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- [00:00]
Bill Kristol
It's time to turn your daydream into your dream job. Wix gives you the power to turn your passion into a moneymaker with a website that fits your unique vision and drives you towards your goals. Let your ideas flow with AI tools that guide you but give you full control and flexibility. Manage your business from one dashboard and keep it growing with built in marketing features. Get everything you need to turn your part time passion into a full time business. Go to wix.com hi, Bill Kristol here.
- [00:30]
Daniel Ziblatt
With Bulwark Live on Sunday. Happy Mother's Day to one and all. And I guess Daniel and I are, I don't know what we're doing. We're honoring Mother's Day by spending half an hour talking about the authoritarian threat, not dishonoring it by neglecting our mothers or wives or others, I hope. Yes, yes, you can rationalize this. You're a Harvard professor.
- [00:53]
Unnamed Speaker
You can come up at arguments, right?
- [00:57]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah, exactly right. Anyway, very pleased to be joined by Daniel Ziblatt, well known as the author of How Democracies Die, co author with Steve Lewinsky and other many other books and many, many other works. Certainly been very prominent as you should have been over the last six years. I particularly will recommend your more political sciencey and historical work, I guess, on conservative parties and the birth of democracy. Is that what it's called? Something like that. That's right.
- [01:23]
Unnamed Speaker
That's right. Yeah.
- [01:24]
Daniel Ziblatt
And actually your earlier work, which I even I, which I've looked at, I've not exactly read on Italy and Germany and the state development there. So I say Daniel is really an unusual political scientist in seeing the big picture, but also the particularities of things, the trends, but also the contingencies of history, which I think is somewhat rare in my opinion. Political science has gotten very much in a very big picture, wouldn't you say? Not very interesting. Not quite as interested in history and particularity as it once was, maybe.
- [01:53]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. Although I think that the real world of events have kind of impinged on people to begin to ask more important questions. I think so.
- [02:00]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah. No, that's interesting.
- [02:03]
Unnamed Speaker
As things have gotten more urgent, I think people have.
- [02:05]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah. You think? The rational actor analysis of everything doesn't seem quite as compelling anymore. Anyway. Anyway, it's really good to have you. I've learned a lot from you, really a lot over the last several years and before too. And so let's talk about where we are. We're 111 days into the Trump, second Trump term and you've studied this and written about this, not just the book, but so many articles we stopped in the New York Times, I recommend to everyone from this past week, where do you think? Where are we? Worse off than you expected, Better off in terms of democracy, resiliency of democracy, strength of democracy, strength of authoritarianism, strength of Trump's authoritarianism here in the US Take it in whatever direction you want.
- [02:46]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, well, I guess I had the feeling things were going to be very bad back in November.
- [02:53]
Daniel Ziblatt
So.
- [02:53]
Unnamed Speaker
And that's what I've spent the last eight years warning about is sort of the moment we're in. And so, like, you know, people, everybody was kind of paralyzed in certain ways. December, January, and kind of my own version of that was, well, I've been warning about this. And so now it's about to happen. What, you know, what else do I have to say? But I think one thing that I have learned since January is just one unexpected feature of this. Others have commented on this as well, is that is the pace of, of the capture of many of the main institutions of our democracy. You know, the first, you know, I was not naive in the sense I understood that the same kinds of traditional actors wouldn't be there, but I had expected that the kind of incompetence of the first Trump presidency would be repeated to such a degree that this wouldn't happen so quickly. And so, you know, in some sense, I think this first hundred days really are shocking at some level. One way of thinking about this, of making sense of the pace by which all these, the course of apparatus of the state, the Homeland Security, Justice Department, is to think of this as year five, not the first 100 days. This is the fifth year of the Trump presidency. If one takes into account the first term as well.
- [04:07]
Daniel Ziblatt
I think it's such that you mentioned this in this one zoom discussion we were on together a couple of weeks ago. I don't know if you've written this up or if others have written this up, but it's a very important point, I think. I mean, that, you know, it helps one thought, well, maybe, yeah, a one. The second term was very different than the first term for a lot of reasons. The internal guardrails being a very important one. The. No, Jim Mattis's and mark espers and HR McMasters and John Kelly's and, and Mike Pence's and so forth. But also he learned, right. And I think there's some history of that, of authoritarians. He, in a way, had the perfect situation. He had a first term where he learned a lot. He was Defeated, but was able to come back. That's pretty amazing in its own right after January 6th and all that. And had four years. He, not just he, but others, had four years to work out what they were going to do. And I agree. I think a lot of us just underestimated. I think it's a very helpful formulation that it's the fifth year of Trump's overall project at work, not the first hundred days.
- [05:04]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. You know, and one, you know, I think actually in How Democracies Die, we kind of gave. Had this report card of the first year of different, like Orban, Erdogan and these. Chavez, these kinds of leaders. And that was back in 2018, 2017. 18. We were comparing how Trump compared the first year of the Trump president's first term compared to these other executives. And it was clear that they also didn't get a lot done in those first years. And so the attack, for example, in Hungary on the Central European University came quite late. And Orban has been in power since 2010. So it took some time for these leaders to kind of gain. Although, you know, Orban tried to work very quickly early on, but some of the worst damage came later, you know, and, you know, if we think of.
