Dear Arnold,

I’m enjoying your new Netflix action series, FUBAR. You’re funny and convincing as a retiring CIA agent who is pulled back into a very messed-up intelligence conflict because he didn’t realize his daughter is also a secret agent.

You also may not realize that, in real life, the door just opened for you to be pulled back into the FUBAR (“F’ed Up Beyond All Recognition”) of our national politics. I’m writing to ask you to walk through that door immediately, and run for president for the good of our country and our world.

You’ve long said that you would run for president, if it weren’t for two facts: that you were born an Austrian citizen, and that Article II, Sec. 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that “no Person except a natural born Citizen… shall be eligible to the Office of President.”

The article hasn’t changed, but American devotion to the Constitution and its provisions on presidential eligibility has.

For the destruction of this rule and so many other norms, Donald Trump is responsible. Incredibly, he has inspired leading Democrats and Republicans to take the position that being constitutionally ineligible to serve as president is no longer a barrier to running for president.

A new consensus has emerged: Voters have the right to choose whomever they want as president, no matter what the Constitution says.

This is the product of Trump’s own ineligibility for the presidency. The Constitution’s 14th Amendment bars any officer of the U.S. who took a constitutional oath and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion”—as Trump did after losing the 2020 election—from holding any other government office. Leading constitutional scholars, from right and left, have delved into the law and history and affirmed that Trump isn’t eligible.

But being constitutionally ineligible hasn’t stopped Trump from running from office or taking the lead in the Republican polls. And it hasn’t stopped Trump from remaining on the ballot in every state, including the two states where he has been ruled ineligible (Colorado, by a court, and Maine, by the secretary of state). With the U.S. Supreme Court expected to decide the question of eligibility nationwide, and its conservative majority all but certain to keep Trump on the ballot, state actions have not taken effect.

Arnold, this makes it clear that you can run. Who could object without looking like a hypocrite?

The courts can’t, once they’ve blessed Trump’s unconstitutional run. And Trump certainly can’t, given both his own ineligibility and his repeated promises to “terminate” the U.S. Constitution itself, as he pursues dictatorial power in a new term.

You should be able to jump into the Republican primaries posthaste. If that doesn’t pan out, you’d be the perfect presidential candidate on the bipartisan No Labels ticket.

Why do you need to run? It’s simple. Because Trump must be stopped. And no one will stop him.

The media won’t stop him, because they need in the race to draw audiences to keep their desperate enterprises afloat. Democrats won’t stop him because they want to run against him—he’s the weakest and most beatable of the Republican presidential contenders in a general election. As California Gov. Gavin Newsom said, explaining why Trump remains on the state ballot, “In California, we defeat candidates at the polls. Everything else is a political distraction.”

The Republican Party would do better in the elections with a non-Trump candidate, but party leaders don’t want to risk losing Trump supporters. And Trump’s Republican challengers, fearful of his deranged base, are simply too scared to challenge him aggressively, even in debates when he’s not present.

You, on the other hand, have challenged him openly for years. And he hasn’t been able to lay a glove on you in response. That’s because you’re not a normal politician—you’re an entertainer both more popular than Trump (FUBAR is among the most watched shows on Netflix) and more skilled at parrying media attacks. (I know this firsthand, from covering you and writing two books about you.) You’re as famous as he is, but more respected. You’re that rare political figure who can make Trump look small.

In entering the race, you should emphasize that Republicans and Democrats, by allowing Trump to stay on the ballot, have all but rubber-stamped the notion that voters should get to choose whomever they want as president, Constitution be damned. You might also say that we should embrace this new American era of democratic openness. After all, the U.S. has long limited voter choice to just two parties, routinely striking smaller parties and their candidates from ballots.

And when your opponents refer to that Article II requirement that candidates be natural born, you should make two arguments. First: Despite the accident of your Austrian birth, you’ve always felt American in your heart and soul—a “natural born” American, in the vernacular of our times. Second: If the Biden vs. Trump matchup is the best that native-born citizens can do, then it’s high time to open the race to foreign-born contenders.

But you shouldn’t just run to stop Trump. You should run to win.

As I was reminded while interviewing you this summer, you have huge visions of the future—for massive improvements in education, for the restoration of health of a country whose people are dying younger, and for a complete revamping of American infrastructure to realize our greatest dreams in economy, technology, and environment. By contrast, the tired President Biden hasn’t offered a detailed second-term agenda, much less a vision. And Trump talks endlessly about the past, about history, about grievance, about the 2020 election.

By offering your ideas, you can show the poverty of Trump and Biden’s campaigns, and how America can escape its current malaise by dreaming big about the future. “When you don’t have a vision of the future, it’s easier to look back,” you wrote in 2023. “When you don’t have a vision, today doesn’t have much meaning because you don’t know why you’re here doing what you’re doing right now, and tomorrow is downright scary.”

Now, I know that running for president is hard, and let’s face it, you’re 76 years old. But you’re still younger than Trump and Biden.

I know that running for president when the Constitution still says you can’t might look crazy and illegitimate. But the recall that elected you in California was also called crazy and illegitimate.

I know that your friends, family, and co-stars won’t want you leaving them to jump into politics again.

But is anything more important than using your power to try to save our FUBAR country?

The post Run, Arnold, Run! appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Former president Jimmy Carter, who will be 99 this Sunday, October 1, was only 46 when he first popped up on the national political radar. After declaring in his 1971 inaugural address as governor of Georgia that “the time for racial discrimination is over,” Carter followed through by increasing the number of Black people on state boards and commissions from three to 53, boosting Black employment in state jobs by 25%, and hanging a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. in the state capitol.

Media-wise, such moves secured Carter’s place within an emerging cohort of racially enlightened “New South” governors, including South Carolina’s John C. West and Florida’s Reubin Askew, who were also elected in 1970. Liberal optimists hailed their victories as the undoing of the Republican “Southern strategy” of relying on racially coded appeals to win over once-reliably Democratic white voters angered by their old party’s pro-civil rights stance. By the time Carter won the presidency in 1976, he personified a vision of a risen, racially redeemed South that captured the American imagination in the final decades of the 20th century.

