Is Trump Saving Our Democracy?
Reconstruction by wrecking ball
In an eloquent New York Magazine article, Frank Rich claims that Donald Trump’s disruptive campaign for president is nevertheless saving American democracy: “…[H]e’s exposing all its phoniness and corruption in ways as serious as he is not. And changing it in the process.”
But Rich’s claim is more than a bit misleading.
Rich evidently believes that a “wrecking ball” (as he puts it) is the way to save democracy.
The impact of Trump’s performance actually may be not so much to save as to rebuild or transform…or even replace. Trump — and some others not so well heeled but just as irreverent of the rules of conventional political engineering — may be a bellwether of the end of a stale and corrupt two-party system.
Maybe what we are witnessing in fact is the beginning of the end or the transformation of political parties more globally. The left-wing Syriza party in Greece for instance was elected (and bolstered by a referendum) to reject the austerity imposed by foreign banks. The result was even more severe austerity after the banks showed that they were really in charge. The French elected a Socialist president and parliament three years ago in hopes of revitalizing France’s moribund economy. As the Socialists proved incapable of realizing their promises, public support crumbled and the party fractured into quarreling factions. Since then Socialist Party membership declined from over 170,000 to only 60,000.
The UK’s party system is also in disarray in the wake of the last election there and the recent ascendance of the radical Jeremy Corbyn to head the Labour Party. Former MP Sir Vince Cable lamented the result:
“A week on from Jeremy Corbyn’s coronation, one thing is brutally clear. His choice as Labour leader was a disaster for Labour and for the country. Labour is now unelectable. The country lacks an effective opposition and badly needs one.”
This suggests something like the unfolding outcome of Trump’s domination of the GOP nominating contest — and the parallel rise of Bernie Sanders to fill the vacuum of the Democratic Party. Cable’s diagnosis of Corbyn’s morbid impact may apply as well to the reactionary factions that increasingly drive the two major American parties:
“Politics is made up of plumbers — practical people who get into power to change things but inevitably get their hands dirty — and priests who pontificate, lay down doctrine and keep themselves pure. Plumbers are currently discredited.
“The achievements of Brown and Blair (and for that matter Lib Dems in the Coalition) are trashed. Priests are in. The Labour Party has chosen one with absolutely no idea how to realise what his congregation wants.”
Similarly, the most succinct take-away from Rich’s article is not even from Rich but from screenwriter Jeremy Pikser’s sidebar explanation of Trump’s popularity:
“He’s not pretending American politics is anything other than theater.”
In a further sign of American partisan unraveling, House Speaker John Boehner made a surprise announcement on September 25 that he would resign not only from his leadership post but from his congressional seat at the end of October. This prompted New York Representative Peter King to proclaim that “The crazies have taken over the party.”
Boehner, vowing to try to get as much legislating done as possible in his remaining weeks in office, explained that “false prophets” were paralyzing both the Republican majority and the government: “We got groups here in town, members of the House and Senate here in town, who whip people into a frenzy believing they can accomplish things that they know — they know! — are never going to happen.”
All of this fits with the prognosis offered by Moises Naim, author of The End of Power. In an interview in June that contrasts with Rich’s conclusion, Naim observed:
“MY VIEW IS THAT POLITICAL PARTIES [HAVE] DESERVEDLY LOST ALLURE, HAVE LOST ATTRACTIVENESS, THEY ARE NO LONGER THE NATURAL HOME FOR IDEALISTS, FOR PEOPLE WHO WANT TO CHANGE THE WORLD, THEIR CITY, THEIR COUNTRY. AND THAT IS A TRAGEDY. BECAUSE YOU CANNOT HAVE DEMOCRACY WITHOUT POLITICAL PARTIES.”
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Related to this topic, also see my article Reaping the Political Whirlwind.
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Also published in LinkedIn Pulse.
