For Republicans entering the general election of 2016, the implications were clear. If Trump threatened basic democratic principles, they had to stop him. To do anything else would put democracy at risk, and losing democracy is far worse than losing an election. This meant doing what was, to many, the unthinkable: backing Hillary Clinton for president. The United States has a two-party system; only two candidates stood a chance to win the 2016 election, and one of them was a demagogue. For Republicans, it tested their political courage. Would they accept short-term political sacrifice for the good of the country?
As we showed earlier, there is a precedent for such behavior. In 2016, Austrian conservatives backed Green Party candidate Alexander Van der Bellen to prevent the election of far-right radical Norbert Hofer. And in 2017, defeated French conservative candidate François Fillon called on his partisans to vote for center-left candidate Emmanuel Macron to keep far-right candidate Marine Le Pen out of power. In both these cases, right-wing politicians endorsed ideological rivals—angering much of the party base but redirecting substantial numbers of their voters to keep extremists out of power.
Some Republicans did endorse Hillary Clinton on the grounds that Donald Trump was dangerously unfit for office. Like their Austrian and French conservative counterparts, they deemed it vitally important to put their partisan interests aside out of a shared commitment to democracy. Here is what three of them said:
Republican 1: “Our choice this election could not be more clear—Hillary Clinton is a strong and clear supporter of American democracy interests….Donald Trump is a danger for our democracy.”
Republican 2: “It’s time…to put country before party and vote for Secretary Clinton. Trump is too dangerous and too unfit to hold our nation’s highest office.”
Republican 3: “This is serious stuff, and I won’t waste my vote on a protest candidate. Since the future of the country may depend on preventing Donald Trump from becoming president, I’m with her [Clinton] this November, and I urge Republicans to join me.”
Had these statements been made by House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, and former President George W. Bush, or perhaps a trio of such prominent senators as John McCain, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz, the course of the 2016 election would have changed dramatically. Alas, they were made by William Pierce, the former press secretary of retired Maine senator Olympia Snowe (Republican 1); Jack McGregor, a former state senator from Pennsylvania (Republican 2); and Rick Stoddard, a Republican banker in Denver (Republican 3).
Leading national Republican politicians such as Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio, and Ted Cruz endorsed Donald Trump. The only Republican figures of any prominence who endorsed Hillary Clinton were retired politicians or former government officials—people who were not planning to compete in future elections, who, politically, had nothing to lose. On the eve of the election, the Washington Post published a list of seventy-eight Republicans who publicly endorsed Clinton. Only one of them, Congressman Richard Hanna of New York, was an elected official. And he was retiring. No Republican governors were listed. No senators. And only one (retiring) member of Congress.
A handful of active Republican leaders, including Senators McCain, Mark Kirk, Susan Collins, Kelly Ayotte, Mike Lee, Lisa Murkowski, and Ben Sasse, Governors John Kasich and Charlie Baker, and former governors Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney, refused to endorse Trump. Former president George W. Bush remained silent. None of them, however, was willing to endorse Clinton.
In short, most Republican leaders ended up holding the party line. If they had broken decisively with Trump, telling Americans loudly and clearly that he posed a threat to our country’s cherished institutions, and if, on those grounds, they had endorsed Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump might never have ascended to the presidency. In France, it is estimated that half of François Fillon’s conservative Republican Party voters followed his surprising endorsement of Macron; about another third abstained, leaving around a sixth of Fillon’s supporters who went for Le Pen, arguably making a key difference in that country’s election. In the United States, we have no way of knowing how Republican voters would have split. Some, perhaps even most, of the base might still have voted for Trump. But enough would have been swayed by the image of both parties uniting to ensure Trump’s defeat.
What happened, tragically, was very different. Despite their hemming and hawing, most Republican leaders closed ranks behind Trump, creating the image of a unified party. That, in turn, normalized the election. Rather than a moment of crisis, the election became a standard two-party race, with Republicans backing the Republican candidate and Democrats backing the Democratic candidate.
That shift proved highly consequential. Once the election became a normal race, it was essentially a toss-up, for two reasons. First, intensifying partisan polarization had hardened the electorate in recent years. Not only was the country increasingly sorted into Republicans and Democrats, with few truly independent or swing voters, but Republicans and Democrats had grown increasingly loyal to their party—and hostile to the other one. Voters became less movable, making the kind of landslide election that we saw in 1964 or 1972 far less likely. No matter who the candidates were in the 2000s, presidential elections were close.
Second, given the uneven state of the economy and President Obama’s middling approval ratings, nearly all political science models predicted a tight election. Most of them forecast a narrow Clinton victory in the popular vote, but some predicted a narrow Trump win. In any case, the models converged in predicting a close race. Toss-up elections can go either way. They hinge on contingent events—on the accidents of history. In this context, “October surprises” can weigh heavily. So when a newly surfaced video paints one candidate in a negative light, or a letter from the FBI director casts doubt on the other candidate’s trustworthiness, it can make all the difference.
