Larry Summers and the Donald Trump problem

This may or may not surprise you but we can't say that we're overly keen on Donald Trump. A Great National Upchuck against the standard ruling classes and Beltway Bandits, yes, that has its amusement and joy to it. But the specific beneficiary not quite so much. What won't surprise you at all is that Larry Summers is just horrified:

While comparisons between Donald Trump and Mussolini or Hitler are overwrought, Trump’s rise does illustrate how democratic processes can lose their way and turn dangerously toxic when there is intense economic frustration and widespread apprehension about the future.

We tend to think it's more frustration about the past or the present ourselves. Something of a rage at the way ion which whoever gets voted in it always seems to be the same government in power. But that's not our point here:

The possible election of Donald Trump as President is the greatest present threat to the prosperity and security of the United States. I have had a strong point of view on each of the last ten presidential elections, but never before had I feared that what I regarded as the wrong outcome would in the long sweep of history risk grave damage to the American project.

The problem is not with Trump’s policies, though they are wacky in the few areas where they are not indecipherable. It is that he is running as modern day man on a horseback—demagogically offering the power of his personality as a magic solution to all problems—and making clear that he is prepared to run roughshod over anything or anyone who stands in his way.

Summers goes on to give examples none of which please us any more than they do him. But again we would identify the real problem as being much more basic.

That is the expansion of Federal power over the decades. for those who believe in the power of government to fix all ills it is of course obvious that government should have more power to fix said ills. But democracies do indeed elect oddities from time to time and a useful rule of thumb is that you should never grant a power to an office that your worst enemy might be occupying in a year or seven hence.

But that is of course what the liberals and progressives have done over these past decades. Ever more power is concentrated in Washington DC, ever more in the executive and this produces conniption fits when there's even a possibility that "not one of us" might end up occupying the Oval Office. The correct solution to this, given that not one of us is inevitably, over the course of time, going to achieve that office is not to give it that power in the first place.

If the Federal Government was the size it should be, back down to the 4 to 6% of GDP that the Founders thought it should be, with executive powers to match, then who would care very much about who got elected?

The same of course applies to our own polity. Various left wingers (including, obviously, the author of The Courageous State) insist that government should have more power to do whatever. Which could even be true but they are missing the vital point that if we have a government with those powers the Tories will get in one day and enjoy those same powers.

Donald Trump is this year's argument for minarchism.