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Trump Is an Authoritarian Weakman

Coronavirus would be the perfect opportunity for an autocrat. Trump isn’t taking it.
Donald Trump


By John F. Harris

03/26/2020 04:30 AM EDT


Altitude is a column by POLITICO founding editor John Harris, offering
weekly perspective on politics in a moment of radical disruption.

Let’s take inventory of what new insights we have learned from the
pandemic about President Donald Trump and his leadership character.

One could hardly miss how this crisis has fortified one of the two
primary pillars of the anti-Trump argument, as advanced by his most
ardent detractors. It has been insufficiently noted, however, the degree
to which the coronavirus response has weakened the other pillar.

The first pillar is that Trump, in the near-unanimous view of the
opposition, is a terrible person whose terribleness finds expression in terrible policies. He is narcissistic, dismissive of unwelcome facts,
willing to traffic in falsehoods, lacking in empathy, erratic in personal manner, and, above all, impulsive in judgment. Are you following so far?
Even a Trump defender could comprehend how Trump critics would seize on
the performance of the past two months—“We have it totally under
control,” he said on Jan. 22—to add damaging new counts to the indictment
they began compiling four years ago.

It is the second pillar of the anti-Trump case that has wobbled curiously
in recent weeks. This president allegedly is not just a near-term menace
but a long-term one—a leader bent on amassing personal power and
undermining constitutional democracy in ways that would last beyond his presidency (which, under the worst scenarios, he might even try, Vladimir Putin-style, to extend illegally if he loses in November.)
Campaigning during coronavirus

The notion of Trump as authoritarian strongman, however, has been cast in
an odd light in this pandemic. Would-be tyrants use crisis to consolidate power. Trump, by contrast, has been pilloried from many quarters,
including many liberals, for not asserting authority and responsibility
more forcefully to combat Covid-19. Rather than seizing on a genuine
emergency, Trump was slow to issue an emergency declaration, moved
gingerly in employing the Defense Production Act to help overburdened
local health systems, and even now seems eager to emphasize that many subjects—closure of schools and businesses, obtaining sufficient ventilators—are primarily problems for state governors to deal with.

Trump’s apparent personal affinity with Putin, and other dictators, has
caused foes to conclude that he has an aesthetic attraction to leaders
who don’t let procedural niceties of democracy or law get in their way.
But he has shown passivity in what by all rights would be a dream
scenario for an authoritarian strongman.

Perhaps the way to think of Trump is as an authoritarian weakman.

“I don’t take any responsibility at all,” Trump said, a line that seems
likely to join a pantheon that includes George W. Bush’s “Brownie, you‘re
doing a heck of a job,” and Bill Clinton’s “It depends on what the
meaning of ‘is’ is,” as debacle-defining one-liners.

That was in response to a question about inadequate supplies of
coronavirus testing kits, which many health experts regard as the essence
of why the United States has been flat-footed in containing the spread of disease. But the spirit has animated other dimensions of Trump’s
response, in which he has been reluctant to make Washington the focal
point of pandemic policy. “The governors,” Trump said at a media briefing
on Sunday, “locally, are going to be in command. We will be following
them, and we hope they can do the job.”
Trump answers question on nationwide coronavirus testing

Quotes like these don’t mean the critique of Trump as aspiring dictator
is in terminal condition. But it is on bed rest with a high fever. He
“has abdicated the role played by U.S. presidents in every previous
global crisis of the past century, which is to step forward to offer
remedies, support other nations and coordinate multilateral responses,” editorialized the Washington Post. New York Times columnist David
Leonhardt criticized Trump for declining to “mobilize American business”
by invoking an emergency, and said the voluntary initiatives he backs
instead “are far less aggressive than a mandatory national effort would
be.”

Of course, even if Trump isn’t grasping for new power, others in his administration may be. POLITICO’s Betsy Woodruff Swan first reported on
the Justice Department’s plan to seek new authority during emergencies, including asking judges to detain people without trial. “Over my dead
body,” responded conservative Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah.) “Hell no,” added
liberal Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.)

Experience suggests one should not get too fixated on any single image of Trump—a kaleidoscopic figure at most times, and especially in the midst
of highly fluid circumstances like a global pandemic. Many appraisals of
Trump, from admirers and foes alike, depend in part on how one holds any particular moment up to the light.

The diverse interpretations of Trump critics tend to fall along a
spectrum. They tend also to return to a couple of deeply rutted debates.

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