Our first post-democratic president?

In the early years of the Cold War, American policymakers had one nightmare above all. To be sure, they publicly fretted that Stalin would send the Red Army into western Europe and impose communism there. But what they really worried about was that some of the western Europeans would choose communism in democratic elections.

Against a military onslaught America could fight militarily, as it had fought against fascism. And it could do so honorably in the name of democracy. But how could a democracy deny another democracy the right to choose its own government, even if a communist one?

The answer supplied by Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower was covert warfare. In 1948 Truman’s Central Intelligence Agency manipulated Italian elections through disinformation and secret contributions to anticommunist candidates. The effort succeeded and the communists were kept from power. In 1953 Eisenhower turned the CIA loose against the elected Iranian government of Muhammad Mussadiq, who was insufficiently anticommunist for Eisenhower's taste. The coup succeeded and Mussadiq was replaced by the staunchly anticommunist shah of Iran.

In each case, democracy was sacrificed to expediency. American interest overrode the right of Italians and Iranians to choose their own governments without foreign meddling.

This conclusion isn't indefensible. Democracy is an important value, but it's not the only value in politics and international affairs. Yet it's telling that the conclusion was not defended at the time. Truman and Eisenhower declined to acknowledge their antidemocratic policies.

This brief history is worth considering at a moment when one of America's two major parties is taking essentially the same view regarding politics within the United States. By renominating Donald Trump for president, the Republicans are endorsing his argument that he really won the election of 2020. If there’s a fundamental principle of democracy, it’s that the results of elections must be binding on winners and losers alike. Anyone who disputes the result of an election bears the burden of producing evidence of error or fraud. Persistent denial, absent persuasive evidence, reveals the denier as no friend of democracy. 

As observed, there are other values than democracy. Republican supporters of Trump evidently prioritize those other values. America is a free country, and this is their right. But if they're not willing to state their priorities openly, the rest of us are justified in wondering what else they're not telling us.

Many Republicans seem to think Joe Biden is such a threat to the American way of life that extralegal measures were justified to deny him office. Trump has treated as heroes his supporters who attacked Congress in January 2021 to overturn Biden’s election. What else do he and they have up their sleeves?

Occasionally Republicans note that democracy isn't mentioned in the Constitution, and from this they infer that the United States is not a democracy. They're right about the Constitution. But American practice has changed since the Constitution was written, and by modern standards the United States is indeed a democracy.

The Republican skeptics can still say the United States should not be a democracy. Here again, that's their right. But yet again, they ought to be candid about it. If they think they know better than voters how to choose a president, they should say so.

Anyway, even the skeptics of democracy agree that America was founded as a republic based on the rule of law. Election laws are central to the operation of any republic. Reject the results of elections and you undermine the republic.

This is how dictatorships begin. Inconvenient laws are ignored or overridden. Most supporters of Trump don't want him to be a dictator. They'd prefer he get his way by the methods of democracy. But they've made clear that if they have to choose between Trump and democracy, they'll choose him.

They've done so regarding the 2020 election, ineffectually thus far. If Trump falls short again this autumn, it’s unlikely he’ll concede. He’ll remain a sore loser. But Biden will remain president.

But if Trump wins, as appears increasingly probable, Americans as a group will have democratically elected an enemy of democracy.

The nightmare of presidents during the Cold War will have come true in America.