- [05:51]
Daniel Ziblatt
You know, just about Orban for a second, correct me if I'm wrong on this, but he actually had a term before that also. Right. So he is like Trump and sort of. He had a semi, let's call it a democratic term in office. He lost. He learned some things. I think he talked about this a lot, about nativism and populism and authoritarianism, honestly, and takes over again. So in that respect, it is weirdly mirrors Trump, vice versa. Trump.
- [06:12]
Unnamed Speaker
That's right. That's right. And when he came in in 2010, you know, I've spoken to some of the opposition people who are in the parliament at the time with part of the opposition, and they were over and they had less of a sense that Orban would be a threat. I mean, I think his first term had been pretty innocuous in the late 90s. And so they kind of gave him the benefit of the doubt. And this legislation was rushed through parliament. They would often not read it very carefully because they didn't have much time to look at it. And so he was able to do a lot quickly. But nonetheless, I mean, there was this kind of process of learning, as you described, and even the kind of fascist, the classic cases of fascism in the 1930s, which I compared with some hesitation to the present. But nonetheless, what you see in those cases is that the fascists, in every instance, as Robert Paxton, the great historian of fascism, has taught us, always involves an alliance with the establishment. And the big challenge for the fascists, both Mussolini and the Hitler regime, was how to extract themselves from the establishment, because they really had revolutionary sets of goals. They came to power with the aid of the establishment. And so it took some time to gain capture of the state. And so that was always a dilemma and, or a challenge, I think, for outsider populist authoritarians is that they rely on their connections to the establishment. However you kind of want to define that, but then at some point try to break from it. I think that's what we're seeing here. Year five of that process.
- [07:37]
Daniel Ziblatt
Now that's such a helpful way of putting it. Yeah, it's one thing you have your alliance with the establishment and that's your, as we said, the McMasters and John Bolton's and obviously John Kelly and Jim Mattis and lots of others. Actually, though most of the Cabinet, honestly the first term you could have said obviously there were many things he did that were not traditional and the establishment didn't like. But even with Paul ryan and Mitch McConnell so different in the second term. And people, some people looked at the Hegseth and Bondi and Patel and those Robert F. Kennedy Jr. For them at her appointments and thought ludicrous, you know, and we. We weaker. It'll. He'll be weaker because of these, but I think he's stronger. No, I mean, it turns out that whatever their personal capacities, which are limited, there are people in the White House, at least, you know what they want to do and want to have total loyalists, people who have no other standing. I was very struck talking to General Milley a couple of months ago. I mean, he had been chairman of the Joint Chiefs but also had been chairman of the army before. That had been around for a while. When Trump started to move in 2020, in certain ways on the Defense Department, Milley was able to call out a huge network of friends, allies, people who respected him, people within the military, people in the broader national security community, people in the media actually to talk to quietly, and was able to thwart Trump, as Trump complained bitterly, much more ptexf neither could do that nor wants to do that. Right. And then fire those generals at the beginning. I think I really feel that the clownishness sort of is a bit of a distraction or what's the word I'm looking for? Covers up the obscures, the danger of some of these people.
- [09:13]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, there's this new book that came out last year by Jeff Kopstein and Steve Hanson called the Assault on the State, which they argue that there's a kind of global wave of new form of. They're less interested in democracy and authoritarianism. What they basically are used, the state is being hollowed out. And they refer to Max Weber's classic concept of patrimonial regimes is the way that most states have been run, which is essentially by loyalists. You treat the state as a private household and so you fill up the regime or the state positions with family members and friends. And that's a bit of what's. I think, I mean, that is what's been happening where I guess I disagree with them. I mean, I really like the book. But one way where I disagree with them is that in a sense it's sort of conflating two things. One is about creating a very dysfunctional state that just can't do anything because it's filled up with incompetence. That's sort of one version of patrimonialism. But there's another version of it which is you fill up the state with loyalists and the state's going to be very effective, but just carrying out your agenda, which can then represent a real assault on democracy. Because if you have people who are loyal to the leader at a personal level, but not loyal to the rule of law, then of course this represents a problem for democracy. So patrimonialism is not just a weakening of the state, but it's potentially this term that we use of weaponizing the state to attack democracy and the rule of law.
- [10:36]
Daniel Ziblatt
I suppose you could have your Steve Millers and Russ Faults in the White House guiding this. And you can have the front people not be so, you know, obviously competent or impressive, but the loyalism, I guess trumps everything right there.
- [10:52]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. And I think, you know, it's also useful to think about this as a kind of coalition of different interests and different groups. I mean, as any, as any presidency is, it's, you know, representing different kind of vast country as ours. You have a two party system. So any party is going to be a coalition of different interests. And so you have these different competing strands of, you know, white nationalism of the kind of obsession with immigration, obsession with China. You know, there are all these different kinds of the trade issue. There are all of these different interests and agendas. And that what ties them together, as you say, is kind of a loyalty to the. To the president.
- [11:27]
Daniel Ziblatt
Go ahead.
- [11:27]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, no, I just say loyalty the president to the president as a person not, not that's right.
