A performance of Wagner’s “Götterdämmerung.” 1917 photo.
What Mark Twain once said of Wagner — “I have been told that Wagner’s music is better than it sounds” — could be applied to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: I’ve heard that he’s not as bad as he seems. Right now, though, Schumer seems really bad in refusing to call for the resignation of Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., who’s been indicted on lurid federal bribery charges involving everything from gold bullion to a Mercedes-Benz convertible. Schumer went so far as to call Menendez a “dedicated public servant” and said, “He has a right to due process and a fair trial.”
Why do I say that Schumer isn’t as bad as he seems? Because he’s probably having private talks with Menedez right now aimed at getting him to step down, figuring that discreet persuasion will work better than public humiliation. The problem is that such thinking is the product of a bygone age, unsuited to the always-on public performance that modern politics demands. Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who’s older than Schumer, figured it out. But Schumer appears to be too set in his ways to make the adjustment.
Mitt Romney, right, with then-Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey. Photo (cc) 2018 by Gage Skidmore.
I read The Atlantic’s excerpt from McKay Coppins’ new Mitt Romney biography on the train ride home Friday. It delivers the goods. I’ve never been a Romney fan, but I appreciate his willingness to stand up to Donald Trump and Trumpism when it really mattered.
I was also struck that, after Romney became an outcast within his own party, he preferred to work with conspiracy-minded loons like Sen. Ron Johnson over the hypocrites who defended Trump in public while sidling up to Romney in private to tell him they would love to denounce Trump, too, but they just couldn’t. (“There are worse things than losing an election,” Romney would tell them. “Take it from somebody who knows.”)
What is chilling, though, is that, as Romney tells it, Republicans who once indulged Trump in order to advance their own political ambitions later had a different, more elemental reason for defending Trump in public: they were afraid they and their families would be killed by Trump’s deranged supporters, whipped up into a fury by the maximum leader himself. Coppins writes:
Some of the reluctance to hold Trump accountable was a function of the same old perverse political incentives — elected Republicans feared a political backlash from their base. But after January 6, a new, more existential brand of cowardice had emerged. One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump’s second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family’s safety. The congressman reasoned that Trump would be impeached by House Democrats with or without him — why put his wife and children at risk if it wouldn’t change the outcome? Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can’t do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right.
Romney was paying $5,000 for security, and he understood that many of his colleagues couldn’t afford that. But this is horrifying, and it shows the near-impossibility of breaking up the Trump-Republican alliance. Moreover, it’s how we move from democracy to authoritarianism to fascism. As New York Times columnist David Brooks put it Friday on the “PBS NewsHour”: “There are members who were going to vote to convict on impeachment, but were afraid that they or their families might get assassinated, and they knew their vote wouldn’t make a difference. We are way beyond the bounds of normal democratic governance, when that’s even on the minds of members of Congress.”
My fear is that Joe Biden’s presidency represents little more than an uneasy interregnum between Trump and whatever’s next. If Biden can win re-election, maybe that will give us four more years for passions on the extreme right — now a majority of the Republican Party — to cool off. From where we are standing today, though, I don’t see much chance of that happening.
If you’re a Medford resident who is not on Facebook, I want to let you know that the Medford Chamber of Commerce will be sponsoring a mayoral debate Breanna Lungo-Koehn and Rick Caraviello. The event will be held at the McGlynn School on Wednesday, Oct. 4, at 7 p.m. Send your ideas for questions to medford.chamber.debate@gmail.com. The email is accessible only to members of the debate panel, which I will chair, as I have in past debates. The Chamber has no role in choosing questions. For more information, see the flier below.
Huey Long in 1935. Photo via the Harris & Ewing Collection at the Library of Congress.
One of the most important books of the Trump era was, and is, “How Democracies Die,” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt. In it, the Harvard political scientists trace how healthy democratic societies are able to fight the contagion of authoritarianism — and what happens when they lose the ability, or the will, to hold the antidemocratic forces at bay.
Among other things, they describe how the Democratic Party machinery prevented the populist demagogue Huey Long’s rise to what might have culminated in the presidency back in the 1930s, in contrast to the Republican Party’s unwillingness to contain Donald Trump in 2016. They also tell us that Italy staved off a right-wing revival at one point when the mainstream conservative party aligned itself with the liberal party in order to freeze out right-wing extremists.
