10 Ways to Tell if Your President Is a

Dictator
Just because the United States is a democracy now, it doesnt
mean it will stay that way.

BY STEPHEN M. WALT-NOVEMBER 23, 2016

There are good reasons to worry about how Donald Trump will
handle foreign policy, but there are also reasons to think he wont
be any worse than some other administrations. The
neoconservatives who dominated foreign-policy making in George
W. Bushs administration had lots of prior experience, God knows,
and look at all the harm they did. My fears about Trumps foreign
policy have always been two-fold: that he might pursue a more
sensible grand strategy but do it incompetently, thereby
weakening Americas international position, or that he will
eventually get co-opted by the foreign-policy establishment and
repeat the Blobs most familiar mistakes. Based on some of his
early appointments like Islamaphobe Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn as
national security advisor we might even get the worst of both
worlds: unrealistic goals pursued ineptly.

But if you live in the United States, what you should really worry
about is the threat that Trump may pose to Americas
constitutional order. His lengthy business career suggests he is
a vindictive man who will go to extreme lengths to punish his
opponents and will break a promise in a heartbeat and without
remorse. The 2016 campaign confirmed that he has little respect
for existing norms and rules he refused to release his tax
returns, lied repeatedly, claimed the electoral and political
systems were rigged against him, threatened to jail his
opponent if he won, among other such violations and revealed
his deep contempt for both his opponents and supporters. Nor
does he regret any of the revolting things he did or said during
the campaign, because, as he told the Wall Street
Journal afterward, I won. For Trump, it seems, the ends really do
justify the means.

To make matters worse, plenty of people in Trumps camp appear

to believe America is now under siege from a coalition of liberal
elites, people of color, immigrants of all sorts, and shadowy
foreign influences. They also understand demography is not on
their side: The Republican Party has lost the popular vote in six of
the last seven presidential elections (Bush in 2004 was the
exception), and the percentage of older white Americans that
forms the GOP base will continue to decline. This situation will
tempt some of them to use any and all means to hang on to
power, justified by their (mistaken) belief that the country must
be saved from all these alleged enemies.

Add to this mix Trumps expressed admiration for strong leaders

like Vladimir Putin, along with the penumbra of extremist advisors
he has surrounded himself with, most notably white nationalist
Steve Bannon, and you have a recipe for undermining democracy
over time. Trumps personal obsession with winning and his
deep fear of humiliation make me wonder how he will react when
his approval ratings sink, the bond market rebels, or when he isnt
able to deliver on his promises. Every president has faced sharp
swings in popularity this was true of Richard Nixon, Ronald
Reagan, Bill Clinton, both Bushes, Barack Obama, and even
Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt. Trump will be no
exception. But when his approval ratings tank and even a
Republican-controlled Congress refuses to give him everything he
wants, will he trim the sails and adjust as normal presidents do
or will he double down, lash out, and look for ways to insulate
himself?

Public accountability is inherent to Americas constitutional

system, but that doesnt mean Trump wont try to escape it. Its
not as if he doesnt have role models for this sort of operation. In
Russia, Putin has won a series of elections and retains high
approval ratings, largely because he has eliminated, intimidated,
or marginalized anyone who might challenge his control while
feeding the Russian people a steady diet of pro-Kremlin
propaganda. Recep Tayyip Erdogan has done the same thing in
Turkey, in part by exploiting rural conservatism but also
by strangling the press and seizing every opportunity to arrest,
threaten, coerce, or eliminate opponents and critics. You can see
similar formulas at work in Hungary and in Poland, albeit to a
lesser extent, and in the recently ended reign of Italian media
mogul Silvio Berlusconi, who kept getting elected in Italy despite
an abysmal record as prime minister and his own checkered
history as a sexual predator.