Yet this sunny perception of Carter’s journey to the presidency obscured the reality of how he had managed to take the all-important first step.

Regardless of his actions after becoming Georgia’s governor, Jimmy Carter had captured that office in 1970 not by thwarting the Southern strategy but by following it very nearly to the letter in repeated campaign appeals to racial and class prejudice. Once they got him where he wanted to be, he quickly disavowed such tactics, which, in his mind, amounted to nothing more than purely pragmatic nods to political reality necessary to achieving his more idealistic aims.

The apparent incongruity between the method Carter employed to become governor and the measures he implemented in office can be traced in part to the way he reacted to the contrasting racial attitudes of his parents. Despite having myriad interactions with Black people as a landlord, grocer, and financier, Carter’s father Earl was no less adamant about their inferiority to whites than any but a tiny handful of his white contemporaries. Ironically, one of these rare exceptions was his wife Lillian, whose sympathy for Black neighbors and readiness to invite them into her home might have prompted more than quiet disapproval, had her husband been a less prominent figure in the community.

Young Jimmy’s awareness of the peculiarity of his mother’s racial views—and the near-ubiquity of his father’s—shaped the distinct blend of realism and idealism that defined his early political career. When his father died in 1953, he resigned his post as a naval engineer, to assume control of the family’s agribusiness enterprises. His budding political aspirations surfaced when he assumed his father’s old seat on the county school board in 1955, only a year after the Supreme Court outlawed racial segregation in the public schools in Brown v. Board of Education. With thousands of white Southerners scurrying to join the defiantly segregationist White Citizens’ Councils, Carter stood out as the only white man in Plains to decline membership in the Sumter County chapter. Later, when the congregation of the Plains Baptist Church, where Carter was a deacon, overwhelmingly rejected the idea of allowing Black people to worship there, his family cast three of only six dissenting votes.

Still, despite his efforts to improve Sumter County schools, Carter made no overt effort to encourage compliance with Brown. In his 1992 book, Turning Point, the best he could say for himself as a candidate for state senate 30 years earlier was that he had been “at least moderate” on segregation.

Carter’s first run for statewide office began with his belated entry into the 1966 Democratic gubernatorial primary against former governor Ellis Arnall, a racial moderate of longer standing, and the unrepentant segregationist Lester Maddox. Maddox won, courtesy of his strong appeal with blue collar whites, and with Arnall capturing the bulk of the Black and more affluent white vote, Carter came in a disappointing third. Still, the stinging defeat educated him to a stark reality: Racial moderation was not yet a winning strategy in Georgia politics. Nor would it be in the 1968 presidential race, when race-baiting virtuoso George Wallace easily outdistanced both Hubert Humphrey and Richard Nixon in Georgia.

Carter took the lessons of both these campaigns to heart when he again sought the Democratic nomination for governor in 1970. This time, his chief opponent was former governor Carl Sanders, who had once declared himself “a segregationist but not a damn fool” and generally lived up to his own billing by presiding over Georgia’s grudging but relatively orderly retreat from segregation between 1963 and 1966. Sanders was a senior partner in a high-powered Atlanta law firm, with a smooth, urbane persona. Dubbing him “Cufflinks Carl,” and playing to both racial and class resentments, Carter’s ads portrayed Sanders hobnobbing in air-conditioned comfort with his closet liberal country club pals while the good working folk of Georgia, including a certain peanut farmer from Plains, sweated and strived to make ends meet.

In a naked appeal to Wallace supporters, Carter opposed bussing and defended the rights of white Georgians to preserve racial homogeneity in their neighborhoods. His campaign circulated photos of Black members of the Atlanta Hawks basketball team showering Sanders with champagne, and spread word that he had furtively attended the funeral of Martin Luther King Jr. While Carter’s racial machinations won him the endorsement of outspoken segregationist politico Roy V. Harris, more than eight in 10 Black voters opted for Sanders, who barely made it into a runoff election, where Carter bested him by 20% before trouncing his Republican opponent in the general election.

As governor, Carter melded his idealism with a more practical-minded engineer’s approach to problem-solving in an ambitious plan to rid state government of corruption, mismanagement, and waste, although when he announced his presidential candidacy near the end of 1974, he was still better known and appreciated for his efforts to do right by Black Georgians.

His carefully cultivated personal ties to influential ministers and civil rights leaders only bolstered Carter’s standing among Black voters. Yet he knew that his success depended on winning substantial support from Southern whites as well.  To this end, he revamped his old Southern strategy, playing this time to regional rather than racial antagonisms. One of his campaign ads noted that after suffering years of ostracism and indiscriminate stereotyping as rednecks and hillbillies, “only a Southerner can understand what Jimmy Carter as President can mean.” Boasting an improbable duo of advocates in George Wallace and Martin Luther King Sr., Carter picked up more than half the electoral votes he needed to defeat Gerald Ford by carrying all of the old Confederate and border states except Virginia.

Still, despite his earnest courtship, Carter failed to win over a majority of white voters in the South, leaving him all the more indebted to the close to 90% support he enjoyed among Black voters in the region. As the ultimate political realists, they seemed to accept Carter’s pandering to Wallace voters in 1970 as merely a situational concession to political reality necessary to achieving the racially equitable and humane ends he secured upon taking office. Ironically enough, historically high Black participation in a presidential election had been critical to putting a white Southerner in the White House. Meanwhile, reeling from the military failure in Vietnam and the moral failures of the Watergate affair, white voters above the Mason-Dixon line also proved surprisingly receptive to the drawling Carter’s disarming smile, downhome folksiness, and earnest assurances that he would bring honesty and humility back to the White House.

Though he had not been above a bit of political charade along the way, once in office Carter appeared to revert to the somber, moralizing Southern Baptist he had always been at heart. With the economy faltering in the face of soaring inflation, he sermonized from his bully pulpit about Americans’ addictive consumerism and their habit of defining themselves not “by what one does, but what one has.” To hardly anyone’s surprise, his gospel of restraint seemed downright heretical to a generation who saw instant gratification and unbridled acquisitiveness as their birthright. Carter’s habit of foregrounding “pain” over “gain” in laying out the ramifications of his decisions led his vice president, Walter Mondale, to observe that “the worst thing you could say to Carter if you wanted him to do something was that it was politically the best thing to do.” Somewhat akin to Henry Clay, once in office Carter seemed to signal that he would “rather be right than [continue to] be president.”