- [11:32]
Daniel Ziblatt
I mean are you surprised by the degree to which it seems like they've managed to just overcome so much of the Justice Department's traditional distance from this loyalty to the president as a person and rather loyalty to the presidency but also to the Constitution as a whole and the rule of law? I do feel like they were, they focused on the power agencies in a way, DOJ and DHS and dod, the Defense Department. And in all of them we don't know. Quite obviously we're very early days here so we need to talk about what could happen in the future. But I, if you had told me that in 111 days that have people in the Justice Department saying the things they're saying and doing the things they're doing and hegseth firing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs and firing the jags from Defense and DHS seemingly totally at their control in that respect. And courts doing some checking, I mean, I don't know how worried are you on the sort of. I guess I would put it this way. It feels like in the world I move in people are very worried and then they're fighting back and they're happy the courts are fighting back. There's still a kind of failure to focus on the fact that we're only 111 days in and it's four years. I mean this is not a parliamentary system where he can, you know, Canada will have a snap election in five weeks and a new prime minister. So I don't know. Now on the other hand, you could argue he's overreached and he's die which is probably true. And he's done some things foolishly and the reaction is just beginning. Where are you on that sort of spectrum of how alarmed is the four year window as opposed to how possibly reassuring is it?
- [13:03]
Unnamed Speaker
You know, I think I'd share your alarm because there's a real sensitivity to the Trump administration, to the, to power, I mean to understanding what the levers of power are. And I think in some ways maybe the opposition has not fully grasped that. I mean the degree to which, how important it is to have access to the coercive apparatus of the state. And so there's a real sensitivity to that. I mean, so it's not just about issues, it's not just about tariff, it's not just about immigration as an issue. It's about gaining control and putting people loyal to the president in these important positions. And once you have, I mean power begets power. Once you have access to homeland security ICE Agency, obviously the Department of Defense, the Justice Department, these parts of the government that are connected to the coercive apparatus of the state. Once you have control of these, it's hard to dislodge. And so I think that in a sense is very worrisome. And I think of course of historical analogies where that's sensitivity to these. Sensitivity is maybe not the right word, but at least a recognition that how important it is to gain access to these institutions, which is something that I think the first term Trump presidency didn't understand. So that, of course, is worrying at a very, very deep level. Now, I think the what on the other side of the ledger, I guess, you know, there is, as we've talked about here already, a little bit, you know, some incompetence and so, you know, and sort of mumbling of a lot of this, you know, the new D.C. u.S. Disappointment that just took place. Martin has just been replaced by a Fox News host. You know, so this is, you know, a loyalist, you know, with some kind of legal experience. But this is. So this kind of these kinds of appointments then sort of make you say, well, how serious is this really? But I guess a second thing in terms of the four year time frame is that it's kind of easy to control the agenda. And you've been in positions of power at some point or advised people in power and so on. So, you know, I mean, what happens, of course, the first hundred days you control the agenda, but events outside events begin to impede on that agenda. It can sort of halt the kind of control of the agenda. So that's one thing that I guess I sometimes think about to give myself some hope about all of this. But, you know, so in other words, things will come along, world events, domestic crises that are not part of the game plan. So far things have gone according to the game plan, though, it seems like. And so, yeah, that's very worrying. You know, an impeachment is something that's just basically off the table. I mean, I always think of this as like the weapon in the political system that is so powerful it can't really be deployed. So, you know, the only other kind of checks then are the courts, as you mentioned, and as well as potentially a Congress. But I'll just say a word about the courts. You know, I sort of have the impression that, you know, about, you know, maybe, you know, in best case we'll have like two thirds of everything that goes through block or blocked. Right, that's in the best case, the most egregious Kinds of moves get blocked, but that means one third are getting through. And this will do permanent damage to the American state. This will do permanent damage to scientific research, to our democracy and so on. And so, you know, then that's in the best case scenario. So the courts certainly are one vehicle, but they're really a partial and imperfect one.
- [16:30]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah, I do think some of the radicalism of what the. That they've been. They've made their radicalism so manifest that it probably has alarmed the courts more than might otherwise have been the case. Maybe they would have been better off with a little bit of slower boiling of the frog. On the other hand, they got some benefits from shock and awe. It's a little hard to know. Not that I want to be in the business of advising them either way, but, you know.
- [16:49]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, that's right. But there is, I think there's a logic to the radical. Is it. I mean, I come back again to the cases that I have studied historically that, you know, there's this account again by Paxton where he says these regimes, once they're in power, you know, face a dilemma. They either have to radicalize because that's part of. Because they sort of mission driven in a way and they have to keep momentum going because if they don't, they kind of just degenerate into corruption and entropy. And so there's a way in which they would need the momentum to go. They need this momentum of radicalization as a kind of driving principle of who they are and what they're trying to do. So that I think that's part. So it's not just a strategic logic in terms of getting stuff done. It sort of helps keep the kind of whole coalition together in a way.
