(Bloomberg View) -- I really don't want to write about Donald Trump's rejection of democratic norms all the time. Plenty of people handle that. And yet, it feels wrong to ignore authoritarian statements by the president of the United States. So here we go again.
On Monday, Trump told a rally in Ohio that Democrats were guilty of treason and were un-American because they didn't applaud him during the State of the Union address. Except he sort of didn't; he was joking, in what Jonathan Chait describes as a "Don Rickles-style riff." National Review's Dan McLaughlin has a theory about it:
[Trump is] basically openly mocking the idea that words in politics mean anything at all. Say what you want about calling your opponents traitors and wanting it taken seriously, at least it's an ethos. But then, that's the subversive, somewhat cleansing but ultimately corrosive part of Trump's brand of political performance art: he's talking to people who by and large think that politicians never mean anything they say, and he's out there telling them, you're right. We can say anything we want and none of it matters. It's all a racket. Hey, how 'bout you and I call each other traitors and then punch the clock at the end of the day and get a drink together? Maybe our political class really has earned being treated this way, but every time Trump does it, he makes it harder to rebuild the broken norms he inherited and has treated with such contempt.
Trump may well have been in joking, reality-television mode for this and other such episodes. But it's certain that a lot of his fans don't get that. Especially when Republican-aligned media basically repeats his excesses with a straight face. Especially when other Republican politicians chime in. Trump is sort of making a postmodern case (as Kevin Drum puts it) that words don't matter. A lot of the people who chanted "lock her up" didn't look like they were in on the joke. And a lot of people whose bigotry has been unleashed don't appear to be, either. For that matter, while Trump seems to be in this mode at times, he sure seems dead serious at others.
Chait asks whether Trump's style makes his words better or worse. I'll go with at least as bad. Some people, as McLaughlin says, hear him as mocking the whole idea of democratic politics. That's terrible. Others will take him literally. That's terrible, too. And still others will use the humor as a clever defense against the plain meaning of the words, a meaning they yearn to hear (and repeat) but fear they're not allowed. That's probably the worst.
Two more quick points: McLaughlin lists several times that Democrats used over-the-top rhetoric against Republicans. It won't wash. Not that his examples are wrong or irrelevant; without tracking them down, I'll grant him each one and stipulate that there were others. It's true that neither side should use over-the-top rhetoric, and that Democrats are guilty of it. But anyone who watches a few hours of Fox News could compile a list that long every day of the week, and Fox News is hardly the worst example within the Republican mainstream, which has basically embraced almost the entire fringe.
And the other point? McLaughlin is upset with liberals who, he thinks, overreacted to Trump's performance. I'm sure he's correct; lots of people overreact to lots of things. The problem with this is that those who are reacting strongly include plenty of conservatives, such as Bill Kristol and, well, McLaughlin himself. So maybe the undemocratic behavior by the president of the United States and his apologists is more important than correctly calibrating everyone's reactions to it.
1. Rick Hasen on the U.S. Supreme Court's green light to immediate congressional redistricting in Pennsylvania. Don't miss Hasen's important point here: Yes, there's a lot of partisan politics on the court (which is itself nothing new), but it's as much a mistake as ever to say that Supreme Court justices, or lower-court judges, are nothing but partisans in robes. It's also probably true that justices are more driven by (judicial) ideology at least as much as they are influenced by partisanship. None of this is to deny that politics matters in the courts, and partisan politics is a part of that.
2. Jennifer Victor at Mischiefs of Faction on the value of big data in political analysis.
3. Diana B. Greenwald at the Monkey Cage on electricity in Gaza.
4. James Fallows on what Trump represents.
5. The Fix's Philip Bump on what Trump means when he calls something "illegal."
6. Ed Kilgore reads the latest evangelical embrace of Trump.
7. And Bloomberg's Ben Steverman and Patrick Clark on the least surprising development: how rich people are exploiting the new tax law.
Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. Click here to subscribe.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Brooke Sample at bsample1@bloomberg.net.
For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.
©2018 Bloomberg L.P.
Essential Business Intelligence, Sharp Market Insights, Practical Personal Finance Advice, Daily Fuel, Gold and Silver Prices and Latest Stories — On NDTV Profit.
