Bob Bauer, a trusted Obama advisor, has written a fascinating editorial on how the founding fathers predicted Donald Trump, Fuhrer of the Republican Reich, but failed to provide the necessary tools to get rid of him. Here is enough of that editorial for you to get the gist of it.
Donald Trump’s Republican congressional allies are throwing up different defenses against impeachment and hoping that something may sell. They say that he didn’t seek a corrupt political bargain with Ukraine, but that if he did, he failed, and the mere attempt is not impeachable. Or that it is not clear that he did it, because the evidence against him is unreliable “hearsay.”
It’s all been very confusing. But the larger story — the crucial constitutional story — is not the incoherence of the president’s defense. It is more that he and his party are exposing limits of impeachment as a response to the presidency of a demagogue.
The founders feared the demagogue, who figures prominently in the Federalist Papers as the politician who, possessing “perverted ambition,” pursues relentless self-aggrandizement “by the confusions of their country.” The last of the papers, Federalist No. 85, linked demagogy to its threat to the constitutional order — to the “despotism” that may be expected from the “victorious demagogue.” This “despotism” is achieved through systematic lying to the public, vilification of the opposition and, as James Fenimore Cooper wrote in an essay on demagogues, a claimed right to disregard “the Constitution and the laws” in pursuing what the demagogue judges to be the “interests of the people.”
Should the demagogue succeed in winning the presidency, impeachment in theory provides the fail-safe protection. And yet the demagogue’s political tool kit, it turns out, may be his most effective defense. It is a constitutional paradox: The very behaviors that necessitate impeachment supply the means for the demagogue to escape it.
As the self-proclaimed embodiment of the American popular will, the demagogue portrays impeachment deliberations as necessarily a threat to democracy, a facade for powerful interests arrayed against the people that only he represents. Critics and congressional opponents are traitors. Norms and standing institutional interests are fraudulent… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <NY Times>
I strongly urge you to click through and read this editorial in it’s entirety. It is too valuable to miss.
If the Trump Residency survives the 2020 election, I strongly question the survival of freedom in the US.
RESIST!!
9 Responses to “The Founders and the Demagogue”
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It’s amazing to me how the R’s will lie, deceit, and change the story for the benefit of dt.
How sickening.
Your last sentence says it all, TC. thx!
When there is an important article someplace with a paywall, I always “print” it to file so I can access it in a hurry if I don’t have time to clear my cache, and this is no exception.
The founders didn’t have much faith in the resistance of the people to demagogues, and it now appears that was simply good judgment. They did have faith in a free press … and I am not going to fault those outlets and journalists who are out there doing their job – and they exist. What no one expected was the rise of individuals with enough money to buy whole networks, spread lies, and brainwash enough people to pave the way for the demagogue. (No one expects the Spanish Inquisition, either.)
They also had faith in the Senate – and what a house of cards THAT turned out to be. At this point, I suspect the one person whose dropping dead before Christmas could help save the country is not Trump, but McConnell.
I would go beyond your last sentence and say that if the Trump Residency survives the 2020 election, I strongly question the survival of freedom in the world. So many nations which once had freedom are now in positions of having Republicans (whatever they are called there) in stranglehold positions in their governments, that I think if we fall, everyone will fall. And in that event, I question the survival of the human race.
This quote by Alexander Hamilton is profoundly prescient & a perfect depiction of tRump:
From an excellent article by David Remnick (my favorite “New Yorker” author – sorry Andy):
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/11/25/the-sober-clarity-of-the-impeachment-witnesses
https://quotecatalog.com/quote/alexander-hamilton-when-a-man-unpr-b1rW3E7/
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/8685381-those-then-who-resist-a-confirmation-of-public-order-are
Hamilton was an optimist. It’s clear that being “possessed of considerable talents,” and “having the advantage of military habits” are not needed. They can be replaced by .. having a history of raw dogging porn stars?
Nadler quoted the same passage in the opening th the first impeachment hearing in Judiciary this morning.
I was at my LAST Wound Care Clinic visit this morning – so I missed it.
Congrats! I bet you don’t mind being done with that!
Despicable to read what these repugs have been doing and continue to get away with each and every day.
tRump being the King of Evil Deceitful Liars, traitor to his own country leading his cronies to do as he says.
If they can’t get anything done with the impeachment hearings to get him out of office, I pray that there is enough wise people in our country to get out and vote to get this creep voted out.
If not, I’ll have to agree with your last sentence too.
Thanks TomCat
Thanks, Amen and Hump Day Hugs to all!