- [17:34]
Daniel Ziblatt
I think the radicalization, self radicalization, whatever you want to call it, is such an interesting part. I've never quite. I see it, I think I do see it somewhat clearly in my own mind, but I've been worried about it. I don't quite know what lies behind it. Some of it is, as you say, kind of an imperative of power. The coalition, the base. Some of it is almost psychological, I think though, and some of it may be personal with the, the man in power that he, I mean, Trump is clearly a more radical, don't you think, figure personally than he was five, you know, eight years ago or for that matter when he left office. I'm so doing, you know, the January 6th thing, which was a little half hearted and fitful at the end, you might say, and getting it failed. He left. I got to think after you talked to him privately on January 21, he would have thought, geez, I'm. That was, you know, I'm in trouble here. And getting away with it, if I can put it that way, I will put it that way. Getting away with it in the sense of surviving the immediate threats of impeachment and so forth. Coming back. People forget how much people in 2020, conventional wisdom in 2022, early 23, was, he's not going to win the nomination again, he's weak. Look at that pathetic launch of his campaign in November at mar? A Lago DeSantis. You know, then he survives all that. Then he survives the attempt to bring up to justice through the court system and with, with surprisingly little trouble, you might say. And then he went. Then he wins the nomination easily. Then he wins the presidency against. He knocks Biden out of the way. He doesn't knock Biden out of the race, but Biden has to leave the race and then he defeats Harris. I mean, I do feel like that must just go, I mean, that has gone to his head, I think we.
- [19:07]
Unnamed Speaker
Can say, as well as the assassination attempt. I mean, in surviving the assassination, I mean, you know, I, I would think that has to play a role also in the sense that this is, you know, he's on a mission. You know, it's like the Blues brother, the line from the Blues Brothers, we're on a mission from God. I mean, that was sort of the, in that movie. So there's a way in which there is a, that's part of what's happening. But you're right, it's hard to know, you know, so this is, this is again, something where I sort of puzzle over this, comparing it to the 20s and 30s, because in that period, of course, you're dealing with a serious, you know, massive Great Depression. You're dealing with the kind of consequences of World War I and the numbers of people who are killed and injured in that. And so this is this period of real tumult. Whereas the Trump presidencies comes into power in January 2025 in a period of economic boom, the border's out of control a little bit, but it's already coming under control. Inflation's out of control, but it's coming under control. So there's a way in which the crises that normally impel this kind of radical agenda are imagined to a large degree. I mean, again, not to deny that some people are suffering, but at a wide scale level, people are doing pretty well in the United States. And so as of January20,25. So it's. So if anything, it just sort of teaches you the kind of, the importance of this ability to kind of construct the reality because the objective, if you just look at the numbers, this is, you know, it's really hard. And again, not to say that there's not reason to vote the incumbent out, that's normal democratic politics. But the radicalism of this agenda and the idea that we need to dramatically remake how everything we do in our society is done, it's just, it's hard to find. It's hard for me at least to see the connection. So just take the example of like NIH funding. So you say, yeah, there's lots of, you know, you talk to people who work at the NIH or who have worked at the nih, say, yeah, there's, there's way in which money has been wasted, that we could do things more efficiently. But the idea of dismantling the system, that is the, certainly the best system in the world for some unknown alternative, it just, it's really hard for me to understand it, especially because it's not really. I mean, in many instances it's not clearly linked to some coherent ideology. So that's. Usually we think of radicalization. I guess this is maybe what you're puzzling over as well. It's connected to some radical vision of an alternative society, utopian society that you want to build. In this case, it's not really clear what that is for me. So it's, it's hard, it's. It is hard to understand.
- [21:38]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah, I mean, I suppose, or behind. I don't know much about the details. I guess Hungary had gone through the financial crisis like everyone else. But was the things hungry in 2010 worse than they'd been in 1990? I don't think so. You know, and maybe Venezuela, I don't know enough about. I mean, yeah, I think that isn't. You're right, though. I've puzzled over that a lot. What is going on here in the world. I mean, we did not just, we're not. Did not just have World War I 15 years before and going through Great Depression. And why is there so much, you know, not just unhappiness with the status quo, but willingness to entertain very radical alternatives to it and ones that one would have thought people would be pretty wary of going down that path. But yeah, it sort of suggests that Trumpism ends up a little more in a kind of mass of corruption, benefit, benefiting lots of interest groups in society, not quite undermining them as much as real radicalism would do. Now, of course that was true, wasn't it, in the 20s, 30s too. It's not as if every Italian business or German business did poorly or, you know, and I mean, it's. Once you get into World War II, it's a different world then you're in a world war. So. But I think it's very important to sort of cut off one's thinking and assuming we don't get to world war, you know, it's sort of what would it have looked like in 35 in Germany or. I don't know enough about Italy. But whatever the right moment is where you're not, is that we think of it all as ultimately cataclysm. Cataclysm, which it was. But it, it needn't have been. Maybe it need to have been. Maybe it didn't need to have been in that case. But in any case, one can imagine this version of it. Yeah. Not going down.
- [23:06]
Unnamed Speaker
No, that's right. I mean, I mean, to go back to that period, I mean that, you know, there, there sometimes we conflate. I mean, this is kind of what you're saying, that we conflate the outcome of the collapse of democracy in Weimar Germany with the, with the rise of Nazism, you could have had the collapse of a democratic regime into, you know, you know, Fon pop and these generals and so on who were around at the time sort of running. And this is what they wanted was a kind of stable autocratic system where they're not real elections really don't matter where the generals run the show. And that the fact that you got this radical movement of Nazism was something they had not wanted themselves.
