WILL THE U.S. BECOME VENEZUELA? (the writing on the wall)

On February 4^th 1992, the president of Venezuela was nearly assassinated. For the previous two years the president had been struggling against his party, dinosaur politicians and entrenched economic interests, to bring Venezuela into a market economy; to transform the centralized command economy of the past 30 years that was driving the country into financial ruin.

To get rid of President Carlos Andrés Pérez (known popularly as CAP), a few generals and business leaders had put up a patsy to assassinate him in an attempted coup so they could then launch a counter coup to “rescue democracy” restore order and eliminate the patsy. This patsy was chosen because of his misguided ambition, open disdain for democracy, oratory skills and charm; not for his military prowess. It was by that lack of prowess that he failed miserably in the primary objective, assassination, throwing askew all the original plans. President Pérez ordered Lt. Colonel Hugo Chávez arrested and tried, as befits in a country ruled by laws, but the populist spark was lit and the “failure” of his government blamed for the conditions leading to the coup was used politically to lead the country down a path of increased populist fervor. CAP was finally dropped by his own party and impeached. Ensuing events led to the ascendancy of Hugo Chávez to the presidency, under the convenient banner of “socialism,” which would net him an estimated fortune of $1 Billion by the time of his death while he was, effectively, president for life (I document all of this in more detail in one of my books, “La Venezuela Imposible”).

Why should Americans care? What does this have to do with the electoral cycle of 2020? It is critical to understand that what led to the events described above was not a conflict between capitalism and communism or socialism. It was a conflict between leading a country as a market economy or leading it as a command economy. Transforming a country from the legacy systems of monarchies and autocracies to a country embracing a system from the Age of Enlightenment. The reaction against this attempted change led Venezuela to be among the world’s first elected populist autocracies, a new ruling model recognized now as a precursor to modern illiberalism.

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In 1948 the victors of the most devastating war the world has ever known had to reconstruct it, and two models of economic development were at the table, so to speak. As the least scarred nation, the U.S. supplied many of the goods needed and offered its economic development model, racking up a trade surplus which was reinvested around the world as U.S. based multinational corporations boomed.

The opposing economic model offered, communism, attracted many thinkers indulging in its promise of a just society, quicker and more effectively than the contrasting model promoted by the U.S., capitalism. The first model relies on central planning by an elite group of leaders that believe they know and have more information than anyone else and are able to manipulate the production levers of society to make it better. Call it a “Type-A” model, seeking more and more control in order to achieve its goals. The second model is not as satisfying to those who want to control outcomes, because it believes that individual initiatives and behavior will lead to an aggregate of better, spontaneous outcomes for society; and you can’t really predict individual behavior. Call it a “Type-B” model.

As the world sifted the ashes of war, an economist partial to the Type-A model became influential in one of the main organizations focused on Latin America: The U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, known in the region as CEPAL. Raúl Prebisch was a promoter of the idea of Import Substitution Industrialization (ISI): placing tariffs on imported goods to promote and protect local industry and create well-paying jobs. A need to choose industries (and companies) follows by the nature of this model, leading to an executive department, the “Promotion Ministry/Office,” most often a cabinet level position with control and influence over the economy; five year development plans with fantastic names ensue. The idea is that the executive knows better and can plan the economy from its vantage point as the leader of the country. Influence peddling, smuggling networks and rampant corruption sprout left and right– as well as a concentration of extremely rich oligarchies well connected to a government protecting the monopoly power of the chosen ones. The consequences are explosive growth of income inequality and economic stagnation, as opportunity is stifled and innovation withers.

The Type-B model, with its foundation on capitalism, has as its primary driver the force of renewal and innovation. Joseph Schumpeter called it “creative destruction” more popularly known as “out with the old, in with the new.” Friedrich Hayek compared a market capable of such creativity as a super computer more efficient than any single human mind, much less a collective of minds in a bubble. This penchant for renewal makes the Type-B model more conducive to democracy, which is also a mechanism of elite renewal at its ideal best. As I wrote in a new introduction to a Brazilian edition of “The Latin Americans: Their Love-Hate Relationship with the United States” (written by my father, Carlos Rangel), capitalism is the economic manifestation of democracy, while mercantilism (command economies led by autocrats) is the economic manifestation of totalitarianism.

