All checks, no balance: the dangerous education of Donald J. Trump

The progression of Special Counsel Mueller probe on President Trump's possible grounds for impeachment has unveiled new and troubling evidence with his personal lawyer's confession.

After months of campaigning publicly against the Special Counsel's "witch hunt", Trump has been rendered legally mute. Illegal conspiracy to hide evidence of unethical behavior that might have affected the election's results has been exposed. 

The most disturbing element of the new developments are not the accusations and probes but the fact that even those defending President Trump are assuming in fact that he has committed crimes such as to be impeached if his associates "turn on him" and reveal what they know. Or -to be more precise- what everybody already knows (conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and collusion with Russian agents) mostly because the same candidate Trump announced it during the campaign. 

This is not a horror but a suspense story. Spectators know who and how committed the crime, they just watch the unfolding events waiting for the next shoe to drop. Some with fear, other with joy. All carried away by two years of endless and mindless antagonistic and hyper-partisan politics fueled by the President that might end being victim of his own showmanship.  

As with chess, in constitutional law there are also "checks". Like in chess, constitutional checks -like a Special Council probe- announce impending doom for those who trespassed their consitutional limits and their office duties. 

As in chess, the next stop can be another check, a loss or the ending of the game.

The Constitution of the United States was specifically designed to check those in power and prevent them from abusing their offices. In 250 years, it has been tested by several former presidents and worked effectively.

James Madison wrote the famous Federalist 10 explaining that:

"No man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, because his interest would certainly bias his judgment, and, not improbably, corrupt his integrity.

With equal, nay with greater reason, a body of men are unfit to be both judges and parties at the same time"

Madison warned that:

 When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens.

And proposed institutions to check majorities (always circumstantial) and factions (always self-serving) from breaking or bending the law: 

To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed. 

Those who think that social media and showmanship can trump (no pun intended) the Constitution have met their first check. There are evidently plenty more down this road. 

Madison had "obnoxious presidents" in his mind when he wrote: 

Men of factious tempers, of local prejudices, or of sinister designs, may, by intrigue, by corruption, or by other means, first obtain the suffrages, and then betray the interests, of the people.  

And conceived an intricate -yet not unassailable- set of rules written in the Federalist papers and then into our 1787 Constitution. The new form of government was not a democracy -democracy was already 2000 years old and had time and again turned presidents into Caesars- but a republic, a system with checks and balances between three separated powers.

Come November, the balance of power in Congress can -and probably will- swing to the opposition party, making more likely President Trump's impeachment. 

The next check can become a check mate.

We haven't had time yet to look at the consequences of a premature end of Donald Trump's presidency.

We should.

Populism in the United States: Trumpism and its challenge to institutions

For most of its history, the United States remained among the few countries where populism never governed. Its unrivaled prosperity along 250 years should at least demonstrate that prosperity at that level can be achieved without the classical populist recipes: 

1. Protectionism - high tariffs - restrictions to trade
2. Anti-immigration measures 
3. Dictatorial powers vested and concentrated in the Executive
4. Government - state property monopolies
5. Large subsidies and government payroll
6. Closed economy - crony capitalism
7. Debt default, monetary emission and debasing (devaluations)

These are the reasons why populists around the world unanimously hate international monetary controls (such as IMF or WTO) , free trade and trade agreements. Anything that limits their power and control over "their" people gets in the way of populist governments and politicians.

The rule of law is also resisted by populists by the same reason. Unlike King James I that accepted in 1215 that monarchs had to obey their own laws, populists reject such limitations.

The "will of the people", understood as the "will of the leader of the people" is for populists the only law of the land.

Once they gain enough control, populist leaders invert the governed-government equation: the government chooses the people, not the other way around. 

In Peron's Argentina, Castro's Cuba or Mugabe's Zimbabwe, people must join the Leader's Party (usually called on his/her name or as "Revolution" or "People's" Party) to be able to get jobs, subsidies and benefits.

Populists systems require a steady system of patronage (think of Chicago's "Daley machine") that trades jobs for votes on a regular basis. That's how populist leaders get re-elected almost for life. Or, alternatively, they establish a dynastic rule (like North Korea) or a "rotative" scheme to circumvent term limits (like Peron and his wife Isabel, Kirchner and his wife Cristina in Argentina or Putin and his teammate Mevdevev, who rotate as PM and President, with Putin holding power in both positions).

A third way to get the populist regime perpetually in power is the single Party system, like in the case of China, South Africa or Singapore. The original economic model can vary from extreme communism (like China) to freewheeling capitalism (like Singapore). Populism is not ideology-dependent. It can switch and mutate as required (think of Deng Xiaoping "market communism").

To get to this point with the US system it is necessary to change the Constitution drastically, or circumvent it with a vast network of cronyism installed in the three powers to override their "checks and balances". Another component is frequently using "referendums" to impose as law of the land a circumstantial majority. California is a good example of the consequences of the referendum and recall systems.

Bannon and his Alt Right followers want precisely this when they speak of "deep state" in their efforts to make a "political cleansing" of the Federal Government, the Judiciary, the Intelligence and Security cadres.

