Tag Archives: Paul Krugman

Long live democracy or long live the king?

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The would-be monarch is fighting hard but just may lose

Philadelphia’s “No Kings” Protest, June 14; source: AP

Crowd estimates are notoriously unreliable. But it appears that between four million and six million Americans angry enough to march on “No Kings Day” last Saturday don’t like the idea of a monarch in the White House. And, given the latest approval ratings for Donald J. Trump – 39 percent or lower, the lowest since January – it is likely that many more who stayed home don’t either.

Of course, some like the idea of an absolute ruler – or something close to it. The Project 2025 folks, for instance, love the so-called “unitary executive theory,” which holds that the Constitution vests power in the executive branch in the president, giving him the power to command at will, hiring and firing and issuing edicts as he sees fit.

“A president is elected by the whole American people,” is how Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller put it in a February press briefing. “He’s the only official in the entire government that is elected by the entire nation. Right? Judges are appointed. Members of Congress are elected at the district or state level.”

“Just one man,” Miller continued. “And the Constitution, Article 2, has a clause, known as the vesting clause, and it says, ‘The executive power shall be vested in a president,’ singular. The whole will of democracy is imbued into the elected president. That president then appoints staff to then impose that democratic will onto the government.”

Certainly, Trump agrees. That’s why he has fired top officers at such independent agencies as the National Labor Relations Board and the Merit Systems Protection Board, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, and more recently, the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. And he also issued an executive order taking direct control of independent regulators, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission.

By appointing loyalist Kash Patel, moreover, he seized control of the FBI, where Patel has been polygraphing agents to find news leaks. And he upended the Justice Department, where appointee Pam Bondi has turned its guns on anyone who investigated Trump in past times. He also fired 18 inspectors general from federal agencies.

“It’s good to have a strongman at the head of a country,” then-candidate Donald Trump declared at a New Hampshire campaign rally back in January 2024, as NPR reported.

Thus, no one could be surprised that he could unilaterally order National Guard troops and Marines into a state where officials didn’t invite them and don’t want them. After California officials sued Trump over the move, he lost an initial judgment and is now fighting in a federal appeals court to keep the troops on the ground.

Poster at anti-Trump demonstration in Frisco, Colorado

Trump, of course, seems to feel he can defy court orders he doesn’t like. Thus, D.C. District Court Judge James E. Boasberg, found reason to believe that administration officials defied his order requiring a halt to deportations under the Alien Enemies Act. And in several cases involving the withholding of federal funding, judges found the administration to be violating injunctions to restore funding.

So much for checks and balances, one might say. And more power to the advocates of the unitary theory or, perhaps more apt, the monarchists.

In some ways, this is cyclical. Those of a certain age will recall that John F. Kennedy felt no reluctance to appoint his brother, Robert, as Attorney General, leading the Justice Department. Only norms and self-restraint regulated much presidential power for much of our history. But, as NPR reported, after Richard Nixon resigned in a scandal over abusing such power, Congress spent years passing laws to limit that power. Inspectors general emerged to attack waste, wrongdoing and inefficiencies.

“We’re still living with those laws today,” conservative legal scholar John Yoo told NPR. “And one way to understand what Trump is trying to do, and I’m not saying even that Trump understands this is what he’s doing, but the presidency, the way it’s designed, urges him to do it, [is] he’s trying to snap those bounds that were imposed on the presidency in the post-Watergate era.”

So, Fox News contributors such as Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor, are keen to attack Democrats for trying to preserve those bounds with efforts such as the “No Kings” demonstrations. “Monarchy Malarkey” Turley called it on his website and in a column for The Hill.

“It is a curious campaign, since every indication is that our constitutional system is operating precisely as designed,” Turley argued. Courts have ruled for and against the president, he added, suggesting everything is just fine, except that Democrats are trying to breathe life into their failed “Democracy is Dying” theme.

“The danger is that these Democratic politicians are fueling the most radical and violent elements in our country with their ‘rage rhetoric,’” he contended.

Assassinated Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman, Sen. John Hoffman; source: NPR

Turley’s timing in making that absurd contention couldn’t have been worse. Recall that a Trump supporter, Vance Luther Boelter, in the predawn hours of “No Kings Day” assassinated former House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, in their home outside Minneapolis. He also shot state Sen. John Hoffman, also a Democrat, and his wife, Yvette, though they survived. And Boelter had a hit list of 45 Democrats.

Recall, too, Trump’s egging on of the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. And his claim afterward that the Capitol terrorizers were “patriots,” followed by his pardon of those who attacked police and others. Can we expect anything better of a man whose disdain for law and order is demonstrated most clearly by his own 34 felony convictions, findings for which he has avoided justice?

For Trump apologists, important questions loom. Is the system really operating as designed when Congress and most of the Senate are supine in the face of Trump efforts against universities, including Turley’s GW? Is it really operating when the president thumbs his nose at courts? Is it really operating when a president can countermand the wishes of a state’s governor and a big-city mayor? Or when, out of sheer vindictiveness, he can ramp up his deportation plans by targeting Democrat-led cities where the protests were largest, such as Los Angeles, Chicago and New York?