But renewal goes against most people’s self-preservation instincts. No one wants to get “renewed.” That is why capitalism as well as democracy are constantly distorted, fragile and in peril. Entrenched political leaders and entrenched economic interests want to stay entrenched. If they are powerful enough they will do so. Power sees democracy as a threat and the more powerful, the more it will do anything to self-preserve by stifling innovation and opportunity to potential future rivals. Markets dominated by oligarchs and tycoons, ever more powerful as they reach worldwide, want to ensure that domination continues. No renewal or innovation needed here, we know what is best for you.

In Venezuela, CAP was an old style, chicken in every pot, populist. President for two terms, but with ten years in between, in his first term he nationalized industries, such as iron and oil, and promoted many civil construction and infrastructure projects. His charismatic leadership concentrated even more power in the presidency. His profligate deficit spending increased the per capita GDP substantially, creating a sense of bonanza; but his most significant lasting investment was in education, the foundation of opportunity and innovation, including sponsoring bright youths to study abroad. By the time he was reelected (a period known as “CAP II”), the populist/command policies he had fueled in his first term had led the country to the brink of economic disaster. He realized the errors of his populist past and tried to rectify. With the help of the new generation of foreign trained professionals that his education programs had fostered, he started to dismantle command economy structures, such as subsidies, tariffs, price and wage controls, centralized/big government, etc. And with such dismantling, the protections to powerful figures in politics and the economy. This would lead to his attempted assassination and political demise.

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Venezuela is not the only country to be destroyed by populism and command economy principles. In the U.S. this is a present threat, which comes from the most unexpected source: Donald J. Trump. Trump uses as a model for governance his experience as the tycoon of a privately held company focused on win-lose propositions – a command structure. Trump’s economic policies embrace Import Substitution Industrialization as a way to “bring jobs back to America;” apply industrial policy to protect and subsidize industries such as fossil fuels and steel, as well as agriculture—in blatant populists ploys; and seek to concentrate unaccountable power in the federal executive so as to deepen the command structure. Trump rules with the A-Type model and uses the populist authoritarian playbook to do so.

A common trait of a populist is self-identification with “his people” leading to phrases such as “El pueblo soy yo” (“I am the people”) affirmed in different variations by AMLO, Chávez, and Fidel, to infer that opposition to the leader is antipatriotic opposition to the country, a common assertion we see in Trump and his supporters. Of course this comes directly from the sense of entitlement of powerful monarchs of mercantile economies, such as Louis the XIV, the Sun King: “L’Etát c’est moi.” And if the leader is the people, what benefits the leader benefits the people – the rationale for self-centered corruption.

By revolving around a command economy to preserve and protect entrenched political and economic power (whether of existing or new elites in power through “revolution”), populism uses the tools of government to do just that. This includes bending rules, violating civil liberties and cronyism, as well as discrediting or censoring any information that may shed a negative light on the administration and its allies. Control and distortion of information is a key way to consolidate power. Attacks on the press and journalists, either physical or reputational, become a frequent tool of command economies seeking to concentrate power. As far back as 1859, John Stuart Mills argued liberty of the press as a fundamental check against tyrants. Any leader in power that continuously rails against the media as its enemy is suspect of aspiring tyranny. Of course, particular members of the press can be relentless in their attacks against a leader they dislike, but blanket and consistent attacks by a government against the right to have an informed citizenry are signs of tyranny.

In Venezuela during CAP II the press ran rampant with attacks against the president, sowing the eventual coup and rise of Chávez. The lack of an ample relationship of mutual respect and trust was part of the problem, but CAP’s intention to change the command economy into a market economy fueled the animosity driving such attacks. Even so, his government did not attack members of the press in the manner of oppressive tyrannies. Certainly not in the way Chávez would later, choking it economically, accusing it of lying, inciting persecution of journalists, crowding out information airwaves, and outright closing of media outlets. Not to mention sponsoring propaganda and partisan outlets to spread the government’s view on its enemies: an opposition by “scrawnies” intent on nullifying the regime.

Populism relies on grievances, offering a redress to those grievances by scapegoating a perceived weak group which is blamed for the people’s woes. It is based on a sectarian mindset that feeds animosity. In an interview I gave to the Brazilian magazine Crusoé, I exemplify this common trait between populists in Venezuela, Cuba, México and Bolivia where the president’s opponents are branded to cleave society as escuálidos (scrawnies), gusanos (worms), fifís (fussies) and colonialistas internos (internal colonialists). Such labeling to dehumanize the opposition and separate it from the mainstream has its lexicon cousin in ethnic and anti-Semitic epithets, and feeds on the same base emotions. The Chávez regime was eventually successful in making "adeco," the name given to those affiliated to President Pérez's party (Accion Democrática), into a common slur.

