President
Trump has single-handedly done more to undermine the basic tenets of
American democracy than any foreign agent or foreign propaganda campaign
could.
“Trump
is a political weapon of mass self-destruction for American democracy —
for its norms, for its morality, for sheer human decency,” Henry Aaron,
a senior fellow at Brookings, wrote by email:
So
if Putin backed him, and if he did it to damage the United States, then
he dropped one extremely smart bomb in the middle of Washington.
The
Kremlin sought to advance its longstanding desire to undermine the
US-led liberal democratic order, the promotion of which Putin and other
senior Russian leaders view as a threat to Russia and Putin’s regime.
This determination, disputed by Trump and others, pales in comparison to the ruinous record of Trump’s 10 months in office.
First and foremost, Trump has gravely damaged the premises and procedures that undergird American democracy.
Partisan polarization, which helped give rise to Trump in the first place, is getting worse as discord intensifies with every slur and insult Trump hurls.
reached
record levels during Barack Obama’s presidency. In Donald Trump’s first
year as president, these gaps have grown even larger. And the magnitude
of these differences dwarfs other divisions in society, along such
lines as gender, race and ethnicity, religious observance or education.
In the introduction to their forthcoming book, “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, political scientists at Harvard, write:
Over
the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do things that
are unprecedented in the United States — but that we recognize as having
been the precursors of democratic crisis in other places. We feel
dread, as do so many other Americans, even as we try to reassure
ourselves that things can’t really be that bad here.
Their attempt at reassurance is not comforting:
American
politicians now treat their rivals as enemies, intimidate the free
press, and threaten to reject the results of elections. They try to
weaken the institutional buffers of our democracy, including the courts,
intelligence services, and ethics offices. American states, which were
once praised by the great jurist Louis Brandeis as ‘laboratories of
democracy,’ are in danger of becoming laboratories of authoritarianism
as those in power rewrite electoral rules, redraw constituencies, and
even rescind voting rights to ensure that they do not lose. And in 2016,
for the first time in U.S. history, a man with no experience in public
office, little observable commitment to constitutional rights, and clear
authoritarian tendencies was elected president.
In
an email, Levitsky argued that “it is important that we understand that
the U.S. has largely been doing these things to itself,” before adding,
“obviously we should investigate Russian meddling to the fullest, but
to blame Putin for the mess we are in today would be ridiculous. We
Americans created this mess.”
Along
similar lines, Ryan Enos, who is also a political scientist at Harvard,
suggested that the question of Russian involvement in the election is a
secondary issue:
It
might be that all the distrust and rancor we see today would have
happened without Russia’s meddling. There is reason, of course, to
believe this is true: after all, the dysfunction in the US political
system that put Trump in office existed long before Putin’s 2016
interference.
In addition, Enos noted,
Trump’s
ability to diminish the United States’ international standing is also
made possible by flaws in our political system, for example a weak
Congress that has ceded too much power to the executive.
Trump
has not only taken a hammer to the code of behavior underpinning
democracy at home, he has simultaneously diminished the international
stature of the United States — and arguably accelerated the rise of this
country’s major competitor, China.
Daron Acemoglu, an economist at M.I.T. and a co-author of “Why Nations Fail,” argued in an email that he believes
the
battle between the Chinese-Russian axis and Western democratic
institutions to be the defining struggle of the next century. And now
the US is in an ambivalent position, led by a flawed character much more
sympathetic to the Chinese-Russian axis.
Trump’s
chaotic approach to foreign affairs has, in turn, served to strengthen
both Russia and China, in the view of several experts.
Arthur Lupia, a political scientist at the University of Michigan, emailed:
As
America is seen as an increasingly volatile and unreliable partner, the
reduced credibility that follows creates new international
opportunities for people like Putin — who can promise relative
stability.
The net result?
“We now have reduced leverage in many international settings.”
A Pew survey
of adults in 37 foreign nations released in June provides the clearest
evidence of Trump’s effect on America’s international stature. It found
that
a
median of just 22 percent has confidence in Trump to do the right thing
when it comes to international affairs. This stands in contrast to the
final years of Barack Obama’s presidency, when a median of 64 percent
expressed confidence in Trump’s predecessor to direct America’s role in
the world.
As
the accompanying chart shows, confidence in Obama was higher than
confidence in Trump in 35 countries. Tellingly, Trump did better than
Obama in only two, Russia and Israel.
A Global Thumbs Down
A survey across 37 countries asked respondents if they had
confidence in the U.S. president to do the right thing regarding world
affairs. In all but two countries, the rating given to Barack Obama at
the end of his term was higher than that given to Donald J. Trump
several months into his presidency.
