Political Contest or All-out War

by  Roy Christman

To explain it, let’s go back to the classic study of political systems developed by the German sociologist Max Weber.   The leader in a traditional system gets his or her authority from the past, usually inherited.   Traditional systems include kingships and tribes.   The rational-legal system is typified by electoral competition and a bureaucracy grounded in science and logic.   In a charismatic government, authority springs from a leader who by force of personality runs the show.

Many governments, of course, are not all one or the other.   Pre-Trump, we would have put the U.S. in the rational-legal box, but we have had traditional aspects.   It’s no accident that we have had two father-son presidencies, a grandfather-grandson presidency, and the presidency of the cousin and nephew-in-law of another.   And we have surely had leaders with charisma (Teddy Roosevelt, Jack Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, to name a few).

Trump would go in the charisma box, right?   When the charismatic leader goes away, however, the government will metamorphose, unless the leader can institutionalize some sort of traditional structure (maybe first Don Jr., then Ivanka).

That leader could also develop an ideology that outlives the leader’s tenure.   Thus the charismatic Mussolini tried to provide Italy with the ideology of fascism, and the charismatic Lenin gave Russia the philosophy of Marxism.   Mohammad, Christ, and Joseph Smith all managed to pull this off, bequeathing permanent organizational structures that have lasted for centuries.

And back again to Trump.

Obviously he influences millions, capturing their love and admiration.   How many people would have rushed the Capitol on the urging of Clinton or Bush?   Fortunately for America, however, Trump had no long range goals, no ideology to inculcate, no movement to institutionalize.   The fact that the Republican National Convention was incapable of producing a party platform in 2020 llustrates how lacking in ideas Trumpism was.   “Build a wall” and “Make America Great Again” do not constitute an ideology but sloganeering.

As a consequence, while Trump may still make some noise and attract a few followers, without the rallies, the Twitter feeds, and the constant churn of outrage, he will become boring.   Nobody storms the ramparts for boring.   Trump’s absence, however, may accelerate trends of the types illustrated in the graph on the history of party paradigms in US governance ( The Beginning of the 4th Three-quarter Century: the rise of the 7th party paradigm ).   The ebbing of anti-immigrant, build-the-wall rhetoric could encourage conservative Mexican-American and Vietnamese voters to move into the Republican Party.   Policies sympathetic to unions could bring some white, working-class voters back to the Democratic fold.

Aggregating political coalitions is a multi-year process, and it will play out over the next decades.   When studying the graph on US party paradigm history, you’ll note that parties are in constant flux.   Without Trump, however, we can describe the competition as a contest rather than all-out war.

That’s a good thing.

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