Rally Around Me!

You are witnessing what political scientists call a “rally around the flag” effect: Trump’s 60% approval for his “leadership” in addressing the coronavirus pandemic and his 49% overall approval level. This uniting to show solidarity against an obvious common enemy, here COVID-19, has primarily been driven during times of war or attacks against the nation. Absent success attributed to that leadership, that “glow” generally disappears in a couple of months. The pandemic will dissipate, although given the lackadaisical response of particularly smaller, more rural (and politically conservative) states, where most shutdowns are left to individual choice (currently 14 such jurisdictions), we are likely to see a second wave of that virus, albeit at a lesser level than the initial tsunami. China is experiencing that second wave now.

The ultimate aftermath here will show an economy in shambles, particularly among businesses that rely(ied) on gatherings of people (such as movie theaters, restaurants, sports and concert arenas, hotels and resorts, airlines and cruise ships, theme parks, mall-based retail, manufacturing plants where workers are side-by-side, department stores, etc.). New habits will have developed, consumer patterns will have changed (perhaps permanently) and even where there is a desire to go to a mass-person event or venue, it will take time for people to generate confidence to tiptoe back to what they once knew… if they ever reach those numbers again. All those lost earnings will not spring back in an instant, with more than a little added debt at every level.

Lots of businesses will have closed or severely contracted and simply will not come back. Real estate deals/values, particularly for average homebuyers and small businesses, will have contracted, and until the earning power resumes to pay for new major acquisitions – homes, new better rentals, cars, vacations involving significant costs, new clothes (who needed clothes when staying at home?!), etc. – those aspects of the economy will stagger back in recession recovery mode, which will be slower than most people suspect.

How will Democrats hold a nominating convention? Will red states allow votes by mail? How accurate is a census taken during a pandemic? Can an incompetent president find reelection by rallying the nation around himself and dominating the media (to the exclusion of opponents)? Or will his failures be so glaring that he is unelectable? He’s letting states bid against each other and FEMA for medical supplies, jacking up the price of essentials, still is setting unrealistic “reopening” dates, has even shut down new applications under the Affordable Care Act just when people need coverage the most (some states are keeping their healthcare exchanges open for new applicants) and is only beginning to see how devastating this “hoax” virus really is. The only new Democratic heroes – New York’s Andrew Cuomo and California’s Gavin Newsom – have media attention solely because of the COIVD-19 outbreak. Trump is taking credit for just about anything that creates a good sound bite, supported by his cowering press briefing minions.

National emergencies have often given rise to autocratic solutions. In ancient Rome, when a crisis unfolded, one member of the Senate was selected to exercise preemptory powers as a unitary, all-powerful, executive called “Caesar.” While those so selected were supposed to return to their lower function as “Senator” after the crisis, that just did not happen. The Caesars just stayed on until they died (sometimes with a little external help).

But crises are one of the most common forms enabling a transition from democracy (or “old regime rule”) to dictatorship throughout history. Hitler is obvious, but there are plenty of other 20^th and 21^st century examples as well. The reaction to the current pandemic, where uniformity and lockdowns are needed to stem the virus, is certainly no exception. Donald Trump’s “me and only me” approach is actually a lesser example; he’s still in the category of autocrat wannabe. Other democratic leaders have been much more successful in using the COVID-19 outbreak as an excuse to crush democracy and their opposition and install their dictatorship. With the rest of the world distracted with their own issues, rising autocrats are often able to reshape their countries with little or no internal or external resistance.

To Laura King, writing for the April 1^st Los Angeles Times, the global trends are not pretty: “To battle a spreading pandemic, democracies across the globe are turning to tools like emergency proclamations, abrupt lockdowns and enhanced public surveillance. But so are the world’s autocrats — and analysts say the burgeoning outbreak is providing cover for some audacious power grabs… Alarmed critics have given the phenomenon a scathing nickname: ‘coronavirus coup.’

“The latest example is in Hungary, where parliament on Monday granted Prime Minister Viktor Orban sweeping new authority to rule by decree for an unlimited period of time. Orban, already engaged in a systematic campaign to consolidate his powers and stifle political opposition, cited the need for heightened powers as a way to aggressively fight the outbreak.