Beyond the substantial economic challenges he faced, the crowning blow to his prospects of retaining that office was his failed—and now, reportedly, sabotaged—effort to resolve the Iranian hostage crisis; the abortive desert rescue mission with its abandoned, sand-clogged helicopters became for many a metaphor for his failed and inept presidency. He was easily out- distanced in 1980 by Republican Ronald Reagan, whose vows of a military buildup and gospel of permanent plenty played far better than Carter’s calls for sacrifice and self-denial. So much for securing the Camp David Accords, bailing out Social Security, deregulating the airlines, preserving the Alaskan wilds, and a number of other stellar accomplishments.

Yet, despite his overwhelming rejection at the hands of American voters, Carter left Washington in 1981 at age 56 with his idealism not only intact but less encumbered by political constraints. His boundless energy also demanded an outlet. By 2002, he had already gained such a reputation as a global peacemaker, humanitarian, and champion of human rights, that awarding him the Nobel Prize for Peace was less a question of “if” than “when.”  With his moral certitude now reaffirmed, he seemed even less concerned with the political consequences of his forthright manner, as he indicated in 2007 by likening Israeli practices in the West Bank to a form of apartheid. Unmoved by the ensuing outcry, Carter soldiered on in his one-man war on human suffering and injustice, even inquiring about his ongoing Guinea worm eradication project after entering hospice care in February 2023.

As the longest-lived of all U.S. presidents, Jimmy Carter hardly stands out as the only one of them who ever sacrificed principle to political expediency. He has no rival among them, however, in dedicating himself upon leaving that office to a higher, more transcendent ideal of human service and remaining faithful to it even as the end of his days draws nigh.

The post Jimmy Carter’s Pragmatic Path to Power appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Together with Democracy International and Metropolitan Autonomous University for the Global Forum on Modern Direct Democracy 2023, Zócalo convened an audience of over 100 at the Casa de la Primera Imprenta de América (House of the First Print Shop in the Americas). We were there in the historic space, just across a narrow road from the National Palace and seat of the president’s office, to ask a question as pressing for Mexico—whose president has recently been accused of attempting to erode his nation’s democratic norms—as it is for the world: “Are Elected Presidents Bad for Democracy?”

The panel included political scientist David Altman, journalist Tess Bacalla, and Democracy International’s European expert Daniela Vancic. During the night, they spoke of the unique challenges facing democracy across the world, citing not only the abuse of power by presidents but also a weakening of civil society organizations and other institutions, such as courts and legislatures.

Former mayor of Los Angeles and Zócalo board member Antonio Villaraigosa gave opening comments, citing the importance of the event’s topic. “Across the world, we’re seeing people get elected to the presidency that don’t believe in democracy,” he said.

Zócalo’s very own Joe Mathews (who is also co-president of the Global Forum) moderated the event, and he opened up the discussion with a history lesson on how the first presidential offices were held not by a national leader, but within the British university system. Mathews then asked the panelists to speak about their observations around the office of the presidency, and why presidents can go wild with power: Is it the person in the job or the job itself?

Vancic considered the position of the presidency in relation to the European Union. While Europe doesn’t have a lot of presidents, there is a European Commission president. But that leader—determined by the Spitzenkandidaten process—is not elected directly. The EU Commission presidents are chosen by political parties. “We tried to bring the system closer to the people and it didn’t work,” Vancic said, citing the failure of direct elections for the European Commission president.

Mathews followed up: Should Europeans even want an EU president?

Yes, Vancic replied, because it would “help the European identity,” which is struggling to build up.

Vancic, who lives in Germany but grew up in Michigan, also spoke about the state of the presidency in the United States. She wouldn’t scrap the presidential system in America, she said, but it needs to be made “more democratic” by getting rid of the Electoral College, for instance, which would make the candidate who won the popular vote the president.

The abuse of presidential power, the panelists agreed, was a major issue for all countries.  It’s precisely because of the strength of the presidency in the Philippines that the nation’s state of democracy is dire, Bacalla said. With the return of the Marcos and Duterte families to power last year, the Philippines is now ruled by political dynasties. “It’s as if the People Power Revolution of 1986 didn’t happen at all,” she said, referring to the movement that ousted then-President Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.  The succeeding president, Corazon “Cory” Aquino, made sure that the new constitution had good, strong provisions that recognized community organizations in the role of governance. But even so, in successive years, Bacalla says, the Philippine presidency has been used to advance controversial policies, such as President Rodrigo Duterte’s drug war and anti-terrorism bill, which have led to widespread human rights abuses.

Altman, who is a political scientist at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, spoke about presidential systems in comparison to other systems, like parliamentary ones. “I can mention as many bad presidents as bad prime ministers,” he observed. In Latin America, the presidential systems combined with proportional representation seemed to create abusive regimes, he said. But presidential systems inherently aren’t bad, Altman said, pointing to the value of the constant clash of powers between the executive and other institutions and political units. He even saw hope in the presidency of Donald Trump in the U.S. The country “survived,” he said, meaning the institutions worked. “American democracy was resilient enough to face that.”

As the discussion wrapped up, audience members lined up to ask questions. Bruno Kaufman, co-director of the Global Forum on Direct Democracy, asked about indirect presidencies, which prompted the panelists to speak about the importance of other forms of governance, related to direct democracy.

Vancic cited the need to protect civil society. “There’s a reason autocrats go for civil society first,” she said.

Bacalla cited the importance of debate among citizens. Before fake news, she said, there was healthy political discussion among people. “We’ve lost that,” she said.

Both spoke of the systemic and structural issues with presidential systems, but placed people—citizens, leaders—undoubtedly at the center of these democratic landscapes.