These fears may strike many of you as alarmist, and its entirely
possible that Trump will uphold his oath to defend the Constitution
and stay within legal lines. But given his past conduct, expressed
attitudes, and bomb-throwing advisors, I think there are valid
reasons to think the constitutional order that has prevailed in the
United States for more than two centuries could be in jeopardy.
And that should worry all Americans. The constitutional reality
never lived up to the Founding Fathers hopes and ideals, of
course, but the system has had a self-correcting quality that has
served the nation well. Equally important, the Constitution has
helped the United States avoid the self-destructive excesses and
extreme injustices that are common in authoritarian countries.
To repeat: I am not saying this dark scenario of subverted
democracy is likely, only that it is far from impossible.
To repeat: I am not saying this dark scenario of subverted
democracy is likely, only that it is far from impossible. Democracy
has broken down in plenty of other countries, and there is no
reason to think the United States is completely immune from this
danger. For a good rundown of the political science literature on
this topic, check out this useful list by Jeff Colgan of Brown
University. The good news is that the United States doesnt suffer
from some of the traits that make democratic breakdowns more
likely: It isnt poor, its political institutions have been around for a
long time, and it is not in the middle of a deep economic crisis.
The bad news is that the United States has a presidential system
(which appears to be more prone to this problem than
parliamentary orders) and also one where executive authority has
grown steadily over time. And weve never had a president
remotely like this one.

Given what is at stake, one of the most important things we can

all do is remain alert for evidence that Trump and those around
him are moving in an authoritarian direction. For those who love
America and its Constitution more than they love any particular
political party or any particular politician, I offer as a public
service my top 10 warning signs that American democracy is at
risk.

1) Systematic efforts to intimidate the media.

As George Orwell emphasized so powerfully in 1984, autocrats

survive by controlling information. A free, energetic, vigilant, and
adversarial press has long been understood to be an essential
guarantee of democratic freedoms, because without it, the people
in whose name leaders serve will be denied the information they
need to assess what the politicians are doing. Trump sailed to the
presidency on a The Top of lies and exaggerations, and theres no
reason to think hell discover a new commitment to the truth as
president. The American people cannot properly judge his
performance without accurate and independent information, and
thats where a free and adversarial press is indispensable. If the
Trump administration begins to enact policies designed to restrict
freedom of the press, or just intimidate media organizations from
offering critical coverage, it will be a huge (or if you prefer, yuge)
warning sign.

What sort of steps do I have in mind? For starters, Trump has

already proposed opening up libel laws so that public figures
can sue the press more easily. This step would force publishers
and editors to worry about costly and damaging lawsuits even if
they eventually win them, and it would be bound to have a
chilling effect on their coverage. Or he could try to use the
regulatory power of the Federal Communications Commission to
harass media organizations that were consistently critical. He
could go even further than Obama did in pursuing government
whistleblowers and leakers and in prosecuting journalists who use
confidential sources. His administration could deny access to
entire news organizations like the New York Times if they were too
critical of Trumps policies or just too accurate in documenting his
failures. Just because the First Amendment guarantees free
speech doesnt mean some parts of the media cant be
stampeded into pulling punches or once again indulging in false
equivalence.

2) Building an official pro-Trump media network.

A second warning sign is a corollary of the first: While trying to

suppress critical media outlets, Trump could also use the
presidency to bolster media that offer him consistent support. Or
he could even try to create an official government news agency
that would disseminate a steady diet of pro-Trump coverage. As
Ian Bremmer of the Eurasia Group told a Harvard Kennedy School
audience this month, if Putin can have an outlet like RT, why
wouldnt Trump want something similar for himself? In Trumps
ideal world, Americans would get their news from some
combination of Breitbart, Fox News, and the presidents own
Twitter feed, which would keep the public bamboozled and go a
long way toward insulating him from the consequences of his own
mistakes. Congress would probably refuse to fund a public
broadcaster that was reliably in Trumps pocket, but if it did, look
out.

3) Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or

the domestic security agencies.

One of the obstacles to a democratic breakdown is the

government bureaucracy, whose permanent members are
insulated from political pressure by existing civil service
protections that make it hard to fire senior officials without cause.
But one can imagine the Trump administration asking Congress to
weaken those protections, portraying this step as a blow against
big government and a way to improve government efficiency. Ill
bet the Wall Street Journal op-ed page would be quick to endorse
this idea, on the grounds that firing a few senior bureaucrats
would encourage the rest to work harder and better. But if the
president or his lieutenants can gut government agencies more or
less at will, the fear of being fired will lead many experienced
public servants to keep their heads down and kowtow to whatever
the president wants, no matter how ill-advised or illegal it might
be. And when you consider that Trump seems to be appointing
loyalists to top posts even when they lack the obvious
qualifications (Trumps incoming chief of staff, Reince Priebus, has
never worked in the federal government), this possibility gets
scarier still.