“We must expand efforts to detain and deport Illegal Aliens in America’s largest cities,” Trump ranted on his Truth Social platform. “These, and other such cities, are the core of the Democratic Power Center, where they use Illegal Aliens to expand their Voter Base, cheat in Elections and grow the Welfare State, robbing good paying Jobs and Benefits from Hardworking American Citizens.”

In the face of such George III-like furor (see the brilliant royal take in “Hamilton”), is the system really performing as it should? Or are critics such as Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman onto something in supporting the “No Kings” efforts.

“America is no longer a full-fledged democracy,” Krugman argued in his Substack. “We are currently living under a version of competitive authoritarianism — a system that (like Orban’s Hungary or Erdogan’s Turkey) is still democratic on paper but in which a ruling party no longer takes democracy’s rules seriously.”

But Krugman doesn’t believe Trump has won — yet.

“Trumpists, however, haven’t yet fully consolidated their hold,” Krugman wrote. “America still has a chance of reclaiming itself from the grip of brazen corruption, mindless destruction, and contempt both for the rule of law and for our erstwhile allies. We don’t have to become a country bullied into submission.”

For that view to prevail – for American liberties and reasonable government policies to succeed – it likely will take more and bigger “No Kings” days. It will likely take a huge voter turnout in one and a half years to send a message in the Congressional elections that, indeed, most Americans have no use for the would-be monarch. And it will take a resounding rejection of Trump’s GOP two years after that to begin restoring health to the Republic.

Encouraging as they are, four, five or six million anti-monarchists are just a start.

China: land of contradictions

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As we walked to lunch with faculty and a couple administrators the other day, we passed demonstrators holding a sit-in outside the Tsinghua administrative offices. Their placards told of how they wanted more money for the destruction of their homes, which was planned to make way for faculty housing. Our hosts, chagrined by the protest, nonetheless noted that this was an example of free speech. These people, it seemed, had a right to make their grievances known.

It seemed a lot like home. But, then at lunch, we got some friendly advice from a Party official who is a fellow academic. Be mindful of what we say in class, we were counseled. Chinese students, especially those from the countryside, give teachers enormous deference in this Confucian society. Moreover, with social media alive and well in China – through local knockoffs of Facebook and Twitter – anything we say may find an audience well beyond the classroom. Privately, say what you want. Publicly, be discreet. There’s a difference in China between the private and public realms.

We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. But, what a perplexing country this is. On the one hand, it has embraced so much about the West. Just look at the soaring skylines in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. And consider the recurring 10 percent-plus annual growth rates that put the U.S. and the rest of the economically turbulent West to shame. The Chinese are setting the pace for the world.

School of Economics and Management

Their passion for capitalism is obvious. The school of economics and management here is a towering modern compound fronting on the strip of stunning buildings that adorn a stretch near the main gate. Inside one of the several buildings, portraits of Nobel Prize-winning economists make a long line in the lobby – seemingly, all are Americans, including New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman. By contrast, the university’s school of Marxism is tucked off in a less impressive quarter of campus, housed in a small, older building. I’ve heard Marxism is regarded as a matter of philosophy, nothing quite so practical as economics and management. Certainly, there’s no doubt who these folks want their students to look up to.

Merit is also prized here, whether in school or in government. To join the Communist Party, our colleague explained, one must be in the top of one’s class academically. The Party is for the elite, those who can lead the country, and getting through the application process is tough and time-consuming. Only about six percent of the 1.3 billion people in the country qualify for Party membership (a surprising share, even if that amounts to 80 million folks).

Indeed, the Party leadership is composed of practical men with impressive academic backgrounds. Some have graduated from Tsinghua, with degrees in subjects such as water engineering. The current president, Hu Jintao, is an alum. The children of some of these men now study at Western institutions such as Harvard. These are bright people who, it seems, take seriously the need to intelligently manage a country where vast numbers still live in poverty a world apart from privileged city-dwellers. They seem to want to spread the wealth and manage the growth of their country well.

And yet, there is a limit to how far western approaches go here. I bumped up against it the other day, when I wanted to shoot some photos at a central athletic field on campus. Large numbers of students paraded about the sprawling field in military uniforms. Military training, a student here told me, is required of all freshmen. Indeed, days earlier I saw similar troops of students marching around campus and singing songs of loyalty to the nation. It was reminiscent of years ago in the U.S., when students had to go through ROTC training on many campuses.

Struck me as interesting. But a fellow in a black athletic outfit thought otherwise. “Delete,” he told me politely — but firmly — as he appeared out of nowhere. This was arguably a public place, and certainly would have been considered so in the U.S. Further, he was not in uniform and didn’t say who he was. But I was in no position to argue. I am, after all, a guest in this country and must behave as one. I certainly don’t wish to offend my hosts, whose graciousness has gone above and beyond.

School of Marxism

Odd thing is, other military events on campus seem to be fair game. For instance, I was able days before to photograph a flag-raising ceremony conducted by young people in front of the main administration building. Chinese people were similarly taking photos. That, it seemed, was acceptable even as the larger parade was not.

