The political scientists say that there are three branches of democratic government: the executive, the legislature and the judiciary. Historians add other essential elements: the news media, the satirists, and of course the voters.
All these ingredients are now coming into play in what used to be a paragon of democracy. The US is in full-blown crisis, thanks to a regime (“administration” is too civil a term for Donald Trump’s presidency) prepared to break what we imagined were unbreakable rules.
Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs on over 200 jurisdictions, announced in the White House Rose Garden a week ago, are a market shock like no other. Normally in times of uncertainty the US dollar rises in value because it’s considered a safe-haven currency, but on the first trading day after the decision, it fell. Not so safe, it seems. A market loss of $6 trillion was bandied about; a US-based Australian economist, Justin Wolfers, put it at $9 trillion.
“Dumb” was a popular media epithet, and considering its implications the tariff plan had very little expert input. Principal authors were Trump and trade adviser Peter Navarro. External experts cited by the White House to justify the decision were contacted by Yahoo Finance, which found they wanted nothing to do with it.
Coinciding with Trump’s Rose Garden event was a rare positive moment for an almost forgotten Congress. Cory Booker, a black senator from New Jersey, completed a marathon run-down of the misdeeds of Trump 2.0 in a speech lasting over 25 hours, breaking an endurance record set by a segregationist 68 years ago.
Booker’s speech was everything Trump’s was not. Where Trump complained about foreign cheaters and scavengers getting rich at America’s expense, Booker called on people’s better nature regardless of party or belief, to stand up in defence of the hard-won civil rights that underpin US democracy. “This is a moral moment, he said. “It’s not left or right; it’s right or wrong.”
Civil rights and our better nature were nowhere to be seen in the indiscriminate arrest and deportation of immigrants deemed illegal aliens – a nod to white supremacists – or in the frantic effort to destroy or emasculate federal agencies led by Trump’s self-styled action man Elon Musk and his “Department of Government Efficiency” (DOGE).
By the end of March, by Forbes’s reckoning, about 280,000 workers had been laid off, although some tens of thousands were being rehired due to “administrative errors”. Those fired include experts responsible for hard-won data on health, climate, the environment, migration, welfare, law enforcement and a host of other matters. In some cases that information is being replaced by demonstrably false conspiracy theories.
In last year’s campaign Trump promised he would rid America of the “Deep State”, represented as a shadowy body made up of unelected officials and Left-leaning billionaires aiming – you guessed it – to take over the world. The Deep State, the conspiracy theory goes, is everywhere, with the United Nations at its epicentre.
In my 15 years in the federal public service, the only people I remember that might have fitted that conspiracy stereotype were the expanding numbers of political operatives – the types making up Trump’s Rose Garden audience last week. It takes one to know one.
Meanwhile, Trump is abusing judges who rule against him (clearly “Deep State”) and demanding that law firms provide free legal aid for the president or lose their security clearances. Some have buckled under the blackmail, but many more remain steadfast in defence of the rule of law, including a judge who ordered the repatriation of an illegally-deported citizen.
We have grown used to legal safeguards, expert advice and reliable government information, all necessary components of a democratic system. Putting them to the sword seems as dumb as starting a trade war.
But this is to assume that Trump and his co-conspirators want social stability and a rational order when their actions – ignoring economic norms, democratic principles and legal constraints – show contempt for such concepts and pleasure in disruption. It may or may not be dumb or deranged; it’s certainly sinister.
With his country in turmoil Trump went on leave. He was filmed parading around one of his golf courses at the head of a cavalcade of buggies, waving regally to onlookers. Rich pickings for the comics, but they’ll be well aware that Trump is big on retribution.
The future of US democracy now rests with members of Congress, judges, lawyers, economists, scientists, educational leaders, business leaders, military leaders, religious elders, journalists, entertainers, workers and every last voter in the land.
If they turn their backs on Trump’s grab for absolute power, history will not be kind to them. That’s if there’s still such a thing as history.