One of the most surprising political phenomena of the past
several months—I write this in the opening days of 2016—is Donald Trump’s
persistence as the front-runner, by a large margin, for the Republican
presidential nomination. Clearly, few prominent Republicans are comfortable
with him as their standard-bearer (a powerful indication, incidentally, of the
striking weakness of political parties today). And as a potential presidential
candidate, Trump possesses numerous weaknesses: a demonstrated lack of past
commitment to any particular political principles (conservative or otherwise),
an utter lack of political experience and apparent indifference to learning
anything about public policy, shameless and ceaseless self-promotion, bombastic
rhetoric, and a boorish and grating personality.
Trump seems, indeed, to
be little more than a demagogue. In his book Presidential Selection (1979), James Ceaser argues that avoiding demagogues
was a chief goal of the system that the American Founders created for electing
a president. Ceaser himself prefers to reserve the
word “demagogue,” given its strongly negative connotations, for especially
egregious examples, so he typically speaks instead of a desire on the part of
the Founders to avoid “popular leadership.” He identifies two characteristic
forms of popular leadership, both of which offer remarkably apt descriptions of
Donald Trump. The first form involves “the use of appeals that [play] up the
personal characteristics of contenders in such a way as to stimulate a
fascination with dangerous or irrelevant aspects of character, methods which
today we might call ‘image-building.’” This could almost have been written as a
comment about Trump, much of whose appeal rests on “irrelevant aspects of
character,” and about his campaign’s constant repetition of the notion that he
“wins.”
The second, and more
dangerous, form of popular leadership is perhaps closer to what we usually mean
by “demagoguery,” and Ceaser labels it “issue
arousal.” This strategy “refers to the effort of an aspiring leader to win
power by putting himself at the head of a broad movement based on some deeply
felt issue or cause which he may have played a role in creating or arousing.”
This portrait nicely captures Trump’s use of two issues in particular,
immigration and terrorism. One thinks especially of his repeated promises to
“build a wall” and of his call, in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings, to
ban all Muslims from entering the country. Both of these reflect an effort to
position himself at the head of “some deeply felt issue or cause.” And although
Trump certainly did not himself create or arouse anger over illegal
immigration, he was responsible for making a ban on Muslim entrants a part of
mainstream political controversy.
Pundits have spilled
plenty of ink trying to explain Trump’s staying power, and they point to many
of the same factors: not only anxiety over illegal immigration and Islamist
terrorism, but also the stagnant economy, distrust of politicians and the
Washington “establishment,” a general sense that the political system is not
serving the needs of ordinary middle- and working-class Americans, and Trump’s
complete disregard for the demands of political correctness. (I will admit the
personal appeal of this last factor.) But one editorial caught my eye for its
evocation of deeper structural factors underlying Trump’s appeal. Roger Cohen
wrote a column for the New York Times entitled “Trump’s Weimar America”
(December 14, 2015). His title, obviously, suggested a parallel between the
conditions of Germany between the World Wars and those in America and other
Western democracies today. Cohen’s second paragraph nicely highlighted these:
“Welcome to an angry nation stung by two lost wars, its politics veering to the
extremes, its mood vengeful, beset by decades of stagnant real wages for most
people, tempted by a strongman who would keep all Muslims out and vows to
restore American greatness.”
