Trumpism is simply the inevitable result of a century-long expansion of federal authority and the centralizing of power in the US Presidency.
This is a short post by the editor, taken from a segment of the July 9th issue of the From the Hawk’s Next newsletter.
I have often said that the Democrats have presented the worst possible opposition to the Trump moment. This is because, given the history of progressivism in the Democratic Party, their argument against Trumpism fails to amount to much more than “You’re doing big government wrong.”
That’s because the Democratic Party is responsible for the lion share of government growth in the past century. Of the four major transformational doctrines that fundamentally changed the relationship between citizens and their government in the 20th century (New Nationalism, War Socialism/The New Freedom, The New Deal, and The Great Society), Democratic presidents championed three of them. Even the other, Theodore Roosevelt, was a Republican at a time when progressivism had camps in both parties. If Teddy had lived into the roaring ’20s, it’s unlikely he would have felt at home in Coolidge’s Republican Party.
By the way, when I say these programs were transformational, that’s an apt description.
Theodore Roosevelt essentially single-handily created the modern presidency. Before Teddy, the presidency was a stewardship, and, in most cases, Congress was the preeminent branch of government. But Teddy pioneered the use of the presidency as a mantle of authority that placed him above all other political stations.
TDR used the bully pulpit to wield popular will and assert control over Congress. He expanded the stick of foreign policy and used the presidency towards imperialist endeavors. And, he didn’t hesitate to involve the government in the private affairs of business and individuals alike. Many have termed the age of TDR as the age of New Nationalism, a time of aggressive empire-building, global entanglements, and subversion of private and individual will towards the “national good.”
The creation of the modern presidency, combined with the implications of involvement in the Great War, afforded Woodrow Wilson powers of government coercion unseen in American history. Already perhaps the first president openly hostile to the vision of the American Founders, Wilson envisioned a thoroughly planned economy under the direction of centralized power guided by “experts.”
Under the guise of a New Freedom, Wilson made modest steps towards these goals, but the outbreak of war allowed him to accelerate his New Founding. Often called War Socialism, the US government during World War I virtually controlled every aspect of American society. Wilson’s “War Cabinet” meticulously managed the economy. At the same time, freedom of speech and expression were extensively curtailed by government acts that forbade any messages that spoke out against the government or the war. (Violations of civil liberties were so rampant under the Wilson administration that in 1917, concerned citizens founded a private organization explicitly to oppose government abuse: the American Civil Liberties Union).
While the American people responded negatively to the abuses of the Wilson administration and elected three successive Republicans after him (including Coolidge, perhaps the most dedicated limited government president of the 20th Century), the disastrous Great Depression created another opportunity for the march of central power and executive authority.
Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal is exactly what it sounds like, a new deal between the government and its citizens. In the face of the Great Depression, FDR promised an active and zealous government that would get the economy going again and keep it from falling back down. He promised to do this by creating numerous new government entities that would keep their thumbs pressed on the scales as well as other programs and entities that would grant assistance to Americans if they still fell through the cracks.
Progressive historians champion the New Deal as the dynamo that surged America out of the Great Depression and created an era of immense growth and prosperity after World War II. Non-progressive historians counter that the mobilization of the economy to support the war effort is what put Americans back to work, and the economic destruction of all other industrialized nations throughout the war gave untouched America a distinct advantage in the late ’40s and into the ’50s. Either way, many of FDR’s New Deal programs were here to stay, and the relationship between Americans and their government was once more fundamentally changed.
But not everyone experienced the best of times in the ’50s and into the ’60s. While America had experienced a burgeoning in the size of its middle class, there were still many living in squalor and poverty. Lyndon B. Johnson wanted everyone to have a piece of the pie and embarked on an effort to build The Great Society.
This massive program in wealth redistribution and government-directed charity created and solidified the modern welfare state. LBJ described it as a War on Poverty. The size and scope of government expanded exponentially as a massive bureaucratic state sprung up to manage the various programs designed to lift Americans out of poverty.
By the late ’70s, mostly progressive forces had transformed the American government into a swelling behemoth with an alphabet soup of agencies whose rules and regulations impacted almost every aspect of American life. Presidential elections began to take on an increased intensity as Americans came to realize just how much executive decisions and directions could disrupt their lives.
Worse, the burgeoning size of the federal government failed to curtail the problems it was supposed to address. Stock markets still crashed, bubbles still burst, recessions still put people out of work, and poverty has remained a consistent reality (especially for ethnic minorities in the inner city).
On top of the economic power and the impact on individual lives, we can add the expanded emergency powers granted the presidency to counteract the global revolutionary aims of the Soviet Union. We now have what many have come to characterize as the imperial presidency, a supreme executive authority whose only remaining checks were adherence to established norms and some judicial challenges on executive action.
At the same time this new imperial presidency, and the Leviathan held at its beck-and-call, had come into its own, the culture war began in earnest with the Roe v. Wade decision. While Reagan presented a Coolidge-like moment of executive restraint and constitutional renewal, the ’90s saw presidential elections truly turn into little more than battles for control of central authority.
This is why I often point out that Trumpism is ultimately the creed of the Left and the Right alike. Donald Trump simply approached the presidential contest in a way that’s fully honest about what it’s become, and he has presided over the federal government in a way that has revealed the unrestrained Leviathan it truly is. His willingness to buck the norms that restrained his predecessors has demonstrated just how much we relied on the good behavior of our leaders, and how little we can rely on checks and balances to curtail a willingness to abuse the office.
The jig is up, the cat is out of the bag, and no one can unsee what we have seen President Trump get away with. Who can we trust with what the presidency has been revealed to be? The only honest answer can be no one.
To avoid increased disruption of the domestic tranquility of our nation, we need a renewal of the principles of limited government. The trajectory we are on is unsustainable. It has been precipitated by a century of government expansion. Trading one expansive faction for another without altering our path will not avoid the inevitable calamity for which we are heading.
The Democrats, specifically, have demonstrated no understanding of the situation we’re in. They have no discernment of the role their party has played in creating the circumstances for Trump’s rise or the altered system of government he has availed himself of. Nor have they adequately moderated themselves to account for the right-ward lurch of the Republican Party.
Their agenda constitutes a cornucopia of demands that together would represent a fifth great transformation of government relations with its citizens in the name of additional wealth redistribution, healthcare access, climate activism, and social justice. They have lurched even farther to the Left in mirror-like synchronization to their political opponents.
While each party effectively hides their own excesses by pointing at each new foe as a “unique threat,” the reality is they are merely different vessels offering to take us to the same destination. Sure, the reasons they offer and the justifications they provide may appear dramatically different, but the end result remains a path that feeds the Leviathan.
(This is, perhaps, why so many Trump supporters have proven resistant to arguments against Trump. They probably know, in their heart of hearts, that Trump has led them to abandon the tenets of limited government and the founding vision, but if their only choices are an imperial president who claims to fight for them or an imperial president who would fight against them, how can they be convinced they have any other choice but to stay on the path they’re on?)
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