Report: 3 in 10 would prefer a more authoritarian government

Shortly after China effectively made President Xi Jinping “president for life,” President Trump joked to donors, “I think it’s great. Maybe we’ll want to give that a shot someday.”

In times past, the president’s wisecrack would have gone unnoticed. But Trump has repeatedly demonstrated his desire to rid himself of the restraints imposed by constitutional checks and balances, and has frequently praised autocrats who don’t have to worry about such limits.

“Look at who he’s reached out to,” says Stanford University’s Larry Diamond, one of the foremost U.S. experts on democracy worldwide. “He has expressed admiration for (Hungary’s illiberal leader Viktor) Orban, (Philippine President Rodrigo) Duterte, Xi, even Kim Jong Un, while the leaders he has displayed contempt for are prime minister of Australia and other democratically elected leaders, including the president of South Korea.”

In other words, Trump is suffering from a bad case of autocrat envy.

The risk is that his impatience with democratic norms will strengthen some troubling trends laid out in a survey report Diamond and two co-authors released last week. Titled “Follow the Leader: Exploring American Support for Democracy and Authoritarianism,” the report found these disturbing figures: 3 in 10 Americans would prefer a more authoritarian form of government in the United States.

A July 2017 survey of 5,000 Americans found that a quarter of U.S. adults like the idea of having “a strong leader who does not have to bother with Congress and elections,” while 18 percent say that “having the army rule” would be a good or very good idea. Accounting for overlap, 3 in 10 Americans embrace at least one of these two authoritarian options.

Diamond’s survey found Trump supporters are substantially more supportive of a “strong leader” (32 percent) than supporters of any other candidate from either major party (20 percent). “Our data suggest a close affinity between politicians who play the race and immigration cards and citizens, anxious about social and economic change, who opt to ‘follow the leader,’ ” Diamond writes in The American Interest. “Illiberal populist leaders claim that they are merely responding to these anxieties, but they are also irresponsibly stoking them.” Including Donald Trump.

A wave of illiberal demagogic populism is infecting many advanced industrial democracies, boosted by social media that travels across national boundaries. Add to this the cyber tactics (and funds) used by Russia to encourage extremist parties that will undermine democracies and the open admiration expressed by Trump for undemocratic tactics used by autocrats. Struggling civil society activists in Hungary, or Poland, or Russia noticed when Trump congratulated Putin on winning a rigged election and when he expresses envy at Duterte’s (extralegal) success in killing drug dealers in the Philippines.

Yet, despite the core of Americans who seek a “strong leader” immune from democratic restraints, the public as a whole still backs democracy overwhelmingly as the best form of government, Diamond said.

But he worries whether U.S. institutions can constrain a president with a soft spot for strongmen. “He will be as authoritarian as political constraints will let him be,” Diamond argues. “You wonder what would happen if he violates norms more boldly. The test may come with firing (special investigator Robert) Mueller.”

As of this spring, President Trump’s autocratic urges are still curbed by the institutions designed by our founding fathers. Their strength will be tested.