The post Is Something Rotten With the State of Presidencies? appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Since the earliest days of the United States, America’s commanders-in-chief have sought to increase their power to act as they pleased—despite the objections of Congress, the rulings of courts, or the wishes of the public. But now, under President Donald Trump, that long-simmering trend is reaching a boiling point that some believe could threaten the separation of powers and undermine the nation’s cherished system of checks and balances.

On Tuesday night, an overflow crowd at the Museum of Contemporary Art in downtown Los Angeles turned out for a lively Zócalo/UCLA event in which an expert panel took up the question, “Does the Expansion of Presidential Power Threaten the Constitution?”

Moderator Ronald Brownstein, senior editor of The Atlantic and a CNN political analyst, led off the evening by observing that President Trump is by no means the first White House occupant to try to inflate his portfolio of executive prerogatives.

UCLA constitutional law scholar Adam Winkler concurred: “There’s no doubt that within the modern era every president has expanded executive power, Democrat or Republican.”

But some of the panelists suggested that Trump—who ran “a top-down campaign where he is the decider,” in Winkler’s words—already has shown signs of pushing his privilege to act beyond that of his predecessors. Among those signs are his thwarted attempt to place a temporary travel ban on visitors from some largely Muslim countries, and his administration’s (also thus far thwarted) threats to withhold federal funds from states that don’t fully comply with federal immigrant authorities’ round-ups of undocumented immigrants.

John T. Woolley, a University of California at Santa Barbara political scientist and co-director of the American Presidency Project website, said, “One of the truisms is: Presidents get away with what Congress lets them get away with.” But Woolley said that Trump’s urge to overreach stems from his alarming “disregard for a number of norms” that have served as a check on past presidents. For example, Trump has publicly criticized federal judges and journalists and even private citizens by name, and has refused to subordinate his brash personal style to other Oval Office shows of decorum.

“One of the things we know about Trump is that he has been profoundly ignorant of government processes and policies,” Woolley said.

In a way, Trump is simply exploiting the precedents set by previous chief executives: whether issuing executive orders to temporarily halt certain migrants, threatening to cut off federal funding to so-called sanctuary states and cities, or firing Tomahawk missiles at Syria, several panelists contended.

But because of his shortage of Capitol Hill contacts, and his complete lack of experience in wrangling legislation, Trump may feel more tempted—or obliged—than previous presidents to try and cram his agenda through by executive fiat, the panelists said.

Joel Aberbach, director of UCLA’s Center for American Politics and Public Policy, said that Trump was sworn into office lacking a clear legislative strategy, and still has yet to fully stock his administration with key appointees. “So executive authority is the tool” that Trump is going to wield, Aberbach said.

The debate over the proper limits of White House authority is as old as the republic, if not older. UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck said the nation’s founders, who were rebelling against the tyrannical dictates of England’s monarchs, always were wary of granting too much power to the new U.S. executive.

Yet, particularly over the last half-century, across successive administrations of both major parties, presidents have tested their ability to do end-runs around an increasingly weakened and polarized Congress, the panelists concurred.

While Congress has lost ground to the president, federal courts have acquired more power over the last 100 years, Winkler said, and so Trump is now pushing back against them. Already, he has suffered some stinging defeats, such as the court-ordered stays on his attempted travel ban.

Brownstein noted that on Tuesday, just a few hours before the Zócalo/UCLA event, a federal judge in California temporarily blocked President Trump’s administration from withholding funding from so-called “sanctuary cities” that aren’t falling in line with the crackdown by federal immigration authorities on undocumented immigrants.

If the courts so far have proven to be the new president’s main policy roadblock, it’s significant that Trump also has clashed with some of his own federal agencies, including the intelligence agencies, the panelists said. And, like Obama before him, Trump also is facing legal challenges from state attorneys’ generals that mirror court strategies that stymied some of Obama’s executive initiatives.

Is expansion of executive power necessarily an ominous sign? Not always, the panelists suggested. Vavreck said that, in certain cases, as with Lyndon B. Johnson during the civil rights movement era, the president has asserted executive power as a positive force to move Congress and consolidate a timely shift in the nation’s attitudes.

But such examples are in danger of becoming the exception that proves the rule, the panelists indicated. U.S. members of Congress, under relentless pressure from partisan media outlets and their own most extremist constituents, are tied up in legislative knots—practically providing an invitation for the president to trample the Congress, even without having won a landslide victory or a popular mandate.

“Is politics going to become more apocalyptic?” Brownstein asked toward the end of the evening. One audience member, Max Goldberg, picked up the theme, asking whether our government is being brought to a standstill by a small group of legislators.

Ultimately, the solution may lie in presidents realizing that, if they only can succeed in ruling by executive orders, their achievements may be quickly overturned—by the next overreaching president.

“There are presidents who will want legacy legislation, and they will have to do it through Congress,” Vavreck said.

The post Trump Isn’t the First Presidential Power Grabber appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

All presidents run up against the limited power of the office. To some extent, Trump’s efforts have been stymied by institutional limits on presidential powers and the separation of powers that are built into the American Constitution. The U.S. Presidency was designed to be limited by the courts and Congress.

But the forces that have been holding some of Trump’s changes at bay go well beyond the separation of powers. They reveal something about the nature of power itself and the impotence of self-proclaimed strongmen like Trump when they fail to properly grasp it. Power is not strength. It can never belong to a single individual, nor can it be a feature of a particular office. It is a phenomenon that rises up—and dies—with a group. As soon as the group disperses, power also disappears.

Hannah Arendt, political philosopher and scholar, in 1969. Photo by Associated Press.

The sharp distinction between power and strength comes from the work of Hannah Arendt, the German-American political thinker who was a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. Strength, Arendt explains, is a function of the instruments one can literally possess and hold, whether these are the muscles one has or the instruments one wields. Strength helps an individual act. Power, though, is something entirely different; Arendt defines it as the human ability not just to act, but to act with others. And as such, power can arise only from within a broad, plural, group of people encompassing differences both big and small.