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Two more alarming indicators of populist “democratic” tyrannies are attacks on civil liberties and on the right to vote. Democratic institutions strive on free speech, and free speech includes protest marches. It is inherently democratic to have marches protesting against policies or leaders. Freedom of the press, freedom of speech and freedom of assembly lead eventually to free opinions in a ballot box. Thus, because voting is in essence a form of free speech, the former is a consequence of the latter. It is the role of a democratic government to protect peaceful protests from opportunistic individuals who may take advantage of a difficult-to-control situation for personal gain. It is not the role of a democratic government to suppress peaceful protests; its role is to protect them. Protecting peaceful protests is as important as protecting the right to vote. Suppression is what the regime has been doing in Venezuela since 2002, and unfortunately seems to be occurring here now, in the U.S.

In addition to unlawfully suppressing protest, the threats, harassment and outright jailing of perceived enemies or “disloyals” is a chilling aspect of tyrannical power. The retaliatory jailing of Michael Cohen, because he is writing a “tell-all” book about his relationship with the president, is a clear example. By the same token, the treatment of Roger Stone and Michael Flynn by the president and the DOJ is a challenge from the rule of men to the rule of law.

Finally, the rise of private militia and mercenary groups is a telltale indicator of a burgeoning populist tyranny. To circumvent the established rule of law, populist governments will use the emotional force of sown grievance to raise and encourage armed and repressive groups to intimidate and attack the populist leader’s targets. In Venezuela these were called the “colectivos.” In the U.S. they are sometimes called “very fine people” exercising their gun rights inside State Houses, for example.

The reported use of mercenary forces in the escalating repression of protesters in cities around our country is disturbing if true. But just the blatant use of federal forces to suppress local problems is problematic in itself. Federalizing repression, taking away the local control by local police forces, was one of the first things Hugo Chávez did, with the assistance of mercenary forces from Cuba, after massive protests against him in 2002. Let us hope that “Operation Legend” is not such an attempt – and that it is not a dress rehearsal for potentially violent voter suppression or results dispute in November.

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Apostle Matthew says “a city set on a hill cannot be hidden” (5:14, Sermon of the Mount). In 1630, the pilgrim John Winthrop used the image from that verse in a speech on a boat’s deck to his fellow settlers as a foundational ideal for the New World they were sailing towards: “wee shall be as a Citty upon a Hill, the eies of all people are uppon us.” With all eyes upon that city, the new colony should be humble before those of God or risk His wrath and be doomed to oblivion. In 1961, J.F. Kennedy used Winthrop’s words as a call for self-aware responsibility in government: “Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us--and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill--constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities,” a view of a public servant in a democracy (listen here). But it was Reagan who used those words to usher in the idea of American Exceptionalism by adding the word “shining” and frequently during his presidency alluding to that image of the Shining City, all the way up to his farewell address:

“I've spoken of the shining city [upon the hill] all my political life, but I don't know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind, it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, windswept, God blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace - a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity, and if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors, and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here.”

I have lived and observed the transformation of Venezuela into a nation ravaged by gaping inequality, crushed opportunity, misery and lawlessness. In 1992 I saw the signs of the creeping acceptance of totalitarianism which would lead to that condition and tried to warn anyone who would listen about the instincts of Chávez and his supporters –but a frog cannot feel the rising temperature of the water until it is too late. I do not like what I have been seeing for the last few years in the United States. The core values of this country are fighting against the challenges of illiberalism and totalitarian forces, especially after the populist spark lit during the 2016 campaign. It is possible that on November 3^rd the electorate will deliver a temporary answer and reprieve, but the dark forces are relentless and capitalism and democracy are always under attack. After 1992 it took 10 years for Venezuela to realize it was late in the game in this fight. The following 18 years brought that country to its current condition. November 3^rd will not be the end of the fight to restore the Shining City. It will mark the beginning.

Image credit: budastock

WE’LL SEE WHAT HAPPENS....

Note on January 14th, 2021: this essay was written before the first impeachment of D. J. Trump.

