The Semi-Loyal

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In my book, Madison’s Sorrow: Today’s War on the Founders and America’s Liberal Ideal, I tell the story of the stunning moral collapse of the post-Gingrich Republican Party. If American democracy is replaced by autocracy, a key reason will be the acquiescence and quiescence of the Republican political elite on the Supreme Court and in the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives. The founders constructed the Constitution so that the three branches would have the motivation to defend their power and autonomy. As James Madison wrote in Federalist No. 51, “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” and this has been true across two centuries of American politics. Until now, one party controlling the White House and both houses of Congress was no guarantee that the president’s own party would bow to his wishes. Across the decades, powerful House chairmen and prideful Senate leaders jealously guarded their power, and Supreme Court justices, blessed with lifetime appointments, followed the Constitution and their conscience.

When democracies are healthy, everyone is loyal to the nation’s foundational principles and debate revolves around public policy. But when societies get into trouble, there is a three-way split, especially among the political elite, according to Juan Linz, the world’s leading expert on democratic breakdown when he taught at Yale (I was one of his students.). In his classic, The Breakdown of Democratic Regimes, Linz explains that while many people remain loyal to the system when a society experiences an attack by extremists, two other groups suddenly appear. One is a small, intense minority that wants power and will seize it any way they can. These politicians and their followers are disloyal; breakers out to destroy the system. The second — and the most important actors in this high-stakes drama — are those semi-loyal to the foundational principles of the republic. As elected officials and judges, speaking to the press, holding hearings, issuing rulings, they strive to appear as normal political actors in the traditional two-party system. They insist that they support democracy and the Constitution but, fearing the disloyal extremists and retribution, they constantly compromise their principles and fail to stand up for what is right.

Feeling the power and hearing the threats of the extremist leader, again and again they bow to his demands, excuse his behavior, and keep mum. Observers watch for a bottom; there is none. Major business leaders act the same way. Neither semi-loyal politicians nor business leaders want to become accessories in destroying the rule of law and constitutional democracy. Instead of breakers, they are gamers, constantly checking the political winds and adjusting for short-term political and economic survival. As the gale intensifies, they make an individual calculus to protect themselves and their institutions, believing that keeping their heads down will keep them safe without fully recognizing the collective consequences of making deals with the devil. It is this lack of firm moral conviction, cowardice in the face of power, and passivity that allows a tyrant to take power. If everyone plays it safe, dictatorships rise and democracy dies. As scholars Steven Levitsky, Lucan Way, and Daniel Ziblatt remind us, “No one has ever defeated autocracy from the sidelines.”

Years before Trump descended his golden elevator, leading Republicans were exhibiting semi-loyal fidelity to longstanding democratic norms. The norm busting that Trump exhibits in his pursuit of power was anticipated by Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich as he gleefully torched the norms of congressional civility and bipartisanship during his rise to the speakership in the early 1990s. Later, GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell stonewalled President Barack Obama’s agenda even though Obama was twice elected by broad majorities. In early 2016, McConnell blocked Obama from appointing Appellate Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court after Justice Antonin Scalia’s death. The result was a stolen seat filled by incoming President Trump. To defeat their political enemies, Gingrich and McConnell flagrantly violated what Levitsky and Ziblatt call the”norms of forbearance,” the unwritten rules that allow our Madisonian system to work.

Gradually, episodes of enabling behavior and moral bankruptcy by so-called conservatives became a recurring feature of Washington politics. Over and again, the actions and words of the semi-loyal revealed an attraction to the reactionary agenda, the inability to resist authoritarian power, and a blindness to the possibility of evil in the Oval Office. In a witty, biting journalistic study, Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission, Mark Leibovich lays bare this insidious phenomenon. Among prominent Republicans, Senator Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina), former-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-California), Senator Leader McConnell (R-Kentucky), and Chief Justice John Roberts all have taken repeated actions that undermine the founders’ republic. We are relearning a truism: institutional checks depend on human character.

Two appalling actions by McCarthy and Roberts stand out in particular relief. Together, they led directly to the Trump administration’s current systematic step-by-step destruction of the national government.1 After Jan. 6, House Republican Leader McCarthy publicly said Trump bore responsibility for the attack on the Capitol while privately telling Republicans that the president’s conduct had been “atrocious and totally wrong.” Still, McCarthy believed Republicans needed the support of Trump and the MAGA faithful to win the House of Representatives in 2022 – and for him to secure the speakership. On January 28, 2021, just a week after Trump left Washington a pariah, McCarthy traveled to Mar-a-Lago to meet the ex-president. The infamous photo of the two men smiling at Trump’s Elba signaled that Republicans would stick with Trump no matter an attempted self-coup.

On July 1, 2024, Chief Justice Roberts, writing for the majority in Trump v. United States, said presidents have “absolute immunity” from criminal prosecution for all “official acts.” Suddenly, the terrifying scenario raised in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals oral argument – that a president who “ordered SEAL Team Six to assassinate a political rival” would not be subject to criminal prosecution – was a reality. In a scathing dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, “In every use of official power, the President is now a king above the law … Immune.”

In the Trump era, both the Supreme Court and nearly every elected Republican has capitulated. This is what strongmen do. First, they dominate their political party and take hold of the government, then they attack society. History shows self-styled autocrats will not stop themselves. With six-year terms, U.S. senators are protected from political blowback and primary opponents to a much greater degree than members of the House of Representatives, facing reelection every two years. Sadly, this did not stop GOP Senators from approving unqualified sycophants as Trump’s cabinet and passing as the president’s “big, beautiful bill,” with all its ugly and mean-spirited provisions. In May, Republicans refused to disavow White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller’s statement that Trump administration officials are openly discussing unilaterally suspending habeas corpus – a bedrock Anglo-American legal principle dating from the Magna Carta – without the approval of Congress. On her Substack, Historian Heather Cox Richardson wrote, doing so is “essentially declaring martial law.”

