With the Trump ascendency and Hillary Clinton’s plea of “What happened?” we progressives find ourselves anguishing over a two-fold question: how we lost this election, but also how, with this loss, we seem in some respects not to even be in the game.
It is, appropriately, a time of introspection as we seek to understand the deeper currents which produced this extraordinary result and its devastating consequences: an ascendant, virulent, and chauvinistic populism and its handmaidens—authoritarianism and corruption—not just here but elsewhere in the world.
Not surprisingly, I look at these events through the context of defining moments in my life. Two for me are my early years growing up in the Alabama of segregationist Governor George Wallace, the grandfather of the current generation of Tumpian populist demagogues (see my last post (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-an-echo-of-george-wallace_us_59a73e82e4b00ed1aec9a56b ) as well as my three years as US Ambassador to Romania, where even today these powerful forces contend for the soul of an emerging democracy.
First let’s define our terms. “Populism” is generally considered to be a movement that is premised on the notion of throwing out the elites. It is often bereft of a particular ideology or agenda. It has a storied tradition in America going back to at least the Populist party of Tom Watson in the 1880’s. It can and has been the lifespring of progressivism from Teddy Roosevelt and our antitrust laws to FDR’s New Deal. That’s obviously, NOT what I’m referring to. Unfortunately, it all too often devolves into a nativist chauvinistic movement and at times is actually coopted by the economic elite. It is this version of populism in Trump, Le Pen in France, Orban in Hungary, Erdogan in Turkey and Putin that concerns me and to which this piece is addressed.
This past week former VP Biden wrote an Op Ed in The NY Times arguing: “America’s ability to lead the world depends not just on the example of our power, but on the power of our example. …. While the United States is far from perfect, we have never given up the struggle to grow closer to the ideals in our founding documents.” (https://nyti.ms/2y0xPq9 )
He addresses the central threat to our position in the world: this rampant strain of populism, which undermines the multilateral institutions which secure our leadership in the world (NATO, the EU, IMF, a network of other treaties including the Iran agreement) as well as, I would argue, our institutions at home including the courts, the separation of powers, and a free and independent media.
With this parochial lens in mind please indulge me.
In April of this year George Will gave a powerful lecture at Freedom Day at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia in which he defined what I take to mean Biden’s “ideals in our founding documents.” Will argued that at its core a central doctrine is that the Constitution was written to restrain majorities. Unlike many populists who believe that majorities are inherently virtuous, our constitution is premised on the notion that, in the words of James Madison, “popular will should prevail” except to be “rightful it must be reasonable”. So at its heart the Constitution is counter majoritarian. When the Declaration of Independence says that governments are established to “secure” rights it means in some instances to thwart the will of the majority.
I first came to understand this fundamental principle as I watched Sheriff Clark’s police beat demonstrators on the Edmund Pettus bridge in 1965 in Selma and Bull Connor on the streets of Birmingham in 1963. If you had polled voters in my native Alabama at the time they undoubtedly would have supported not only segregation but almost any efforts to shut down the civil rights movement. But for the intervention of the Kennedy Administration and a few courageous federal judges like Frank M Johnson in Montgomery there would have been no effective limit on Wallace’s populist demagoguery. The federal government’s position was indeed profoundly counter-majoritarian but clarified to me the notion that there are certain rights, from equal protection to personal autonomy and free speech, which are inviolate even by state governments, speaking on behalf of an overwhelming majority.
This counter-majoritarian principle, present since our founding, is our essential DNA as Americans. Nothing else can possibly explain how 300 million people in one of the most racially, ethnically and economically diverse nations in the world continue to thrive. Notwithstanding the anger and impatience of any temporary majority, our institutions, be they courts or an independent media, force us to respect each other and the rights of others, whether or not we are in the majority at any particular moment.
It was a notion that was difficult for even the most pro-western Romanians to understand when I argued for it in my three years as Ambassador. During that time a titanic struggle was underway which continues to this day over whether Romania would be governed by men or women (mostly men) or by law. As is the case with many post-Communist countries, disentangling command and control economies is a particularly challenging endeavor. An economy that was run by a network of corrupt and incompetent state-owned enterprises is not easily transitioned to a free market system. The oligarchs who run these companies and reap most of the profits are clever enough to dominate the mainline media and the political parties, not unlike the rail and steel barons did in America in the late 19th century. Then, as now, corruption catalyzes the system, and stymies reform.
