Another likely Trump presidency will test the guardrails imposed by the Founding Fathers. But they are robust
There is an emerging consensus that the nearly deadly bullet that grazed Donald Trump’s upper right ear in Butler, Penn., last weekend has fired the Republican candidate back into the White House.
There will be many twists and turns before the November election, but what is clear is that Trump’s status as a champion of the under-represented has been enhanced by the assassination attempt. He has been masterful at creating an image of himself as a persecuted fighter against a “deep state” that is out to get him. The shooting enhances that victimhood.
He has been equally adroit at building a coalition of conservatives: people who resent government overreach, and those who feel they have become strangers in their own land because of cultural changes they don’t agree with. Trump has united them in an us-versus-them identity.
The voters who elected him in 2016 are still with him, testimony to how hard it is to change the minds of people who have wrapped up their political beliefs with their identity.
He is benefitting from the anti-incumbency mood that is sweeping democracies around the globe, as high inflation has raised the cost of living everywhere.
Americans rarely vote for incremental shifts and have a greater appetite for sweeping change than do other democracies. It seems likely that after a period of progressive government, the pendulum of opinion is likely to swing past the centre of gravity and go a similar distance on the other side.
The consolation for supporters of western liberal values like individual freedom, open markets and the rule of law is that after a period of time, the pendulum will likely come back to a point of rest.
The broken promises have produced an anxious, battered country that desires some stability. “We need a rediscovery of who we are,” said Starmer. But British voters had to go through the Brexit ordeal to reach the conclusion that maybe the elites and experts were onto something when they said it was a bad idea.
America has not yet reached that state of exhaustion. Tribal emotions are still raging and the U.S.’s democratic institutions are in peril.
He holds a maximalist interpretation of unitary executive authority, a fancy way of saying he thinks he should be able to do whatever he wants as president.
This is not intended as an anti-Trump rant. He is proposing some policies that are reasonable and overdue, particularly those that course-correct the excesses of the illiberal left and its obsessive belief about obtaining justice for identity groups by deplatforming their enemies and imposing equity.
Trump is proposing reforms such as education programs that teach students to love their country, “not hate the country, like they’re being taught right now.”
But other proposals are misguided (a universal baseline tariff of 10 per cent on all imports), worrying (the suggestion that the U.S. might abandon NATO; the construction of internment camps for immigrants and homeless people) or simply anti-democratic (directing the Department of Justice to go after political enemies).
Some, even much of this may be campaign rhetoric, but this will be a president who is much better prepared to push through his agenda than he was in 2016. Media reports suggest plans to strip civil service job protections are at an advanced stage, so that “deep state” defenders can be replaced with Trump loyalists.
Western liberalism has been under threat before from isolationism, protectionism, Bolshevism and fascism. It has adapted and survived, and it will again.
Trump’s fiscal and trade policies, if implemented as advertised, will invite retaliation and drive-up inflation, as will his proposal to devalue the dollar to reduce the trade deficit and make exports cheaper.
We have already seen what happens to the popularity of governments that usher in higher prices.
Trump will test the guardrails imposed by the Founding Fathers. But they are robust.
Will the silent majority of American voters really sit idly by while 237 years of diversity of opinion is unravelled for the greater glorification of one man?
The Supreme Court has granted immunity for all official presidential actions, nominally in order to keep politics from interfering with the president’s duties.
But even the conservative majority would surely balk at overturning the 22nd Amendment, which prohibits a third term in office (and one which Trump has mused about challenging).
Partisanship and pre-existing beliefs are hard to shake. But they are not immutable. Brexit has shown that disillusionment follows when it becomes clear to voters that their politicians have failed them.
As Abraham Lincoln once said: “Why should there not be a patient confidence in the ultimate justice of the people? Is there any better or equal hope in the world?”