Transcript: Election 2024: The Stakes

Publish date: 2024-07-21

MR. CAPEHART: Good afternoon, and welcome to Washington Post Live and another installment of our 2024 election series co-produced with the “Capehart” podcast. I am Jonathan Capehart, associate editor for The Washington Post.

If you're a reader of The Washington Post, then you know if you see an opinion essay by Robert Kagan, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and contributing columnist here at The Washington Post, you need to stop what you're doing and read it. And the same goes for his books, including his latest, "Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart Again," and joining me now to talk about it is Robert Kagan. Bob, welcome back to Washington Post Live.

MR. KAGAN: Thank you, Jonathan. Great to be here.

MR. CAPEHART: All right. So, let's start with the title of your book, "Rebellion." Who exactly is rebelling, and what are they rebelling against?

MR. KAGAN: Well, I think that the core of the Trump movement is fundamentally rebelling against the order that the Founders created after the revolution and with the Constitution, an order based on universal individual rights, the idea that everyone is--enjoys those rights equally, and which is, you know, hostile to racial hierarchies, religious hierarchies, and other traditional hierarchies. And I think just as many people throughout American history have objected to those principles and fought against them, that's what we're seeing today. And their leader, the person they think can overthrow this system, is Donald Trump.

MR. CAPEHART: All right. So, you may have already answered this question in your previous answer, but I would love for you to elaborate because, as you write in your book, similar movements have emerged throughout American history. Some of these antiliberal groups you mentioned or you describe are the slaveholding South, white Southern populists of the Jim Crow era, the Klan, the Birchers, followers of Pat Buchanan, and now, as you mentioned before, the MAGA movement. Talk again--and, like, we've got 30 minutes, Bob, so you can really flesh it out--what is the throughline that connects them?

MR. KAGAN: Well, you know, we--when the Founders established a system based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which I call the fundamental liberal principles that our government is based on, they knew that not all Americans agreed with those principles, because for one thing, there was the institution of slavery, which clearly violated those principles. And the Founders, as we can all say now, were hypocrites, but it's important to remember that they knew they were hypocrites. They knew that slavery violated the principles of the Declaration which they were attempting to establish, and they hoped that over time, slavery would be abolished and that the people would come to see the importance of these liberal values of universal individual rights.

But the fact was the South was, almost from the very beginning, in rebellion against those principles. If you go back and read the comments of people like John Calhoun and other leaders of the South, they explicitly rejected the Declaration of Independence. So, I bring these historical examples up because I think people are a little shocked to hear that some Americans actually object to the fundamental principles that undergird American politics and society. But it has always been the case. And you have just gone through the groups after the slaveholding South that have always resisted liberal pressure and the pressure to live up to the Founders' principles in the Declaration of Independence.

And I think we're not--we thought that perhaps all that was gone. We think that people progress and learn, et cetera. But just as a hundred years after the end of the Civil War, the South was practically united in resisting desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which I think this is an anniversary of, and so they resisted then. And I don't think we should be surprised 70 years later to see that people are still resisting these liberal principles.

And I think those who were engaged, for instance, in the January 6th assault on the Capitol were very explicit in their desire to, as they put it, "overthrow the regime," and the regime is the government that the Constitution enshrined, and that is based on the principles of the Declaration.

MR. CAPEHART: All right, Bob. We’ve got--we have to do some definition, because usually, when I'm talking, you know, on my show and we talk about democratic values--and I always have to say small "d" democratic, so that people understand that I don't mean Democratic Party. I mean just these broad principles. And I want you to--maybe this audience knows what you mean when you say liberal, but in the 21st century, for a lot of people, particularly Americans, when they hear the word "liberal," they're thinking far left, progressive. They put it into a modern, present-day context. What does liberal mean in the context that you're writing?

MR. KAGAN: Well, what liberalism historically meant--and, you know, the root of liberalism is the word "liber," which means free, and it basically--are the essential principles that allow a free life. And those principles are, as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, the--you know, idea that there are inherent natural rights which all human beings are born with equally, that those rights are not granted by the government, they're not granted by a God or God, then they are not even granted by the Constitution. And the purpose of government is to protect those rights, and that is--you know, that is the primary and overriding purpose of the government. And it's to protect those rights, not only against the government, but also against communities, which may impinge on those rights.

And so liberalism has come to mean, you know, bigger spending on government. It has a lot of--it's taken on a lot of meanings, which I think is more, better encapsulated in the word "progressive." But the liberalism I'm talking about is the liberalism on which this government, this government of the United States, was established.

And it's important to point out that at the time of the American Revolution, there were no governments. There had never been government in any time in history based on those fundamental principles of protecting individual rights, not even ancient Greece. If there was a democracy, it was nevertheless not a liberal democracy. And it's important to distinguish not only the word "liberalism" in the sense of the Declaration's principles from our modern understanding of liberalism but also to understand that the key element of what America is, is not that it's a democracy. I think democracy is essential in order to carry out liberal--to protect liberal values, but it is the core of liberalism that the Founders were concerned about.

The Founders knew, for instance, that a democratic majority could violate individual rights because they'd already had that experience with the British Parliament violating their rights. So, they knew that it was not enough to have democracy, that you had to be willing--you had to be able to limit even democratic decisions in order to protect individual rights, because you had to worry about what they called the "tyranny of the majority."

MR. CAPEHART: And just to be clear, small "d" democratic--small "d" democratic majority.

[Laughter]

MR. KAGAN: Yeah, yeah.

