"Law and Order" Again?
Donald Trump has often told us what he will do if elected president this coming November, but never in such detail and at such great length as in recent interviews with Time magazine. In a sit down at Mar-a-Lago on April 12 and a later phone conversation, the former president explicitly described the laws and constitutional norms he would shatter while assuming dictatorial powers. Yet, a lawless president — past and future — just might ride into the White House on a Nixonian “law and order” campaign. The irony is that the candidate who would break the law — as he has throughout his life — could become president on a promise to restore order. And it will be our fault if we buy what he is selling. He has warned us.
We are six months from perhaps the most consequential election in American history — save for 1860 — and certainly one of the oddest. Voters dread a rematch of 2020. Nearly two-thirds of voters believe President Joe Biden is not physically fit to serve another four years, while three-in-five lack confidence in Trump’s integrity and willingness to act ethically. Trump labors under the added handicap of being criminally indicted in four jurisdictions and forced to sit mutely in court as one of those cases plays out. (Though to be fair, some in MAGA world may well view Trump’s indictments as badges of honor.)
A week ago, I wrote that the ongoing trial for election interference in Manhattan was diminishing Trump’s electoral prospects. There is little question that Trump’s haggard presence in the courtroom, where, for once, he is not in charge, reveals a small man getting smaller. Furthermore, a conviction in New York — the only case likely to be tried and concluded before election day — could convince enough voters that Trump is damaged goods and not fit for public office.
But, that rosy assessment of a Trump defeat hinges on how student protests roiling college campuses play out once the current academic semester ends. And, significantly it depends on what happens in Chicago this summer at the Democratic National Convention. Continuing unrest, with protests, and the possibility of violence, could provide Trump with the tools he needs to overcome his own liabilities. Trump would not be shy about promising to crack down on social unrest. Trump has invoked calls for “law and order” frequently, beginning in 2016 when he described himself as “the law and order candidate.”
Cries of “law and order” in 1968 helped propel Richard Nixon into the White House. To be clear: Nixonian “law and order” referred primarily to fears of violent crime and the urban riots that broke out following the assassination of Martin Luther King in May 1968. There was always more than a whiff of racism associated with the phrase, and it fit snugly into Nixon’s “Southern strategy” to wean White southerners from the Democratic party by euphemistically endorsing racial segregation and discrimination. “Law and order” buttressed that strategy. It was a way of talking in code about race.
The mayhem at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago and student anti-Vietnam war protests (accompanied by campus occupations) became more fodder for politicians shouting about the need for “law and order.” (In an example that history may not repeat but often rhymes: The Democrats will meet this year in the Windy City. Remind me again, Who thought that was a good idea?) The current pro-Palestinian campus occupations strike an eerie chord among those of us old enough to remember the protests of 1968. (I was a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an anti-war protestor that year. My sympathies today are with students protesting the savagery of Israel’s response to Hamas’ brutal initial assault.) In another instance of history rhyming: Police cleared Hamilton Hall on Columbia’s campus of protestors exactly 56 years to the day when the NYPD stormed Hamilton to oust students protesting the Vietnam War and Columbia’s plans to expand its campus into adjacent Harlem.
Americans saw the urban riots on the nightly news in 1968. They also saw — in real time — the mayhem in the streets of Chicago as it played out. Those indelible images may well have influenced how people voted in November in what turned out to be a consequential election that led to a re-alignment in American politics resulting in Republicans occupying the White House for 20 of the next 24 years. Similar images today — all over social media as well as television — could influence the 2024 election. Biden clearly is worried. Thursday, he insisted, “Order must prevail.”
Searing images etched into the brains of voters are far more significant than the scary words Trump utters. If words mattered in MAGA land, then attendees at Trump rallies would be turned off by the word salad with which he usually entertains them. Trump’s Time interviews are surely scary, but who is getting scared?
Certainly, not Trump’s hardcore base, and I suspect not many voters who are in the middle, upset by Biden’s age and the assertions that the incumbent cannot fulfill his presidential duties. A recent NBC News poll reveals that Trump has earned the votes of 53 percent of the Americans who do not follow political news (compared to 27 percent for Biden). This cohort of voters does not know that Trump has made clear his wishes to subvert American democracy (would they care if they did know?). Clearly these voters are not scared by Trump.
As for those voters who do consume news, Trump fares well among those who get their news online or from cable news programs (rest assured, Fox News is not likely to trumpet the juiciest quotations from Trump’s Time interviews.) Conversely, 55 percent of voters who get their news from national TV networks and a whopping 70 percent who read newspapers back Biden. (I know I preach to the choir.)
Much of what Trump told Time were lies, so many that Time felt compelled to publish a lengthy accompanying fact-check article. But people who do not read (or at least dip into) the main story in the magazine or the published transcripts, are unlikely to read the fact-checks. So, millions of Americans will go to the polls this November not aware that one of the two candidates for president intends to set up huge detention (concentration-like) camps to house the millions of immigrants he intends to deport. They will not know that he plans to use the military to aid in the roundups, a clear violation of law. They will not know that, as president, he would reserve the right to fire thousands of now-protected civil servants and replace them with loyalists. They will not learn that he would use the criminal justice system to satiate his lust for revenge against all those he believes have wronged him.
But they will have seen the pictures of student protestors arrested on campuses.
That scares me.
Published May 3, 2024