There are exceptional occasions when a rare event occurs. Sometimes we are surprised, sometimes bewildered. The rarity of such an event can even make us doubt of its possibility, even when all evidence is there: A Black Swan, an Albino Tiger, an Aurora Borealis. In society we take for granted one of the rarest and marvelous of phenomena: Democracy. Modern democracy, as we know it and aspire it to be, is a Grand Experiment in governance that has been in use by a small fraction of humanity during a brief period of history and, as such, is a rare and fragile institution.

Within the institutional democracy of the U.S. rare events threatening it also occur but the Constitution allows remedies that have made it stronger. The Amendment process is conceived as a defense of democracy, allowing for changes that strengthen the Union. Only seventeen have been ratified since the Constitutional Convention of 1787 (The first ten, the Bill of Rights, were ratified simultaneously with the Constitution in 1789). Impeachment, another rare remedy, was conceived also by the framers as a defense of the Constitution and the democratic republic. The rarity of impeachment makes it uncharted every time it occurs and, in the 230 years from 1789, each time it has been part of a transformative cycle for the Union—especially in the case of a presidential impeachment.

There have been nineteen House of Representative impeachments that have reached the Senate floor for a trial. Of these, two were votes to impeach presidents: President Andrew Johnson (1868) and President Bill Clinton (1998). The rest of them were fourteen Federal Judges, one Senator, one Justice, and one Cabinet Officer. While articles of impeachment were drawn for President Nixon at the end of July 1974 by the Judiciary Committee these were never voted upon by the full House, as his resignation two weeks later on August 9^th effectively put an end to the process. Of all nineteen impeachments trials, eight have resulted in convictions, three ended with the resignation of the accused officer, one was dismissed after expelling the Senator from the Senate, and seven resulted in acquittal, including Presidents Johnson and Clinton.

Presidential Impeachments

The core of the charge against President Johnson was for violating the “Tenure of Office” Act [1]. Notwithstanding the actual charges detailed in the articles of impeachment [2], the animus to impeach President Johnson was largely driven by the President's Reconstruction policies. Johnson went against the reasons and results of the Civil War, pardoned and restored property to former slave owners and mostly gave the Southern states a free hand in governing as they saw fit, resulting in the so-called "Black Codes": separate laws for Blacks and Whites.

The ideological divide between pro-slavery supporters and abolitionists brought upon the country the Civil War, the deadliest American war in history [3]. To heal democracy after such a catastrophic event the spectacle of the blood spilt was not enough. After the war, President Johnson’s administration tried to once again impose inequality upon the freemen, making efforts to restore the superiority of the slave owner class to its former (narcissistic) glory. These policies and laws supported by Johnson led to his impeachment as part of the healing process to excise this political poison from the system. 

The House voted to impeach President Johnson on February 24^th 1868, the Senate started trial on March 5^th and on May 16^th the final vote was held acquitting the President, a three and a bit month process. President Johnson was acquitted by a single vote (35 votes for conviction, 19 for acquittal, one short of two thirds). In spite of the opposition party having more than enough seats in the majority to convict, seven of them voted to acquit in order to “protect the office of president and preserve the constitutional balance of powers.” As one of them said later: “I cannot agree to destroy the harmonious working of the Constitution for the sake of getting rid of an Unacceptable President.”  

The process against Johnson and the constitutional questions arising from it gave the final push needed to ratify the XIVth and XVth Amendments, that other rare remedy to salvage the ideals embedded in the Constitution. These amendments, along with the XIIIth, are the so-called "Reconstruction Amendments" abolishing slavery and establishing equal protection, citizenship and voting rights, regardless of race. The initial push for them was the infamous Scott v Sanford decision of 1857, by which the Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution did not grant citizenship to black people, whether slaves, former slaves or never slaves [4]. The two latter amendments were ratified towards the end of Johnson's first term (1868 and 1870; the XIIIth was ratified in 1865). Andrew Johnson did not run for reelection and is generally considered to have been one of the worst presidents in the history of the United States.

During his second term, President Clinton was charged with lying under oath to a Grand Jury and with obstruction of Justice, both charges related to his attempt to deny, hide and minimize a sexual affair with Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern at the time. The affair had been uncovered by Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr who had a wide latitude and budget to investigate the president and all of his actions and behaviors prior to and during the presidency. The inquiry was started on October 8^th  and the vote to impeach was held on December 19^th, 1998. The Senate trial began January 25^th and the final Senate vote acquitting the President was held on February 9^th, 1999, approximately four months for the process. President Clinton was acquitted on both charges, on the first article by a 55 for acquittal to 45 for conviction vote (including 10 Republicans) and on the second article by a 50 to 50 vote.  At the time, the Republican Party held a majority in the Senate, 55 (R) to 45 (D) seats. President Clinton was subsequently disbarred and he and his wife, Hillary, have lived the political consequences of his impeachment and trial to this day.