Traditional Republicans and Democrats might fight those efforts if not out of conviction, for necessity, because they are the "incumbents" to be replaced. 

In a pluralistic open economy like the US, private companies create an much more extensive set of multiple interests and can also offer resistance.

Trump, finally, might not be interested in such far-reaching changes in the system, nor be in power long enough. He has neither electable heirs nor reliable allies outside his own family, which creates another obstacle. No cunning wives or younger brothers with popular appeal.

And, of course all these plans ignore the existence of a growing number of rivals and enemies, and a deeply divided electorate.

Here, as usual, some additional civil and informed debates about the populist phenomenon:

Europe (Inteligence squared)

Niall Ferguson (global)

Latin America (Mary Anastasia O'Grady)

Is liberalism dead? Not yet, but not feeling well.

"Liberalism created the conditions, and the tools, for the ascent of its own worst nightmare, yet it lacks the self-knowledge to understand its own culpability."                            Deenen, P. (2016) Why Liberalism Failed (Politics and Culture)

After the unexpected victories of populism in the United States and Britain and its ascent in Europe and a good part of the developing world, some political scientists and many politicians have began to wonder if we are witnessing a deeper turn away from the global liberal order so hardly won after World War II.

Patrick Deenen's argues that the global expansion of a liberal order -based on democratic rule, free markets, free trade and universal rule of law (not to confuse with  "progressivism" as it's incorrectly done in US politics)- has actually exposed the limitations of the rationalistic and excessively optimistic premises of the liberal thought proposed by Emmanuel Kant, John Locke and Adam Smith -to mention the most consequential thinkers usually associated with our current liberal order and open societies-. 
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How we define Liberal in this article:

Liberalism is a political philosophy or worldview founded on ideas of liberty and equality.  Liberals generally they support ideas and programs such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, free markets, civil rights, democratic societies, secular governments, gender equality and international cooperation. (More about it)

Looking at the traditional Dickinson's political spectrum (referred to US political tendencies) we can see that the characteristics of "liberal" -as defined in this article and in political sciences- are mostly coincidental with "Hybrid" and "Moderate" -something that few today associate with Trump's Republicans or Bernie Sanders' Democrats-

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The larger division between those benefited by the open world and society created by the globalization based on liberal values seems to be between highly educated "elites" able to work anywhere, multilingual and with a "cosmopolitan" sense of "world citizenship" and those left behind for lack of those same attributes, which are strongly correlated with wealth and affluence.

For those left to lead "local" lives tied to less open places, cultures, countries and labor opportunities, globalization seems to be the cause of steady deterioration in their income, standards of living and employment opportunities. For those that stay (or feel "left") behind, the face of globalization is the closing of local employers, outsourced jobs, stagnant incomes and immigrant inflows competing for fewer jobs and lower pay.

On those realities -as perceived by the "losers" in this game- nationalism, populism and xenophobic politics can and are thriving.

Deenen takes that point of view to warn that the liberal order as we know it might be unsustainable

"From that vantage, I hinted that such a political condition was ultimately untenable, and that the likely popular reaction to an increasingly oppressive liberal order might be forms of authoritarian illiberalism that would promise citizens power over those forces that no longer seemed under their control: government, economy, and the dissolution of social norms and unsettled ways of life. 

And it might provoke a swing towards the other extreme of the political spectrum, characterized as:

"The breakdown of family, community, and religious norms and institutions, especially among those benefiting least from liberalism’s advance, has not led liberalism’s discontents to seek a restoration of those norms. That would take effort and sacrifice in a culture that now diminishes the value of both. Rather, many now look to deploy the statist powers of liberalism against its own ruling class.Today’s widespread yearning for a strong leader, one with the will to take back popular control over liberalism’s forms of bureaucratized government and globalized economy, comes after decades of liberal dismantling of cultural norms and political habits essential to self-governance." 

The emergence of leaders like Donald Trump in US, Nigel Farage in Britain and the rest of EU populist parties (from Spain's Podemos and Catalonian nationalists to Syriza in Greece or the far Right nationalists in Northern Europe, France and Germany) show the relevance of Deenen's question.

In a similar line of discussion, Niall Ferguson debated Fareed Zakaria on the subject "Is the Liberal Order dead?", confronting Zakaria's liberal optimism with Ferguson's more skeptical vision of the "wisdom of the people" behind populist claims:

David Goodhart makes a similar analysis of the Brexit vote in Britain in his also thought-provoking book "The Road to Somewhere" showing similar forces behind the paradox of a slim majority voting for local reasons in a matter of national and regional impact:

I find both positions enormously thought-provoking and rich in insights about the origins of "cultural wars" that have been going on for centuries in both US and EU, and also lacking in balance.

The very idea of a "global order" should call us to some restraint. The current "global order" seems to me very different if we look at it from the viewpoint of longstanding, advanced republican systems such as US, UK, or NW Europe than if we look at it from the systems that emerged from the rubble after the collapse of the Soviet empire just 30 years ago. Most of the latter are still ruled by the same elites that ruled under communism, and to great extent -Putin's Russia being the model- with the same "rule of the leader" rather than rule of the law, in open contempt for any form of "liberal order". China and most authoritarian governments in Asia look no different.