The distinction between strength and power becomes even starker when contrasted with violence. Arendt explores these distinctions in her 1970 essay On Violence, which she wrote against a backdrop of violent student movements around the world and the glorification of violence by thinkers like Franz Fanon and Jean-Paul Sartre. Responding to what she saw as a dangerous conflation of power and violence, Arendt argues that the two are antithetical. Violence, for Arendt, is closely related to strength: It is an instrument that augments strength. But while violence and strength certainly command obedience (it’s difficult, to say the least, to dissent at the barrel of a gun), we shouldn’t confuse either with power, Arendt explains—nor can we conflate obedience with legitimacy. A strongman made even stronger by his possession of the instruments of violence is not, Arendt shows us, more powerful or more authoritative.

American democracy presumes power and resists strength. Resting on the will of the people, our republic was designed to do away with government as the “rule of man over man”—a government that, Arendt notes, the American founding fathers thought “fit for slaves.” Institutions and offices of governance have no power of their own; they are manifestations and materializations of power, which lies only with the people. Thus, if it is to be an office of power and not violence, the Presidency, as much as Congress, needs numbers of people. Without the people, the Presidency loses that “living power” that prevents it from petrification and decay.

But power is not just numbers. The distinction between power and strength is not merely a preference for majority rule. Being powerful isn’t, as political organizers would often have us believe, about speaking with one voice. Power is predicated on plurality. For Arendt, the assemblage of different, if not opposing, opinions and identities is the very thing that gives power to a movement. Arendt describes plurality simply, if a little enigmatically, as “the fact that men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.” What she means here is that power demands more than the many, or even the majority or everyone, acting together. The group must comprise individuals who meaningfully differ in their opinions from one another such that there are others with whom one acts. It is in acting “in concert” with those who hold different opinions that the power created by a movement remains with the people. If the group can be summed up by one opinion or identity—white working class, conservative, immigrant—the group is no better than an undifferentiated mob that might be swayed to carry out the orders of a dictator. It is no better than a potential instrument of violence.

That potential clarifies the first weeks of the Trump presidency—for both his supporters and his opponents. People have questioned Trump’s legitimacy on a number of grounds: He lost the popular vote, Russia may have interfered in the election, he lacks experience in government. But in some ways the biggest long term threat to his legitimacy lies in his lack of power. By reducing the office to his dictates as a “strong leader,” Trump has signaled that he might see the Presidency more as an instrument of strength than a manifestation of power. His assaults on anyone who questions his decisions, from the press and the judiciary to his own federal bureaucracy, portend a President for whom governance looks suspiciously like the imposition of strength from above that the Founding Fathers sought to eradicate. When Trump revels in the possibility that he might rule solely through the strength of his leadership, he threatens to strip the American political sphere of the various perspectives that make it a constant source of power and legitimacy. He threatens the very power of American democracy.

Through this lens, it is not clear that those who support Trump have much to celebrate, no matter how ardently they may share his views. In acceding to this kind of ruler, we undermine democracy as a system of self-rule and undermine our own power as a people to govern. Indeed, many support Trump precisely because he is “strong” and presumably willing and able to take over the reins of governance from the people. As efficient as strong leaders may be in affecting change, we must be cognizant of what we are giving up in complying with this kind of rule.

At the same time, those who oppose Trump shouldn’t take their own democratic credentials for granted. Power has high standards. Numbers are not enough—not the numbers of the popular vote or the unanimous decision by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals (captured by Hillary Clinton’s “3-0” tweet). The burgeoning anti-Trump movement will only become a powerful force in American society when it is a coalition of different opinions that come together for a public good beyond any particular interest. If the opposition can capture plurality, it not only enacts the kind of American society it purports to embrace, but also can serve as a legitimate, democratic force of governance. Its power and legitimacy will come from that fact that such a group can claim to speak and act as a true public—a group of diverse opinions, interests, and identities. Because, as Arendt tells us, what is at stake in politics is not one’s own life and the particular interests one holds, but the world itself.

The post Why Donald Trump Will Hate the Presidency appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

But I don’t think it went nearly far enough. Her influence, like that of many first ladies, is still not fully understood and is often underestimated. She was wise to keep it that way while she was in the White House—as the example of more publicized first ladies perhaps shows. Now, she deserves more credit.

Lady Bird Johnson was a political adviser, moral compass, and informal therapist for her husband, who was, according to Lyndon Johnson’s adviser Joe Califano, essentially a manic-depressive. “She helped him when he was down,” he told me while I was researching my book about first ladies. “She leveled it out for him.” Larry Temple, who served as special counsel to President Johnson, said “there was nobody closer during my time to LBJ than Lady Bird Johnson. Absolutely no one whose advice, whose counsel, whose judgment he sought and took more than Lady Bird Johnson.” When the first lady occasionally left the White House, Temple knew to tread carefully. “If she were gone,” he remembered, the president was “like a caged animal.”

Lady Bird Johnson came into the White House in mourning after President Kennedy’s assassination, unlike most first ladies who are celebrated with inaugural balls. But she wasted no time once she moved in. The Highway Beautification Act of 1965, which cleaned up the nation’s highways and limited billboards, was her signature issue as first lady. But her job as a trusted adviser to her husband gave her influence on many other topics throughout LBJ’s presidency. For example, she helped inform her husband’s decision to push through Congress the historic Civil Rights Act, which overturned Jim Crow segregation laws. She knew that action needed to be taken after witnessing firsthand the humiliation of her family’s cook, Zephyr Wright, when they drove together from the Johnsons’ Texas ranch to Washington. Hotel managers in the South refused to offer her a room because Wright was African-American.

Johnson’s first lady was furious at such discrimination. But she also knew the South well, as she grew up in a small East Texas town. During the presidential election campaign, she helped her husband to victory when she traveled 1,628 miles across eight southern states on her “Lady Bird Special.” She rallied fellow southerners, some of whom resented her husband for forcing them to change their way of life with his civil rights legislation. She made 47 speeches on the whistle-stop train trip and bravely stood up to hecklers with signs that read, “Black Bird, go home!”

When she wasn’t campaigning, Lady Bird Johnson wielded power quietly. Though she was a trailblazer—the first wife of a U.S. president to have her own press secretary and the first to campaign without her husband—she did not make her influence widely known. She was in the White House from 1963 to 1969, before many tenets of feminism were widely accepted, and she was expected to focus on being a wife and mother. If this meant that she did not get the praise she deserved, she also avoided much of the criticism heaped on other first ladies who came after her.

