Trump and friends like unchecked power

Gordon L. Weil

“Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.  Great men are almost always bad men.”

These are the classic words of Lord John Acton, a Nineteenth Century British historian.

We seem to have no shortage of eligible “great men” these days.

Having gained a taste of presidential power, Donald Trump proclaims his interest in more and greater power.  He could free his criminally convicted allies, use the government to punish his foes and replace the nonpartisan civil service with his loyalists.  Single-handedly, he would remove the U.S. from international leadership roles.

Civics students could ask how he could accomplish that with the checks and balances of the Constitution.  A complacent Congress and a compliant Supreme Court could help him.  By using dubious state tactics to suppress the Democratic vote for Congress and in the electoral vote count for president, he might gain for himself wide freedom of action.

For his core backers, the fact this “great man” is a “bad” man makes no difference.  Ultimately, his chances for another term could depend on whether traditional Republicans drop him if he is convicted of a major violation of law.  Otherwise, with unlimited power, his unlimited ego could prove Lord Acton correct.

Equally subject to Acton’s principle is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a Trump ally. He has just admitted to one of the most historic lies. As soon as Israel was created in 1948, the international community adopted the concept that Israel, the homeland of dispersed Jews, and Palestine, an Arab state, should exist side-by-side.  Israel agreed. Now, he flatly rejects it.

It has become clear that Israel, under Netanyahu’s long leadership, has had no real commitment to the two-state model with a separate Arab state, even one that is disarmed.  He has simply hoodwinked the U.S., Israel’s willing ally and financial backer, and others.

Israel is now strongly influenced by conservative, ultra-religious parties.  They favor a purely Jewish state with Arabs denied independence and subjected to Israeli authority allowing it to control Arab land. The destruction of Gaza conforms to this policy.

Gaza is being demolished to punish the population for the heinous acts of Hamas on October 7. Netanyahu resists American and European calls for humane treatment of the population.

This policy reveals the extent of his own power.  Though he relies on his religious party backers, his policy denies what they profess to promote.  The bible says that God asks only that the people of Israel “do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with their God.”  Mercy is now missing.

Maine Sen. George Mitchell, who tried to negotiate Middle East peace, once warned that their failure to agree could lead to both sides losing.  The Palestinians would lose territory and Israel would lose friends. 

Netanyahu is making that forecast come true.  The last words of the biblical passage stating God’s expectations reveals that, for Israel’s failures, “you will bear the scorn of the nations.”   

In Russia, President Vladimir Putin, Trump’s trusted friend, shows the excesses of absolute power.  Russia was offered a close relationship with its former opponents, but he chose to continue to assert that his country remained a superpower under his leadership.  Ultimately, he believed his own myth and invaded Ukraine, a nation he deemed inferior.

He believed Russia would win in a few days.  When it failed, it showed the world that Putin’s superpower was gone.  He had sacrificed the historic standing of Russia to serve his own sense of power.

Yet Putin continues to hold onto his absolute power.  He can kill his opponents even if they are abroad.  After he failed to kill Alexei Navalny, his most effective political opponent, he imprisoned him almost indefinitely.  Even foreigners, like Evan Gershkovich, an American journalist, can be jailed endlessly without charges.

Acton’s observation seems to become more credible the longer a “great man” holds onto office. Netanyahu is in his third term as Israel’s Prime Minister.  Putin will soon gain his third term as Russia’s President plus one term as Prime Minister.  If he wins in November, Trump has hinted that he should get an unconstitutional third term because of the controversy surrounding the 2020 election.

There can be no doubt that Acton was right.   Power may come from elections, but absolute power results from leaders abusing their office to promote their complete authority, allowing them to alter the system to reflect their interest, not the national interest.

More important than any issue in an election is the threat that it can lead to the exercise of unchecked power.  Such an election can have more long-lasting effects than any policy.  And it rarely can produce a popular and successful result.

Power grows in a vacuum, one created by passive people. Lord Acton is only correct if we let it happen. 

Correction: House Speaker Mike Johnson is from Louisiana, not Texas, as I incorrectly wrote last week. 

Latest political violence – ‘swatting’

Political violence is last refuge of losers

 

Gordon L. Weil

Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, who had ruled Donald Trump off the ballot, was threatened and swatted.

The Maine State House, along with other state capitals, received a bomb scare.

The judge handling Trump’s New York fraud trial faced a bomb scare and was swatted.

A member of Congress and his children were threatened with being killed.

The former Arizona Speaker of the House, who had testified on Trump’s attempt to change the electoral vote, was threatened and swatted.

