Speech shows Trump just doesn’t get democracy
Promises show he’s naive, and his claims indicate a tinpot autocrat
On Thursday, Donald Trump accepted his party’s nomination for the presidency of the United States. He then took a little over an hour to demonstrate his unsuitability for the office.
Trump described an America not all would recognize. It is a place where illegal immigrants stream across the border in ever greater numbers, bringing crime, drugs, lawlessness and disorder. When they are charged with crimes, they are not returned to their countries of origin.
The America Trump described is a place where every person from a country with a Muslim population is suspect — a possible terrorist bent on bringing violence and foreign values to America.
The America Trump described is a place where the possibility of violent crime, even murder, is constant. Citizens should, in short, live in fear and in want of an authoritarian government that will protect them, whatever the costs and compromises.
In Trump’s telling, changing that America depends on one thing and one thing only: electing Donald Trump.
Trump’s speech should be deeply troubling to those who value democracy. First, it was largely free of facts. Perhaps this is par for the course in political rhetoric, and perhaps it ought not disqualify him from consideration. But it does signal how much effort he is willing to put into truly understanding problems confronting America.
The second observation should disqualify him from consideration. By Trump’s telling, the only thing needed to restore American greatness is to elect him. This is the claim of an authoritarian and not a democrat. It should be rejected outright.
His claim is not that he needs to be elected to enact a certain series of policies, and that these policies will repair America’s standing. It cannot be the case, because he literally has no policies to speak of, at least none that can be practically implemented. A wall stretching the length of the U.S.-Mexico border is likely impossible, given the degree of private ownership of that land, and geographic and topographic features. Reducing taxes at the rate he suggested would bankrupt the federal government within his first term. A unilateral cancellation then renegotiation of trade agreements is both naive and incredibly laborious.
Nor can it be the case, as Trump claims, that he is uniquely suited because he can lead his party and help it implement the broad package of policies that it has always supported. He does not command the support of the Republican Party at the congressional level, and he does not anyways support most of the party’s policies.
Nor can it be the case, as Trump claims, that he will draw together an executive branch that will be able to use the existing machinery of government to advance American interests. He appears to have spent no time even considering the operation of the executive branch.
In sum, the appeal of Trump is that he and he alone embodies the ideas and the vision that America needs to regain its place in the world. His election will send such a message of strength that order will be restored to the streets and to the international arena.
These are the claims of an authoritarian and a tin-pot autocrat. They reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of modern democracy and society. Government is large and complex. The international arena is a complicated, risky and fraught place. Economies are largely self-organized systems that cannot simply be bent to the will of a certain person.
Democracy and democratic leaders are something else. It is a system of government in which politicians and parties use the existing systems of government to collectively make decisions, to implement policies broadly consistent with a shared ideological understanding of the world, and to respond to unforeseen events in as rational a fashion as possible. They do so within a context of electoral and institutional accountability. Democracy should never depend on a single person being in office. And the effectiveness of a government and the greatness of a country should never depend on the election of a single person. Donald Trump fundamentally misunderstands this. Voters should not.