- [23:41]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah. You could have an in between a fair amount of nativism and discrimination and unpleasant. I don't mean to minimize it more than unpleasantness to minority groups and so forth. Doesn't have to go to 1945, obviously.
- [23:53]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. And so I think in the current period, I mean, this kind of connection between the corruption, this, you know, the massive corruption, which seems to me maybe be the real motive behind all of this. I mean, the opportunity for everybody to be on the take and making money and use, you know, essentially using the state in this kind of raid on the apparatus of the state and, you know, is one agenda. And I think that's a big part of the agenda of what's going on. And so, you know, to the degree that this radicalization is part of it, ideological agenda is part of it, you know, maybe that's sort of necessary to Keep the, Keep the whole thing running.
- [24:25]
Daniel Ziblatt
Two, you mentioned Congress quickly, but let's talk. Talk about Congress and. Which means talking about the Republican Party, which controls Congress and has, I mean, I, so far, not much sign of rebellion. Martin's nomination was pulled last week. I suppose it would be a tiny bit, but, I mean, is that. Well, what's your sense of that? How important a factor is that?
- [24:50]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I was just looking before our conversation. I was just. I wanted to get these numbers here. That. So, so Trump has issued 147 executive orders at least as of the first hundred days, which is more than anybody since Roosevelt, 1933. And he signed fewer bills into law than any president in 70 years. And so what, what this suggests is that, you know, everybody was always kind of worried about the filibuster. You know, so for those, those of us who are kind of critical of the filibuster and, you know, you know, I had friends who would say, well, you know, wait till Trump comes back in office. You'll wish you had the filibuster. But, you know, interesting, filibuster is sort of irrelevant because that's not where it's. That's not where the action is. I mean, the action is in the executive orders. And so, you know, so he signed five bills in the laws in the first 100 days, which is the lowest number of years in 70 years. So what that suggests is that essentially circumvent through Doge, of course, as well, but through these executive orders, there's this effort to essentially make the Congress irrelevant. And what's striking about it, of course, is not because the opposition party's in control of Congress. I mean, his own party's in control of both houses. I mean, a small majority in the House of Representatives, but this is really an instance of executive aggrandizement and a kind of, you know, at some level, you could say that the constitutional order is not working as it had or it's supposed to. You know, and certainly that's a lot the basis, a lot of the legal challenges to the executive orders and cutting off of funding that this is, you know, these are congressional. Congress has the power of the purse, and the executive is essentially ignoring that. So, so it's almost like the irrelevance of the Republican Party at this point. It seems to be the main thing that strikes me about the role of.
- [26:29]
Daniel Ziblatt
Congress and all but willed, willed irrelevance or chosen irrelevancy. I mean, it's not illegal. When you think about it for two seconds, you shouldn't have to go to the courts to vindicate Congress's power. Congress is supposed to do that in the system, and they have plenty of ability to do it. They could override the terrorists. I mean, okay, they'd have to get 67 votes. They'd have to get it can't just be a couple of Republicans. But again, it's not as if this has never happened. They could be doing a ton to stop this, and they've chosen not to. And I guess the question, one question just is, how is that sustainable? Does that start to erode? Do you get a little more of a normal reaction from Congress, slash the Republican establishment, which I think is a highly overlapping.
- [27:11]
Unnamed Speaker
I mean, my sense is that the key indicator to watch here is the approval rating of Donald Trump, in particular among Republican voters. And as long as it remains high, then any median voter or member of Congress in the House of Representatives especially, but also in the Senate, are going to be very worried about crossing Trump because they know in order to stay in office, they have to stay on board with Trump. But as his poll numbers drop and begun to drop, then that essentially potentially emboldens or gives the opportunity for Republicans to kind of quietly begin to criticized. And we've seen some of it, I think, on tariff issue, but it's been pretty muted, I would say. And so that seems to be the link here is the kind of pop the approval numbers. And I think that, I mean, it's interesting about Trump's approval numbers is they have a pretty low ceiling, but they also have a high floor. I mean, it seems like it's not especially among Republican voters. I mean, I don't have the numbers right in front of me, but my sense is that those are still incredibly high and it's hard to see if how those will drop. And so that does suggest that Republicans in Congress won't be the ones doing the checking here. You know, there's a I mean, I always bring it back to these. But this is what I study. There's this book that's a pretty dense book but pretty interesting called Ruling Oneself out, which is a study of why the subtitle something like it's by the authors, Ivan Ermakov, a Theory of collective abdication, which essentially why is it that he looks at both the Weimar Parliament in Germany as well as the parliament, the Third Republic Parliament in France. And in both instances, he studies these two key votes where the members of the parliament essentially hand power over to the executive. So in the case of Germany, this was the enabling law. And In France, the Republic, they vote themselves out of existence and give power over to the Patain, the leader of Vichy France. So the question that the author asks is, why in the world would anybody ever do why? I mean, these people, their office, their authority, everything, their prestige comes from occupying a powerful office. So why would you willingly hand over power? So he goes through a couple of hypotheses. One, he says, you know, one is just simply miscalculation. They somehow think that they're actually helping themselves. The second is just raw coercion. I mean, in those cases, that kind of makes sense that there is, you know, there's kind of people in the streets threatening them if they don't vote, a long thing, you know, And I think we have a little bit of that going on. I mean, we hear reports of. Of members of Congress. Lisa Murkowski had an incredible quote a couple weeks ago where she said, you know, she feels she can't really express what she really thinks. You know, how much of that is real? I don't know. But, you know, that people are reporting that. The third dynamic that he points to is a kind. I sort of. I forget what he calls it, but it's essentially like peer pressure. You kind of look at what your people in analogous positions are doing. And so there's a key. A few key reference points or key actors, and depending on how they behave, then you mimic their behavior. That's what he finds in these historical cases. So I think each of these things. Fourth. Fourth big factor he says he calls ideological alignment, which essentially means that you actually are on board with the agenda, so you're happy to hand over power because this person is doing what you want anyway. So I think all of the. And he sort of shows how each of these factors played out. So I think each of these are playing out in this case. And they, you know, and I add to that this kind of electoral motivation that they're worried about being, you know, primary or whatever.
