Abstract
Donald Trump’s candidacy was the most, though by no means the only, inflammatory aspect of the 2016 presidential campaign. Relying on Aristotle’s Politics, this chapter seeks both to understand and to offer a constructive response to the upheaval of this most extraordinary election. Aristotle’s account of demagogy sheds light not only on much of Trump’s conduct, but also on that of the other leading candidates as well. Aristotle, however, offers not only a path to understanding the demagogic presidential politics of 2016, but also a possible remedy, so that it does not recur in the future. According to Aristotle, a republican regime such as America’s can diminish the chances that demagogy will emerge by limiting the power of public offices, by emphasizing the importance of the rule of law, and by strengthening the middle class, whose characteristic virtue—moderation—brings a welcome stability and decency to republican politics.
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Notes
- 1.
Megan Garber, The Atlantic, December 10, 2015, cites several uses of this descriptor for Trump at an early stage in the nominating process at http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2015/12/what-we-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-demagogues/419514. Her explanation of Aristotle’s view of demagogy is superficial at best.
- 2.
Politics V.6.1305b23–25, 29–34; 10.1310b12–31. All references to the Politics use Aristotle’s Politics, trans. Carnes Lord, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013).
- 3.
“The hardworking people [Hillary Clinton] calls deplorable are the most admirable people I know: they are cops and soldiers, teachers and firefighters, young and old, moms and dads, blacks , whites and Latinos—but above everything else, they are all American. They love their families, they love their country, and they want a better future.
These are the forgotten men and women of America. People who work hard but don’t have a voice.
I am running to be their voice, and to fight to bring prosperity to every part of this country.” Donald Trump, Speech on the American Economic Plan, September 15, 2016 as quoted by Tessa Berenson, Time, September 15, 2016 at http://time.com/4495507/donald-trump-economy-speech-transcript.
- 4.
“‘I’ll take jobs back from China,’ he went on. ‘I’ll take jobs back from Japan. Hispanics are going to get those jobs, and they’re going to love Trump, and they already do.’ … ‘I think I’ll win the Hispanic vote,’ he concluded, insisting that the Hispanic community was not insulted by his comments.” Heather Saul, The Independent, July 24, 2015 at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/donald-trump-declares-the-hispanics-love-me-they-were-chanting-for-me-after-being-met-by-protesters-10412777.html.
- 5.
“On Fox News’ MediaBuzz today, Howard Kurtz asked Trump about appealing to minorities. Trump said he’ll do great with African -Americans, Hispanics, and Asians. ‘The African -Americans love me,’ he said, ‘because they know I’m gonna bring back jobs.’ And then Trump claimed, ‘They’re gonna like me better than they like Obama . The truth is Obama has done nothing for them.’” Josh Feldman, Mediaite, January 24, 2016 at http://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-black-people-will-like-me-more-than-they-like-obama.
- 6.
“Donald Trump told a divided Republican Party on Thursday he will be the ‘voice’ for frustrated Americans who have been let down by government and the ‘elites’ who run it. ‘Nobody knows the system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it,’ Trump told a fired-up crowd of backers…” David Jackson, USA Today, July 22, 2016 at http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2016/07/21/donald-trump-republican-convention-acceptance-speech/87385658.
- 7.
Trump argued that the United States is in decline under the Obama administration, citing a litany of grim statistics about crime and violence, terrorism and national security, and the rising number of Americans who have stopped looking for work.
Election opponent Hillary Clinton and other Democrats are to blame for many of the nation’s ills, Trump said, and ‘the problems we face now—poverty and violence at home, war and destruction abroad—will last only as long as we continue relying on the same politicians who created them in the first place.’ …Citing the recent spate of police killings and terrorism, the businessman who has never held public office promised that ‘the crime and violence that today afflicts our nation will soon, and I mean very soon, come to an end.’” Ibid.
- 8.
Politics IV.4.1292a26–28, emphasis added. Compare Woodrow Wilson’s view of presidential rhetoric as taking the incoherent desires of the people, formulating them into policy programs that they can understand and then teaching them that that is what they wanted all along. (Woodrow Wilson, “Cabinet Government in the United States,” International Review VII (August 1879)) And of course, there is Teddy Roosevelt’s president as “steward of the people” using a “bully pulpit.”
- 9.
Although the FBI did not find evidence that Clinton or her colleagues intended to violate laws, Comey chastised Clinton’s actions as “extremely careless.” “There is evidence that they were extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.” Meghan Keneally, ABC News, July 5, 2016 at http://abc30.com/news/fbi-recommends-no-charges-be-filed-against-clinton/1414041.