Having impeachment as an extraordinary remedy option is a problem in and of itself. The existence of the threat of impeachment is a commonly brandished political tool [5]. It is significant that in both historical instances of presidential impeachment trials, the opposition party held the majority in the House and the Senate. If President Nixon had stood trial, the opposition also had a majority of the Senate at the time, but not enough to convict. Only after Senate Republican elders met with the president to let him know that a large fraction of their caucus would not support him did Nixon resign to avoid a public spectacle of his crimes, misdeeds and abuses—and disgrace by conviction.

Those three instances highlight the political nature of this remedy. Only when Congress had an opposition party majority did the process occur, and even then it resulted in acquittal or stopped short of a trial. The actual removal from office and disqualification to further hold high office of a sitting president may be as rare as a snowstorm in South Florida. Calls for impeachment, though, are routine and most presidents have heard them, perhaps sometimes influencing policy and political decisions.

Separation of Powers: Essential in Democracy

Speaker Nancy Pelosi is right on this: policy disagreements on immigration, gun-control, taxation, climate, health care, trade and judge selection, among others, are not impeachable offenses and should be taken up at the ballot box. Petty lying and bluster is not impeachable. But abuse of power is, as are obstruction of justice, corruption and subversion of national security [6]. Congress is almost constitutionally bound to bring articles of impeachment on these grounds, if found credible through the inquiry, to keep itself as a viable separate branch of government and not become a presidential partisan rubber stamp of this and future administrations. Given the facts and documentation at hand in the case of Donald Trump, the House of Representatives has been left with little choice: it must open an impeachment inquiry. It will also likely do its prescribed duty to defend the Constitution and vote to impeach. The impeachment threat as a political tool does not lead to better policy making, it leads to polarization; that is why the impeachment process as a constitutional remedy is such a grave matter. 

Defending the Constitution and its core principle of separation of powers is the only way to ensure the continuation of democracy and stop absolutism. Over the last three years, an increased pattern of behavior, actions and orders by the executive branch (and glossed over by an increasingly compliant Congress and Judiciary) has undermined the accountability achieved by the separation of powers and established dangerous precedent. Voters in 2018 did not take this lightly, passed judgment on such behavior, actions and orders, and voiced through the ballot box their opposition to administration policies which are trying to undo years of bipartisan progress.

What will happen in the Senate is anyone’s guess at this point. Of the incumbent Republican Senators running for office in 2020, several primary candidate filing deadlines come up in November and December, and many more in early March. The threat of a primary challenge is one used against many congressmen, but the timeline for a possible trial that goes past the filing deadlines will free many of the Senators from that threat. At that point their political survival may rest on whether they want to link themselves or not with an impeached president whose dirty laundry is aired on trial. As the impeachment processes of presidents Johnson, Nixon and Clinton demonstrated, the political damage to the impeached and his or her allies is substantial and will last for a long time, even if acquitted or never tried.

As political strategy, to use an impeachment timeline to their advantage, Democrats will (or should) carefully craft precise articles of impeachment and vote for them after the winter recess, possibly even late January. Conversely, for the Trump Republicans, the quicker the process unfolds the better, hoping for poorly drafted partisan articles of impeachment that will allow them to summarily dismiss the charges by a simple majority vote in December or earlier, threatening primary challenges to those on the fence who may not toe the (Trump) party line. As the two previous impeachment trials and Nixon’s case have shown, party allegiance is not necessarily an indicator of the final vote, but each situation has been different. As Trump is fond of saying (and could probably be the title of an autobiographical book he will not write a word of): We’ll See What Happens.

Urgent Need for a Structural Systemic Remedy

After 230 years of Constitutional rule and 150 years since the Johnson impeachment, there must be something wrong with a democracy that attempts to impeach its president twice in twenty years. There is a national divide that makes this political solution seem more available now that it had been in the previous 200 years. The impeachment remedy is a symptom of something deeper, which makes us turn our insights once again towards that core constitutional principle: representation.

