On the Path to Autocracy?

Over the past several decades, the world has watched as democracies around the world have stumbled toward authoritarianism.  While there have been occasional military coups, for instance in Egypt, much more common have been democratically elected leaders moving their countries step-by-step, through entirely legal means, into autocracy: Chavez in Venezuela, Erdoğan in Turkey, Orbán in Hungry, Duerte in the Philippines, and others. 

Are we on a similar path? David Frum quotes Abraham Lincoln:

If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it.”

Harvard sociologists Steven Levitzky and Daniel Ziblatt have for several decades actively studied the gradual loss of democracy in these countries. Their recent book, How Democracies Die,  examines the processes—slightly different from country to country—by which democratic norms and practices failed and autocratic practices took their place. They then compare these lessons to the recent course of American democracy, a unique perspective that allows us to consider some answers to Lincoln's questions of where we are and whither we're heading under President Trump.

Levitsky and Ziblatt emphasize the importance of identifying the warning signs in candidates, even before they have been elected. They have developed four indicators that should concern citizens if presidential candidates (in words or practice):

• appear to reject the democratic rules of the game, as when Trump refused to commit himself to accepting the results of the election if he lost;
• appear to question the legitimacy of their opponents such as when Trump begin calling Hillary Clinton "crooked Hillary" and allowed his supporters to chant repeatedly, "Lock her up."
• appear to tolerate or encourage violence.  Several times during his campaign, the president refused to interfere when his supporters precipitated violent scuffles with protesters.  Washington Post fact checkers documented at least eight incidents in which Trump either encouraged his supporters to physically attack protesters or threatened to do so himself.
• show a willingness to curtail the civil liberties of their opponents, including the media, as when Trump repeatedly threatened to sue the media for unfavorable coverage.  He has tried to blacklist certain reporters or news outlets from his news conferences.  He has repeatedly threatened protesters with either imprisonment or violence.

It should be noted that no modern president has stepped over any of these lines, except Richard Nixon who, in his attacks on the press, crossed over only that last one.

Implicit in our democracy is a respect for the process, by which Levitsky and Ziblatt mean:

• “mutual toleration”—leaders don't treat political rivals as existential enemies, but rather as fellow loyal Americans.
• “forbearance,” or “restraint”—leaders don’t “play politics to the max”; that is, they don't use every legal power they have a right to in order to destroy their rivals.  What this means in actual practice is easier to say than to define clearly, but we can recognize that our politics is moving rapidly in that direction. 

Our Constitution is a fragile document that can easily be abused. The most blatant abuse of this power, in my opinion, came when Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell refused to allow consideration of Merrick Garland, President Obama's nominee for the Supreme Court.  Trump's government shutdown and threat to declare a national emergency in order to build a wall is another example.

The American Constitution foresaw the danger that any one branch of government—the executive (president), legislative (Congress) or judicial (the courts)—would become too powerful.  It separated the powers of those three branches so that each could override the others.

Fortunately, in the face of Trump's threats to democracy, the Supreme Court has acted quickly to counter some of Trump's most egregious attempts to arrogate power (such as when he attempted to block migrants from applying for citizenship if they didn't pass-through official checkpoints).

Unfortunately,  Congress has not acted so responsibly. The most serious failure of the legislature to reign in the President has been its refusal to censure or limit Trump in his more egregious actions.  Both Speaker of the House Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell—for purely political reasons—refused to investigate any charges against Trump, no matter how serious. Since Republicans have controlled all three branches of government for the last two years, there has been no adequate legislative critique of the executive branch of government, which gravely threatens our Constitution. 

To answer President Lincoln's questions, where we are is in the midst of a most serious battle for our Constitution and our country.  Whither we are heading, I'm afraid, is toward autocracy.  Even if Trump were to be constrained in his actions (such as through the power of the new House), the norms he has broken over these two years of his presidency will reverberate for decades.