“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information, our judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.” James Comey, July 5, 2016, FBI National Press Office Release at https://www.fbi.gov/news/pressrel/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system.
See also Rep. Gowdy’s questioning of Comey in the House Oversight Committee: Steve Guest, The Daily Caller, July 7, 2016, at http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/07/comey-confirms-hillary-clinton-lied-to-the-public-about-her-emails-video/#ixzz4OlvsZcmO.
- 10.
See Politics V. 5, in which Aristotle argues that the most common cause of the downfall of democracies into factional conflict is demagogy, such as the tactic of stirring up enmity between the rich and the poor. A similar tactic in twenty-first century democracy is called identity politics and may involve dividing the populace along other lines, such as “race,” ethnicity, or sexual identity, though wealth/privilege and its lack always lurk beneath the surface. When the political landscape is divided into equally powerful warring factions with “nothing or very little in the middle,” the regime is about to “change,” i.e., undergo a revolution (PoliticsV.4.1304a40–b4). Compare Federalist 10: “The smaller the society, the fewer probably will be the distinct parties and interests composing it; the fewer the distinct parties and interests, the more frequently will a majority be found of the same party and the smaller the number of individuals composing a majority, and the smaller the compass within which they are placed, the more easily will they concert and execute their plans of oppression.” (Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison, The Federalist , ed. Robert Scigliano (New York: Modern Library, 2000)), 10.60.
- 11.
- 12.
Trump revealed his own character, especially during the primaries, when he seemed to believe that everyone who criticized him was a would-be competing demagogue appealing to the many by trying to bring Trump down, thus his/her unflattering opinion of Trump must be thrust beyond the pale of acceptable opinion, rather than answered with a reasoned argument. Again, Trump is hardly alone in this tactic but his sensitivity to any negative evaluation, his tendency to chase and maul every potential slight, places the inverse-flattery element of his campaign in high relief.
The impact of Twitter and other “social” (really asocial, if not anti-social) media on this election has been noted. (http://www.cio.com/article/3137513/social-networking/twitters-impact-on-2016-presidential-election-is-unmistakable.html; http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/11/election-bots/506072; http://www.govtech.com/social/2016-Presidential-Election-Circus-Is-Social-Media-the-Cause.html, among lots of others.) More interesting would be an exploration of the political atmosphere in which citizens/voters and candidates find 140 characters sufficient to change someone’s mind. And if changing minds is not the goal, as it probably is not, but rather to signal one’s virtue and the other’s disgrace, Aristotle might suggest that an examination of the seriousness of our ethics is in order.
Moreover, the rhetorical strategy of stirring up anger against the opposition may be effective in some cases (Aristotle, The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle, W. Rhys Roberts, trans., Edward P. J. Corbett, ed. (New York: Modern Library, 1954, II.2.1378a32–36, b14–16, 23–32, 38–79b3, 27–30; 1416a3–7)), but it potentially creates a counter-productive backlash: Trump’s emphasis on examples of law-breaking by illegal immigrants was countered by shouts of racism and xenophobia that successfully consolidated a large opposition coalition; Clinton’s dismissal of a significant segment of the populace as deplorable racists and homophobes stirred up the ire of “undecided” voters and those Trump supporters who were neither. By the way, Aristotle explains the magnitude of the anger felt and expressed by Clinton supporters after Trump’s election at 1379a22–24: “We are angered if we happen to be expecting a contrary result: for a quite unexpected evil is especially painful…”
- 13.
Clinton publicly criticized the super-rich and privately salved their fears, likely in order to avoid the revolt of the oligarchs that Aristotle predicts. https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927.
- 14.
Politics V.9.1309b35–10a7, emphasis added. In his inaugural address, Trump spoke of his task as governing for the sake of all Americans, regardless of party . Jefferson did so as well, after a very “divisive” campaign. If it is a banality of American inaugurations, it may rest upon the truth Aristotle insists upon: that a political regime cannot survive if those wishing it to continue do not vastly outnumber those who wish the opposite (Politics IV.12).
- 15.
“During Thursday night’s debate on Fox News, Trump reaffirmed his willingness to target the families of terrorists and supported the use of waterboarding, implying a willingness to use torture. ‘We should go for waterboarding and we should go tougher than waterboarding,’ he said.