Now Levitsky and Ziblatt are back with a new book, “Tyranny of the Minority: Why American Democracy Reached the Breaking Point.” The Atlantic has a lengthy excerpt, and you should read it if you can. In the excerpt, the authors argue that our Constitution is broken, mainly because it is so difficult to amend. They point out that Norway, their lead example, adopted a constitution as undemocratic as ours in 1814 but amended it 316 times over the next 200 years in order to extend the franchise, eliminate provisions that had empowered a minority of voters over the majority, and the like.
The American requirements for amending the Constitution, by contrast, add up to a nearly insurmountable hurdle. In addition to a two-thirds vote by each branch of Congress, which is not unreasonable, the rules also mandate that three-quarters of the state legislatures approve amendments. As a result, we are stuck with undemocratic provisions such as the Electoral College, under which the president can be elected despite losing the popular vote, and the Senate, which super-empowers small states since every state gets two votes. Indeed, the 14th Amendment, which in some important respects reinvented the United States, never could have been passed at any time other than in the post-Civil War environment, when the North controlled the South.
“With the Republican Party’s transformation into an extremist and antidemocratic force under Donald Trump,” Levitsky and Ziblatt write, “the Constitution now protects and empowers an authoritarian minority.” They add:
In 2016, the Democrats won the national popular vote for the presidency and the Senate, but the Republicans nonetheless won control of both institutions. A president who lost the popular vote and senators who represented a minority of Americans then proceeded to fill three Supreme Court seats, giving the Court a manufactured 6-3 conservative majority. This is minority rule.
Currently the antidemocratic impulse is playing out in Wisconsin in a big way. Earlier this year, voters in Wisconsin elected Janet Protasiewicz, a liberal Democrat, to the state supreme court, thus paving the way for the protection of reproductive rights and at least a partial reversal of the gerrymandering that has given the Republicans wildly disproportionate power in the legislature.
So what are Republican legislators going to do? They’re going to impeach her — except that they’re not actually going to remove her from office, since that would give Democratic Gov. Tony Evers the opportunity to replace her. Instead, they plan to leave her in limbo, still a member of the court but suspended from taking part in the court’s business. As New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie puts it:
It’s that breathtaking contempt for the people of Wisconsin — who have voted, since 2018, for a more liberal State Legislature and a more liberal State Supreme Court and a more liberal governor, with the full powers of his office available to him — that makes the Wisconsin Republican Party the most openly authoritarian in the country.
We are heading off a cliff, moving closer and closer to authoritarianism in direct contradiction of the will of the majority. And as Levitsky and Ziblatt point out, there’s not all that much we can do about it since we can’t fix the Constitution without the cooperation of those who are benefiting from keeping things the way they are. God help us all.
Vivek Ramaswamy. Photo (cc) 2022 by Gage Skidmore.
Entertainment was hard to come by at Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate. But to the extent that there was anything to savor, it came in the form of the attacks on Vivek Ramaswamy at the hands of Mike Pence, Nikki Haley and Chris Christie. What they needed to accomplish was to bury what was left of Ron DeSantis. Instead, they were so enraged by Ramaswamy that they focused their fire on him.
Ramaswamy was glib, smug, rude and arrogant. He also mouthed far-right talking points in a way that would do Donald Trump proud, coming out foursquare for everything bad, from coal to Russia. Although all eight candidates tried to duck a question about climate change (Haley was a wishy-washy exception), only Ramaswamy declared it to be a “hoax.” He alone would cut off U.S. aid to Ukraine, though DeSantis was heading in that direction.
Did Ramaswamy help or hurt himself? Who knows? I thought New York Times columnist David French put it well: “Everything I dislike about him, MAGA loves, and he looked more like Trump’s heir than DeSantis did.” Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo called Ramaswamy a “cocky little shit,” which wasn’t quite accurate: he’s actually pretty tall.
