Five years ago, I warned about the risk of a Donald J. Trump presidency. Most people laughed. They thought it inconceivable.
I
was not particularly prescient; I come from Italy, and I had already
seen this movie, starring Silvio Berlusconi, who led the Italian
government as prime minister for a total of nine years between 1994 and
2011. I knew how it could unfold.
Now
that Mr. Trump has been elected president, the Berlusconi parallel
could offer an important lesson in how to avoid transforming a
razor-thin victory into a two-decade affair. If you think presidential
term limits and Mr. Trump’s age could save the country from that fate,
think again. His tenure could easily turn into a Trump dynasty.
Mr.
Berlusconi was able to govern Italy for as long as he did mostly thanks
to the incompetence of his opposition. It was so rabidly obsessed with
his personality that any substantive political debate disappeared; it
focused only on personal attacks, the effect of which was to increase
Mr. Berlusconi’s popularity. His secret was an ability to set off a
Pavlovian reaction among his leftist opponents, which engendered
instantaneous sympathy in most moderate voters. Mr. Trump is no
different.
We
saw this dynamic during the presidential campaign. Hillary Clinton was
so focused on explaining how bad Mr. Trump was that she too often didn’t
promote her own ideas, to make the positive case for voting for her.
The news media was so intent on ridiculing Mr. Trump’s behavior that it
ended up providing him with free advertising.
Unfortunately,
the dynamic has not ended with the election. Shortly after Mr. Trump
gave his acceptance speech, protests sprang up all over America. What
are these people protesting against? Whether we like it or not, Mr.
Trump won legitimately. Denying that only feeds the perception that
there are “legitimate” candidates and “illegitimate” ones, and a small
elite decides which is which. If that’s true, elections are just a
beauty contest among candidates blessed by the Guardian Council of
clerics, just like in Iran.
These
protests are also counterproductive. There will be plenty of reasons to
complain during the Trump presidency, when really awful decisions are
made. Why complain now, when no decision has been made? It delegitimizes
the future protests and exposes the bias of the opposition.
Even
the petition calling for members of the Electoral College to violate
their mandate and not vote for Mr. Trump could play into the
president-elect’s hands. This idea is misguided. What ground would we
then have to stand on when Mr. Trump tricks the system to obtain what he
wants?
Have you changed anything in your daily life since the
election? For example, have you tried to understand opposing points of
view, donated to a group, or contacted your member of Congress? Your
answer may be included in a follow up post.
The
Italian experience provides a blueprint for how to defeat Mr. Trump.
Only two men in Italy have won an electoral competition against Mr.
Berlusconi: Romano Prodi and the current prime minister, Matteo Renzi
(albeit only in a 2014 European election). Both of them treated Mr.
Berlusconi as an ordinary opponent. They focused on the issues, not on
his character. In different ways, both of them are seen as outsiders,
not as members of what in Italy is defined as the political caste.
The
Democratic Party should learn this lesson. It should not do as the
Republicans did after President Obama was elected. Their preconceived
opposition to any of his initiatives poisoned the Washington well,
fueling the anti-establishment reaction (even if it was a successful
electoral strategy for the party). There are plenty of Trump proposals
that Democrats can agree with, like new infrastructure investments. Most
Democrats, including politicians like Mrs. Clinton and Bernie Sanders
and economists like Lawrence Summers and Paul Krugman, have pushed the
idea of infrastructure as a way to increase demand and to expand
employment among non-college-educated workers. Some details might be
different from a Republican plan, but it will add credibility to the
Democratic opposition if it tries to find the points in common, not just
differences.
And
an opposition focused on personality would crown Mr. Trump as the
people’s leader of the fight against the Washington caste. It would also
weaken the opposition voice on the issues, where it is important to
conduct a battle of principles.
Democrats
should also offer Mr. Trump help against the Republican establishment,
an offer that would reveal whether his populism is empty language or a
real position. For example, with Mr. Trump’s encouragement, the Republican platform called for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act, which would separate investment and commercial banking.
The Democrats should declare their support of this separation, a policy
that many Republicans oppose. The last thing they should want is for
Mr. Trump to use the Republican establishment as a fig leaf for his own
failure, dumping on it the responsibility for blocking the popular
reforms that he promised during the campaign and probably never intended
to pass. That will only enlarge his image as a hero of the people
shackled by the elites.
Finally,
the Democratic Party should also find a credible candidate among young
leaders, one outside the party’s Brahmins. The news that Chelsea Clinton
is considering running for office
is the worst possible. If the Democratic Party is turning into a
monarchy, how can it fight the autocratic tendencies in Mr. Trump?
Luigi Zingales, a professor
of entrepreneurship and finance at the Booth School of Business at the
University of Chicago, is the author of “A Capitalism for the People:
Recapturing the Lost Genius of American Prosperity.”
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter. end quote from:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/opinion/the-right-way-to-resist-trump.html
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