A recent analysis (by M. Geruso et al at the National Bureau of Economic Research, NBER) on elections from 1836 to 2016 and reported by Stephen L. Carter in Bloomberg) demonstrates that the probability of an “inversion” – an election resulting in the winner of the popular vote losing in the Electoral College – is 65% in a close election, two out of three of those elections; and all polling shows us how closely divided is the general electorate. When we further observe that in the elections for the last 10 congresses, most of these have resulted in a disproportionate majority of representatives being elected by a minority of voters [7], it is no wonder that the Electoral College and Gerrymandering have resulted in increased political polarization and divisiveness within the political dialogue of the country.

The case of Andrew Johnson’s impeachment shows that the healing was not only in the exorcising of the demons which he manifested in speech, laws and policy to perpetuate the hateful rhetoric of slavery and racism. The other Constitutional remedy, amending, was also necessary. In order to obtain better results from the Grand Experiment, it is time for the political manipulation of “Swing States” and Gerrymandering to be put to an end. 

A Constitution that states in its preamble that we strive for a more Perfect Union is the instrument for such a goal. It is time to recognize our current crisis as a unique "Black Swan Event" bubbling since the 1990's and finally brewed in the negative energy and divisiveness personified by the current president. The nation must take steps to weed out the roots of the corrosive divide that ails it before it is too late and falls deeper into the populist trap leading to its destruction. As was the case with the "Reconstruction Amendments" true representation must be clarified and cemented into the nation's charter to rectify and set a new course. We must go beyond the juncture of a single bad administration or politician and amend, transform and strengthen the rare and fragile nature of our democracy.

[CJR Note: for those observant ones, the four period ellipsis in the title is intentional]

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[1] The Tenure of Office Act, a law restricting the firing of certain high level executive branch officers without consent by the Senate was repealed in 1887. In 1926 the Supreme Court referenced that law in another case, stating that it was probably invalid. This Act, if it had been challenged in court, most likely would have been struck down as unconstitutional, as it interfered with the separation of powers. It is possible that some of the Senators voting for the acquittal of Johnson took the long view on this, considered impeachment over a possibly unconstitutional law dangerous and voted against the party line because of that.

[2] During President Johnson's trial, the charges defined “An impeachable high crime or misdemeanor is one in its nature or consequences subversive of some fundamental or essential principle of government or highly prejudicial to the public interest, and this may consist of a violation of the Constitution, of law, of an official oath, or of duty, by an act committed or omitted, or, without violating a positive law, by the abuse of discretionary powers from improper motives or for an improper purpose.” 

[3] The estimated number of casualties of the Civil War is approx. 655,000, or 2.1% of the population at the time. By contrast, the total American casualties in WWII, the deadliest war in the history of mankind, was around 405,000, or 0.38% of the population.

[4] The language of the Scott v Sanford decision ruled that black people "are not included, and were not intended to be included under the word 'citizens' in the Constitution, and [blacks] can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States."

[5] It may be remembered by some that, as part of the 2016 campaign, the threat (and "trauma") of impeachment was levied against candidate Hillary Clinton. It was said that congressional Republicans were ready to draw articles of impeachment against her on the grounds of "her emails" if she was elected and introduce them right after she was sworn in.

[6] Conducting secret foreign (or even domestic) policy to advance personal interests can lead to potential leverage (blackmail) by foreign nations, leaders or businesses who may then threaten to expose such illegal actions. It is very likely, for example, that Russian intelligence officials knew the contents of the July 25^th phone call to Ukraine before the American public did.

[7] On average, Democrats to achieve House majorities have needed 53% of the vote, resulting in a 55% majority of Representatives three out of ten times, while Republicans only needed 49.5% of the vote to obtain a 54% majority of Representatives seven out of the same ten times.

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Populism, or the Collective Blindness that Leads Nations to the Abyss.

This is an English language version of an essay previously published in Spanish.
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Abdicating Governance: The Failure of Institutions

Winston Churchill’s description of democracy as the worst of all systems of government except for all the others is famous. Democracy, it has been argued, carries within itself the seeds of its eventual destruction by allowing within it by definition voices and factions that oppose it. In democracy it happens that the universal right to vote is considered the desideratum-and yes it is; but, doubtless, universal suffrage is occasionally captured by leaders who hear voices from a dissatisfied populace within the system. Voices echoed by those who will use the liberties of the democratic system to exploit emotions arising from heterogeneous, and sometimes contradictory, dissatisfactions and coalesce a political movement against the cold pragmatic reasoning offered by traditional leaders. A popular movement with the intention of rewriting existing political and social institutions outside the trite formulas and solutions spread by the elite and the intelligentsia of the status quo. A movement that is usually described as populism.

