Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. (The physician, not the jurist) wrote “The Autocrat at the Breakfast Table.” It’s available at Guttenberg.com, or you can buy a first edition for $50 + $8 shipping). The book was actually a collection of essays that Dr. Holmes had written for The Atlantic, and doesn’t say a word about egg McMuffins, which raises the question of what Dr. Holmes had for breakfast. Our aspiring autocrat usually skipped breakfast, but when he did eat breakfast, he seemed to favor bacon and eggs.
If Donald John Trump had been reelected, he very well might have established himself as an autocrat, with Don Jr. as his designated successor. His failure to win reelection may have been the result of COVID-19 – simply because of his abysmal mismanagement of the pandemic. Instead of declaring it a national emergency, mandating mask wearing and social distancing, he tried to minimize the impact of the virus, and denying all responsibility. It was an exercise in hand washing of near biblical proportions.
Following the attacks on the World Trade Center, President George W. Bush’s approval rating went to 90%, the highest approval rating ever recorded. In contrast, when he landed on the deck the the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln, with the banner “Mission Accomplished,” his approval rating had dropped into the 60s, and continued its downward slide. Rahm Emanual, President Obama’s first chief of staff, said “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things that you think you could not do before.” But, when President Trump was asked about the failure of America’s testing program for COVID-19, he said “I don’t take responsibility at all.”
Will Wilkinson, a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, penned a column headed “To the dismay of Democrats, the president’s strategy of ignoring the pandemic mostly worked for Republicans.” There may be some truth to that – the Democrats lost seats in the House, and did poorly on many down-ticket races, but President Trump himself, with his notorious need for approval, lost the election. Perhaps his surrounding himself with sycophants who would only say what he wanted to hear, contributed to a sincere, if misguided belief that he won, except for the allegation that the election was rigged.
Another obvious fact is that President Trump never really tried to expand his base. Mr. Wilkinson wrote “Mr. Trump has a knack for leveraging the animosities of polarized partisanship to cleave his supporters from sources of credible information and inflame them with vilifying lies.” When the economy began recovering from the Great Recession of 2008, it recovered unevenly, and the first and greatest gains went to the so-called Costal Elite. In the same way, when the pandemic came to the United States, it first affected the densely populated Bos-NY-Wash corridor and California. The red states, which had been ignored by the economic recovery, did not become red zones until closer to the election. While Fox and OAN reported on the disastrous conditions in New York, the Trump supporters could see that, while Democrats were telling them to wear masks and shelter in place, their President was telling them it was safe to go out to bars, football games, work and schools. Politics, in general, favors messages of optimism, which is why Ronald Reagan’s Morning in America and Donald Trump’s MAGA have been effective.
The incoming administration faces a number of challenges. Perhaps coping with COVID-19 is the first priority, but undoing the polarization that led to Donald Trump’s election of 2016 will rank as a priority alongside regaining the trust of the European Union, rejoining the Paris Accord, and finding homes for the children who were separated from their parents at the southern border.
Lincoln said “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” The rest of the speech, delivered at the Illinois Republican State Convention, June 16, 1858, deals explicitly with slavery – but we are dealing with a problem of divisiveness today, and perhaps one of the first steps should be to show the Trump followers that they have not been forgotten. It will be difficult, but it’s a necessary step to avoiding descent into autocracy. We barely escaped this year. We may not be so lucky next time.
Sam Uretsky is a writer and pharmacist living in Louisville, Ky. Email sdu01@outlook.com.
From The Progressive Populist, January 1-15, 2021
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