Cohen’s piece is no doubt somewhat melodramatic and overheated. Donald Trump is not Adolf Hitler; his bombast arises from personal narcissism rather than hatred of groups such as Muslims or Jews. Nor is he promoting fascism; indeed, whatever he is promoting remains far too vague to merit any particular ideological label. What Cohen captures, however, is less something about Trump than about his audience, voters who feel themselves, along with their country, increasingly unable to succeed in a hostile world and who do not regard most politicians as understanding their problems or speaking to their needs. These voters may well be mistaken about the political system’s attentiveness to their problems; indeed, I think that in significant respects they are. This does not mean, however, that their concerns should be lightly dismissed. As Michael Walzer has written, in “A Day in the Life of a Socialist Citizen,” one of the finest political essays I know:
[T]he best critics in a liberal society are men-out-of-office. In a radically democratic society they would be men who stay away from meetings, perhaps for months at a time, and only then discover that something outrageous has been perpetrated that must be mocked or protested. The proper response to such protests is not to tell the laggard citizens that they should have been active these past many months, not to nag them to do work that they do not enjoy and in any case will not do well, but to listen to what they have to say. (1970, 229–38)
Even if we are not moved
by Walzer’s appeal to our basic concern for our
fellow citizens, mere self-interest also counsels that we listen to what Trump
voters have to say. For as is suggested both by Ceaser’s description of popular leadership and Cohen’s conjuring of a Weimar America,
large numbers of voters who feel alienated and unrepresented offer fertile soil
for demagogic appeals. And the next would-be demagogue might well be more
dangerous than Trump, whose large ego and self-promotion may make him a mere
buffoon rather than a genuine scoundrel.
Especially worrisome,
however, is the possibility that we could be witnessing the creation of a large
class of voters likely to be routinely susceptible to demagogic appeals like
Trump’s. This is the frightening scenario sketched (though not with political
campaigns in mind) by two important recent books on socio-economic inequality
in the United States: Charles Murray’s Coming Apart (2012) and Robert
Putnam’s Our Kids (2015). Both Murray and Putnam, from different points
along the political spectrum, argue that a number of factors are combining to
produce a new class divide in American society, in which—to oversimplify
slightly—those with at least a college degree are increasingly successful while
those with at most a high school diploma fall further and further behind.
“Success” here includes not simply finding meaningful work and earning an
income sufficient to support a family, but also other behaviors and
affiliations associated with living happy and meaningful lives: marrying and
staying married, raising children, avoiding harmful activities such as crime
and drug use, being active in one’s neighborhood, participating in a religious
community. On all of these counts, the well-educated and relatively affluent
continue to do well, while the lower-middle and working classes experience
unemployment, family breakdown, increased criminality and incarceration, social
isolation, and a decline in religious affiliation. To make matters worse, the
two classes are increasingly segregated from each other, living not in mixed
neighborhoods but in separate enclaves, so that the well-to-do truly do not
know how the other half lives, while the unsuccessful lack resources and
connections to turn their lives around.
Murray and Putnam point
to various factors that have helped cause this new form of increasing class
inequality. Among them is a kind of virtuous cycle of success that is also,
from the perspective of interaction across class divides, a vicious cycle: in
an economy that increasingly rewards intelligence and talent, elite colleges
and universities have become skilled at discovering and attracting the
brightest young men and women, who then meet, marry, and have bright children
who repeat the cycle, spending their entire lives in affluent communities, with
good schools, among people more or less like themselves, in a world spared the
social dysfunctions typical of poorer neighborhoods and, unlike those
neighborhoods, possessing broad resources to assist any kids who do struggle
along the way. While neither Murray nor Putnam is optimistic about our
overcoming this emergent class divide, Putnam offers a range of so-called
“purple” policy proposals—purple because some are more conservative, others
more liberal—that he thinks might mitigate the problem, whereas Murray thinks
that only a cultural great awakening, in which the new upper class consciously
decides to desegregate and engage itself in the lives of the new lower class,
could turn things around.
Even if Putnam is correct
that we have policy tools that could address growing class inequality, a new
lower class is by now firmly in place, and even on an optimistic assessment we
will be dealing with its problems for at least one and probably two
generations. Members of this class, constituting perhaps as much as a third of
the population, will by and large experience economic, social, and familial
failure, even as many of their fellow citizens enjoy continued success. One can
hardly be surprised if they are drawn to political candidates who do not belong
to the Washington establishment, who propose radical and forceful measures instead
of business as usual, and who promise that, under their reign, America and
Americans will “win again.” In other words, we should expect, for at least the
next generation and perhaps longer, to see a series of candidates imitating the
Trump formula. We are in for a coming age of demagogues.
The reasons for this, in
fact, lie even deeper than the new forms of class inequality that Murray and
Putnam so powerfully describe. At stake is also one of liberal democracy’s
historic strengths: its ability to navigate the dynamism of market capitalism.
