How Populism Stumbles

[DemocratSinceBirth]

Populisms vary, but their genesis is generally the same. Some set of ideas commands public support but lacks purchase in elite policy debates. Then a combination of elite failure and popular pressure makes that tension ripe for exploitation, and some new figure or movement emerges, promising to follow the will of the people and override the ruling class.

Donald Trump is obviously such a figure, and his freeze on refugee admissions to the United States is one of those ideas. Just as most Americans favor lower immigration levels than the bipartisan immigration deals hatched in Washington envision, many Americans are doubtful about admitting large numbers of refugees from terrorism-scarred countries. Trump’s primary-season proposal to temporarily bar all Muslims from entering the United States had only minority support. But when he shifted to advocating a refugee freeze and country-by-country restrictions, he was on more solid populist ground.

So it’s not surprising that he’s attempting to keep this promise. It’s also not surprising that it’s been a mess.

...



The great fear among Trump-fearers is that he will deal with this elite opposition by effectively crushing it — purging the deep state, taming the media, remaking the judiciary as his pawn, and routing or co-opting the Democrats. This is the scenario where a surging populism, its progress balked through normal channels, turns authoritarian and dictatorial, ending in the sort of American Putinism that David Frum describes darkly in the latest issue of The Atlantic.


But nothing about Trumpian populism to date suggests that it has either the political skill or the popularity required to grind its opposition down. In which case, instead of Putin, the more relevant case study might be former President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood leader whose brief tenure was defined both by chronic self-sabotage and by the active resistance of the Egyptian bureaucracy and intelligentsia, which rendered governance effectively impossible.

The Egyptian deep state’s sabotage of Morsi culminated in a coup. This is not my prediction for the Trump era. But what we’ve watched unfold with refugee policy suggests that chaos and incompetence are much more likely to define this administration than any kind of ruthless strength.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/01/opinion/how-populism-stumbles.html

[DetlefK]

1. Morsi? They write an article in defense of the f**king theocratic authoritarian MORSI???

Is it too much asked to remember how the Muslim Brotherhood behaved after winning the majority in the election?
How they interpreted this as a mandate to rule totalitarian over Egypt because that's what election-winners do?
How they ran roughshod over Egypt's secular laws and traditions?
How they alienated their domestic political allies?
How their outrageous behavior lead to YET ANOTHER wave of anti-government protests?

Does anyone actually think that the egyptian military would have dared a coup if the Muslim Brotherhood had ruled in a moderate and open-minded fashion and untited the country?

[randome]

2. It's hardly in defense of him. You might need to read the article more carefully.

The gist of it is that Trump and his minions are every bit as incompetent as Morsi was.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]"The whole world is a circus if you know how to look at it."
Tony Randall, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao (1964)[/center][/font][hr]

[DemocratSinceBirth]

3. The gist of the article is Drumpf will end up like Morsi.

The image of Drumpf in a cage gives me....