In a healthy democracy, leaders govern through persuasion. They make arguments and respond to critics. They observe norms and advance proposals through compromise and mutual respect.
Richard Neustadt, arguably the most influential political scientist ever to study the U.S. presidency, famously concluded that “the power of the president is the power to persuade.”
Authoritarians, by contrast, rule through fear. They seek to impose their will on others through terror, cruelty and physical force. Niccolò Machiavelli famously wrote, “It is much safer to be feared than loved because... love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
We live neither in a healthy democracy nor in an authoritarian regime. Though Donald Trump was democratically elected, he aspires to be a dictator. For him, governing is done only through corrupt patronage and fear. In this regard, his aspiration is to govern in the way Lorenzo de' Medici — the object of Machiavelli’s attention — ruled Florence. A near-dictator who still has a pliant representative government.
Against this background, it didn’t come as a shock when Senate Republicans betrayed their constituents by voting to advance Trump’s disastrous budget bill. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), who provided the deciding vote, had already told us she was afraid...
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