The Atlantic features a good interview with our Jim Ceaser on his uncanny ability in his 1979 political-science classic Presidential Selection to have foreseen the nomination of Trump.
Presidential Selection was, for me, the most important book by far in figuring out how to integrate political philosophy with institutional analysis and astute political history in teaching various courses in American politics. Political parties have taken on a constitutional role in structuring the selection of the president. There needs to be a proper place for ambition, but not the kind of ambition that’s destructive of constitutional forms. Woodrow Wilson, for one, was just naïve in his reliance on people being moved by principled characters displaying ennobling rhetoric. The institution of the party, dominated by “party regulars,” is a better judge of both competence and character than are primary voters in the age of the electronic media. Parties function best — America functions best — when there is a strong and pretty safe space for deliberation and coalition-building.
Here are five reasons that, if the Republican party were an organized body of thought and action, Trump wouldn’t be nominated: 1) He’s ignorantly incompetent; 2) he has huge “character issues”; 3) he’s unstable and unreliable; 4) he repudiates or mangles beyond recognition many of the principles that have given the party its meaning over time (including those grounded in the inalienable rights we all share); 5) he’s unelectable — and maybe in a way that may well cost the party both houses of Congress, too. You can argue over whether each or all of these is reason enough not to vote for Trump. My point is that each of them — and certainly all of them taken together — is enough for him not be the Republicans’ candidate.
Jim explained that party reform that transferred the selection of the presidential candidate from party regulars to the rank-and-file expressing their candidate preferences through primaries and caucuses made it easy for the nomination — and, therefore, for the party itself — to be captured by an “outsider” whose only qualification is a kind of demagogic rhetoric that arouses resentment and other forms of animosity against the establishment for being corrupt and out of touch.
And the outsider wouldn’t have to succeed all at once but could build up momentum as the primaries and caucuses occurred over several months. The establishment could be lulled into complacent slumber that comes with reveling in the lesson of experience that outsiders, at least on the Republican side, never go the distance. Jim’s book, after all, did well in explaining why the Democrats ended up with McGovern and Carter, but it really didn’t explain why the “outsider” danger on the Republican side has been, until this year, only a political theory. The Republicans had been predictably nominating boring insiders who came in second the previous time.
One of the puzzles of our time is why a system so tilted in the direction of rhetoric and debating — not to mention branding — has produced so many uninspirational and not particularly eloquent Republican nominees. Both Bushes, Dole, McCain, Romney! At least we’re not talking demagogues there. If I had interviewed Jim, I would have asked him about that.
The Republican voters, someone might say, were often longing for the credible outsider who never appeared and constantly settling for candidates with limited democratic appeal. That’s why they didn’t follow up their victories in 1994, 2010, and even 2014 with winning the presidency. The party leaders of old would surely have done better than the present system in producing electable candidates. Trump, someone might add, is an understandable — if misbegotten — reaction to a generation of boring, loser nominees.
The whole convention-based national party, Jim memorably reminded us, was invented by Martin Van Buren to prevent another president with the untethered ambition of Andrew Jackson. And it’s pretty reliably gotten that job done over time, even after the reform in delegate selection. Even Goldwater, McGovern, and Carter were, in their own ways, men of character and competence, at least in comparison with Trump. Trump’s ambition is more rogue even than Jackson’s, insofar as he owes nothing and concedes nothing to the party establishment. If there’s going to be party unity, it’s going to be, he says, on his terms.
As Jim points out, the outsider thing really kicked in this year in an extreme way in both parties. Trump is not really a Republican, and Sanders is not really a Democrat.
Still, it’s not that Trump was unstoppable. What there is of a party establishment proved to be decadent, out of touch, and overconfident. The decent men from Florida, Bush and Rubio, were conspiring against each other while Rome, so to speak, burned. And Cruz thought he could — because anyone could — take Trump one on one, and so he used his time and treasure for too long to take all the others out. It even seems to be the case that the considered judgment of a majority of Republican voters on issues such as entitlements and unions is closer to Trump than to Cruz. Don’t get me started on the spectacular cluelessness of the parts of the Republican establishment called consultants and big donors. Most said donors didn’t and won’t even come to the plate this year. Then there was the passive-aggressive brand of “Never Trump.” Nate Silver, when confessing that he departed from his data when underestimating Trump, added that he didn’t predict that the Republicans would do nothing that wasn’t stupid to stop Trump.
My advice to Republicans (and, for that matter, Democrats): Don’t blame the system, blame yourselves.
Still, Jim understands better than anyone why the system is pretty bleepin’ bad. It has all the downsides of democracy without the upside of being genuinely democratic. This year, it’s the system that has given us the two most unpopular major-party nominees ever.
At this point, however, it’s generally conceded (rightly or wrongly, for me it’s a complicated issue) that Trump was legitimately selected by a system that wasn’t and shouldn’t have been rigged against him. So Republicans, for the most part, are doing what they can to own the result.
And, just like a country is still a country, a convention is still a convention. A majority of the actual delegates will be in some sense party regulars undazzled by the personality of Trump. As Jim reminded us elsewhere, they have a duty to help him be the best potential president he can be, including perhaps giving him a better vice-presidential nominee than the one he whimsically chooses.
There are still some who have hope in the imperative Trump delendum est and work to inflict on Donald a defeat so massive that he will be excised like the cancer he is. I certainly agree with not voting for Trump, although that act of conscience or prudence is easy for someone who’s not an elected official, a party regular, or an opinion-forming public intellectual of any consequence.
But that hope is a more than a little delusional or unrealistically exaggerated. Trump probably won’t lose that badly, maybe no worse than McCain and not as badly as Dole. And the nomination system will be, at best, marginally better next time. The next successful Republican nomination will have stolen more than a bit of Trump’s thunder. Republicans, learn from Trump, but don’t be Trump! (I probably should have written that in Latin.)