The average citizen has many things top of mind: family, job, garden... The common citizen has many occupations and prefers to devote more time to them than to government. The ordinary citizen wants to have the confidence and satisfaction that his or her government is led by capable people who protect the common interest to the best possible extent. Those are the terms of the political contract that the citizen, the people demand from their government and institutions. When public officials break that contract, that confidence, dissatisfaction arises and the populist seed is sown.

As a further condition, populism flourishes not only when dissatisfaction is widespread, but when existing-political, economic, social and the media institutions ignore this dissatisfaction or do not offer a clear message about how to respond to it—that is, fail in their role. Symptoms of institutional failure include:

• Media with credibility gaps,
• Partisan and ideological polarization driven by self-interest or perceived as such and,
• Low voter engagement with an institutional discourse seen as sterile and irrelevant.

Under these conditions a growing group of people becomes a diminishing group of voters so, and as a result of such low participation, traditional representatives are perceived with scant legitimacy. “Don’t blame me, I didn’t vote for…” is the bumper sticker capturing that sense of illegitimacy.

The citizen body has many needs and demands. When political representatives address these needs before letting them escalate into a general grievance, democracy works. By ignoring these needs and allowing them to become widespread anger against what is then perceived as a detached elite, fertile ground for a populist movement is created.

It is at that moment that the disenchanted, cynical, disenfranchised, marginalized, poor—the forgotten—are easily seduced by a snake charmer who gets from the fervor awakened in the popular mind an adrenaline rush feeding his/her own narcissism while inflaming the masses. The populist dynamic thus enters into a cycle of increasingly toxic feedback between the leader and the mass—as in any overdose of any drug.

Deceit: The Anti-democratic Nature of Populism 

The populist discourse is sectarian by nature. The populist seeks to establish a simple reason why people are dissatisfied with their status and targets the blame on an easily identifiable group and the institutions, politicians and intellectuals affiliated to that group. Common base emotions exploited in sectarian speech are resentment, envy, xenophobia, racism and revenge.

For these reasons (sectarian, anti-institutional and emotional discourse) populism is one of those bad words in politics that few allow as a valid alternative. Recent political movements such as Podemos, in Spain or Kirchnerismo in Argentina, have sought to redefine the term positively, repackaged as "popular democracy." However, as with every populist, they label themselves anti-institutional or protectors of the oppressed. That so called Popular, Participatory or Democracy for the Masses preaches a sectarian credo without respecting the rights or even the legitimate participation of opposition minorities [i]. Also it begets concentration of power, destroying or nullifying institutional checks and balances and separation of powers. It is the tyranny of the majority in full-fledged form.

Populism’s true nature, sometimes in the past and certainly nowadays, hides within the very rules of the democratic game. But make no mistake, populism is fundamentally undemocratic despite looking as if it seeks to legitimize its power from the people, as the name suggests. Even when populist leaders fail to reach power they will change the political dialogue, planting in their followers deep skepticism about the validity of the institutions; and when democrats use populism’s seductive tools to gain power, they equally undermine democratic institutions by the skepticism sown (drunk uncle's "inconvenient truths" -mercantilism, favoritism and corruption- suggested by B. Arditi, as cited by Frei and Rovira, 2008).

Democracy can only be sustained when people trust their institutions. When trust declines a leader can take advantage of that lack of trust by calling the institutional system incompetent, corrupt or rigged. The expectations created by the leader’s promises feed a craving for radical change and breeds hope in the movement’s followers. When achieving power by institutional means, i.e. popular vote, the only way for the leader to fulfill the promised change is by eventually destroying the institutional system that brought him or her to power; otherwise followers in the future will seek a more radical populist. When the populist leader achieves power through non-institutional means, ferocious purges are unleashed against the institutional representatives of the previous system. Undoubtedly the populist and authoritarian go hand in hand. Unbridled populism always and eventually will become totalitarianism.

Institutionalists left behind by the wave leading the populists to power in the best of cases retire, and in the worst end up in exile, prison or executed. Survivors write and ponder from their political paleolithic cave, sometimes not even realizing how they failed the constituents and institutions or media they led.