In case Ramaswamy is new to you, you might want to check out this profile in The New Yorker, written by Sheelah Kolhatkar. Ramaswamy, who made his fortune in biotech, has moved to the extreme right in recent years, something that hasn’t exactly endeared him to those who were once close to him. Kolhatkar writes:
I asked Ramaswamy if his burgeoning reputation as a conservative firebrand had taken a personal toll. He chose his words carefully. A family member no longer spoke to him, and he’d been ghosted by a close friend. Although he’d forged new relationships with conservatives, none of the connections had turned into friendships. “I feel like the public advocacy, or whatever you call what I’ve been doing in the last couple of years, has eroded more friendships than new friendships made up for it,” he said.
Being shunned because of your principles is one thing. Being shunned because of ambition is something else.
So who won? I thought the big winner was President Biden. Trump, too, I imagine, since he continues to dominate the Republican field and did not take part in Wednesday’s free-for-all. Other than that, I’d say Pence was the winner, sort of; he managed to get credit for standing up to Trump on Jan. 6 without being booed too loudly, as Chris Christie was, and he came across as a normal candidate — that is, if your idea of normal is an extremist who wants a nationwide ban on abortion. Another Times columnist, Ross Douthat, said of Pence’s performance: “Moral clarity, debating chops, a message frozen in amber in 1985 and a visceral hatred for Vivek Ramaswamy: It won’t get him the nomination but it made for some of the better theater of the night.” James Pindell of The Boston Globe gave Pence an A-plus.
A lot of people thought Haley did well, too. She projected as independent and even somewhat moderate, criticizing Trump for running up the debt. You’d think might hurt her chances of being chosen as Trump’s running mate, but she’s proven over and over that she’ll be whatever she thinks she needs to be.
Trumpers storm the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. Photo (cc) 2021 by TapTheForwardAssist.
Heather Cox Richardson agrees with the argument that the 14th Amendment prohibits Donald Trump from seeking election because he directed and took part in an insurrection. There is, however, a problem with this argument, which neither she nor others have addressed: there first needs to be a determination that Trump did, in fact, engage in “insurrection or rebellion.”
He did. Of course he did. But he and his partisans deny it, even though it all took place in plain sight. So how would you actually get the 14th Amendment to kick in? It seems to me that a guilty verdict in either the Jan. 6 federal case or the Georgia case would do it. So would a congressional resolution (good luck with that).
So yes, if Trump is found guilty, he could be banned from running for office. Short of that, this strikes me as a pointless exercise.
Update: David French thinks the Supreme Court could intervene and declare Trump ineligible to run. Of course, that’s not going to happen, either.
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to come up with something new or interesting to say about the various Trump indictments. The redoubtable Heather Cox Richardson leads with the Montana climate-change court case and moves on to Tommy Tuberville before settling in for a few paragraphs about the Georgia charges. As of this writing, Josh Marshall has said nothing. Marcy Wheeler has written what may be her shortest post ever.
But it has to be said that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis has done the nation a service, and not in precisely the same way as Special Counsel Jack Smith. By indicting a total of 19 people, she can get into the entire sweep of the Trump-led conspiracy to steal the 2020 election, as Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland argue in The New York Times. Because the case will be heard in state court, the trial — if there is one — will probably be on television, and a Republican president won’t be able to pardon Trump if he’s convicted. All good.
There’s already quite a bit of speculation as to who among those charged will flip. My nominee for the most likely star witness is former chief of staff Mark Meadows. One person we can be almost certain will not flip is Rudy Giuliani, if only because Willis would not likely accept his cooperation. He should be a flippee, not a flipper. If you suffered, as I did, through the second “Borat” movie, then you know Giuliani was thisclose to having sex with a woman who he believed was underage. Giuliani is a disgraceful human being, second only to Donald Trump in loathsomeness among the various defendants.
So how will this end? On Threads this morning, the historian Michael Beschloss asked: “Serious question for you: Where will Trump be two years from now? (Not your hope but your best prediction.)”
My answer: “Faking illness in a hospital bed at MAL to avoid having to appear in court.”
Not very satisfying, maybe, but a likely outcome nevertheless.
Why isn’t this getting more attention? “Slitting the throats” of “deep state” federal bureaucrats? In better times, DeSantis would have been forced out of the race. (Free link.)
