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Nicholas Kristof

By Nicholas Kristof

Opinion Columnist

With this presidential election seemingly a jump ball, what might American democracy and the world look like if Donald Trump is again elected president?

I think it’s hyperbole to suggest, as Hillary Clinton did, that a Trump election would be “the end of our country as we know it.” I don’t think that Trump could turn the United States into a dictatorship.

That said, in the course of four decades of covering the world, I’ve repeatedly seen charismatic leaders win democratic elections and then undermine those democracies. The populist left did that in Venezuela, Mexico and El Salvador, and the populist right did it in Hungary, India and Poland (Poland managed to claw its way back). In his lust for power, willingness to ignore democratic norms and eagerness to glorify himself and suppress opposition, Trump reminds me of those leaders.

“He is the most dangerous person to this country,” Mark Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Bob Woodward.

It’s not that Trump would declare himself dictator for life, but he has already adopted the standard strongman approach of trying to weaponize the legal system to punish and intimidate critics. When he was president, he proposed prosecuting Clinton and did force a criminal investigation into former Secretary of State John Kerry.

“Sometimes revenge can be justified,” Trump said in June.

It’s worth noting that his efforts to prosecute Clinton and Kerry didn’t succeed, and American democracy survived his first term largely unscathed. Democratic institutions are stronger in the United States than in Hungary or Venezuela, and our system is less vulnerable.

It’s also true that in his first term, Trump’s autocratic inclinations were frustrated by incompetence and by frantic efforts by his own aides to impede him. What would be different in a second term is that he is better prepared and seems ready to bring in like-minded aides who would empower his antidemocratic efforts.

I’ve seen in many other........

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