And dont assume the military, FBI, National Guard, or the

intelligence agencies would be immune to this sort of
interference. Other presidents (or their appointees) have fired
generals who questioned their policy objectives, as Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld did during George W. Bushs first
administration when he removed Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki,
who had the temerity to tell a congressional committee that the
occupation of Iraq was going to need a lot more people than
Rumsfeld had claimed. Other generals and admirals got the
message and stayed out of Rumsfelds way for the rest of his
disastrous tenure as defense secretary. There have also been
fights in the past over control of the National Guard, but a move
to assert greater federal authority over the guard would give
Trump a powerful tool to use against open expressions of dissent.

Because there are precedents for the various tactics Ive just
described, some people might be inclined to give Trump a pass if
he moves in this direction. That would be a serious mistake.

4) Using government surveillance against domestic

political opponents.

This step wouldnt be entirely new either, insofar as Nixon once

used the CIA to infiltrate anti-war organizations during the
Vietnam War. But the governments capacity to monitor the
phones, emails, hard drives, and online activities of all Americans
has expanded enormously since the 1960s. And as Edward
Snowden revealed a few years ago, these activities still lack
adequate oversight and have sometimes broken the law.

As far as we know, however, no one has yet tried to use these

new powers of surveillance to monitor, intimidate, embarrass,
deter, or destroy political opponents. I dont know if the exposure
of the indiscretions of former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer or former
CIA Director David Petraeus is an example of this problem or not,
but it certainly demonstrates how an ambitious and unscrupulous
president could use the ability to monitor political opponents to
great advantage. He would need the cooperation of top officials
and possibly many underlings as well, but this only requires loyal
confederates at the top and compliant people below. The White
House had sufficient authority, under George W. Bush and Dick
Cheney, to convince U.S. government employees to torture other
human beings. In comparison with that, convincing some officials
to monitor emails and phone calls and online searches in order to
dig up damaging dirt on the presidents rivals should be childs
play.

5) Using state power to reward corporate backers and

punish opponents.

A hallmark of corrupt quasi-democracies is the executives

willingness to use the power of the state to reward business
leaders who are loyal and to punish anyone who gets in the way.
Thats how Putin controls the oligarchs in Russia, and it is partly
how Erdogan kept amassing power and undermining opponents in
Turkey. As Matthew Yglesias argues in Vox, that is also how
Berlusconi operated in Italy, and it helped wreck the Italian
economy and made endemic corruption even worse.

I know, I know: Corruption of this sort is already a problem here in

the Land of the Free whether in the form of congressional pork
or the sweet deals former government officials arrange to become
lobbyists once they leave office so why single out Trump? The
problem is that Trumps record suggests he thinks this is the right
way to do business: You reward your friends, and you stick it to
your enemies every chance you get. So if the Washington
Post runs a lot of critical articles about Trump, and Post owner Jeff
Bezos suddenly learns federal officials are contemplating new
regulations that would hurt his main business (Amazon), none of
us should be all that surprised. But we should be really, really
worried.

6) Stacking the Supreme Court.

Trump will likely get the opportunity to appoint several Supreme

Court justices, and the choices he makes will be revealing. Does
he pick people who are personally loyal and beholden to him or
opt for jurors with independent standing and stellar qualifications?
Does he pick people whose views on hot-button issues such as
abortion, gay marriage, and campaign financing comport with his
partys, or does he go for people who have an established view on
the expansiveness of executive power and are more likely to look
the other way if he takes some of the other steps Ive already
mentioned? And if its the latter, would the Senate find the spine
to say no?

7) Enforcing the law for only one side.

Effective liberal democracies depend on the rule of law being

implemented in a politically neutral fashion. Thats an ideal that
no society achieves completely, and there are many ways in
which the U.S. judicial system falls well short. But given the
nature of Trumps campaign and the deep divisions within the
United States at present, a key litmus test for the president-elect
is whether he will direct U.S. officials to enforce similar standards
of conduct on both his supporters and his opponents. If anti-Trump
protesters are beaten up by a band of Trumps fans, will the latter
face prosecution as readily as if the roles were reversed? Will local
and federal justice agencies be as vigilant in patrolling right-wing
hate speech and threats of violence as they are with similar
actions that might emanate from the other side? I dont know
about you, but I do not find the nomination of Jeff Sessions for
attorney general reassuring on this point.

