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Unfortunately, America’s capacity for institution-building has been undermined by internal failures and external challenges. Which is, of course, how we ended up with Trump in the first place.
During the 1960s, our culture took a hard turn against institutional authority. The most spectacular and memorable examples of this came out of the left-wing counterculture, but the libertarian and populist currents on the right were also in important ways anti-institutional, though this was masked for a time by the fact that so many people on the right belonged to thriving religious institutions.
In politics, these trends led to good-government reforms that slowly gutted the parties as decision-making institutions. Primaries handed the choice of candidates over to the electorate. Congressional reforms first dispersed the power that had been held by a handful of powerful committee chairs and in various ways made it harder for them to broker legislative deals — or be held accountable for failing to. Campaign finance reforms weakened the parties’ role as a source of campaign funds, which forced individual politicians to rely more heavily on outside donors and activist groups and, at the same time, limited each party’s ability to discipline members who went rogue.
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The GOP today looks less like a political party than a collection of hundreds of political entrepreneurs. They might all operate under the same franchise license, but their ties to fellow franchisees are weak, and it is hard to interest them in stewardship of a larger corporate brand.
All this has been exacerbated by another good-government reform: the move to put more and more congressional business on camera, which has turned our national legislature into one long television commercial. This is part of a second factor undermining our institutions, a series of technological shifts that have turned institutions upside down and inside out.
Private deliberation has been replaced by public performance, which is swell for having arguments but terrible for making deals. Cable news, with its insatiable demand for content, has made it easier for members of Congress to get on camera, and social media has made it easier for their words to go viral. As a result, politicians increasingly treat their offices as platforms for individual brand-building rather than places to work with other politicians to pass laws.
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Social media has also made it easier for the masses to bypass gatekeepers, ignore institutional norms and mount coordinated attacks on figures of authority. On the left, this takes the form of progressive revolts at newspapers, universities and left-wing nonprofits. On the right, it has taken the form of voting for Trump, whose major selling point is that he won’t let anyone tell him what to do.
These technological shifts have undermined the functioning of key institutions and exacerbated the collapse of their moral authority. In fairness, this collapse is also rooted in failures that only became more glaring in the klieg lights of social media attention. Trump might not have gotten so far if the Republican establishment hadn’t taken its base for granted. The party could have spent more time on good government and less on geopolitical grand strategy; less time schmoozing donors and more actually listening to voters.
As I say, however, recriminations are mostly pointless. We are where we are, and Trump is where he is — which is to say, poised to do further damage to his party and his country. We will remain stuck in reruns until Republicans find some way to overcome the forces arrayed against institutional cohesion, unite as a party and get rid of him, together.
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The 2020 election season was never a fan favorite, yet it is somehow now in reruns. The original co-stars will again face off, now somewhat hoarier, considerably more unpopular and noticeably less capable of remembering their lines.
Democrats’ reason for keeping the show going is simple. They are stuck with President Biden because he’s stuck with the charmless and inept vice president he chose four years ago for reasons of coalitional politics. For the same reasons, she cannot be replaced with someone who could easily beat Donald Trump.
Republicans’ reason is more interesting — and longer-lasting. Republicans are stuck with Trump because their party has been unable to overcome its collective action problem.
For nine years now, they’ve known that they’d all be better off with Trump gone but also that anyone who tried to make that happen would risk the anger of his voters. So individual politicians keep retreating to the same playbook: stay quiet on the sidelines in hopes that fate will intervene or that someone else will muster the courage to take him out. This is both morally derelict and ineffective.
Pointing this out doesn’t really help, though, because vicious collective action problems are rarely overcome by moral exhortation. We solve them by creating institutions that provide the right incentives.
Unfortunately, America’s capacity for institution-building has been undermined by internal failures and external challenges. Which is, of course, how we ended up with Trump in the first place.
During the 1960s, our culture took a hard turn against institutional authority. The most spectacular and memorable examples of this came out of the left-wing counterculture, but the libertarian and populist currents on the right were also in important ways anti-institutional, though this was masked for a time by the fact that so many people on the right belonged to thriving religious institutions.
In politics, these trends led to good-government reforms that slowly gutted the parties as decision-making institutions. Primaries handed the choice of candidates over to the electorate. Congressional reforms first dispersed the power that had been held by a handful of powerful committee chairs and in various ways made it harder for them to broker legislative deals — or be held accountable for failing to. Campaign finance reforms weakened the parties’ role as a source of campaign funds, which forced individual politicians to rely more heavily on outside donors and activist groups and, at the same time, limited each party’s ability to discipline members who went rogue.
The GOP today looks less like a political party than a collection of hundreds of political entrepreneurs. They might all operate under the same franchise license, but their ties to fellow franchisees are weak, and it is hard to interest them in stewardship of a larger corporate brand.
All this has been exacerbated by another good-government reform: the move to put more and more congressional business on camera, which has turned our national legislature into one long television commercial. This is part of a second factor undermining our institutions, a series of technological shifts that have turned institutions upside down and inside out.
Private deliberation has been replaced by public performance, which is swell for having arguments but terrible for making deals. Cable news, with its insatiable demand for content, has made it easier for members of Congress to get on camera, and social media has made it easier for their words to go viral. As a result, politicians increasingly treat their offices as platforms for individual brand-building rather than places to work with other politicians to pass laws.
Social media has also made it easier for the masses to bypass gatekeepers, ignore institutional norms and mount coordinated attacks on figures of authority. On the left, this takes the form of progressive revolts at newspapers, universities and left-wing nonprofits. On the right, it has taken the form of voting for Trump, whose major selling point is that he won’t let anyone tell him what to do.
These technological shifts have undermined the functioning of key institutions and exacerbated the collapse of their moral authority. In fairness, this collapse is also rooted in failures that only became more glaring in the klieg lights of social media attention. Trump might not have gotten so far if the Republican establishment hadn’t taken its base for granted. The party could have spent more time on good government and less on geopolitical grand strategy; less time schmoozing donors and more actually listening to voters.
As I say, however, recriminations are mostly pointless. We are where we are, and Trump is where he is — which is to say, poised to do further damage to his party and his country. We will remain stuck in reruns until Republicans find some way to overcome the forces arrayed against institutional cohesion, unite as a party and get rid of him, together.
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