The most criticized first ladies were Nancy Reagan and Hillary Clinton. Much has been made of Reagan’s covert power: She famously instigated the dismissal of her husband’s chief of staff, Don Regan, and persuaded President Reagan to appoint more moderate Republicans as advisers. Men in the West Wing called her “Evita” (after Argentina’s powerful first lady Eva Perón) and “The Missus” behind her back. She became a lightning rod for her husband’s administration and had to shoulder the burden of criticism.

President Johnson and Lady Bird Johnson in the Oval Office on June 5, 1968, as President Johnson learns by phone of Robert F. Kennedy’s death.

So did Hillary Clinton, who was equally unapologetic about her influence in her husband’s administration. (Clinton is the only first lady to have run for public office, making her second bid for the presidency this year.) Many voters were aghast when Bill Clinton named his wife to head up his ambitious health care reform plan. She also took up an office in the West Wing—a controversial decision that she later told Laura Bush she regretted making.

Lady Bird Johnson, by contrast, worked out of a small blue sitting room overlooking the rose garden in the White House’s second floor. She used her influence surreptitiously but effectively. Mornings, when the Johnsons breakfasted together in the bedroom, President Johnson would listen intently. “He felt that she had no alternative agenda except his best interest and she would tell him what he needed to hear whether he wanted to hear it or not,” the Johnsons’ daughter, Luci, told me. She laughed and explained that her mother was “that one person who’s going to tell him if there’s spinach in his teeth so he has a chance to get to a mirror and get it out.”

He even asked her to grade his speeches. In a phone call after a news conference on March 7, 1964, Lady Bird Johnson asked her husband, “You want to listen for about one minute to my critique, or would you rather wait until tonight?” “Yes, ma’am,” he replied. “I’m willing now.” Her major takeaway: He needed to speak more slowly and stop looking down at his notes so often. “I’d say it was a good B-plus,” she said. In 1968, right before LBJ shocked the nation in a live, nationally televised address when he said he would not be seeking another term, it was Lady Bird Johnson who walked into the Oval Office with a note. “Remember—,” it read, “Pacing and drama.”

It was also Lady Bird Johnson who, in 1964, insisted on releasing a statement in support of their close friend and top political adviser, Walter Jenkins, who was arrested on what was then called a “homosexual morals” charge in a YMCA men’s room a few blocks from the White House. Lyndon Johnson wavered, suggesting they keep quiet for political reasons. But Lady Bird Johnson would not abandon their friend in his hour of need. “If we don’t express some support to him,” she said, “I think that we will lose the entire love and devotion of all the people who have been with us.”

After the Johnsons retired to their Texas ranch in 1969, LBJ lived only four more years, dying of a heart attack in 1973 at age 64. Lady Bird Johnson outlived her husband by almost thirty-five years, but they were fulfilling ones for her. She continued her work on environmental causes in Texas, founding the National Wildflower Research Center. She planned her husband’s library and could often be found working in her office there. And she became the grande dame of former first ladies, calling her successors to check in on them during difficult times in the White House. Rosalynn Carter told me that during the Iran hostage crisis, “Lady Bird Johnson often reached out with concern.”

No one understood better how tricky a position the office of first lady could be. Her example shows that Americans seem to want their first ladies to be seen and not heard. Johnson knew this instinctively, and she was able to stay above the fray in a way that Reagan and Clinton were not. But that didn’t mean Johnson wasn’t powerful. Though it operated in the shadows, her influence was real and lasting.

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It’s appropriate, therefore, that one of the more enduring, and endearing, aspects of our national reverence for George Washington is the fact that once he had militarily won independence for the American colonies—at a time when he had achieved global fame for this feat—he appeared perfectly content to return to his Mount Vernon estate and live out his remaining days as a respected Virginia planter.

The fact that Washington did not deem himself indispensable to what would follow lay down a marker for this new nation of self-reliant free men—he embodied the notion that in a representative democracy, no individual is indispensable. And that, paradoxically enough, is what made Washington an indispensable protagonist at the founding of our republic.

It’s worth noting that even as the conflict began between the colonies and their mother country, Washington had not burned with desire to command the new American army. Nor did he face the assignment given him with confidence that he would succeed. His misgivings began with the estimate of himself that he offered Congress with his acceptance of the appointment: “[M]y Abilities and Military experience,” he said, “may not be equal to this extensive and important Trust.”

He also felt uneasy about leaving his wife Martha, to whom he wrote from Philadelphia: “[T]hat so far from seeking this appointment I have used every endeavor in my power to avoid it, not only from my unwillingness to part with you and the Family but from a consciousness of its being a trust too great for my Capacity and that I should enjoy more real happiness and felicity in one month with you at home.” But, he added, “as it has been a kind of destiny that has thrown me upon this Service, I shall hope that my undertaking of it, is designed to answer some good purpose.”

The American people do not seem to have felt any of the doubts Washington carried within himself about his abilities, and his selection by the Congress did not surprise them. He had been a leading Virginia planter concerned about British moves to curtail economic autonomy and political freedom in the colonies in the years leading up to the confrontations at Lexington and Concord, and involved in the efforts to organize opposition to these moves. Many people across the colonies knew of Washington, had learned about him from militiamen who served under his command in the French and Indian War (as the Seven Years War, 1756 to 1763, was called in America).

Washington had come to the public’s attention early in the preliminaries to the war in 1754 when he tangled violently with a small French contingent in the Ohio country, an encounter that elicited his high-spirited (and foolish) comment: “I heard bullets whistle and believe me there was something charming in the sound.” The charm soon wore off as he suffered defeat in a battle a few months later. His reputation was not damaged however, and in the next four years his name became well-known throughout America as he fought with distinction—as a volunteer with General James Braddock and later as a commander of the Virginia Regiment with General John Forbes—until the Ohio country, or most of it, fell to British forces. Thus Congress’ action in making him commander of the Continental Army reflected the esteem he had earned in the conflict with the French.

