Yes, democracy is frustrating. But if we succumb to the cult of the strongman we will end up with something far worse... as the Americans will soon discover, writes LORD SUMPTION
No nation can make itself great again by choosing a leader who would be a figure of fun if he were not so powerful: an incoherent mountebank and serial liar with a string of corporate bankruptcies, sexual assault allegations and a fraud conviction to his name.
No nation can make itself great again by choosing a leader who would be a figure of fun if he were not so powerful: an incoherent mountebank and serial liar with a string of corporate bankruptcies, sexual assault allegations and a fraud conviction to his name. Yet that is what has happened in the United States.
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. America’s founding fathers knew their Greek and Roman history. They knew how fragile democracy was. All tyranny needed was a plausible demagogue to offer people the earth in exchange for absolute power. Having got rid of a King, they were determined not to fall for a despot.
They devised an elaborate system of checks and balances. It was based on the separation of powers, with a President bound by federal laws, a Congress to make those laws, and a powerful federal judiciary culminating in the Supreme Court. The government of the United States, said Chief Justice Marshall in 1803, is ‘a government of laws, and not of men’.
So how have they ended up with Donald Trump? He has ridden roughshod over the laws, emasculated both the other branches of the State and circumvented most checks on his power.
Trump’s personality cult among members of his party has made it hard to get elected to Congress as a Republican without his endorsement.
The result has been to convert Congress into his sounding board. We saw this during his address earlier this month, which was punctuated by whoops of adulation from the Republican benches. We will soon discover whether the courts have the courage and integrity to stand up to Trump. But the signs are not good.
In his first term he packed the federal judiciary with his supporters. The Supreme Court has rewarded him with a ruling that he is immune from criminal liability for anything he does as President. This enables him to ignore court orders, which can only be enforced by criminal sanctions.
Trump’s response to unfavourable court orders has been to subject the judges to threats and abuse. He has openly argued that his popular mandate requires judges to bend to his will.
Former UK Supreme Court justice and author Lord Jonathan Sumption writes that events in the US are a sombre warning for democracies everywhere
Lord Sumption took particular aim at US President Donald Trump (pictured), who he described as an incoherent mountebank and serial liar with a string of corporate bankruptcies, sexual assault allegations and a fraud conviction to his name
Respect for the law and the constitution are fundamental to any democracy. But a working democracy needs more than that. All constitutions depend on certain cultural norms to make them work. You need public officers who honour not just the letter of the constitution but its spirit and purpose. You need conventions about how even lawful powers will be exercised to avoid capricious, vindictive or oppressive decisions.
You need to treat political opponents as fellow-citizens with whom you disagree, not as enemies to be smashed.
These things do not come naturally to mankind. The world is full of former democracies which have been emptied of everything that once made them democratic because this spirit has died. That is what is now happening in the United States.
What we are witnessing in one of the world’s oldest democracies is not so much a political revolution as a cultural collapse.
Consider just a few of Trump’s recent actions. He has pardoned some 1,500 thugs who tried to stage a violent coup on his behalf on January 6, 2021, describing their conviction as a ‘grave national injustice’.
He has used public powers to pursue personal grudges against the officials who tried to bring him to book for egging them on. He has intimidated the Press, suborning once independent papers.
He has barred lawyers who have represented his enemies from public contracts and shut them out of federal buildings.
He has imposed tariffs without Congressional authority on the basis of bogus claims to emergency powers. He has stopped his officials enforcing laws which he doesn’t like, such as the laws against bribing foreign businessmen and officials. Trump has replaced top generals with compliant acolytes. ‘I love you, sir. I think you’re great, sir. I’ll kill for you, sir’, is what (according to Trump) the new chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said on his appointment.
Lord Sumption believes that the current US President is a threat to the system of checks and balance created by the founding fathers like George Washington (pictured here in a portrait by American painter Gilbert Stuart)
President Donald Trump said in an press conference in 2019 that he got along with strongmen world leaders better than he did with the American media, namechecking Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman
He has fired the military lawyers whose job is to keep the Armed Forces on the legal straight and narrow, because (according to his defence secretary) they were ‘roadblocks’ to Trump’s decisions.
He has threatened state governors with cutting off federal funds unless they comply with his wishes. When the Governor of Maine replied that she was only applying federal laws, Trump is reported to have replied: ‘I am the federal laws’.
There have been other American demagogues: think Huey Long, Joseph McCarthy, George Wallace or Barry Goldwater. These people had some simple, fixed ideas, generally based on a limited understanding. Their response to perceived obstacles was to lash out against any one in their way.
Trump is cast in the same mould: Charismatic, divisive, extreme, autocratic. His trademarks are scapegoating, lies and personal abuse. The Mussolinian scowl, chin forward, says it all.
American voters once had the maturity to see through such people. US political parties and public institutions had enough respect for the workings of the democratic state to freeze them out.
What has changed is that America is experiencing a crisis of expectations. After two centuries of almost unbroken good fortune, the United States faces the prospect of relative decline. Middle class and blue collar incomes have been squeezed by competition from low-wage economies. Old skills have become redundant. National prosperity has shifted to new high-tech industries.
Powerful autocrats have usually been international predators. This is a consistent pattern from Louis XIV of France to Vladimir Putin. Trump is true to the form.
His reported conversation with the Danish prime minister about Greenland (‘I am determined to have it’) is the sort of conversation that Hitler had with President Hacha of Czechoslovakia in 1939 before sending the troops in.
Lord Sumption says he sees Trump in the same mould as classic political strongmen, charismatic, divisive, extreme, autocratic - with a scowl like Italian dictator Benito Mussolini (pictured)
In 2109, in his first term in office, Donald Trump became the first sitting U.S. president to cross the Demilitarized Zone into North Korea, a move praised by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un as courageous
This crisis of expectations is common to other democracies, including ours. Trump has cheerleaders in Germany, Italy and Hungary. In Britain Nigel Farage and Liz Truss are declared admirers. Polls show considerable support for strongmanism, especially among the young.
Events in the United States are a sombre warning for democracies everywhere. Western democracy may not survive another generation.
It is time for democratic governments to be more honest about what the state can realistically achieve; time for all of us to temper our own expectations.
Otherwise, for all the frustrations of democratic government, we will end up with something much worse, as the Americans will soon discover.