You may recognize his name. Nichols was a prominent national security Republican who was Never Trump. He tweets as @radiofreeTom and his primary gig is as a professor at the Naval War College in RI. He is also a former Senate staffer, and has a new book (about which I will be writing soon) titled The Death of Expertise.
His op ed is titled Are Trump voters ruining America for all of us?
Nichols begins rather bluntly:
President Trump’s record in his first 100 days, by any standard of presidential first terms, is one of failure. Aside from the successful nomination of the eminently qualified Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court, there are almost no accomplishments — and a fair number of mistakes.
While noting the fact that many Trump supporters have not wavered in his support, compared to the withering criticism the President has faced from others, especially Dems, Nichols notes
The wide disagreement among Americans on the president’s performance, however, is more than partisanship. It is a matter of political literacy. The fact of the matter is that too many Trump supporters do not hold the president responsible for his mistakes or erratic behavior because they are incapable of recognizing them as mistakes. They lack the foundational knowledge and basic political engagement required to know the difference between facts and errors, or even between truth and lies.
NIchols explores further, and warns us that it is not just that Trump voters are ignorant and don’t know things, but rather that they do not care about them. He offers several examples, and includes a summary from one Trump voter who basically concludes that the criticisms being offered especially on television are
Just so much mumbo-jumbo, the kind of Sunday morning talk-show stuff only coastal elitists care about.
To respond to this, Nichols devotes the final four paragraphs of his op ed, the first of which read
There is a serious danger to American democracy in all this. When voters choose ill-informed grudges and diffuse resentment over the public good, a republic becomes unsustainable. The temperance and prudent reasoning required of representative government gets pushed aside in favor of whatever ignorant idea has seized the public at that moment. The Washington Post recently changed its motto to “democracy dies in darkness,” a phrase that is not only pretentious but inaccurate. More likely, American democracy will die in dumbness.
Consider that last sentence: More likely, American democracy will die in dumbness. Now, some Trump voters and advocates will criticize that as an elitist attitude. Even the notion of “temperance and prudent reasoning required of representative government” is dismissed as an elitist idea. Except I might remind readers that part of the rationale used to try to limit voting by minorities and poor people is that how they vote demonstrates a lack of reasoned thinking at least as expressed by those who seem to believe that anyone who votes differently than they do is by definition flawed or dangerous in their reasoning. This is NOT what Nichols is arguing. He is arguing that the very notion of representative government requires some willingness to go beyond anger and the latest “hot” idea to something with a broader perspective.
He addresses this in his next two paragraphs:
Those of us who criticized Trump voters for their angry populism were often told during and after the election not to condescend to our fellow citizens, and to respect their choices. This is fair. In a democracy, every vote counts equally and the president won an impressive and legitimate electoral victory.
Even so, the unwillingness of so many of his supporters to hold him to even a minimal standard of accountability means that a certain amount of condescension from the rest of us is unavoidable.
Condescension may be warranted, although it does not necessarily change what is happening. In fact, it may make some more resistant to any appeals to change their behavior.
In my own case, I feel a certain amount of pity because we are already seeing how their support of Trump is being betrayed in his actions in office. I certainly also feel anger at the damage being done to our nation’s polity, to our society.
Which leads to Nichols’ final words:
In every election, we must respect the value of each vote. We are never required, however, to assume that each vote was cast with equal probity or intelligence.
That is true in every election. That is the nature of our current system.
Which leads to a question only partly addressed by either the title or the contents of the op ed: have we already reached a point where the system is irrevocably broken, both as a result of how politics has been practiced, even before Trump decided to run this cycle, and as a result of the specific forces both applied in this election (Russian interference, for example) and unleashed as a result (the resurgence of Anti-semitism, misogyny, racism, xenophobia, intolerance, selfishness, etc.).
I think the entire op ed is worth considering. Even if you disagree with some of either the thinking or the conclusions of Nichols.