Thomas Jefferson argued that institutions should be renewed radically every so often—periodic elections originate from that reasoning. Institutional stagnation undoubtedly can decelerate, prevent or reverse the political, and therefore economic, development of nations. For industrial cycles in business theory Schumpeter referred to a similar concept calling it Creative Destruction, caused by technological development and its consequent effect on both production and distribution systems as well as lifestyle preferences. Populism is inserted into the political world as an alarm, like the canary in the mine, indicating the need for a fresh renewal in a nation’s institutions as social needs evolve—or else be forced to face a destructive transformation.

When populism appears democrats need to read the signs and take a stance against it, even if it seems contradictory that a democrat is apparently against popular will. The leader in a liberal democracy must recognize the grievances behind the populist movement and rectify the institutional elites' rule. A populist leader is not fooling people, he is channeling dissatisfaction, collecting and making a powerful emotional echo that appropriates the voice of those alienated by socially bankrupt institutions. [ii] True democrats need to expand horizons outside their political bubble and recognize that the alienation the populist harvests exists. True democrats have to address and rectify the social and economic conditions that cause dissatisfaction, because allowing populism to take over political and media institutions causes serious damage to democracy. And democracy must be protected even though it is the worst system of government, except for all the rest.

Populism has its role in democracy, that of the canary. It is attractive and sings a song, but is toxic and dangerous, as botox can be. The utopian idealism offered by populism is seductive when it groups heterogeneous complaints under the large cover of general dissatisfaction and promises to satisfy these complaints with simple symbols and slogans instead of specific and complex proposals. Liberal Democracy is in danger under those conditions but must hold its political ground to balance the attacks of populists with the need for social redress. 

The fundamental promises of Liberal Democracy are: defending the dignity of the individual, equal protection under the law, ensuring equal opportunity, and protecting private property. Those also are seductive promises. Those are the conditions under which individuals can take charge of their life freely in their pursuit of happiness and thrive, a pursuit that brings benefits to the collective of society—as postulated by Adam Smith almost 250 years ago and proven in practice.

It is only under a system of Liberal Democracy that nations have been able to improve the economic and social condition of their population. There are flaws of course but, we must reiterate, it is only in an alternating democratic system committed to solving these flaws that they can be rectified, as history has demonstrated. Human, civil and social rights have flourished and developed under democratic governments with constructive dialogue. Herein lies the largest and most damaging failure of populism: its purposeful ignorance of history. And that ignorance has led prosperous societies to the abyss of economic suffering, social disintegration and destruction of civic values under regimes using the state’s monopoly of legal (and para-legal) violence to remain in power.

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NOTES

[i] Qualifying democracy with adjectives is an unfortunate necessity to distinguish ideological systems. Just as "populism" often has implicit negative connotations in its terminology, "democracy" is considered a positive descriptor for any system of government, as was the case for the German Democratic Republic (DDR – East Germany, a fiercely totalitarian regime) or is that of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea). Because the usage of the word democracy has been distorted so much it needs the qualifying adjective “liberal” to describe a government system based on free periodic elections, rule of law, and free market principles.

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[ii] Regarding the link emotion / reason Frey and Rovira (2008) make this interesting observation: "The fact that the establishment of populism is based more on passion than reason points out one of its greatest political weaknesses: the problem of duration. Rational criteria are much easier to stabilize than emotional factors. Thus, the permanence of a populist movement depends on its continued ability to activate and sustain collective passion. To do this it exploits emotional attention niches, such as speech and images arousing emotions like anger, fear and hatred that keep alive the distinction between friend and foe in society. "

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REFERENCES

Whatdo we mean when we speak of Populism?; Ezequiel Adamovsky. AMPHIBIOUS, National University of San Martin, Buenos Aires Argentina - Accessed August 11, 2016

Populismas Political Experiment: History and Political Theory of Ambivalence; Frei, Raymundo and Rovira Kaltwasser, Cristóbal. Journal of Sociology 22, 2008; Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Chile - Accessed August 11, 2016

Populismwith a Brain; Lynn, Barry C. and Longman, Phillip. Washington Monthly, June / July / August 2016 - Accessed August 11, 2016

It'snot just Trump. Authoritarian populism is rising across the West. Here's why; Norris, Pippa. The Washington Post, March November 2016 - Accessed August 14, 2015

Sorry,Obama: Donald Trump Is a Populist, and You're Not; Chait, Jonathan. New York Magazine June 30, 2016 - Accessed August 14, 2016

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