The great virtue of free markets is their tremendous creativity, but this
economic advantage can also be a social weakness. For as Schumpeter captured so
nicely with his concept of “creative destruction,” the dynamism of capitalist
markets, which generates their remarkable productivity, also creates social
dislocation and turmoil. Every economic advance, every new technological
breakthrough, every more efficient form of management or organization threatens
those whose livelihoods are associated with suddenly obsolete alternatives.
Economic gains for all are purchased at the expense of losses to specific
groups and persons. The more dynamic the economy, therefore, the more
associated losses it will bring in its wake. And if these become extensive
enough, then many citizens, despite the overall economic gains that may accrue
to society—the overall maximization of utility, as it were—will become nervous
and uncertain, fearing that perhaps they could be the next ones suddenly to
find themselves displaced and dispensable. In the past decade, this fear has
begun reaching even into the professional class, affecting groups such as
professors and lawyers.
No amount of preaching
the virtues of free markets—even if the sermons are correct, and even if they
are persuasively offered—will suffice to overcome this anxiety if it becomes
sufficiently widespread. Although some people may enjoy the excitement of
capitalist derring-do, many, perhaps most, citizens are not the heroically
entrepreneurial risk-takers of capitalist mythology. They are grateful for the
benefits of the market but not eager to sacrifice the stability of a secure
livelihood. C. S.
Lewis nicely captures these two sides of human nature, the competing loves for
change and for stability, in one of his Screwtape Letters. There he writes—or, rather, Screwtape writes—that because human beings live in time, “they must experience
change.” Therefore God “(being a hedonist at heart) has made change
pleasurable to them.” But change alone will not satisfy us. And “since He does
not wish them to make change, any more than eating, an end in itself, He has
balanced the love of change in them by a love of permanence. He has contrived
to gratify both tastes together in the very world He has made, by that union of
change and permanence which we call Rhythm.”
Lewis is not here making
a political point; his examples of “Rhythm” are the changing of the seasons and
the liturgical year. But his point about our attraction to both change and
permanence is relevant in this context. One of the historic tasks of liberal
democracy has been to preserve a balance between the dynamism of the market and
an open economic system, on the one hand, and the stability and security that
humans require to order and plan their lives meaningfully, on the other. One
sees this tension running beneath the political and economic struggles in
nineteenth-century Europe; partially concealed from view by two world wars
(though obvious during the intervening Depression), it re-emerged later in the
twentieth century and has become especially evident since the Cold War’s end
left the world with no economic competitors to market capitalism.
The result has been an
extraordinarily dynamic global economy, with real net gains in utility that
have lifted millions in the developing world out of poverty. But for citizens
of Western democracies like the United States, it has also meant great
insecurity, of an extent not seen since the Great Depression. And it is clear
that we have not yet found fully adequate ways of responding to this, of
recreating the elements of permanence needed to balance what seem to be
increasing rates of technological and economic change. When people decry a
“broken” political system, I think this is often what they really have in mind.
Finding a new balance
between permanence and change is among the deepest political challenges of our
age. Until we begin to achieve it, ambitious politicians will seek to ride the
waves of discontent to power by appealing to the new lower class described by
Murray and Putnam. Hard though it is to imagine, we may yet come to look back
in wistful longing upon the campaign of Donald Trump.
Peter Meilaender is
Professor of Political Science at Houghton College.
Works Cited
Ceaser, James W. Presidential
Selection: Theory and Development. Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1979.
Cohen,
Roger. “Trump’s Weimar America.” The New York Times, December. 15, 2015.
(http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/15/opinion/weimar-america.html, accessed
1/5/16).
Lewis,
C. S. The Screwtape Letters. New York: HarperOne, 1996.
Murray,
Charles. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960–2010. New York:
Crown Forum Books, 2012.
Putnam,
Robert. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2015.
Walzer, Michael “A Day
in the Life of a Socialist Citizen.” In Obligations: Essays on Disobedience,
War, and Citizenship. New York: Clarion Books, 1970.