The menace of Il Duce

Would checks and balances stop Trump? Don’t bet on it

This is how fascism comes to America

Robert Kagan is a neocon who describes himself as a "liberal interventionist."

Given he opposes Trump on a variety of substantive policy issues, as the bearer of this particular bad news he is not the most credible of messengers, and his tone is too nearly one of panic.

To make his case, he requires hysteria about a Muslim ban and about deportation of 11 million illegals, though the first would not and the second need not involve anything unconstitutional or undermine the separation of powers, assuming as Kagan does that the congress gives Trump the necessary legislative support.

And his panicky warning that Trump would use his position as president to intimidate the congress, somehow using physical fear to get what he wants, is unwarranted.

Trump will not be Tiberius and he will have no Sejanus (or Macro) to recommend suicide to senators who annoy him.

Of greater concern is what a Republican-controlled congress, in deference to Republican and other voters numerous and enthusiastic enough to actually put the man in the White House, might do.

Though he imitates Mussolini in style and is said to be a fan of Hitler's speeches, Trump has founded no Fascist and no Nazi Party, has not said a word about constitutional changes to make himself a Fuhrer, and is not supported by a mass movement expressly committed to installing him as a dictator.

The real threat is that he might turn out, at the worst, to be something of a Napoleon III, a lawfully elected president who then, relying both on mass support and support among elites, makes his office and himself much more potent through enabling legislation unconstitutionally shifting power from the legislature to the executive far more than anything previously done in our country.

There is also a threat of constitutional amendments to the same purpose, or other imprudent amendments dear to the hearts of the insurgent right such as those prescribing debt limits or a balanced budget.

And Trump has more than once said he wants to significantly write down the national debt, effectively defaulting, imposing serious losses on creditors.

Or perhaps a better analogy would be what was done by Maduro and Chavez in Venezuela, whose supporters in the legislature altered or subverted the constitution in various matters such as term limits and emergency powers enabling them to make their own legislation, ruling by decree.

And considering that, apparently, gridlock and obstruction are among the things that have most infuriated Trump's supporters and made them most contemptuous of Washington, politicians, and "government as usual," this seems too real a threat.

A threat that would not have been possible in the bad old days when elected and other party officials controlled the nomination process and would never have put forward such a demagogue, rather than voters through primaries or activists through caucuses.

A threat the authors of our constitution rather absurdly thought to deal with by giving the actual choice of our president to constitutionally unbound and unbindable Electors whose very raison d'être is to vote their consciences to head off.

That won't happen.

The man is a menace.