Worldwide fame came to Washington during the American Revolution, despite the lack of a long succession of great victories. Washington was admired as much for how he handled adversity—and made sure his army outlasted it—as he was for his successes. His forces seemed on the edge of destruction every year after 1775. His army was defeated in major battles at Brooklyn in 1776; it suffered heavy losses in New York and New Jersey in the months after General William Howe smashed it in at Brooklyn Heights; it almost collapsed at Valley Forge where it had endured a terrible winter following defeat at Brandywine and Germantown. In the next three years, the army hardly prospered, usually nearly starving in camp. Its soldiers often proved unreliable—enlisting for short periods, and disappearing homeward bound whenever they could find a way from engagement in the war.

But this dispiriting assessment should be qualified by several facts about these men: Some fought with skill and bravery in all of their defeats, and there was a small number of superb officers at their head. Washington, in particular, stood alone in his brilliance and unwavering spirit, providing an example of steadfastness against all suggestions that the army should give up and concede victory to the British. After the battles at Trenton and Princeton, Nicholas Cresswell, a planter, recorded in his journal an opinion that was fairly widely shared: “Six weeks” before, a friend of his “was lamenting the unhappy situation of the Americans and pitying the wretched condition of their much-beloved General, supposing his want of skill and experience in military matters had brought them all to the brink of destruction. In short all was gone, all was lost. But now the scale is turned and Washington’s name is extolled to the clouds.”

The battle of Yorktown raised popular estimation of Washington even more, especially because it yielded a general conviction in America, almost matched in Britain, that the war was over (even if Washington did not necessarily agree). The toasts drunk to victory at this time always included one to Washington, the leader of the triumphal nation.

One of Washington’s finest moments came not on the battlefield or in any conventional aspect of warfare. It occurred in the army’s camp at Newburgh, New York, in early 1783. On this occasion, Washington dissuaded some disgruntled officers of his from forcing Congress—their masters and his—to provide back pay and pensions for themselves. It was healthy to petition Congress and speak up for the interests of its new army, which Washington forcefully did throughout the conflict, but in the end, he pointed out to his fellow officers, the “Civil Power” must govern, and the army must follow its direction. These officers may indeed have been considering the use of force to compel the Congress to act on their behalf; but confronted by their general, who had sacrificed so much, they gave way, and a tranquil United States made peace.

Washington reiterated his respect for civilian supremacy at the simple ceremony at which he surrendered his command, making clear that in the newly independent nation, even the greatest of generals remain servants to the republic and its representatives. The general would return to lead the “civil power” as our first president, but even then, only for a finite number of years, once again establishing the precedent of self-restraint and subservience to the law and republican norms. Thus, Washington’s great legacy was the idea that the launching of the United States was all about the people, not himself.

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The 10-hour round-trip total comes in at nearly $2.3 million, and that’s just the operating cost of Air Force One. It doesn’t account for the additional planes the President might require for his armored limousines, his Secret Service protection, their lodging and meals, or the support costs for his entourage of White House staffers coming along for the ride. There are also considerable expenses in terms of both time and money that the Southland cities he visits and passes through will incur by cordoning off streets and snarling traffic. In short, taxpayers will spend millions of dollars in order to allow the President to raise thousands of dollars.

Presidential travel has been an easy political target for decades, of course, especially by the side that’s out of office. And it’s easy to dismiss these expenses as insignificant in a $3.5 trillion federal budget. But we shouldn’t. What should particularly bother taxpayers, regardless of their political persuasions, is the fact that there is virtually no transparency surrounding a president’s use of this immensely powerful perk.

Political parties and campaign teams are required to reimburse the government whenever the president travels on their behalf. It’s taxpayers, however, who almost always end up footing most of the total bill, because under existing rules (or lack thereof), it’s left up to White House officials to determine which portions of any trip are official and which are expressly political. So when a President wants to attend a fundraising dinner with A-list actors in Hollywood, the expense can be offset by making a stop at a nearby business or school to speak about issues like immigration reform, healthcare, or student loan rates. Presto! Now the trip is for “official” business.

It’s been this way for years, and the rules are so vague that not even researchers who study them full-time can describe them. In a 2012 report, the Congressional Research Service stated that it’s “unclear how the White House designates travel that is not directly related to a governmental or political function.” Basically, the president gets the benefit of the doubt.

This makes it easy for schedulers to add a sprinkling of “official” business to any trip, and it opens the door for any party to game the system. Ultimately, this is to the detriment of every American’s bank account as well as an electoral process that’s becoming increasingly expensive and time-consuming.

To be sure, security concerns surrounding presidential travel require some secrets to be kept. And in today’s hyper-partisan political environment, where just about everything that anyone in Washington does inevitably draws criticism from across the aisle, examining what constitutes political or official travel could devolve into pointless fighting or political posturing. But just because a policy has been in place for years doesn’t mean that it’s a good one.

Fortunately, there’s been a little more attention paid recently to the issue of taxpayer-subsidized fundraising. In 2009, the Federal Election Commission updated its rules to require campaigns to reimburse the government at charter flight rates, which are significantly higher than commercial flight costs. That means that President Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign paid much more for Air Force One usage than, for example, President George W. Bush did in 2004, or President Bill Clinton in 1996. It’s a start at least.

Still, the rules need to be explicit, and the steps any administration takes in order to follow them need to be plainly visible and easily reviewed. This means more thorough and timely public access to travel records and costs as they are incurred (within carefully defined considerations for security). Regardless of whether it’s technically legal or “by the books,” and no matter who occupies the Oval Office, this type of activity should be less of a secret to the everyday Americans who must pay for it.

Let me be clear: the problem isn’t as simple as a $2.3 million flight to California. It isn’t that we have reason to believe the president has intentionally abused his travel privileges. It’s just that without a more transparent system, we’d never have any idea if he did.

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It’s a familiar story.

Presidents have been sensitive about their vacation habits from the start of the republic. They struggle for years to get to the White House and then, once they get there, they seem desperate to get away from the place as much as they can.

Presidential absences from Washington have been criticized as an abdication of duty, or a regal indulgence insulting to less fortunate voters. This is more about optics than reality. As presidents and their defenders have been saying from the beginning, the commander-in-chief never really leaves behind the most demanding job in the world; the demands of the office travel with its occupant.

