Why (Crowd) Size Matters
By Andrew Foster
The first several days of Donald Trump’s presidency were dominated in some significant part by debates over the size of the crowd that attended his inauguration as the 45th president. This has struck me at different times as bizarre, sad, and amusing. Increasingly, however, I am realizing that it is also important.
To begin, let me state clearly that I agree that Donald Trump won the election. He is my president and I have no question as to his legitimacy. I do, however, question his authority, and this is where the size of his crowds, both on January 20 and more generally, comes in.
The objective fact is that President Trump received 304 votes in the Electoral College. This easily exceeds the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Hence, he is the president.
At the same time, other objective facts are also relevant. Less than 27 percent of all eligible voters voted for President Trump in the election. He lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million votes. Experts estimate that three times as many people participated in the Women’s March on Washington as showed up for President Trump’s inauguration. Moreover, he took the oath of office with the lowest-ever approval rating for a new president, only 45 percent. Since these polls have been taken, no president has ever assumed office with an approval rating below 50 percent and no incoming president has ever had such a high disapproval rating, 45 percent.
The authority to lead in a representative democracy comes not just from winning an election, but also from garnering popular support. It is a simple idea, but one that bears highlighting at this time.
A president who has broad support has a stronger mandate for his or her policies than one who has marginal support. Said differently, it is hard to lead America in a dramatically different direction when most of the country refuses to follow.
This explains, at least in some significant part, why the Trump administration needs to create the myth that, as Sean Spicer, the president’s press secretary said last week, “[t]his was the largest audience to ever witness an inauguration — period — both in person and around the globe.” This also helps to explain why the president and his team continue to repeat the lie that he would have won the popular vote but for massive voter fraud. His ability to drive big change rests in large part on having the support of a wide majority. Without that level of popular support, he has to try to manufacture the appearance that it exists.
Whether one supports President Trump’s agenda or not, it is unquestionably transformative. On everything from trade policy and climate change to health care, taxes, and immigration, he proposes to take us in directions that are not only dramatically different from President Obama’s presidency, but that are contrary to widely held, fundamental understandings of what America is and what it means to be an American.
It takes real authority to make this kind of change, and in this country, that kind of authority does not derive solely from the result of an election.
To be sure, as President Obama famously said, “elections have consequences,” and we will surely see the truth of that in the next few years. At the same time, as President Trump acknowledged in his inaugural address, true power in the United States, the power to remake the country, resides with the people.
The paltry inauguration crowd, especially compared with the millions who rallied across the country at the Women’s Marches on Saturday, is objective evidence that we, the people, have yet to confer on President Trump the authority he craves and needs to achieve his dark vision for America. The only question now is whether the more than 70% of us who did not vote for President Trump will continue to demonstrate that, regardless of who occupies the Oval Office, this is our country too and we will fight for it.
Andrew Foster is a clinical professor of law and director of Duke Law School’s Experiential Education and Clinical Programs.