In one sense, the craven, despicable behavior of Republican politicians is to be expected. In electoral politics, as President John Kennedy understood, profiles in courage are the exception. At the same time, self-rule is not an anything-goes- politics. Democracy works best when elected officials possess a sense of civic virtue and understand that sacrifice for the greater good is occasionally required. Historian Gordon S. Wood says members of the founding generation shared a devotion to the public good; they could practice brass knuckle politics, but they also tried to stay true to an honor code. The one political leader who did not share this outlook was Aaron Burr.

When democracy is under assault, each of us, whether a Supreme Court justice, U.S. senator, a Fortune 500 CEO, or an average citizen, is faced with constant choices: do we stand up for democracy and the rule of law … or not? Are we willing to pay a price, either in terms of time and effort or in terms of personal or professional pain and stress, in order to keep freedom alive?

Two democratic traditions gave birth to the American Revolution. The liberalism of John Locke and the English Revolution of 1640-1660 emphasized individual rights, free speech, and consent of the governed. The civic republicanism tradition flowing from the Italian Renaissance and ancient Athens encouraged the development of civic virtue among the citizenry. Unfortunately, virtue inevitably wanes; corruption of the republic sets in when too many citizens become apathetic or withdrawn from active civic engagement in order to pursue business success and enjoy private life. While praising American democracy as it existed in the Jacksonian era, Alexis de Tocqueville was deeply concerned about the future. He feared that selfish individualism and a turn away from public involvement would gradually erode the norms that make democracy healthy and successful.

In 21^st century America, civic republican corruption has progressed to the point where basic civic knowledge is woefully thin. Those who are politically active often know a great deal, but a large swath of the public is disengaged, influenced by disinformation, and politically ignorant. This makes them easy prey for a skilled demagogue making simplistic arguments and fantastic promises.

In 2012, the late Justice David Souter issued a prophetic warning when he said, “An ignorant people can never remain a free people.” Souter argued that the biggest problem confronting American politics and public life was a pervasive civic ignorance of the Constitution and the structure of government. Not understanding how and why power is divided among the three branches is an invitation for a strongman promising that “I will solve your problems, give me total control.”

The scramble for economic success, keeping food on the table and a roof overhead consumes most Americans. People naturally seek to relax with family, friends, and entertainment in their off hours. The relentless nature of capitalism – its demand for constant innovation, never-ending growth, and ever-rising productivity – means the economy, and our participation in it, is much more important to us than the public square or religion. Seeking to explain the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in the early 20^th century, Joseph Schumpeter argued that even highly intelligent businesspeople and lawyers, who were quite sophisticated in their work life, sank to a childlike emotional state when it came to national politics. The concrete reality of modern politics is distant and remote; a sphere of life not nearly as tangible as the daily chase for the deals and dollars that constantly involves us with other human beings. It takes place far away in Washington DC. and political figures speak to us via mobile screens or television displays. As a result, politics is perceived as entertainment and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death remains one of the seminal books of our age.

If Republican politicians have become moral cowards in the MAGA era, then business executives have taken refuge in magical thinking. They supported Donald Trump for president over Kamala Harris in 2024, confident that a Trump 2.0 administration would be much like the first three years of his first term, when he rode the economic recovery engineered by Barack Obama. They disregarded President Trump’s attempted coup on January 6, 2021 and warnings that in his second term the president would be unencumbered by advisers who would curb his worst instincts. They consciously ignored candidate Trump when he viciously attacked immigrants and people of color and spouted incoherent praise for tariffs. They convinced themselves that what Trump was saying was just hyperbole and that he would leave the U.S. justice system intact. Certain that his desire to dominate and punish would only extend to vicious verbal attacks on his political opponents, they could not imagine a national government assaulting CEOs, corporations, major law firms, and universities. Few of us could. Now these attacks are here.

It’s time that the business community and the broad American public take seriously the charge issued by General John Kelly, former White House chief of staff, and General Mark Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs, that Trump often acts, consciously or not, like a fascist. It’s an ugly word, a word with considerable historic baggage, and a word that senior military leaders such as Kelly and Milley would not use unless it spoke to the truth of the matter.

For far too long, business leaders have been telling themselves, “Trump is an outrageous character for sure, but it’s mainly performance. In reality, he’s not that different from Ronald Reagan.” Only when President Trump started a global trade war, setting tariffs on more than 60 nations and asking American business and consumers to eat his tariff tax did Wall Street and corporate CEOs realize that he also was taking a sledgehammer to the economy. Suddenly, major corporations find themselves begging for favorable economic treatment. Trump’s version of crony capitalism has begun. Above all else, the president craves adoration, power … and submission.

This nation’s free enterprise system has been very good to America’s business class. Of that, there can be no denying. Our business leaders have to decide whether the system that made them rich and powerful – and the envy of business men and women around the world – is worth the fight. It’s time for a group of CEOs to take the lead and provide us with a modern example of Patrick Henry and Winston Churchill.

The American business community has the resources and the power to fight back. We need them to stop being semi-loyal gamers. Do they really believe in American constitutional democracy and free market capitalism? Unless they view Xi Jinping’s authoritarian, one-party China as a model for the United States, it is high time for business people with brains and a conscience to start strategizing about how we keep democratic capitalism alive in the United States. The president clearly has another system in mind.

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