His election might be the jolt a broken system needs.
In the fall of 2014, political scientist Francis Fukuyama offered a dire diagnosis of American politics, contending they had become ossified and closed off from the concerns of the people and the genuine needs of the country, a “vetocracy” increasingly resistant to change and reform.
“The depressing bottom line is that given how self-reinforcing the country’s political malaise is, and how unlikely the prospects for constructive incremental reform are,” Fukuyama concluded, “the decay of American politics will probably continue until some external shock comes along to catalyze a true reform coalition and galvanize it into action.”
What if Donald Trump turns out to be that external shock?
By many standards, Trump is a disastrous prospect for the Oval Office. He has no interest in policy and refuses to learn. He’s thin-skinned and lashes out at any perceived slight, no matter how small. He traffics in conspiracy theories and long-dispelled rumors. His bigotry is unusually broad, and it is quite possible he believes in nothing other than himself.
But the dangers of a Trump presidency are so glaringly clear, his election might force everyone else in the American political system to simply be better in order to mitigate the damage.
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For starters, Democrats might suddenly remember the idea of separation of powers. During Barack Obama’s presidency, Democrats in Congress started drafting executive orders for him to sign — an open proclamation that passing legislation under constitutional rules had become too difficult, and it was time for America to be ruled by royal fiat.
The media might start remembering how laws are supposed to be passed again, too.
President Obama ignored the Constitution when he felt like it and a large portion of the media went along because they believed in the goal: If he wants to stop enforcing immigration law, well, then it’s a compassionate idea, and besides, it’ll add a lot of Democratic voters along the way. If he wants to appoint whomever he wants without confirmation votes by stretching the definition of recess appointments beyond all forms of recognition, well, it’s just because those Republicans are being so darned unreasonable. Under President Trump, the media would instantly become adversarial again; the threat of runaway executive power would no longer be merely a partisan concern.
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In fact, the biggest worry for Constitution-lovers would be that congressional Republicans could suddenly embrace the idea of an imperial presidency themselves. The extraordinary danger of a Trump presidency is that instead of rebuking Obama’s abuse of executive power, he would ratify it and make it the new normal.
#share#Anger over the economy and the perception that Wall Street had behaved recklessly during the housing boom helped fuel Obama’s election in 2008 and subsequent populist waves, from the Tea Party to Occupy Wall Street. With an unpredictable, tantrum-prone president, Wall Street and financial institutions would have extreme incentives to police themselves. In the wake of the next big financial scandal, a President Trump might try to enact confiscatory tax rates by executive order or start tweeting out the home addresses and phone numbers of people he deems responsible. When the watchdog has gone rabid, everyone else has a greater incentive not to act rashly.
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A Trump presidency would be seen as an ugly backlash to a more diverse country, but also a rebuke of the racial demagoguery that has flourished in the Obama years, which stoked a debate about “white privilege” at the precise moment most white people don’t feel privileged at all. Recall that months after the election of the first African-American president, the African-American attorney general called America a “nation of cowards” when it came to race. Politico described Al Sharpton as President Obama’s “go-to man on race.” With those kinds of signals being sent from the top, just what kind of race relations should the country have expected?
Trump could get elected only in a country that has grown so tired of reflexive cries of racism that it now tunes out statements that are much more plausibly labeled racist. The boy who cried wolf has cried too many times, and now a rather wolfish figure has appeared, and his cries have had little effect.
Faced with a president who ignores all accusations of racism, Americans of all colors might just realize that the accusation of “racism” shouldn’t be an easy tool for shutting down debate, demonizing political foes, or attributing malign secret motives to those with opposing views. Americans might even accept that not every grievance, perceived slight, and micro-aggression has to become a social-media firestorm and national news.
#related#What’s been fascinating about the Obama era has been how much faith remains in the president’s ability to solve problems even in the face of one colossal screw-up after another. Take your pick: the VA, Healthcare.gov, the OPM (Office of Personnel Management) hacking scandal, runaway NSA domestic surveillance, Fast and Furious, Benghazi. President Obama constantly insists he’s the last one to know about these problems, and rarely if ever fires anyone with less plausible deniability.
Trump’s high disapproval ratings suggest that most Americans already don’t like him, don’t trust him, and don’t have much faith in him. In a Trump presidency, perhaps a wide swath of Americans — at least those outside his frothing fan base — would accept that they can’t count on the president to be a messiah figure with a magic wand, a giant national Santa Claus bestowing gifts upon lucky communities.
And if Americans stopped believing that the president could solve their problems, they might be a little more proactive in coming up with their own solutions.
— Jim Geraghty is the senior political correspondent for National Review.