The two largest federal employee unions on Thursday denounced Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s recent vow that as president he would “start slitting throats” in the federal bureaucracy — the latest escalation in intensifying Republican attacks on government operations they want to slash or eliminate.
DeSantis, whose campaign for the GOP nomination has included promises to downsize agencies and fire bureaucrats, made the comments this weekend in New Hampshire while criticizing the “deep state,” echoing a term regularly used by former president Donald Trump to deride Washington.
There is no shortage of commentary about the indictment of Donald Trump on charges that he tried to overturn the 2020 election. So I want to spend a few moments taking a look at Mike Pence. In reading the 45-page indictment last night I was struck, once again, at how decently and courageously Pence acted when faced with the greatest challenge of his public life.
I can’t understand why liberals and conservatives are so reluctant to give him any credit, blowing past his actions on Jan. 6, 2021, and focusing instead on his previous eight four* years as an obsequious Trump toady and his status as a theocratic right-wing extremist. That’s fine. He deserves that criticism. But before and during the insurrection, Pence acted with moral courage, telling Trump repeatedly that he would follow the Constitution by certifying Joe Biden’s victory, and with physical courage, refusing to flinch after Trump whipped up an enraged mob that surely would have killed him if given the opportunity.
“You’re too honest,” Trump reportedly told Pence on Jan. 1 after learning that Pence would not reject or return to the states electoral votes that had been properly cast.
If you’re not inclined to give Pence his due, think about what would have happened if he’d gone along with Trump’s corrupt scheming and Trump had attempted to remain in office. As one administration official is quoted as saying, there would be “riots in every major city in the United States.” To which Co-Conspirator 4 (identified as Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark) is said to have replied, “Well, that’s why there’s an Insurrection Act.” And there you have it: Troops in the streets, gunning down members of the public in order to keep Trump in office.
We all owe Mike Pence a debt of gratitude.
• We are already hearing a lot of misguided commentary that special counsel Jack Smith will need to prove that Trump knew he was lying about the outcome of the election in order to show that Trump committed the crimes with which he has been charged. For instance, David French of The New York Times, an anti-Trump conservative and lawyer whose analysis I have come to rely on, nevertheless gets it wrong when he writes:
There’s little doubt that Trump conspired to interfere with or obstruct the transfer of power after the 2020 election. But to prevail in the case, the government has to prove that he possessed an intent to defraud or to make false statements. In other words, if you were to urge a government official to overturn election results based on a good faith belief that serious fraud had altered the results, you would not be violating the law. Instead, you’d be exercising your First Amendment rights.
I don’t think that’s right. Regardless of whether Trump believed he’d been a victim of voter fraud, it’s indisputable that he knew Biden had been declared the winner. Trump’s beliefs did not give him the right to put together slates of fake electors, which the indictment devastatingly describes as morphing from a semi-legitimate contingency plan into a flat-out attempt to dislodge the real electors. And it surely did not give him the right to foment a violent insurrection.
In any case, the indictment is full of evidence that Trump was told over and over, by his own officials, that he had lost the election, and that he continued to lie about it publicly. Even if French is right, I don’t think Trump’s state of mind should pose much of an obstacle.
• Did Rudy Giuliani, a.k.a. Co-Conspirator 1, sing like a canary or what?
• We need to understand what we’re living through. The president of the United States staged a violent insurrection with the aim of staging a coup in order to remain in office, and, if the polls are to be believed, about 43% of voters would still like to return him to that office. Tuesday was an important day for accountability, but this country remains on the brink of falling into right-wing authoritarianism. None of us know whether we’re going to get through this or not. God help us all.
I’m spending a few days in Graceland with my daughter, an Elvis fanatic who’s wanted to visit for many years. But I want to make sure you’ve read The New York Times’ astonishing report on Donald Trump’s explicit, publicly stated plan to convert the presidency into authoritarian one-person rule. Here is a free link.
As you’ll see, Trump would eliminate any meaningful congressional oversight on the grounds that such oversight would somehow violate the separation-of-powers provision in the Constitution. At the same time, the president would be free to ignore spending directives passed by Congress. I would call it a path to dictatorship except that we would presumably still have elections. Oh, wait.
Trump has a non-trivial chance of being elected president in 2024. Everyone who’s concerned about the future of our country needs to read this.