How can a "global liberal order" exist when 70 to 80 percent of the countries and population still live under the rule of military, religious or elected dictators?

If we look at the Democracy Index elaborated by The Economist, we can see that only 4.5 % of the entire global population lives in a full democracy (dark blue). You may notice that US and UK are not at that level, precisely because of their populist revolts and their systems' swings during the last 20 years (think from Thatcher and Clinton to May and Trump).

If we limit Deenen's concept to US and UK -so far the cradles and champions of republican liberalism- we might be closer to a balanced argument.

US with Trump and UK with Brexit are certainly way off their traditional political boundaries, strongly tilted towards an unusually populist direction in their domestic and foreign policies.

In both cases, both experiments seem to be sinking fast in lack of direction, as it has been the case with populism in power in Latin America and Fascist Europe. Populist rage and hatred politics are highly flammable fuel, and as such, they have very little lasting power. 

Neither President Trump nor PM May seem to know what to do to keep the promises that got them elected save for kicking the can further or engaging in distraction tactics. Their "new order" seems less cohesive by the week and the "strong leaders" weaker at each turn, facing ever higher chances of being kicked out of office.

Once again, Kant rule applies: if all the countries in the world were to try nationalistic and populist policies (as it was in 1914, 1930 and 1939) what would the "world order" look like?

We know the response, but those who experienced the last "populist world order" are in their eighties or nineties. Or mostly within the 20 million dead in WWI and 70 million killed in WWII. 

But millions of  people, young and middle age living in US, UK and EU know it well today. 

They are -we are- the millions of Latin Americans, Eastern European, Asian and African immigrants that have experienced illiberal systems -all the gamut from elected populist dictatorship in "banana republics" to money-laundering kleptocracies and autocracies serving plutonium cocktails, using hungry dogs or antiaircraft cannons for firing dissidents- and came to the remaining liberal-ruled republics seeking for rule of law.

We certainly can compare the alternatives and know the consequences of illiberal governance.

Today's challenge seems to me to find a way out of the populist-nationalist trap before it starts to harm the economy or becomes belligerent again.

I comes to my memory what Ronald Reagan said in 1961 about this subject.

"Freedom is never more than a generation away from extinction"    

Ronald Reagan 

US political parties: Rumors of their Dead are Greatly Exaggerated

"Washington" - used as a semantic place holder for "corruption", "incompetence" and "mainstream elites" is just another of a series of populist  code words used in election years for the new elites that want to be elected and the old elites that want to keep their seats there.

Political parties have been declared dead and irredeemable in the United States for the last 250 years. Those who announce "a new paradigm" fail to explain what that "paradigm" means, and for good reasons. The same that kept the US Constitution and its institutions in its place all that time.

"All parties are corrupt" speech is the most typical form of extreme, intolerant partisanship -opening the door to moral equivalence justifications of anti-constitutional behavior-

Lobbies regularly denounce other lobbies for ... lobbying, which is a legal activity with thousands of registered  and audited firms installed in Washington, the West and the East coasts and around the country. Just look for the Mercer's family Foundation and its Government Accountability Institute, that proclaims to be "non-partisan" save for its funding of anti-Clinton books such as "Clinton's cash" and its support for Steve Bannon and Breitbart.

The "death" of the "establishment" parties is as old as the American Republic. And there have been third parties in many elections -from the days of the Republic-Democrats that was the name of Jefferson and Madison's anti-Federalist party 

to Teddy Roosevelt's Bull Moose, 

Or the populist-nativist Right-wing parties of William Jennings Bryant

Ross Perot's (and later Pat Buchanan's) Reform party -both of which made +20 percent of the vote and gave the presidency to the Democrat candidate they professed to like least- or the perennial Ralph Nader spoiler.

The truth is , as usual, far from those claims and more complex and nuanced.

Books like Scott Christmas "Washington's Nightmare: A Brief History of American Political Parties" and Kurt Andersen's "Fantasyland: How America Went Hawywaire: a 500-year history" may provide a good start.

Third parties are not a bad idea -Europe has plenty of examples of them- but far from a solution

In the case of contemporary US politics. we are witnessing a fight inside both traditional parties in which Left wing (socialist Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) and Far Right (Bannon) are trying to take over by replacing moderates with more extreme, populist and belligerent candidates to impose their respective agendas (impeach Trump, prevent impeachment and remove obstacles to executive power, respectively).

There are many parallels between Donald Trump and Andrew Jackson populist platforms

Recognized by Trump himself and other Right wing political pundits like Dick Morris (a former Clinton's advisor turner enemy)

Make no mistakes. Those seeking to take over the two traditional parties make no little plans.

Their common element is populism 

It will hinge on the economy whether COTUS changes are significant in one direction or another.

But the "system" -as those who want to change it call the Constitution- is not the real problem.

If it were,  banning gerrymandering and reversing Citizens United would be the priority.