Had Republican leaders publicly opposed Trump, the tightly contested, red-versus-blue dynamics of the previous four elections would have been disrupted. The Republican electorate would have split—some heeding the warnings of the party leadership and others sticking with Trump. Still, Trump’s defeat would have required the defection of only a tiny fraction of Republican voters. Instead, the election was normalized. The race narrowed. And Trump won.
4
Subverting Democracy
Peru’s Alberto Fujimori didn’t plan to be dictator. He didn’t even plan to be president. A little-known university rector of Japanese descent, Fujimori had hoped to run for a senate seat in 1990. When no party would nominate him, he created his own and nominated himself. Short of funds, he threw his hat into the presidential race to attract publicity for his senate campaign. But 1990 was a year of acute crisis. Peru’s economy had collapsed into hyperinflation, and a Maoist guerrilla group called the Shining Path, whose brutal insurgency had killed tens of thousands of people since its launching in 1980, was closing in on Lima, the capital city. Peruvians were disgusted with the established parties. In protest, many of them turned to the political nobody whose campaign slogan was “A President Like You.” Fujimori surged unexpectedly in the polls. He shocked Peru’s political world by finishing second and qualifying for a runoff against Mario Vargas Llosa, the country’s most prominent novelist. Peruvians admired Vargas Llosa, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize in literature. Virtually the entire establishment—politicians, media, business leaders—backed Vargas Llosa, but ordinary Peruvians viewed him as too cozy with the elites, who seemed deaf to their concerns. Fujimori, whose populist discourse tapped into this anger, struck many as the only real option for change. He won.
In his inaugural address, Fujimori warned that Peru faced “the most profound crisis in its republican history.” The economy, he said, was “on the brink of collapse,” and Peruvian society had been “broken apart by violence, corruption, terrorism, and drug trafficking.” Fujimori pledged to “dig [Peru] out of the state that it’s in and guide it to a better destiny.” He was convi
nced that the country needed drastic economic reforms and that it would have to step up the fight against terrorism. But he had only a vague idea of how to accomplish these things.
He also faced daunting obstacles. As a political outsider, Fujimori had few friends among Peru’s traditional power brokers. Opposition parties controlled congress, and their appointees sat on the supreme court. The traditional media, most of which had backed Vargas Llosa, distrusted him. Fujimori had been unsparing in his attacks on the political elite, describing it as a corrupt oligarchy that was ruining the country. Now he found that those he had attacked and defeated during the campaign still controlled many of the levers of power.
Fujimori got off to a rocky start. Congress failed to pass any legislation during his first months in office, and the courts did not seem up to the task of responding to the mounting terrorist threat. Fujimori not only lacked experience with the intricacies of legislative politics, he also lacked the patience for it. As one of his aides put it, Fujimori “couldn’t stand the idea of inviting the President of the Senate to the presidential palace every time he wanted Congress to approve a law.” He preferred, as he sometimes bragged, to govern Peru alone—from his laptop.
So instead of negotiating with the leaders of congress, Fujimori lashed out at them, calling them “unproductive charlatans.” He attacked uncooperative judges as “jackals” and “scoundrels.” More troubling still, he began to bypass congress, turning instead to executive decrees. Government officials began to complain that Peru’s constitution was “rigid” and “confining,” reinforcing fears that Fujimori’s commitment to democratic institutions was weak. In a speech to business leaders, Fujimori asked, “Are we really a democracy?…I find it difficult to say yes. We are a country that in truth has always been governed by powerful minorities, oligopolies, cliques, lobbies….”
Alarmed, Peru’s establishment pushed back. When Fujimori sidestepped the courts to free thousands of prisoners convicted of petty crimes to make room for terrorists, the National Association of Judges accused him of “unacceptable antidemocratic authoritarianism.” Indeed, the courts declared several of Fujimori’s decrees unconstitutional. Soon, his critics were routinely denouncing him as “authoritarian,” and the media began to depict him as a Japanese emperor. By early 1991, there was talk of impeachment. In March, the news magazine Caretas ran a cover with a picture of Fujimori in the crosshairs of a rifle, asking “Could Fujimori be deposed? Some are already studying the Constitution.”