I can recall as yesterday arguing with Romanian media and political elites about the necessity of enforcing the rule of law in the face of rampaging majorities. Political leaders claimed the popular mandate to end the anticorruption efforts and thwart good, transparent corporate governance of the state-owned enterprises, the remnants of the communist era that bred a good part of the endemic corruption. In one instance, I remember being told “But ambassador we have a solid majority supporting us in the last election…who are you or the EU or the IMF to tell us to ignore the will of the people?” My response, harkening back to my days in Alabama, was “But a lynch mob is democratic. That doesn’t make it right. You don’t have to listen to me. I’m only the US Ambassador. But you do have to listen to the EU because you agreed to these ‘first principles’ of good governance when you joined the EU and by the same token when you borrowed $20 bn from the IMF you agreed to abide by rules of transparency and predictability.” It struck me at that point that Romania in 2012 was really not that different from Alabama in the 1960’s, with Robert Kennedy’s Department of Justice removing Wallace from symbolically “standing in the door” of the University of Alabama as he tried to block the entry of the first black student. In this case it was not US Marshalls but EU bureaucrats ordering the Romanian government not to block the anticorruption program.
So one defense against the authoritarianism bred by this populism is strong external institutions, whether it’s the courts and the media in the US or the EU or the IMF abroad. But there are limits to the effectiveness of these institutions. In the end, we must dig deeper, to the conditions that have allowed this populism to take root, and the legitimate grievances of those, especially in America, who are so dispossessed and alienated that they are willing to tolerate the authoritarian musings of demagogues.
The problem with our Madisonian argument is that unfortunately it plays right into the narrative by some populists: a bunch of elitist lawyers and pundits arguing that the people’s voice should be ignored. Clearly there is a significant plurality of Americans, primarily white males without a college education, who have given up on progressive politics. They believe the unions have failed them, the Democratic party has failed them, and the liberal media has failed them. Why shouldn’t they believe that? As the New York Times recently pointed out (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/business/economy/bump-in-us-incomes-doesnt-erase-50-years-of-pain.html?) economic data on economic inequality suggests that the American boast that America is an engine of class mobility and an ever expanding middle class is not reassuring. The essence of the American dream-that we can hand to our children a better future- is in serious jeopardy. This not only explains the Trump election but the opioid crisis that inflicts significant portions of our country and especially the alarming increase of suicides among middle class white males.
This is another powerful “example” that Biden, myself, and other progressives have a special burden to address, and is the essential lesson of Ed Luce in his compelling book The Retreat of Western Liberalism. Developing a program of reforms that would not only work but would resonate with these voters I predict will be exceptionally difficult. As Lucas suggests in his book, you can’t blame these alienated Americans for not being terribly concerned about the excesses of populist demagoguery as long as they cannot provide a better standard of living to their children than their parents gave to them.
It is quite possible that the only antidote to Trumpian right wing populism is the agenda of left wing populism, from free college education to single payer health care. Indeed there is much to the argument is that at its heart our problem in America is the 1% and their political power and whether we progressives have the courage and political clout to take them on. More on that in my next post.
But there are two more challenges for progressives, especially by our pollsters and message gurus:
First, we need to better understand the relationship between populism and authoritarianism. As Jan-Werner Muller argues in his What is Populism? “… they (populists) will engage in occupying the state, mass clientelism and corruption and the suppression of anything like a critical civil society.” In other words, an end to the American system as we know it. Why is that inevitable and can our institutions survive that stress? As Muller has pointed out, to be populist is to all too many populists to be antipluralist. The question we have to put to ourselves is whether there is an argument on behalf of the power of pluralism that is different from the identity politics that seems to enthrall progressives today. Identity politics further alienates these voters who are the engine of Trumpian populism, especially when our argument seems to ignore them in favor of other alienated minorities. Why can’t we craft an argument on behalf of pluralism that sounds to white middle class males that we care just as much about their plight?
And second, can we rekindle the argument for, and rebuild a constituency around anticorruption, the rule of law, and our Madisonian system? What would the giants of our founding, from Jefferson to Madison to Franklin say today, and can we develop a modern language in favor of a constitutional system that has made us the wonder of the world. What is the 21st century version of Benjamin Franklin’s “Madam, A Republic if you can keep it”.
Perhaps what we need is a 21st century version of the Federalist Papers. Such a dialogue would have to address the question put to us this past weekend in the New York Times by Ganesh Sitaraman when he asks whether our Constitution is up to the task of confronting pervasive income inequality (https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/16/opinion/sunday/constitution-economy.html?mcubz=0&_r=0). Sitaraman argues that the Constitution was written at a time when there were not such economic inequality among white males (African Americans and women were of course excluded) and there had not yet emerged such a powerful economic elite as we have today.
I will address each of these three additional areas in subsequent postings. Thanx for reading.