The author wrote this post last month, before last Thursday’s debate, but his movement of mind is not only not out of time, it chimes with Cong. Jamie Raskin’s bracing clarities in a Q&A yesterday…
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It’s a familiar trope of old horror films. Everyone is aware of the fanged entity creeping up on the heroine, except the femme fatale herself. You might be tempted to point, or even scream “Behind you!” But, of course, you won’t be heard.
There is something strangely analogous to that frustration – not being heard – which might strike a chord with those who have tried to express their misgivings about Trump to those of other persuasions.
Admittedly, the situation is different – for one thing, the movie scene has already been filmed – but in real time, there is always the illusion that persuasion is possible, that reasonable persons can be swayed by the facts. You may not have all the facts at the tip of your tongue, but suppose you did – or better yet – suppose you lived in a world where you could just create the facts – perfect facts – guaranteed to end the viability of any political figure you chose to attach them to. What might you choose? Ending Roe? Two impeachments? Eighty-eight indictments? A conviction? How about a coup against the United States, including a plot to replace lawful electors with operatives whose only qualification was a commitment to do as their recruiters instructed?
Let’s gild the lily. Let’s make that person say terrible things, like “undocumented immigrants aren’t people,” or “grab ‘em by the pussy,” or phrases lifted straight from Mein Kampf. While we’re at it, let’s toss in a sexual assault, and if a litany of additional me-too-ers should prove available, let’s add eighteen more.
Who would believe that all that wouldn’t work?
Here are the facts: in the first months of Trump’s presidency his favorability ratings were around 35%. By May of 2024, after all of the above had transpired, his favorable ratings stood at 42%1. How can this be explained in a world where so many have seen their aspirations and viability shattered over so much less? Howard Dean’s campaign imploded after he screamed too loudly while pretending to be thrilled with his third-place finish in the Iowa Caucus. Hillary Clinton used the word deplorables – deplorables! – and suffered immediate blowback. Her opponent, meanwhile, was prefacing her first name with Crooked, and suggested that it might not be a bad thing if somebody shot her.2
There must have been moments like this in the final days of the Weimar Republic when a danger so apparent to some was dismissed by those in the thrall of another rising populist.
When I first heard the notion, “It can’t happen here,” its undertones were far more theoretical than the weight it carries today. In high school, I learned about checks and balances, and for two hundred and thirty-five years, they have held against formidable tests: secessionists, communists, Nazis, anarchists, Charles Lindberg, Father Coughlin, Joe McCarthy. How could it be that the individual who would finally shatter the system would not be a Machiavellian mastermind, or even someone normally associated with high intellect, but instead, a bloviating buffoon?
Some might blame the Founders for not locking in better controls. But the Founders were not striving to fortify our system against a hypothetical king, but an actual king, one who would have had them hanged if their fledgling democracy had failed. They created a president who could not impose a single law without the cooperation of Congress, whose excesses could be shut down by the courts. He could not eliminate his enemies with forced confessions (Fifth Amendment), nor torture them (Eighth Amendment), nor silence them (First Amendment).
The founders definitely foresaw Trump. Who they did not foresee was Nikki Haley. Imagine a Jefferson, or a Hamilton, or an Adams inveighing against King George III with mild, self-canceling declarations such as, “Rightly or wrongly, taxation controversies follow him,” then moderating that – lest someone take offense – with, “He was the right monarch at the right time.” Haley, of course, was just one person, but what the founders also could not have imagined was an entire wing of Congress willing to cede their power to the usurper, or a judiciary unwilling to contest insurrection.
Haley was not an idiot. She knew that the portion of the electorate she courted had little tolerance for truth-telling. She said it herself: “If I focused on Donald Trump in the beginning I would have ended up like Chris Christie.”3
Her prospective voters were not people you crossed. Nor were they ripe for persuasion. Even if you stood before them pointing and screaming, “The monster is right behind you,” they would be unlikely to turn their heads. Nonetheless, according to current polling, the president who will be elected in November is likely to be one of their choosing.
I cannot recall an election where someone did not say, “This is the most important election of our lifetimes.” Perhaps we who have pushed retellings of The Emperor’s New Clothes should have been reading The Boy Who Cried Wolf. But even over-zealous wolf warnings do not preclude the possibility that one day the wolf will be real. Yet, if a sizable portion of the populace is inured to such warnings, what, if anything, can be done?
Trump has detonated existing checks and balances to powder, along with the institutional means of constraining him. We are left with no silver bullet in defense. But if Ted Bundy were pounding on your door at four in the morning, you would not hold out for perfection, you would reach for the first weapon you could find. In elections, some of the first go-tos would be: donations, endorsements, postcards, canvassing, rallies, phone banks (even if it means calling the same person in Pennsylvania twenty-seven times).
Not exactly kryptonite, but it may be all that we have. For what it’s worth (and some are still disputing this) in 2020 it worked.
In the current cycle, the clock on democracy is ticking.
The last check and balance is the vote.
It’s up to us.
And, George Soros, if you’re listening, this is not another hallucinating boy outing an imaginary wolf. It’s more like that old Ray Bradbury title: Something Wicked This Way Comes. We can already hear the footsteps.
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References
1 Favorability ratings
https://www.realclearpolling.com/polls/favorability/donald-trump
2 Trump Suggests Hillary could be shot
New York Times online, 8/9/2016
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html
3 Why Haley did not go after Trump
Yahoo News 3/6/2024.