Prompted by this article in Salon magazine: “Can we stop tiptoeing around the fact that Trump is behaving like a dictator?”
After our independence, and after we officially became the country it is now, has any other president acted so boldly like a king and caused such division in our citizenry?
I don’t ask this as a casual swipe at Trump. I’m asking a real factual question. I’ve not been that political in the past and there’s a lot about the far past politics that I’m just not up on.
Nixon.
CMC fnord!
I was around for Nixon. I don’t remember the Republicans loosing their ability to think clearly for him. Sure, they were slow to come around to impeachment but didn’t Hogan buy airtime to announce he was voting to impeach?
Wasn’t there a sedition law back in John Adams’ time?
In any case, the United States started out much more as a, shall I say, less than democratic republic. In fact, conservatives today seem fond of reminding us of that fact. We’ve become more democratic over the past 200+ years, expanding the franchise to include people of color and women to varying degrees. If the US backslides on democracy, being less democratic wouldn’t be without precedent, but it would certainly represent a major directional change along the authoritarian - liberal democratic political/philosophical axis.
In addition to the question being asked, a potentially more ominous question is whether or not there has ever been an executive who has asserted the privilege of executive power to this degree. And this is where we may be potentially drifting into uncharted waters. The finer points of this issue’s historical background can be debated, but I suppose we could argue that, generally, in the past, the US was less democratic because society itself held a less democratic worldview, which changed over time.
What we’re faced with in the Trump era is a political power vacuum in which a faction whose world view is not widely supported is asserting itself by violating political norms, not just of today but norms that have been held for decades or even centuries. The broad claims of executive power, combined with the Senate majority’s abdication of its role as a check on executive power, are having profound impacts that will define the future of American democracy, with impacts ranging from an hyper-political and ideologically rigid judiciary to an executive that insists on supremacy under the constitution.
Well, if you go by executive orders, he’s about average for recent Presidents. All Presidents since Carter have issued on the order of thirty-something or forty-something executive orders per year. Trump is sitting at 45.8. All the Presidents from Ike to Carter were between sixty and eighty executive orders per year. And from Teddy Roosevelt through Truman they were all in triple digits. So no, unless you have some other statistic in mind, he doesn’t seem to be overachieving on the dictator front.
I’d argue that people really don’t seem to understand exactly what Nixon did.
One political party choosing both, viable, parties candidates would seem to be the definition of ‘losing our democratic government’.
CMC fnord!
Which nobody is, other than you.
Okay, so suggest some other objective metric.
How about incidents of Contempt of Congress (Ignoring congressional subpoenas)?
The problem with your metric is that executive orders are perfectly fine and appropriate when applied to areas under the purview of the executive branch. They become problematic when they are used to effectively overturn legislation or judicial decisions - attempting to expand executive power beyond its constitutional limits.
Sounds good. Got data?
Wow.
Yeah, I can see that Carter and Trump are about the same. [insert old style roll eyes]
We ain’t seen nothin’ yet. We’ve proved that we can’t/won’t impeach him, so for the next year, he can do whatever he wants. Including, I suppose, rig the next election, or cancel it. I don’t think Trump has it in him go that far, but little by little, recent presidents have been paving the road for somebody who will. It wasn’t Trump who delivered Homeland Security and the Patriot Act.
In a serious answer to your question, Lucas Jackson, yes. I think we’re in more trouble than we’ve ever been since the Civil War.
Nixon was bad. But during Nixon, the country agreed on facts and they knew how to recognize them when they were presented.
Republicans and Democrats alike agreed on constitutional norms. They understood that interfering to rig elections was the work of an unfit executive, and they understood that impeachment was the constitutional remedy to remove an unfit executive. They agreed that soliciting any interference in our elections, including and especially foreign interference, was the pinnacle of unfit behavior. In Nixon’s day, what Trump and his henchmen are doing would have appalled Republicans. They would not only have removed him, I believe they would have run him out of the country.
We have never seen an attorney general so corrupt that he actively interfered with the judicial process to try for particular outcomes in active criminal cases. Not once, not ever. Nixon’s AG, John Mitchell, did try to weaponize the DOJ/FBI to persecute Nixon’s enemies as William Barr is also doing for Trump, but even Mitchell didn’t attempt to reach into active criminal matters and bend them to an outcome as bidden by the executive. Mitchell did time for his crimes, it should be noted.
The rule of law is the very foundation for our government, the notion that all persons are created equal under the law and must receive like protections and punishments. If Trump successfully breaks it, we may not recover from that.
Foreign interests, Republicans in Congress and corporate oligarchs all have their own reasons for wanting to help Trump succeed. Although they are motivated by different agendas, they are working together for the same outcome of destroying our democracy as we have lived under it for nearly 2 and a half centuries. We have never seen these diverse factions embrace bald propaganda in order to achieve their objectives. We’re far past the point of spin. We’re in an era of pure untruth – and nearly half the country believes and accepts it without question.
When those at the top live by a “justice” that does not apply to the rest of us, when our representatives in Congress work hard for special interests and ignore the wishes of their constituents, then yes. We are in deep trouble, and we are no longer a functioning democracy. This is the time to resist in every way you can.
Agree wholeheartedly with this. Much of the Trump agenda is the furtherance of the GWB mess. Even the same players are hiding under all the same rocks. How they loved filling the vacuum that is Trump.
Oh, good, the cancel the election boogeyman. Who’s the last president that people didn’t get suggest would cancel the election, George Bush (41)?
McConnell started us down this path - Trump is just an idiot who would be king and thinks he is.
It’s McConnell that prevents and blocks and creates a dysfunctional gov’t.
If it were’nt for McConnell - trump would be held in check as he rightly should be.
McConnell certainly shoulders much of the blame, but he didn’t dismantle the State Department. Didn’t weaponize/politicize DHS or attempt to overtake military funding for his own political purposes. He didn’t scapegoat immigrants/refugees. Didn’t put kids in cages. Didn’t alienate all our allies.
Don’t get me wrong. I loathe McConnell and the sooner he’s gone, the better. He’s very much onboard with the former GWB agenda and did his part by politicizing the courts and denying Obama his SCOTUS pick among many other things. That Oleg Deripaska-funded 200 million dollar aluminum plant in Kentucky should be heavily scrutinized. The activities of McConnell’s wife Elaine Chao’s family and China should be deeply investigated. McConnell is as corrupt as they come. But he’s only one piece of the whole corruption puzzle. There are a scary number of players in this nightmare.
Right - my point about McConnell is that without him, Trump would not be so ‘successful’ at his games.
Trump is just doing exactly what we knew Trump would do - ignore all sense of decorum, and run the country like a mob boss - but all of those things would be held in check if both houses of Congress would/could do the job - and McConnell ensures they wont.
But Trump is only 1 piece - we don’t “lose democracy” until the other 2 pieces fall lockstep with the would be king - and it’s McConnell that is causing that part.
No disagreement from me on this. It’s also the piece that normalizes the outrageous abuses. I think lots of people in the country think, “Well, it can’t be that bad, or else Congress would do something about it.” It will be too late by the time they work it out.