We are re-writing the Constitution

Historians may look back and write that this moment in America was a gigantic aberration, when the country lost its way.

Or they will look back and consider us a second "founders generation," like the Americans of 1787-1791. We would be the people who changed the USA from a republic into an empire led by a strongman.

James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and the other authors of the Constitution believed in a democratic government that could avoid tyranny and protect minority rights because it was protected by structure and process. We are in the midst of a constitutional revolution, replacing a constitutional presidency with a personal leader, in the manner of Vladimir Putin today, strongman dictatorships in Latin America or Africa, or the monarchs of prior centuries. We will keep the term "president" and pretend nothing has changed, but we have indeed changed. We have made Trump into a leader exercising personal power as state power.  Trump is the state. L'État, c'est moi, as Louis XIV put it. "He who saves his country violates no law," as Napoleon and Trump said it.

This current founding era started on election night in 2020 and has continued through the Mar-a-Lago exile, through Trump's inauguration, and is in the finishing stages now. Trump sold the idea of a new form of government. Only he can solve America's problems. Trump sold it first to Republican voters by convincing them that his assertion of a stolen 2020 election was more credible and dispositive than was the electoral process, audited and recounted and judged by the courts. That idea spread to Republican officeholders who voted not to count Pennsylvania's electoral votes. He got compliance and support from billionaire oligarchs and business leaders in the run-up to the 2024 election. The revolution operated throughout the Mar-a-Lago exile, with Project 2025 planning to complete the revolution after Trump won a return term. Trump denied their plans were his, but word leaked out. The premise that Trump argued and successfully sold was that America needed a dictator, perhaps for a day, maybe for much longer, because the problems of the country weren't being solved by people using the democratic process.  

The public is experiencing shock and awe at the speed and audacity of Trump's second term of office. Wow! The government can act!  Trump understands optics. Recipients of U.S. foreign aid are far away. He rounded up Venezuelans to send to an El Salvadorian hell-hole, where they are publicly abused. Trump had demonized them as a group, and they are other people. Musk orders arbitrary mass firings of government employees. There were probably some ineffective employees in the group. As long as it is someone else being hurt, Americans are on-balance okay with decisive lawlessness. The low public esteem of Congress makes decisive action by a president seem like a reasonable workaround. Someone has to be in charge.

Trump is effectively eliminating independent sources of potential opposition. Trump intimidated the news media (CBS, Disney, the NYTimes and Washington Post), law firms (Paul, Weiss), businesses (Meta, Amazon), universities (Columbia), and manufacturers (auto tariffs). 

Trump is destroying the procedural safeguards built into the Constitution and the legalistic bureaucracies of government. He suspended enforcement of the Corrupt Foreign Practices Act, he fired inspectors general, he flouts ethics rules against self dealing. He rewards his friends and punishes his enemies. Don't worry about obeying the law. Worry about angering Trump.

What will end this era? Monarchies can be a stable form of government. Oligarchies can be stable as well, although rampant corruption and erosion of the rule of law reduces their effectiveness. In a world where the leader can subject your business to a tariff or block its access to the mail, roads, or the courts, incentives for survival change. Efficiency and profitability become less important. More important is courting favor with the leader and securing a monopoly advantage. 

Strongman government can badly misjudge public sentiment. It can make enemies. At some point, arbitrary government doesn't just affect someone else. It affects you. Trump's strongman rule will end when he does something unpopular. The question is whether, in that moment, the U.S. can re-establish process-oriented constitutional government.

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