Two weeks ago I wrote my first “The Stakes, Not the Odds” essays, focused on the impact of a second term for #PO1135809 on healthcare policy in the United States. Last week I wrote my second essay in this series, focused on what foreign policy might look like in his second term. This week, I’m writing about the impact on the functioning of government. I’m repeating the first page or so of my introductory essay before I go into the governing implications.
It’s December of 2023, and we are less than a year away from the 2024 presidential election. We should be worried, because President Biden’s popularity as reflected in the polls is lower than that of his likely opponent, #PO1135809. I can’t, for the life of me, understand why people think that it’s a good idea to give #PO1135809 another term in the White House, but that seems to be the case – at least for now.
We saw a couple of statements from #PO1135809 last week that warn us clearly about his plans. He confirmed in a public interview that he plans to be a dictator “on Day One” if he is reelected. We should take him both seriously and literally. He was never funny, and he is no longer even a bad joke.
Warning signs are flashing around the world. A second term for #PO1135809 would be a – well we don’t really have a term for BEYOND disaster, but that’s what it would be. You don’t have to trust me on this – Google “Trump” “second term” and “authoritarian” to see articles from around the world about this threat. The January/February issue of Atlantic (soon to be released) is totally devoted to this threat. We should all read it. Yes, sources like the Atlantic are not free. It costs something under $100 per year, depending on what plan you select. Eight dollars a month, give or take. Quality journalism is worth paying for.
I have friends (acquaintances, tbh) who have decided to take the moral “high ground” and refuse to vote for either Biden or #PO1135809. They refuse to accept the notion that this is not the hillside to die on.
The media tend to focus on elections as horseraces – who’s ahead, who’s behind, who’s lagging, who’s coming up on the inside, who is the “dark horse” that you didn’t see coming. This is not helpful in our current situation. Instead of the “odds” of Biden winning reelection, we should be talking about the “stakes” at play here. What would a second #PO1135809 administration look like?
One thing should be crystal clear after we’ve listened to the public rants of #PO1135809 for the last decade – he has absolutely no idea about how government works. Furthermore, he has no interest in learning. His goal from the beginning has been acquiring and then maintaining personal power. That’s it. His “Make America Great Again” has as much actual meaning as the old Esso promise to “put a tiger in your tank.”
There are two elements to this plan – one far-reaching and the other retributive.
The far-reaching element is his disdain for what he and his acolytes call the “deep state.” By this, they mean the corps of government civil servants who keep the government running. He has promised to dismantle the federal civil service and replace it with political appointees whose loyalty is to him rather than to the Constitution. Because he doesn’t know anything about governing, he also has no idea what this means.
Michael Lewis wrote about this in his 2018 book The Fifth Risk, in which he explored the disastrous situation that would arise if Americans elected political leaders who fundamentally did not care about governing. He wrote this during the first years of the #PO1135809 administration, and he waved all sorts of red flags about what he was seeing in even the earliest stages of this failed administration. Among other things, he warned about how much worse things would get if #PO1135809 ever got his act together and actually was able to implement the policies he talked about.
In his next book (published in 2021), The Premonition, Lewis wrote about how the disaster he predicted in 2018 was realized in the government's reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic, as the parts of the government that were supposed to work together to address this type of problem failed in many minor and major ways. This was predictable, he believed, because the people in charge did not care about governing.
I think everyone has concerns about the labyrinthian government bureaucracy. We bemoan “red tape” and lament about how long it takes for the government to do something. What people like #PO1135809 fail to understand is how incredibly complex the government is, and the level of expertise it takes to navigate the system. The career civil service exists for a reason; when it was established in the 1880s, it was generally agreed that the system of political appointments that had governed federal hiring was rife with corruption and needed to be replaced. This commitment was solidified when President Garfield was shot and killed by a person always identified as a “disappointed office seeker.”
Approximately three million people work in civilian jobs in the federal government. People devote their lives to this service. My father worked as a civil servant for 30 years; my daughter has been a career civil servant attorney in the Department of Justice since 2008 and expects to spend the rest of her career there. As she says when we talk about things like this, “You’ll miss us when we’re gone.”
The retributive part of #PO1135809’s plan focuses specifically on the Department of Justice and the federal court system overall. This is a much more simplistic goal and much easier to see as the petty grievance that it is.
#PO1135809 has been criminally indicted in four courts for 91 charges. So far. Because he and his acolytes cannot admit that he has done anything wrong, they have been characterizing the various investigations and indictments against him as nothing but political theater, as a Witch Hunt. They have been poisoning public opinion (and potential jury pools) for a decade, encouraging a belief that he has “done nothing wrong” – as he continues to state every time he’s given a chance.
This would be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. After all, the prisons are full of people who claim they “did nothing wrong.” What makes this serious is the power of his amplification system – the right-wing media circle-jerk that repeats and reinforces his claims so that many voters don’t hear anything else. This has led people to reject not only any accusations against him, but basically any news they disagree with. Biden won an election? Nope, not true, they say. #PO1135809 wants to be a dictator? Nope, that’s just the “lamestream media” who have always been after him. #PO1135809 is a corrupt con man who has been enriching himself off of his loyal (if misled) followers? Nope, that’s President Biden. Impeach #PO1135809 for political bribery (#1) and inciting an insurrection (#2)? Nope, impeach President Biden because of something something Hunter something something laptop something something China.
#PO1135809 and his attorneys have been promising (threatening?) recently to use the power of the Presidency (if he wins) to go after anyone who appears to have opposed him in any way. The vein of grievance and retribution runs deep in this one, my friends. The goal of his entire campaign has been to somehow get back in office so he can be protected from the consequences of his actions. If Americans are deluded enough to give him a second bite of the apple, he has made it clear that he will ignore all of the Constitutional norms he has not already eviscerated. Liz Cheney and other Republicans have warned that #PO1135809 is unlikely to accept the results of the 2024 election if he loses and is also unlikely to step down voluntarily at the end of the term if he wins. In Reno, Nevada, last weekend, #PO1135809 told the crowd: “We're going to win four more years in the White House, then after that we'll negotiate. Based on the way I was treated; we're probably entitled to another four after that." In her Substack newsletter Civil Discourse, legal scholar and MSNBC contributor Joyce White Vance noted on Monday of this week, “That's not a joking matter. That’s the leading GOP candidate saying he intends to stay in office for longer than the Constitution allows.”
We should be not only paying attention — we should be sounding the alarm bells and working to defeat him as if our lives depend on it.
It is about our lives.
Scary AF