Swatting is calling the police to report a crime supposedly taking place at the target’s home.  It creates chaos and perhaps even danger for the target.  In two cases, it has led to the death of an innocent party.

Swatting is part of an effort to scare or physically harm a political opponent.  Many threats are dealt with locally, but federal enforcement agencies have registered a 47 percent increase in their political threat investigations in the two most recent comparable five-year periods.

Most cases share the facts that the actions are illegal and the targets have acted unfavorably to Trump.  That translates easily to a message that you will be in danger if you harm his interests.

Judges, officials and legislators take threats seriously. While they are not deterred by being endangered, they are forced to balance the safety of themselves and their families with their duty to the public.  The purpose of the judicial system is to eliminate the need for this balance, allowing officials to make decisions as objectively as possible in the public interest.

Problems arise when people who may face charges or experience negative political outcomes try to stir up opposition using physical threats, not open debate.  Debate can lead to compromise, but some may prefer to use intimidation in hopes of traveling a straight line to their desired result.

Whatever your opinion about whether Trump aided an insurrection on January 6, 2021, there can be no doubt that the people who broke into the Capital wanted to menace Congress so that it would at least halt counting electoral votes for president.   There also can be little doubt that the invaders were doing what Trump wanted them to do to change the official outcome.

There’s an old political saying that “[False] patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels.”  It seems increasingly to be the case that physical attacks in politics have become the last refuge of losers.  If they don’t have the votes, they don’t give up on doing virtually anything to gain power.  They often accept false information about their opponents to the point they see themselves in danger.

For some, politics has become less about governing, a process that limits the ability of participants to completely achieve their goals, than about gaining attention for them and their cause.  They may get noticed, but they probably don’t get results.  It’s possible they simply seek to destroy the current system, so it can be replaced by more authoritarian rule.

A group of extreme conservative Republican House members were able to dump then Speaker Kevin McCarthy after he had compromised with Democrats, who control the Senate and presidency, to avoid shutting down the government by passing a temporary budget deal.  They replaced him with Mike Johnson, a Texas member they considered more reliable.

When faced with the same issues as McCarthy, Johnson did the same thing, avoiding his party being held responsible for a government shutdown.  The right wing promptly went after Johnson, forcing him to struggle for a solution.

In a recent interview, McCarthy commented on the power of that small right-wing House group to disrupt congressional action.  He said the extremists focus on their own reputation and raising money to enhance their power.  “[W]hen you come here, if you don’t want to govern, why be a part of it?” he asked.

McCarthy missed the point.  He assumed that any member would want to be effective within the limits of the system.  But the extremists seem ready to topple the system, because it requires compromises that yield results not fully meeting their goals. 

They share Trump’s belief that, notwithstanding the real situation, the country is in deep trouble.  The current political system is dominated by a permanent class of bureaucrats – they call it the “Deep State” – and they must be dislodged by an executive with greater powers.

Their goals intersect with those using physical threats, who want to create a sense of chaos that only a stronger executive can cure.  Trump’s statements indicate that he wants to expand presidential authority to bypass Congress and government professionals.

It is unusual, especially at the federal level, for the great debate over the country’s future to be carried out through attempted legislative blockades while its traditional leaders are subject to physical threats.  But that’s where the country is.

Iowa GOP Caucus Overrated, turnout is unrepresentative

Gordon L. Weil With 99 percent of the Iowa Republican caucus vote having been counted, the initial results show 109,404 voters participated. Donald Trump’s strong victory has boosted speculation both about the likelihood of his winning the GOP nomination and then the general election. To many observers, the Iowa results confirm his lead on the road to the White House. He surely got his vote out. While the results may show that his legal issues are not undermining his strength among loyal Republicans, reasons remain for taking care about drawing too many early conclusions. Leaving the punditry aside, there is one clear fact that raises doubts about reading much into the result. In the 2022 Iowa race for governor, the GOP winner received 709,198 votes. That number includes any Democratic or independent voters she may have picked up. The caucus participants for all candidates was only 15 percent of that statewide GOP vote in 2022. Overall, there were 1,211,146 Iowa voters in 2022. That means that the GOP presidential caucuses drew only nine percent of the number of active election participants. Trump won less than five percent of the number of general election voters. The importance of the first-in-the-nation step in the presidential selection process is mainly a media creation. It is useful in sending message to hopeless candidates and to potential donors. But as an indicator of who will be on the ballot in November and how they might perform, it is greatly overrated.