Democracy on the Rocks

Surely, political scientist Brian Klaas makes a salient and often ignored point: if American democracy does not appear to be working, other countries will not be adopting it. Period. End of thought. Verdict: true.

Unfortunately, Klaas, who teaches at Johns Hopkins and who has written a column for the Washington Post, reflects the problem more than the solution. You see, by his lights, the fault lies entirely with Donald Trump. 

He is up in arms about what he calls the January 6 insurrection-- not Trump’s finest hour-- but he ignores completely the months of insurrectionary violence that consumed major American cities. If American democracy, and Democratic Party governance, cannot control the streets of its major cities, if it cannot tamp down violent crime, surely that is not an argument for democracy.

After all, the theory behind democracy is that giving the people a say in their governance will channel their views into the political process and away from street violence.

And, of course, Klaas rattles on about the Republican objections to the way the 2020 vote was conducted, but still, he never mentions that Democratic politicians failed, after the 2016 election, to recognize the legitimacy of the Trump presidency. They harassed and abused President Trump, beginning before he took office, and did everything in their power to render his government dysfunctional. 

The first rule of democratic decorum is that the losing party respects the results of the election. On this score Democrats failed in 2016, and continued to do so through their impeachment vote in January 2020. If you are looking for a gratuitous display of flagrant disrespect, look to the second Trump impeachment. Democrats are in no position to criticize those who are simply following their rule book. 

Surely, the seditious rhetoric directed against Trump provided the script for the Democrat-inspired riots of the spring and summer of 2020. 

So, American democracy is dysfunctional. As are American Democrats. America is setting a bad example for the rest of the world. One of the reasons is that American political scientists like Klaas have no sense of how to provide an objective analysis. They are simply thinking like Democratic Party hacks. It is a bad look, indeed.

As Klaas notes, America’s allies are despondent over the state of American politics:

U.S. allies see our democracy as a shattered, washed-up has-been. We used to provide a democratic model for the world, but no longer. The chaos, dysfunction and insanity of the past several years have taken a predictable toll.

The numbers are depressing. Just 14 percent of Germans see American democracy as a desirable model for other countries, while 54 percent say that it “used to be a good example, but has not been in recent years.” Public opinion in France, Britain, South Korea, Japan and Australia is similarly bleak. In New Zealand, fewer than 1 in 10 citizens sees American democracy as a desirable model.

Speaking of shattered, washed-up has-beens, countries around the world must have noticed, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, that America just elected a shattered, washed-up has-been to the office of the presidency. Even the pathetic prime minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, reportedly said that Kamala Harris would be America’s president before the next election. Considering what an incompetent fool Harris has shown herself to be, it does not restore faith in American democracy. 

In short, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris give evidence of the problem, not the solution.

And they highlight a disturbing, inescapable dilemma that the Biden administration must confront: Until the United States fixes its broken democracy at home, it will be unable to effectively fight authoritarianism abroad.

Put bluntly: The United States’ authoritarian slide isn’t just a domestic policy issue. It’s a foreign policy disaster, too.

Klaas, who seems not to be able to express himself very clearly, is trying to say that America took an authoritarian turn with Trump, and that he is counting on Biden to right the ship. Incidentally, he should know better than to split infinitives, too.

Of course, as many commentators have noticed, if Trump really had been an authoritarian, then his Congressional and media detractors would never have been able to harass him non-stop for the four years of his presidency.

Again, Klaas blames it all on Trump:

Ever since Donald Trump emerged as the Republican front-runner in 2016, China has been exploiting the unhinged turmoil he ushered in as evidence that democracy is a bad joke rather than a serious way of governing a society. As the Trump years descended into mayhem, China ramped up its rhetoric. And when Trump’s failures to contain the covid-19 pandemic became plain for the world to see, Beijing cited it as further evidence that democracy was a failed experiment.

If we accept that Trump did not do a great job with the coronavirus pandemic, we should also accept that so-called scientists who were leading the fight were also political partisans who were making decisions that they believed would damage Trump. To think that Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birks have no responsibility for the pandemic response is mind-numbingly naive.

So, countries that do not want their major cities to descend into turmoil and who do not want a system where the opposition party becomes a disloyal opposition are turning to more authoritarian models, as in, China.

This matters because emerging economies are slowly getting pulled into China’s orbit as they seek a viable blueprint for their own development. In Afrobarometer surveys of public opinion across Africa, China has pulled even with the United States. Six in 10 Africans have a favorable view of China’s role in their country. And while the United States is still seen as offering the best development model, China isn’t far behind. This is a drastic shift in just a few decades — and it will play an increasingly important role in U.S. foreign policy as some of these developing countries decide whether to follow Washington or Beijing.

Horror of horrors, Klaas suggests that the United States has lost the moral high ground. In truth it has nothing to do with the moral high ground-- which mostly just makes you a target-- but systemic dysfunction.

The United States has lost the moral high ground. The world might have always been wary of lectures from the United States about the virtues of democracy and freedom, but at least those on the receiving end of those lectures often believed that the country giving the lecture knew how to build a successful democracy. That’s no longer true.

Happily perhaps for him and his editors, Klaas then offers a lame metaphor by saying that we need a president whose words pack a democratic punch.

At a time of authoritarian resurgence, we need the words of the U.S. president to pack a democratic punch. Instead, they ring hollow. After all, due to ongoing Republican machinations, American voters can’t even be sure that their right to vote will be protected in the years to come. What can the United States teach the world about democracy when the country is continuing its steady slide toward authoritarian politics?

Do you think that Joe Biden’s words pack a democratic punch. The man cannot hold an open press briefing, because his handlers are terrified that he will start drooling and go off script. Biden’s words are completely rehearsed, at best, read off of cue cards. He is a sad argument for American democracy.

Again, Klaas blames it all on Trump, inveighing against Trump’s wish to jail his political opponents-- tell me when that happened, professor?-- while completely ignoring the ongoing criminal investigations that Trump’s detractors hope will put the Donald in jail.

Worse, now that the world doesn’t respect or admireU.S. democracy, dictators have a rhetorical trump card. They can point to the fact that Trump (falsely) claimed the U.S. election was rigged; that Republicans are actually trying to rig elections with voter suppression and worsened partisan gerrymandering; and that the former president repeatedly called to jail his political opponents. Our hypocrisy will enhance dictators’ impunity.

With political scientists like Klaas, we are not in very good shape. Intellectual life has lost the name of fair and objective analysis. After all, you cannot attack foreign countries for producing propaganda when you have turned most major media outlets and most social media platforms and have turned them into non-stop propaganda. You cannot have a functioning democracy when you have monopolized the marketplace of ideas and have encouraged Silicon Valley oligarchs to shut down free speech, beginning with that of the former president of the United States.