American standing declined since Obama
Standing improved with Trump
Trump rating
Obama
50%
Philippines
69%
94%
Nigeria
58
63
Vietnam
58
71
Israel
49
56
Russia
11
53
Tanzania
51
78
Kenya
51
83
Ghana
49
82
India
40
58
South Africa
39
73
Hungary
29
58
Australia
29
84
Senegal
26
77
Italy
25
68
Japan
24
78
Indonesia
23
64
Poland
23
58
Canada
22
83
Britain
22
79
Venezuela
20
26
Greece
19
41
Tunisia
18
27
Netherlands
17
92
Peru
17
53
S. Korea
17
88
Lebanon
15
36
Colombia
15
56
France
14
84
Brazil
14
63
Argentina
13
40
Chile
12
60
Germany
11
86
Turkey
11
45
Sweden
10
93
Jordan
9
14
Spain
7
75
Mexico
5
49
Critics of Trump’s foreign policy contend that the drive by Rex W. Tillerson, Trump’s Secretary of State, to “streamline” the department by forcing out as many as 2,000
State Department employees has had the effect of diminishing America’s
international presence. By the end of this month, the number in the two
top ranks — career ambassadors and career ministers — is scheduled to be cut in half, from 39 to 19.
In a Nov. 15 letter to Tillerson,
Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Armed Services Committee, and Sen.
Jeanne Shaheen, ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Subcommittee
on State Department and USAID Management, wrote:
Taken
together, questionable management practices at the Department of State;
the attitudes of some in the Administration on the value of diplomacy;
declining morale, recruitment and retention; the lack of experienced
leadership to further the strength and longevity of our nation’s
diplomatic corps; and reports of American diplomacy becoming less
effective paint a disturbing picture.
Their verdict:
These
factors lead us to conclude that America’s diplomatic power is being
weakened internally as complex, global crises are growing externally.
Trump’s
assault — and that of his appointees — on democratic standards and
principles is the central element of what might be called a brutalizing or “decivilizational”
process. That’s part of what underlies the eternal return of the
president’s mendacity, reappearing this month in his behind-the-scenes
recitation of lies about Obama’s birthplace and the Access Hollywood tape on which he can be heard bragging about what you can do to women “when you’re a star.”
These developments have revived open discussion of Trump’s mental health.
On Wednesday, Trump pushed the envelope even further, retweeting videos from an ultranationalist group in Britain “purportedly showing
Muslims committing acts of violence.” Prime Minister Theresa May
explicitly faulted Trump, saying “It is wrong for the president to have
done this.” As The Times reported, “No modern American president has
promoted inflammatory content of this sort from an extremist
organization.”
Trump’s extraordinary record of prevarication calls the truth into question. As Hannah Arendt famously put it, when this happens, nothing can be believed anymore:
One
could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and
trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their
falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the
leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all
along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for
their superior tactical cleverness.
The
moment we no longer have a free press, anything can happen. What makes
it possible for a totalitarian or any other dictatorship to rule is that
people are not informed; how can you have an opinion if you are not
informed? If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that
you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any
longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed,
and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. On the
receiving end you get not only one lie — a lie which you could go on
for the rest of your days — but you get a great number of lies,
depending on how the political wind blows. And a people that no longer
can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of
its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And
with such a people you can then do what you please.
It’s
been one year since the election of Donald Trump as president and,
despite his questionable commitment to the country’s political
traditions, American democracy is still standing.
Acemoglu then asked, “Is it time to rejoice in the strength of American institutions?” Short answer: no.
Political
norms that are the bulwark of our democracy cannot be easily repaired
once damaged, even if Trump’s most dangerous policies are stopped. Nor
can white supremacist, anti-immigrant, and nativist rhetoric be swiftly
sidelined once condoned by the U.S. president.
In the face of these threats, Acemoglu continues, “the performance of U.S. checks and balances so far gives no comfort.”
The
test facing our democracy now is whether the rules of engagement that
make the system work can be restored. Trump trampled on those rules and
won the presidency. That precedent may, in and of itself, have inflicted
irreparable damage.
Is there a legal remedy? From the Mueller investigation, for example?
“Executive
authoritarianism and lawlessness can be hemmed in and checked but not
fully constrained by courts, the criminal law, or the written
Constitution,” Jacob T. Levy wrote this week in “The Limits of Legalism,” published by the libertarian-leaning Niskanen Center:
They
ultimately have to be confronted by elected officials: co-partisans
willing to exercise serious restraint, or if not, an opposition voted
into office who will do so instead.
At
the moment, Trump’s co-partisans, House and Senate Republicans, have
shown little willingness to confront him. The longer Trump stays in
office, the greater the danger that he will inflict permanent damage on
the institutions that must be essential tools in any serious attempt to
confront him.
American standing declined since Obama
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