If Trump is quick to call out his critics but gives racists, bigots,
and homophobes a free pass because they happen to like him, it
would be another sign he is trying to tilt the scales of justice in his
favor.

8) Really rigging the system.

Back when he appeared likely to lose, Trump started telling

audiences that the system was rigged and threatened not to
accept the outcome if he lost. If anything, of course, the system
turned out to be rigged in his favor, insofar as he lost the popular
vote and benefited from a number of obvious efforts to suppress
the vote in areas where support for Hillary Clinton, his Democratic
opponent, was high. Be that as it may, given the promises he has
made and the demography of the electorate, Trump and the GOP
have every incentive to use the next four years to try to stack the
electoral deck in their favor. Look for more attempts to
gerrymander safe seats for House Republicans and more efforts to
prevent likely Democratic voters from getting to the polls in 2018
and 2020. Needless to say, such interference is fundamentally at
odds with true democracy.

9) Fearmongering.

Stoking public fears about safety and well-being is a classic

autocratic tactic, designed to convince a frightened population to
look to the Leader for protection. Trump played this card brilliantly
in the campaign, warning of Mexican rapists, foreign
governments that steal our jobs, scores of recent migrants
inside our borders charged with terrorism, and so on. He also
hinted that his political rivals were somehow in cahoots with these
various enemies. A frightened population tends to think first
about its own safety, and forget about fundamental liberties, and
would be more likely to look the other way as a president
amassed greater power.

The worst case, of course, would be an Erdogan-like attempt to

use a terrorist attack or some other equally dramatic event as an
excuse to declare a state of emergency and to assume
unprecedented executive authority. Bush and Cheney used 9/11
to pass the Patriot Act, and Trump could easily try to use some
future incident as a with apologies for the pun trumped-up
excuse to further encroach on civil liberties, press freedoms, and
the other institutions that are central to democracy.
10) Demonizing the opposition.

Trying to convince people that your domestic opponents are in

league with the nations enemies is one of the oldest tactics in
politics, and it has been part of Trumps playbook ever since he
stoked the birther controversy over Obamas citizenship. After
he becomes president, will he continue to question his opponents
patriotism, accuse them of supporting Americas opponents, and
blame policy setbacks on dark conspiracies among Democrats,
liberals, Muslims, the Islamic State, New York financial elites, or
the other dog whistles so beloved by right-wing media outlets
like Breitbart? Will he follow the suggestions of some of his
supporters and demand that Americans from certain parts of the
world (read: Muslims) be required to register with the federal
government?

Again, these are the same tactics Erdogan and Putin have used in
Turkey and Russia, respectively, to cement their own authority
over time by initiating a vicious cycle of social hostility. When
groups within a society are already somewhat suspicious of each
other, extremists can trigger a spiral of increasing hostility by
attacking the perceived internal enemy in the hope of provoking a
harsh reaction. If the attacked minority responds defensively, or
its own hotheads lash out violently, it will merely reinforce the
first groups fears and bolster a rapid polarization. Extremists on
both sides will try to outbid their political opponents by
portraying themselves as the most ardent and effective defenders
of their own group. In extreme cases, such as the Balkan Wars in
the 1990s or Iraq after 2003, the result is civil war.

Trump would be playing with fire if he tries to stay in power by

consistently sowing hatred against the other, but he did it in the
campaign, and theres no reason to believe he wouldnt do it
again.

This list of warning signs will no doubt strike some as overly

alarmist. As I said, it is possible even likely that Trump wont
try any of these things (or at least not very seriously) and he
might face prompt and united opposition if he did. The checks and
balances built into Americas democratic system may be
sufficiently robust to survive a sustained challenge. Given the
deep commitment to liberty that lies at the heart of the American
experiment, it is also possible the American people would quickly
detect any serious attempt to threaten the present order and take
immediate action to stop it.
The bottom line: I am by no means predicting the collapse of
democracy in the United States under a President Donald J.
Trump. What I am saying is that it is not impossible, and there are
some clear warning signs to watch out for. Now, as always, the
price of freedom is eternal vigilance. Or to use a more modern
formulation: If you see something, say something.

Photo credit: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images

Posted by Thavam