Someone needs to lead.

"Presidential power is the power to persuade."
          Presidential scholar Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, 1960

Better a bad leader than no leader.

Trump fills a void.

When I look for the next Democratic leader, I will be looking for someone articulate, charismatic, bold, decisive, and willing to confront and disagree with people in his or her own party. A president needs to be a salesman willing to sell.

Democrats shake their heads in wonderment that the country, including Republicans who otherwise seem to be good, reasonable people of decent character, voted for and continues to support Donald Trump. How can they tolerate in a president a person they would not use as a trustee of their estate, a business partner, the manager of a cash business, or the executive director of a tiny nonprofit, or trust to drive a teenage daughter home from babysitting?

Gallup polling supplies some of the answer. We are at a time of profound skepticism about the institutions of our society. In the public's eye, they are all more or less flawed. Corrupt. Incompetent.

"Small business" partially survives the skeptical mood because it is not an institution. It is different people and organizations competing with each other for business.

Democrats are playing with weak cards when they insist that President Trump follow the Constitution and respect congressional prerogatives and power. Congress should write the tariff law? Congress should exercise the power to go to war? Congress should write immigration policy? Congress cannot agree on important matters, and it is as conflicted and corrupted by special interests as is Trump.

Do we trust the military? Yes and no. My own feeling of support for the U.S. military took a deep dive in 1968, when it promulgated a policy of winning the Vietnam War through attrition and comparative body counts. That was me, the potential trade. My respect has grown back in recent years, rooted in the military's own culture of honor and duty, when Trump considered using it to back his effort to stay in office after the 2020 election. It refused him. But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is openly replacing military institutionalists with Trump loyalists. Are they trustworthy now? I don't know.

The Supreme Court's switch on Roe v. Wade revealed that the court is a lagging-indicator political body, now reflecting America's turn from Warren Court equality in various spheres to MAGA backlash against that. It is making controversial social policy because Congress fails to do it. Its decision to give presidents immunity from following the law destroyed its credibility with Democrats and will destroy it with Republicans the next time there is a willful Democratic scofflaw president.

President Trump holds power by process of elimination. No other governing institution is willing to stop him from doing anything he really wants to do. He exercises the fundamental power of the presidency: persuading Republican officeholders that what he is doing is in America's interest, and, moreover, that challenging Trump would cost them personally. 

Throughout Biden's presidency I bemoaned his incapacity to communicate to Americans the value of what he was doing. Behind the scenes, he carried out an Elizabeth Warren set of policies. Those policies needed to be explained, defended, and sold. The effort to sell them would have brought its own self-correction. If you cannot sell it, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in a democracy. Biden couldn't sell. That set up Trump to be a change agent.

Trump filled the void.

I blame Republican voters and officeholders for tolerating such a morally defective leader, but they are not wrong to say that Democrats gave them a weak choice in the 2024 election. Kamala Harris positioned herself as Biden's successor. She didn't lead.

Trump's depravity and dishonesty leaves a moral leadership void. His destruction of our trade networks and military alliances leave a strategic void. Trump represents the "destructive" phase of progress by creative destruction. It is not clear to me that Republicans are exhausted by his destruction. 

Democrats seem ready to repair and rebuild. They don't need a policy wonk to do this. They need a salesman who tells us what he is doing, and why it makes America great.

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