Feeling besieged, Fujimori doubled down. In a speech to business leaders, he declared, “I am not going to stop until I have broken all of the taboos that are left, one by one they are going to fall; we will be triply audacious in knocking down all the old walls that separate the country from progress.” In November 1991 he sent a massive package of 126 decrees for congressional approval. The decrees were far-reaching, including some antiterrorism measures that threatened civil liberties. Congress demurred. Not only did it repeal or water down several of the most important decrees, it passed legislation curbing Fujimori’s power. The conflict escalated. Fujimori accused congress of being controlled by drug traffickers, and in response, the senate passed a motion to “vacate” the presidency because of Fujimori’s “moral incapacity.” Although the motion fell a few votes short in the Chamber of Deputies, the conflict had reached a point where one government official worried that “either the Congress would kill the President, or the President would kill the Congress.”
The president killed congress. On April 5, 1992, Fujimori appeared on television and announced that he was dissolving congress and the constitution. Less than two years after his surprising election, the long-shot outsider had become a tyrant.
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Although some elected demagogues take office with a blueprint for autocracy, many, such as Fujimori, do not. Democratic breakdown doesn’t need a blueprint. Rather, as Peru’s experience suggests, it can be the result of a sequence of unanticipated events—an escalating tit-for-tat between a demagogic, norm-breaking leader and a threatened political establishment.
The process often begins with words. Demagogues attack their critics in harsh and provocative terms—as enemies, as subversives, and even as terrorists. When he first ran for president, Hugo Chávez described his opponents as “rancid pigs” and “squalid oligarchs.” As president, he called his critics “enemies” and “traitors”; Fujimori linked his opponents to terrorism and drug trafficking; and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attacked judges who ruled against him as “communist.” Journalists also become targets. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa called the media a “grave political enemy” that “has to be defeated.” Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan accused journalists of propagating “terrorism.” These attacks can be consequential: If the public comes to share the view that opponents are linked to terrorism and the media are spreading lies, it becomes easier to justify taking actions against them.
The assault rarely ends there. Though observers often assure us that demagogues are “all talk” and that their words should not be taken too seriously, a look at demagogic leaders around the world suggests that many of them do eventually cross the line from words to action. This is because a demagogue’s initial rise to power tends to polarize society, creating a climate of panic, hostility, and mutual distrust. The new leader’s threatening words often have a boomerang effect. If the media feels threatened, it may abandon restraint and professional standards in a desperate effort to weaken the government. And the opposition may conclude that, for the good of the country, the government must be removed via extreme measures—impeachment, mass protest, even a coup.
They take this step for another reason, as well: Democracy is grinding work. Whereas family businesses and army squadrons may be ruled by fiat, democracies require negotiation, compromise, and concessions. Setbacks are inevitable, victories always partial. Presidential initiatives may die in congress or be blocked by the courts. All politicians are frustrated by these constraints, but democratic ones know they must accept them. They are able to weather the constant barrage of criticism. But for outsiders, particularly those of a demagogic bent, democratic politics is often intolerably frustrating. For them, checks and balances feel like a straitjacket. Like President Fujimori, who couldn’t stomach the idea of having lunch with senate leaders every time he wanted to pass legislation, would-be authoritarians have little patience with the day-to-day politics of democracy. And like Fujimori, they want to break free.
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How do elected authoritarians shatter the democratic institutions that are supposed to constrain them? Some do it in one fell swoop. But more often the assault on democracy begins slowly. For many citizens, it may, at first, be imperceptible. After all, elections continue to be held. Opposition politicians still sit in congress. Independent newspapers still circulate. The erosion of democracy takes place piecemeal, often in baby steps. Each individual step seems minor—none appears to truly threaten democracy. Indeed, government moves to subvert democracy frequently enjoy a veneer of legality: They are approved by parliament or ruled constitutional by the supreme court. Many of them are adopted under the guise of pursuing some legitimate—even laudable�
�public objective, such as combating corruption, “cleaning up” elections, improving the quality of democracy, or enhancing national security.
To better understand how elected autocrats subtly undermine institutions, it’s helpful to imagine a soccer game. To consolidate power, would-be authoritarians must capture the referees, sideline at least some of the other side’s star players, and rewrite the rules of the game to lock in their advantage, in effect tilting the playing field against their opponents.
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It always helps to have the referees on your side. Modern states possess various agencies with the authority to investigate and punish wrongdoing by both public officials and private citizens. These include the judicial system, law enforcement bodies, and intelligence, tax, and regulatory agencies. In democracies, such institutions are designed to serve as neutral arbiters. For would-be authoritarians, therefore, judicial and law enforcement agencies pose both a challenge and an opportunity. If they remain independent, they might expose and punish government abuse. It is a referee’s job, after all, to prevent cheating. But if these agencies are controlled by loyalists, they could serve a would-be dictator’s aims, shielding the government from investigation and criminal prosecutions that could lead to its removal from power. The president may break the law, threaten citizens’ rights, and even violate the constitution without having to worry that such abuse will be investigated or censured. With the courts packed and law enforcement authorities brought to heel, governments can act with impunity.