- [30:42]
Daniel Ziblatt
So it's called ruling oneself out.
- [30:44]
Unnamed Speaker
Ruling oneself out, Yeah. A theory of collective abdications.
- [30:47]
Daniel Ziblatt
And the author is.
- [30:48]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, the author is Ivan Ermakov.
- [30:51]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah, I need to look that up. That sounds fascinating. It's such a puzzling, somewhat puzzling phenomenon. The one thing I would say, incidentally, about the Trump approval is it's a bit of a vicious cycle, too, because if voters see the people they literally voted for for the Senate and the House, whom they presumably respect somewhat, and their Republican governors, if it comes to that, Attorney General, all kind of on board, or certainly not not whatever they mutter privately, not say anything publicly. And then they say, and I want to get to this now. So maybe final point, leaders of other institutions they respect going along, semi going along, certainly not rising up in protest. Then they say to themselves, gee, I'm kind of a little uncomfortable with some of what Trump's doing and some of it seems a little mean spirited or these courts seem to have a problem. But I don't know. I mean, this, my, my old traditional Republican senator who's been there 18 years and isn't a Trump. Some of them are. But is this, many of them aren't Trump creations. Right. John Barrasso, the senator from Wyoming, Republican leadership guy, I've known him, knew him in the pre Trump days, normal Republican, let's call him a normie Republican, wouldn't say on TV this morning, Sunday morning, that the Stephen Miller's notion floating of the suspension of habeas corpus was out of the question or that he would necessarily act in Congress to stop it if Trump did this, using immigration as the excuse. I mean, it's, I want to get into the substance of this, but it's such a like unbelievable leap from, you know, something that's been done maybe one and a half, two times really in American history to, you know, by Lincoln and fdr, a tiny bit with FDR really, or a little bit that somehow this is, and Lincoln's was not approved by Congress, that this is like a reasonable thing to do because of, I don't know, we have some gang members who came in along with other immigrants. But the fact that he can float this, the fact that in my opinion, 40 Republican senators and 150 Republican House members and Republican governors and business leaders and civic leaders aren't up today screaming about this is out of the question. This is the Enabling Act. I mean, to exaggerate a little, but it's kind of a mini enabling act. And this is not within the bounds of like a reasonable debate over the unitary executive and you know, Humphrey's executor and whether he should be able to fire the head of the LRP or something. I mean, the fact that it's been met with silence and then when pressed, Barrasa dodges the question two or three times.
- [33:11]
Unnamed Speaker
Dodges it, I think is revealing. Of course.
- [33:13]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah. I just, I do feel like it's hard to ask the voters to get they'll knock Trump's down around in the low mid-40s because this was some natural reaction against some of the policies, I think, by the weaker Trump supporters. But it's going to get hard to not get below that if there's not some leadership and they're the collect there one has the problems that you just specified, that seems to be paralyzing them.
- [33:35]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I mean, I really agree with that. I mean, I do think that having some dip in poll numbers because of the economy and the stock market helps. But ultimately, and that's. You referred to our op ed from earlier this week in the New York Times. That's really the whole point of that op ed is to say that at the end of the day, we can't really rely on voters alone to do this. And even people going out and protesting on the weekends, which is really important and courageous. But in fact, really what's been striking is the degree to which the people with the most power and so in some sense maybe feel like they have the most to lose are also as a result of that, maybe the most unwilling to speak out. And that having major civic leaders, whether union leaders, business leaders, religious leaders speaking out forthrightly and clearly, I mean, that's part of the issue is not being clear enough. And the condemnation is both gives and heads of other kinds of organization gives cover to everyday citizens, helps them frame what's happening because what's happening is quite confusing and I think emboldens people. They really sort of realize if these powerful actors, if these powerful, I mean, the converse of this is if these powerful actors with a lot of resources at their disposal aren't going to criticize it, then why am I going to. And so I think it's really essential. And I guess what the other only other caveat I'd add to it is that it does seem like there are certain moments where there are openings where the words and actions of civic leaders and political leaders can have a bigger impact. You know, that once, once kind of normal kind of day in politics, things are pretty frozen. People are kind of pretty set in their ideas. They've cast a vote. They kind of want to remain loyal to that vote, don't want to be able to justify the vote they've made. But there are certain moments of opening where people are trying to make up their mind. And at that moment, they look to their leaders to see, okay, how is it that they're thinking about this a little bit in line with the book that I described, you look not only to your peers and friends and family members and neighbors, you also look to what people who you respect what they're saying. And so I think, for instance, the January 2020, 21 period was one of those moments where people, it was pretty kind of, you know, most voters sort of felt this is out, totally out of line, which kind of trying to form their judgments about this. But then if you have leaders at that moment sort of being muted in their criticisms or talking out of both sides of their mouths, then you kind of, okay, well I'm going to now formulate my view of things and it's not going to be as critical as it might otherwise have been. So I think it's important. I mean, it's hard and it's hard maybe at the time to know when those moments of flux and unsettled public opinion are. But I think that that's what we should be looking for is looking for those moments of opening where actually at this moment it's really absolutely critical to say something and it won't fall on deaf ears, in other words, just to.