The public tends to be more tolerant when a president spends time at a home away from Washington than when he travels elsewhere. So life can be easier for presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan who happen to own lavish retreats than it is for presidents like Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, for whom most vacations are an exercise in improvisation.

Criticism of presidential vacations resonates when there’s a perception that taxpayer dollars are footing the bills. The tradition is for presidents to pay for their accommodations, including rented vacation spots, while the taxpayers pay for Air Force One, communication, staff, security, and other official expenses of presidential travel, all of which can add up fast. Relocating White House operations to Kennebunkport, San Clemente, or Crawford for weeks is a costly proposition, but short trips to new destinations are what tend to capture the public ire. First lady Michelle Obama got much grief for her vacation in Spain with daughter Sasha in 2010, as the trip seemed profligate. Judicial Watch, basing its analysis on government documents, said the trip cost the Air Force and Secret Service at least $467,000.

Whether the escape is to a second home or to a stimulating new spot, each chief executive feels the desire to slip out of the ornate white fish bowl. George Washington talked about “the magnitude and difficulty of the trust to which the voice of my country called me,” and he retreated as often as he could to his 8,000-acre plantation in Mount Vernon, Virginia–a total of 15 times over eight years, for periods ranging from several days to a few months. Washington was a micro-manager, setting forth in detail the diet and work schedules of his slaves and requiring his overseers to update him on conditions at the plantation even when he was away. He often responded with pages of suggestions contained in long business-like letters on which he lavished great attention, despite his official workload. He once wrote that he considered himself above all a Virginia planter, not a president or a general.

John Adams, the second president, spent many weeks at his home in Quincy, Massachusetts. In fact, he holds the record for the longest continuous presidential vacation, eight months in 1799. In Quincy, he found relief from the heat and humidity in the temporary capital of Philadelphia, and he felt relatively safe from the outbreaks of yellow fever that struck the capital region periodically.

Thomas Jefferson called the presidency “a place of splendid misery,” and he left regularly for his plantation at Monticello, Virginia. More recently, Harry Truman called the White House “the great white jail,” and he spent weeks relaxing at the Navy’s submarine base in Key West, Florida, where he took over the commanding officer’s house.

John F. Kennedy romped with his children and relaxed on yachts off the Atlantic coast of his family estate in Hyannisport, Massachusetts. Ronald Reagan, one of the nation’s most frequent presidential vacationers, fled every summer, and during other periods, to his Rancho del Cielo near Santa Barbara, California. He told his aides that he preferred to be left alone with his wife Nancy, and they complied with his wishes as much as possible.

George W. Bush spent many weeks at his ranch in Crawford, Texas. He also was one of the most frequent presidential vacationers, spending all or part of 490 days at his ranch during 77 trips there over eight years. He ran into some serious political trouble for his holiday habits when he appeared to lose track of the life-and-death situation created by Hurricane Katrina in 2005 while he relaxed in central Texas.

Except for the current election season, Barack Obama has taken his holidays in rented homes at Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts and in Hawaii, where he was born and mostly raised. His decision to pass up the Vineyard this summer was probably wise, considering how a vacation among the island’s elites might have clashed with his attempts to portray his opponent as an out-of-touch tycoon.

One of the most devoted vacationers was Franklin Roosevelt, who escaped to his home in Hyde Park, New York and to his rural retreat in Warm Springs, Georgia. At Warm Springs, he exercised in the thermal springs that eased the discomfort in his legs, which were paralyzed by polio. Roosevelt also spent many weeks privately cruising on yachts and naval vessels up and down the Atlantic Coast, which relaxed and refreshed him. In those days, presidents didn’t have to put up with the scrutiny of the 24-hour news cycle, so FDR could take his jaunts without the country knowing about them.

Roosevelt also made a lasting contribution to presidential relaxation and stress management by creating a permanent presidential retreat in the Catoctin Mountains of Maryland, which he called Shangri-la. It was later renamed Camp David by Dwight Eisenhower in honor of his grandson. This retreat is a 20-minute helicopter ride away from the South Lawn of the White House.

Understandably, presidents and presidential wannabes endure the most intense scrutiny and the sharpest criticism when they go on holiday during hard times. In July, Republican candidate Mitt Romney felt some of the heat. During a news conference following the release of a jobs report showing unemployment at 8.2 percent, Romney was asked if he should be on vacation at all “as this rather grim economic news is coming out.”

Speaking at Bradley’s Hardware in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, near where he has an $8 million lakefront estate, Romney said, “I’m delighted to be able to take a vacation with my family. I think all Americans appreciate the memories that they have with their children and their grandchildren. I hope that more Americans are able to take vacations. And if I’m president of the United States, I’m going to work very hard to make sure we have good jobs for all Americans who want good jobs and, as part of a good job, the capacity to take a vacation now and then with their loved ones.” Romney went on to spend a week at his estate with 30 members of his extended family.

It reminded me of George H.W. Bush, another son of privilege who vacationed with his big family at his seaside estate in Kennebunkport, Maine during economic hard times. Some commentators thought he paid a price, with TV pictures of the president in his speedboat fueling the perception, exploited Bill Clinton in the 1992 elections, that Bush was out of touch.

Clinton was careful to avoid alienating voters during his own re-election bid four years later. He went on vacation at national parkland in the West. He based his decision in part on private polls focusing on where he should go. After he won re-election, he returned to his favorite vacation spot–Martha’s Vineyard.

My view, having covered the vacations of five presidents over the years, is that the public has considerable tolerance for their presidents taking holidays. Americans know their leader needs a break, just like they do.

Kenneth T. Walsh is the author of From Mount Vernon to Crawford: A History of the Presidents and Their Retreats. Walsh covers the White House and politics for U.S. News. He writes a daily blog, “Ken Walsh’s Washington,” and is the author of “The Presidency” column in the U.S. News Weekly. He can be reached at kwalsh@usnews.com and on Facebook and Twitter.

*Photo courtesy of U.S. Embassy New Delhi.

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