“‘Especially in weak democracies, this is accelerating trends we were already seeing,’ said Sarah Repucci, who heads the analytics department at Freedom House, a Washington-based watchdog group that for years has documented the worldwide erosion of democracy… Repucci cited Orban as among the autocrats using the virus as an excuse to accelerate their repressive agendas. From Israel to Brazil, from the Philippines to Chile, there are telltale signs of autocratic intent behind executive actions ostensibly spurred by the coronavirus, analysts say. One is when measures giving a leader more authority are open-ended, rather than being linked to an easing of the outbreak.

“Another warning sign, according to analysts, is when newly imposed government measures are specifically engineered to resist oversight by courts or lawmakers, or appear to have little direct connection to actual efforts to halt the spread of infection.

“In Israel, the coronavirus outbreak came amid political deadlock, and at a perilous moment for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is under criminal indictment on charges of bribe-taking, fraud and breach of trust. He denies any wrongdoing...While launching a decisive early campaign to contain the virus’ spread, Netanyahu and his allies put off the scheduled start of his trial by closing the courts, handed the government unprecedented surveillance powers without parliamentary oversight and blocked the convening of the new Knesset, or parliament, in which the political opposition garnered a majority in March elections.

“Then, through canny maneuvering, Netanyahu took advantage of a fractured opposition and managed to get his chief rival, Benny Gantz, to agree to serve under him. The prime minister, the country’s longest-serving leader, said the severity of the crisis demanded unity; Gantz, a former army chief, employed a classic military metaphor to explain his about-face, saying he did not want to be the one who refused to help carry a stretcher off the battlefield.

“‘The word ‘magician’ is too weak to describe this stunning achievement, which isn’t solely a result of his political abilities,’ columnist Yossi Verter wrote in Monday’s [3/30] Haaretz newspaper. The pandemic’s arrival in Israel, Verter wrote, was a matter of ‘inconceivably perfect timing’ for Netanyahu, despite critics’ labeling his machinations a ‘coronavirus coup.’

“Like the virus itself, power grabs can take on the quality of a contagion, especially when established democracies offer little in the way of pushback… ‘It’s a dangerous signal to aspiring autocrats as to what they can get away with during this crisis,’ said R. Daniel Kelemen, a professor of political science and law at Rutgers University, pointing to the muted European Union response to Orban’s moves…

“In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte, notorious for extrajudicial executions at the hands of death squads, has been given broad emergency powers to confront the health crisis, although lawmakers balked at a provision that would have let him take over private businesses. Even so, rights groups were alarmed by the expanded scope of presidential authority.

“There are growing fears that some leaders in Latin America could use coronavirus containment as a pretext to keep a tight lid on dissent. In Chile, President Sebastián Piñera declared a 90-day ‘state of catastrophe,’ which was likely to suppress the last vestiges of massive street protests over economic inequality that ignited there in late 2019.

“In Bolivia, where President Evo Morales was forced to resign and go into exile amid massive anti-government demonstrations last year, presidential elections deemed crucial to restoring stability have been postponed because of COVID-19…

“As late as last week [end of March], Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan was putting an optimistic face on the outbreak’s course… ‘By breaking the speed of the virus’ spread in two to three weeks, we will get through this period with as little damage as possible,’ Erdogan, whose government has been accused of obscuring the scope of infections and where they have taken place, said in a televised address March 25. [Sound familiar?]

“Another leader who considers himself a kindred spirit of Trump’s is encountering political headwinds over an initially dismissive approach to the pandemic. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who at one point referred to COVID-19 as ‘a little flu,’ has repeatedly contradicted the guidelines of his Health Ministry, calling on people to return to work and attend large gatherings.

“But like Trump, his approach has proved polarizing. For weeks, tens of thousands of Brazilians in big cities have leaned out their windows each night, banging pots to protest against the president. Bolsonaro’s supporters, meanwhile, drive through the streets in cars draped in the national flag, honking horns to show their support for the president and their anger at business closures.”

Given the deep levels of polarization here in the US, the unprecedented levels of income inequality, the macro-trends of further empowering the economic elite (from massive tax cuts to disproportionate political influence a la Citizens United vs FEC), to gerrymandering and voting restrictions (such that The Economist now lists the United States officially as a “flawed democracy”) allowing minority rule, make no mistake, the United States has become a “weak democracy,” that is susceptible to autocratic rule. It definitely can happen here.

            I’m Peter Dekom, and the COVID-19 outbreak could have truly been a unifier for all Americans, but Donald Trump has insured it has not and never will bring us all back as the United States of America; maybe someone else can.