- [36:22]
Daniel Ziblatt
Sort of almost dot the I on that. I mean, and there's an interrelationship between your op ed, which was excellent in the New York Times, on which was really civil society, civic leaders a little more addressed to their civic institutions, standing up a little more, more than they, than they have. But also that affects the political leaders and vice versa. If John Barrasso got 20 phone calls from his top donors, seven, saying, you got to speak up, this is intolerable, it would be a different. And if he had gotten 20, of course, beforehand, if he was watching the business leaders he's most responsive to, and not just business leaders, but the, I don't know, people, Wyoming civic leaders and so forth and church leaders and educational institutions all, you know, kind of saying this is out of the question, what's happening with some immigrants and so forth. He would be behaving differently. And if he behaved differently, they would then be more willing to pay differently. And I do think that there's that that's. I come back, I'd like, I'd love to hear this you on this a little more. And we should probably let people go soon, but we can resume this discussion. We need to resume it, I think. But yeah, the elite, there's a little bit of a kind of one of the public. I go to so many of these panel discussions, only maybe a fifth as many as you do. But still, when's the public really going to move? And I really kind of lost my patience at one recently in Washington said, you know what, whenever elite's going to step up, I mean, it's a little hard to ask the public to do it when, I mean of course, the people in the room I was in were agreed with you and me and they were speaking up. So I don't, wasn't trying to be critical of them. But I mean now there are some obviously elite, some institutions that have leaders, institutions who have spoken up. But when voters watch business go out of its way to capitulate during the transition period, that turned out to be a more important period than one expected. Right. And then see the subsequent law firms and some of the universities, not all and general kind of quiet and caution. I don't know, I feel like the elites are really. You wrote about this a lot, right. Prior even to the book, in 2018. I mean, talk about that a little more about the political elites and civic elites, if that's the right term.
- [38:17]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. So I mean, I mean they both, we call it kind of they play in the political process, they play a gatekeeping role certainly and choosing who the candidates are going to be, but just in the sort of dynamics of the current moment as well. I think voters, you know, it's a confusing world and voters are trying to make their calculations and decisions based on all sorts of information. And this is a very important one, what prominent people in society are saying. And so I think it's, you know, I guess a couple of things. One that there's evidence that this works. And what I would point to is in other contexts. So, you know, so In Germany in 2024 or December 2023, this kind of secret meeting was revealed by some investigative journalists where there was a proposal to force migration of citizens with migration background forced to out migration, or what they called it, re migration of citizens, German citizens with migration background. And once this came to light there was these massive protests. But more than that, I think just as important as that were that major. The CEOs of all the major German corporations, Mercedes, the biggest auto manufacturers, the heads of German chambers of commerce, bankers, the heads of labor unions, the association of German Bishops came out and made absolutely clear cut statements. Under no conditions can you support the. I mean they're very, I mean strikingly political. Not only saying extremism is unacceptable and bad for German society and German economy, but you can't in some instances say you can't vote for the AfD. In our view that that's not a Christian thing to do. Now, you know, that's going pretty far. The AfD has continued to do pretty well. But if you look at the poll numbers after that, I mean they did decline actually over the course of 2024. And so I think these kind of loud vocal statements at a critical moment really are powerful. But the precondition for doing that is that we have in our minds and that business leaders and civic leaders of all sorts, university leaders, I haven't mentioned them, have in their minds a clear understanding of what are the red lines, what kinds of things are unacceptable, acceptable, and what kinds of things are just legitimate policy disagreements and to really show some forbearance on the policy issues. You know, there's this famous kind of debate now over or this position that universities are supposed to stay neutral. And I, you know, generally support that on political issues. But there's certain things that are kind of red lines for the basic survival of democracy, habeas corpus being one of them. So we need to have the kind of conceptual apparatus and that's the kind of conversations maybe we need to be having with civic leaders. What are those red lines? What are the things that are just okay, no, absolutely. If somebody says this, somebody endorses this, we need to uniformly come out and condemn it. And so people need to have awareness essentially what democracy is at the end of the day. So, you know, need to know a little political theory, I guess is what I'm saying, because otherwise it just all gets very muddled and you sort of, oh, you're engaging in politics. Business leaders don't want to be partisan. They don't want to be perceived as taking one side over another. And so in a two party system this gets quite tricky. But if we have very clear criteria of what counts as red lines in a constitutional democracy, then I think we can kind of move forward with that.
