Tocqueville’s observations of America explain Trump
President-elect Donald Trump is not, by his own admission, an avid reader. But I’m guessing that he has at some point cracked open, and even absorbed, some ideas from Alexis de Tocqueville’s “Democracy in America.” The French nobleman spent nine months visiting the United States during 1831-32, and produced an amazing, prescient analysis of the young country published in two parts (1835 and 1840). Trump seems to embody some of the characteristics of the people Tocqueville describes, and is clearly well in tune with the Frenchman’s musings about the then-distant future.
In the recently concluded presidential election campaign, the key line of attack on Trump aimed at the vagaries of his temperament, which was depicted, at the very least, as boorish. Another theme focused on his alleged penchant for too-sharp business practices, as if he were a latter-day version of Sinclair Lewis’ protagonist in “Babbitt,” a man who was “nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could afford to pay.” Jeb Bush tried to devalue the Trumpian persona by saying, repeatedly, that “you can’t insult your way into the White House.” Wrong.
Why did none of these attacks defeat Trump? The answer lies in Tocqueville’s discussion of American behavior. He puts the matter quite succinctly: “In democratic countries, manners are generally devoid of dignity ... and they are frequently low.” Then he goes on to observe “but they are frequently more sincere.” And this may be the secret of Trump’s success: He is without question authentic. From his extemporaneous speeches to his quick, sotto voce interpolations during the presidential debates, Trump personified the rough earnestness Tocqueville recognized in Americans nearly two centuries ago.
It is this authenticity that helped Trump ride the populist wave that washed him into high office. The power does not derive from the man, but rather from the people. As House Speaker Paul Ryan noted, so admiringly, Trump heard and heeded the discontented voices to which others were not listening. In a country where 70 percent of the people believe all is not well, the candidate who acknowledged this concern and pledged to act to rectify the situation prospered. For, as Tocqueville so accurately observed: “The people reign in the American political world . ... They are the cause and the aim of all things; everything comes from them, and everything is absorbed in them.” It took Trump, the antipolitician, to remember this.
A final, Hail Mary assault on Candidate Trump had to do with his possible business ties to Russia and his admiration for Russian President Vladimir Putin. The fact that hackers alleged to be working for the Kremlin had made Swiss cheese of Democratic cybersecurity offered yet another Russian-flavored, anti-Trump angle of attack as well. But it didn’t work.
It turns out that Trump’s assessment of Russia is deep and nuanced. He sees that the effort to overthrow Syria’s Bashar Assad is doomed, but that Russia can be an important ally in the fight against the Islamic State and other terrorists. He also holds out the hope of greater cooperation with Russia in world affairs. To my mind, this sounds a lot like Tocqueville on the subject of Russia and the United States: “Their starting-point is different and their courses are not the same; yet each of them seems marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe.”
So there it is; at the turn of every Trumpian corner we find Tocqueville. Whether the topic is personality, populism or power politics. Coincidence? Maybe. But I think not.