So, every once in a while, I expect I’ll run into reminders that the rules are different here. As long as I am a guest, I will comply. Anything else would be ungracious, to say the least.

Cojones at Standard & Poor’s

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You’ve got to hand it to the folks at Standard & Poor’s. It took cojones to stand up to the Treasury Department and give an honest assessment of U.S. debt and the problems of dysfunctional government. The downgrade to AA+ doesn’t make up for the misses the outfit was guilty of in the financial crisis and doesn’t atone for its seemingly willing blindness to the fool’s paradise we were living in. But its clear-eyed view of the shadows on our horizon now is worth a bundle.

The big question, though, is whether it will make a difference. The U.S. will not default, no matter how keen the GOP pols are to use threats such as that. Investors know that and they won’t flee Treasury securities. Where would they go anyway? Investors have known the same things S&P has known for months and still the yields on Treasurys are at historic lows. Putting money into the government bonds is safer than any bank, and that won’t change anytime soon, as even our tut-tutting creditors in China know.

Still, the grand game of “chicken” will continue in D.C. for the rest of the year, at least, and the downgrade could make a difference in how the game is played. The Gang of 12 – the bipartisan panel that is supposed to decide our financial fate – will have S&P’s jaundiced judgment to bear in mind as they go through their ideological faceoff. As they try to resolve problems that should have been dealt with in recent weeks, the prospect of a continued low rating, or even a further downgrade, could focus their minds on the consequences of fiscal mismanagement and dithering. Their debate, too, could keep a dead hand on the markets.

Politics, and the prospects of ousting a President, will weigh heavily on those folks, no doubt. The temptation to deny President Obama a victory – a financial resolution that would serve the country well – will be just about irresistible for half the panel. Maybe S&P’s independent judgment will prove to be a bracing slap of cold water, a reminder that the bloodsport that politics has become does have real consequences outside the Beltway. Voters could make judgments about mismanagement similar to that S&P folks made and simply throw all the bums out.

But it is too easy to cast this drama as simply a matter of gaining political advantage. This is much more than just naked opportunism. This fight is over the real and yawning ideological gulf between the parties. It is all about the longstanding argument over the size and role of government that has colored every election since at least the Reagan days. The Californian shook up prevailing wisdom in D.C. and made people believe government was the problem, not the solution – a view that is echoed decades later by the likes of Rep. Eric Cantor and, of course, the Tea Party movement.

The “two different worldviews” that divide Washington are too far apart for anything more than an armistice, Cantor suggested in a Wall Street Journal piece today. The Virginia Republican argued that expanding the welfare state and redistributing income are the central plays in the Democratic playbook. “The assumption … is that there is some kind of perpetual engine of economic prosperity in America that is going to just continue,” Cantor said. “And therefore they are able to take from those who create and give to those who don’t. We just have a fundamentally different view.”

Beyond that is the Keynesian-supply-sider divide. Keynesians such as New York Times columnist and Princeton economist Paul Krugman say Obama and Washington aren’t doing enough to use government money to stimulate the lackluster economy. By contrast, the GOP leaders invoke economist Arthur Laffer’s dictum – the Laffer Curve – to argue that tax cuts would be far more effective than government spending, especially when so much of the government money is borrowed. Variations of this debate are as old as the Great Depression and economists still are split on whether the government pulled us out that 1930s slump or prolonged it with government programs.

These are serious disputes, and unresolved economic questions. It comes to a matter of faith, of whether you worship at the Church of Laffer or the Congregation of Krugman. And, lately, it comes to a matter of who has the power to either turn on the government spigot or choke it off and, in theory, let the economy heal itself. Problem is, with a 9.1% unemployment rate, an outrageous amount of debt and the never-ending political campaign that Washington has become, the power centers and the course are anything but clear.

That’s partly why we should tip our hat to S&P. The outfit, the economic engine of my former longtime employer, McGraw-Hill Cos., didn’t bow to what had to have been enormous pressure from Washington in coming to its judgment. We can only imagine the debates that raged at company headquarters: Will this downgrade lead to higher interest costs for all Americans? What are the consequences when the economy is so weak? And what of the unlikely possibility that vengeful government regulators could make life tougher for S&P and McGraw-Hill, especially at a time when McGraw-Hill is facing pressure to reorganize or sell itself?

In fact, it’s a remarkable thing about our system that Washington can’t dictate terms to S&P. One can’t imagine that kind of independence in some other major global economies. Wall Street and Washington intersect at crucial points but neither can dictate to the other. That’s a priceless strength of our system and it would have been a sorry statement if S&P had caved to Treasury.

It is fascinating, of course, to see these warring economic visions collide. But this is no classroom exercise, no parlor game. The entertainment value is far outweighed by the size of the stakes. What Washington does will affect the livelihoods of millions, the legacy our kids inherit, and the role of the U.S. in the world. It doesn’t get much more serious than that. It will take smart and independent people to help the pols to chart the way.