- [41:15]
Daniel Ziblatt
It's funny that you mentioned the AfD because I mean, for me I was so startled not when Musk actually, but somewhat startled when Musk came out literally for the AfD in the election, not generally saying, gee, maybe they've been misunderstood a little bit, there's some decent people in the AfD, whatever version of that you want. And then Vance echoed him and now Vance and Rubio have echoed endorsements that affected the AfD very recently in terms of the German legislation that the AfD thinks disfavors it because they want to keep an eye on terrorists and anti democratic activities, I feel like, and people just haven't. But that got very little notice here, I've got to say. I mean, it's like the American, the Vice President of the United States of America, gratuitously, it wasn't like he was attacked by the left and had to intervene or something. Gratuitously, just Deciding to tell the German people that they should support the AfD in a, in an election where the AfD had been moving up, then stalled out. Luckily it continues, sold out. I think Vance didn't have an effect, but I feel like that the radicalism of that, I don't know, I feel like didn't hit home here.
- [42:18]
Unnamed Speaker
Right. And I mean, it comes from a lot of ignorance or I don't know what the under, you know, you know, there's different kinds of radical rights in Europe. This is one thing maybe that these people don't understand is that, you know, that the Swiss people, people's party in Switzerland, which has been in government, is an anti immigrant party. And it's not a party I personally would vote for, that, you know, many liberals would vote for. But there's a difference between different kinds of radical right parties, and some are more explicitly and overtly anti democratic. And the AfD certainly falls in that camp. I mean, you know, the radical right forces and many of the radical right forces in Western Europe won't cooperate with the AfD. So, you know, I think that it comes from a position of sort of not understanding these nuances. Another thing, just to me, while we're on the afd, one thing I'll say that because this is a little bit frustrating, I find in the American debate, actually, I think this has just come up in the last couple of days that U.S. senator said, you know, we shouldn't be sharing intelligence with German intelligence if they're going after the AfD because this is a violation of free speech or something like this. So, you know, there's two different kinds of what they call firewalls in Germany. One is that the, you know, the state, after a kind of legal process it's in the German constitution, can potentially ban a party. It's rarely happened in German history, only in the 1950s. And lots of, you know, there's, you know, I can imagine why free speech advocates and so on in the United States would be skeptical of this. And I have my own questions about whether that's a politically prudent thing to do. It's sort of like the equivalent of our 14th Amendment removing Trump from the ballot last year. So that's one debate one can have. But then there's a second part that people kind of mix up with this, which is that the other parties, the mainstream parties, have a choice themselves to make whether or not they're going to form coalitions and cooperate. And, you know, you're under no obligation in a parliamentary system to form an coalition with anybody you don't want to form a coalition with. And so if they say we don't want to cooperate with this party, there's no sense in which that's not democratic or that that is authoritarian in some way. You just don't want to cooperate. You know, you don't have to invite everybody to your own house for dinner. Right. So that's a kind of free choice made by political parties and that's very different than a kind of the state in a top down fashion banning parties or limiting parties access to the ballot.
- [44:26]
Daniel Ziblatt
Now that's such a good note to end on if we, I guess we should end because I mean of course the Republican Party in Congress, which these are all elected officials elected in their own right could make these choices. Right. I mean the degree to which that's almost not even something they think of these days. Right. It's one thing to ask people, you know, cabinet secretaries not to go along with stuff. I think they shouldn't obviously if it's not lawful and so forth over design, perhaps in protests, but that's a little more complicated. They were appointed by the President and so forth. These are people in an independent, equal, co, equal and independent branch of government who were elected by the voters, often by larger margins than the president actually. Right. So that you do come back to the Republican Party, I mean Trump would be so much less dangerous. Don't you think the party is what makes him dangerous in a way. Right.
- [45:11]
Unnamed Speaker
I said earlier the party. Party's irrelevant. I think that's not quite right. I mean it's irrelevant. I mean it's silence is highly relevant. But it's, but it's, you know, it's sort of stood back and that fact is I think a key enabling factor of everything that's going on.
- [45:25]
Daniel Ziblatt
We need to get back together in a month or two and see if some of that silence is broken. And also we'll have the end of the court term a little more sense of what the courts are doing. I think a lot of. Don't you think And I think some of the outside institutions, whether there's been a bit of more they're following your advice in the op ed or not. I don't know. We should.
- [45:40]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah. I think the thing to look to is just, you know, because at the end of the day all of this stuff really matters if it tilts the electoral playing field in such a way that it makes it harder for the small d Democratic opposition to win. And so I think looking at, on at that process you know, is the electoral process being distorted because of media, because of let's say, you know, threats of violence and so on? This stuff all really, I mean at a very minimal level democracy simply about alternations in power and allowing free and fair competition. So is that being distorted? That's sort of at the end of the day the big thing, you know, looking forward to 2026.
- [46:14]
Daniel Ziblatt
Yeah, that's more of a maybe next half. Yeah, that was been in the background in the first hundred days but that well that will now become more prominent I think.
- [46:21]
Unnamed Speaker
Yeah, I think that's right.
- [46:22]
Daniel Ziblatt
Daniel, thank you really so much for joining me today. It's been so interesting and so provocative and we'll have to get back together soon because there's so much more to talk about. But thanks, thanks for taking the time today and thank you all for joining us on Bulwark on Sunday. Thanks.