“But in a statement Friday, Trump said that he understands ‘that the United States is bound by laws and treaties’ and that he would ‘not order our military or other officials to violate those laws and will seek their advice on such matters.’ He added, ‘I will not order a military officer to disobey the law. It is clear that as president I will be bound by laws just like all Americans and I will meet those responsibilities.’” Ryan Browne and Nicole Gaouette, CNN Politics, March 4, 2016 at http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/04/politics/donald-trump-reverses-on-torture.
The later statement obviously was made after various military leaders expressed shock and his advisors alerted him to the incendiary rhetoric he had been using. The electorate was left free to decide which sentiments would guide Trump once he became Commander in Chief.
“Donald Trump’s latest threat against the media came Friday at a rally in Texas. Once elected president, Trump promised, he will ‘open up’ federal libel laws to make it easier to sue news outlets like The Washington Post and New York Times…” reports Callum Borchers, February 26, 2016, in The Washington Post at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/02/26/donald-trump-vows-to-open-up-libel-laws-to-make-suing-the-media-easier-heres-how-he-could-do-it. Borchers reassures his fellow “horrified” journalists that Trump can’t change the libel laws on his own, unless, of course, he can get the Supreme Court to overturn Times v. Sullivan. Again the electorate was left to wonder what a President Trump would do to politicize the judiciary further during his term. That the Court is seen as the next best thing to Congress for changing the law is yet another sign of the trend away from a law-governed republic.
- 16.
As Publius distinguishes them in Federalist 10 (Hamilton et al. [2000], 10.58–9).
- 17.
Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 28 Oct. 1813 (http://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/03-06-02-0446). He goes on: “it would have been inconsistent in creation to have formed man for the social state, and not to have provided virtue and wisdom enough to manage the concerns of the society. May we not even say that that form of government is the best which provides the most effectually for a pure selection of these natural aristoi into the offices of government?” And would we be equally justified in suggesting that the deplorable rubbish be content to be despised by the geniusses? Jefferson’s education plan proposes to make those who are not up to a university education but who performed tolerably well through the secondary levels of schooling the schoolmasters of the next generation. The system both promotes the most talented and virtuous and inculcates respect for them among those who do not advance, because it teaches virtue and hones talent and then selects the more virtuous and talented for more teaching and honing. It seems unlikely that such a system would inculcate respect in the natural aristoi for those left behind, despite the equality of their rights and their voting power.
- 18.
Counting all citizens over 35 not incarcerated and not on active military duty. I did not ask to examine the length of residence in the U.S. nor the “naturalness” of the citizenship, which would reduce this number somewhat. I thank Edward A. Rubin for this calculation.
- 19.
Closer to Jefferson’s lifetime, Andrew Jackson used his presidency to advance a similar backlash—one that birthed the spoils system of filling executive branch offices with party loyalists rather than administrators chosen for their competence and virtue: “There are, perhaps, few men who can for any great length of time enjoy office and power without being more or less under the influence of feelings unfavorable to the faithful discharge of their public duties. Their integrity may be proof against improper considerations immediately addressed to themselves, but they are apt to acquire a habit of looking with indifference upon the public interests and of tolerating conduct from which an unpracticed man would revolt.” Andrew Jackson: “First Annual Message,” December 8, 1829. Online by Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, The American Presidency Project. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=29471.
- 20.
Nicomachean Ethics VII.1–10. The truly moderate person does not even feel a desire to indulge to excess, while the middle-class citizen is temperate and frugal out of a habit instilled by a middling income and a need to support himself and his family.
- 21.
Others of the founding generation argued for more emphasis on training the youth in trades and professions, both to make them productive members of society and to foster virtues such as frugality, self -reliance, and self -control. See, for instance, Robert Coram’s and Noah Webster’s educational schemes.
- 22.
Jefferson , following Aristotle and many others, assumes the good life has a strong moral component. His natural aristocrats are supposed to be those “endowed with genius and virtue” and they are promoted in his proposed publicly-funded schools on the basis of both qualities.
- 23.
Benjamin Franklin’s “Information to Those Who Would Remove to America,” 1782, though playfully written, makes interesting connections between middle-class income and politically salutary virtues:
The almost general Mediocrity of Fortune that prevails in America obliging its People to follow some Business for subsistence, those Vices, that arise usually from Idleness, are in a great measure prevented. Industry and constant Employment are great preservatives of the Morals and Virtue of a Nation. Hence bad Examples to Youth are more rare in America, which must be a comfortable Consideration to Parents. To this may be truly added, that serious Religion, under its various Denominations, is not only tolerated, but respected and practised. Atheism is unknown there; Infidelity rare and secret; so that persons may live to a great Age in that Country, without having their Piety shocked by meeting with either an Atheist or an Infidel. And the Divine Being seems to have manifested his Approbation of the mutual Forbearance and Kindness with which the different Sects treat each other, by the remarkable Prosperity with which He has been pleased to favour the whole Country. (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch15s27.html)
Cf. Melancton Smith’s socio-economic analysis of middle-class virtue at the New York Ratifying Convention, 1788, in the midst of his Anti-Federalist argument that the House needs to be larger so that it cannot be filled exclusively with lawyers and wealthy men:
Those in middling circumstances, have less temptation—they are inclined by habit and the company with whom they associate, to set bounds to their passions and appetites—if this is not sufficient, the want of means to gratify them will be a restraint—they are obliged to employ their time in their respective callings—hence the substantial yeomanry of the country are more temperate, of better morals and less ambition than the great. The latter do not feel for the poor and middling class; the reasons are obvious—they are not obliged to use the pains and labour to procure property as the other.—They feel not the inconveniences arising from the payment of small sums. The great consider themselves above the common people—entitled to more respect—do not associate with them—they fancy themselves to have a right of pre-eminence in every thing. (http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/v1ch13s37.html)
- 24.
Also strongly suggested in Politics II.6, 8–10, through the critiques of Plato’s Laws, Sparta, Crete, and Carthage.
- 25.
In addition to Franklin’s (rather ironic) and Smith’s (likely more sincere) encomia to the middling state, a wide array of famous and not so famous writers at the time of the founding praised the virtues practiced by the neither rich nor poor: John Adams, Charles Pinckney, John Dickinson, James Wilson, Noah Webster, Jeremiah Atwater, and Robert Coram, to name a few .
- 26.
Consider Yuval Levin’s wise analysis of contemporary American culture in The Fractured Republic (New York: Basic Books, 2016), especially pp. 39, 55, and 73. My argument might diverge from his on this point, introducing his analysis of the need for upward mobility for the poor: “Wealth is not a social problem, but poverty is” (124). The poor must indeed to be able to rise into the middle class, but the middle class should not be primarily in the business of trying to rise out of the middle class, but rather of reaping the rewards of self-reliance and self-restraint. Money is not the root of all evil, but the love of it just might be.
- 27.
The Huffington Post (November 2, 2016) collects various current opinions on the “value of a higher education,” all of which analyze its financial benefits at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/value-of-college-education. See also Jennifer Barrett, CNBC, June 19, 2015, at http://www.cnbc.com/2015/06/19/is-a-college-degree-overvalued.html. Even a site called “Education Corner,” when adding “other benefits” to the financial ones, produces a list that boils down to social prestige and a higher standard of living: http://www.educationcorner.com/value-of-a-college-degree.html. Contrast this view with that of Benjamin Rush, Noah Webster, and the “Foreign Spectator,” Nicholas Collin, at the time of the founding. For further development of arguments showing the parallels between Aristotle and the founders on the middle class and its virtues, see my America, Aristotle, and the Politics of a Middle Class (Waco, Texas: Baylor University Press, 2018).
- 28.
An interesting further development in this election: This reduction of the value of education to its monetary benefits results also in the notion expounded by Trump’s competitors that the less fortunate can “get a foothold” in the middle class and, by extension, become able to climb higher on the economic ladder if the government makes a college education free for all without regard, as Jefferson once insisted, to talents or virtue.
References
Aristotle. The Rhetoric and the Poetics of Aristotle. Trans. W. Rhys Roberts, ed. Edward P.J. Corbett. New York: Modern Library, 1954.
———. Aristotle’s Politics. Trans. Carnes Lord, 2nd ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2013.
Hamilton, Alexander, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist, ed. Robert Scigliano. New York: Modern Library, 2000.
Kurland, Philip B., and Ralph Lerner. The Founders’ Constitution, 2000. http://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/. Accessed 30 November 2017.
Levin, Yuval. The Fractured Republic. New York: Basic Books, 2016.
Rubin, Leslie G. America, Aristotle, and the Politics of a Middle Class. Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2018.
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Rubin, L.G. (2018). Demagogy and the Decline of Middle-Class Republicanism: Aristotle on the Trump Phenomenon. In: Jaramillo Torres, A., Sable, M. (eds) Trump and Political Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74445-2_4
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