MR. CAPEHART: So, Bob, when you came to my attention, lots of people knew who you were, but you came to my attention because of another one of your many books. And this was the one entitled, "The Jungle Grows Back," and that was the argument--the argument you were making--and you correct me if I'm wrong--is that the small "d" democratic world order that was devised by the United States and the West after World War II, it took work to maintain that order, that it wasn't just some natural thing, and that for all of human history, the moment that we're in on the--at the global level is but like the blink of an eye. And that came to mind as I'm reading "Rebellion" because, as you've already been explaining, this liberal democracy that we have is not the--it's not the natural order of things, that in order to maintain our version of liberal democracy, we have to work at it in order to keep it.

MR. KAGAN: That's right. Jonathan, you just said that so well that I don't know if I have anything to add to it.

But I will say that it is important to realize that liberalism itself, as I've defined it--liberalism, the principles of universal individual rights--is an aberration in history. As I said before, no government was ever founded on those principles. Most governments in the world have never been founded on anything like those principles.

And there's always been resistance to those principles. From the moment that liberalism came into being with the American Revolution, there have always been forces fighting against it, because as you've suggested, there's something inherently unnatural about acknowledging that people who are not like you, who don't believe what you believe, who don't--religious--in terms of religious or other beliefs, people who don't look like you, people who don't talk like you, nevertheless enjoy the same rights that you do. That is a--that's a kind of philosophical reach, I think.

Most people--you know, it's human nature to care about yourself, your family, your tribe, people who look like you, people who share religious beliefs with you. It's very unnatural to insist that other people who are very different from you also share those rights. And that is the miracle of what the United States has created.

You can be--as people have often said, you can be from any walk of life, any religious conviction, any race, any ethnic group, and you're still an American simply by agreeing and abiding by these universal principles.

MR. CAPEHART: So then, well, let's talk about people, Bob, because you write, and I quote, "The problem is not the design of the American system. It is not the electoral college. It's not political polarization. It is not the internet or Fox News. It is not the economy. The problem is and always has been with the people and their beliefs."

And that dovetails quite nicely with the lead editorial in The Economist, out today, and I want to read this to you: "Mr. Trump is surely unequal to the task of turning himself into a dictator, even if he wanted to. He's too easily distracted, scatterbrained, and anxious to evade responsibility. The greater danger is that his contempt for norms and institutions further diminishes Americans' faith in their government. That matters because the American project depends on its people. Barely a quarter of them say they are satisfied with democracy."

And I just want to add this one last thing in, Bob. President Biden has made democracy versus autocracy a cornerstone of his reelection campaign. Given what you've written and given what The Economist says in its lead editorial, do Americans truly revere or even care about liberal democracy?

MR. KAGAN: Well, I would have to say that's a real question right now because, you know, if they do, it's hard to understand how they could support Donald Trump. I understand being critical of Joe Biden and the Biden administration. There's plenty to be critical of. But the risk that Donald Trump obviously poses to our democratic system, to our Constitution, and to the liberal principles that undergird our system, the threat is very clear. He's already attempted to overthrow the U.S. government when he tried to annul the election of 2020.

And so you have to ask yourself, how can people be supporting someone who presents such a grave risk to the system? And the answer, I think, is, is because many of them support that, the idea that the system isn't working and should be changed in a way that benefits them more. And other people who may not have those convictions in a deep way, nevertheless, are perfectly willing to go along with what could be a fundamental challenge to the system.

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And this is why I think--I'm not sure--I haven't seen that Economist editorial, but there is the implication in that editorial, which I think is pretty common, that this is Donald Trump doing this to the American people or doing this to a group of Americans, affecting the way they think about things. I think it's important to give them credit for knowing that they're not happy with the system, and there's a reason, by the way, that I used the term "antiliberal" instead of "illiberal," which is what people usually use. I want to take seriously the notion, because it has been true throughout America's history, that people really do disagree with the principles of the Declaration of Independence and don't want to live in a society that is based on that.

A very large percentage of Americans believe, for instance, that the Founders intended to create a Christian nation, which is exactly not what the Founders intended to do. But in so saying that, they're clearly expressing an unhappiness with the fundamentally secular system that the Founders created and would like to see change, and they see Donald Trump as the vehicle for that change. They see him as their savior and deliverer against this system, which they think is stacked against them. And they have that view, the same as people in, as you mentioned earlier, the Birch Society, McCarthy movement, and every other sort of fundamentally antiliberal movement in history--in American history has been based on this idea that the fundamentally white Christian nature of the country, which is what they believe the country really is about, is being destroyed by the influx of immigrants and people of other religions, et cetera.

And this is the core of Trump's campaign. His "poison the blood" campaign is all about--it's basically about white supremacy, and I think it's important to understand that what Donald Trump represents above all is a kind of ethno-religious definition of America, call it white nationalism, call it Christian white nationalism, but that is what he represents. And those are the main element of who his followers are.

MR. CAPEHART: Let me go to this audience question. This is from Carol Silver from Maryland, who wonders, "If Trump left the picture, do you think the old Republican Party would reemerge, or would a new leader take his place and MAGA would continue as a threat to democracy?"

MR. KAGAN: Well, that's a terrific question, and I think I believe that the Republican Party that we have known is finished, and that if Trump wins, I think it will be a party that is consolidated around Donald Trump and what I think will be his autocratic and authoritarian tendencies, and that will be the Republican Party.

If Trump loses, I believe the party is going to split between its MAGA wing and what is clearly a fairly sizable non-MAGA wing of the Republican Party, because I don't see how any other figure besides Donald Trump can unite the party in the way that he has.

And so, you know, we've seen parties in the past in American history disappear precisely because of these kinds of splits. There used to be something called the Whig Party in the United States, which was destroyed by the debate over slavery and was replaced ultimately by a Northern Party and a Southern Party. And so I think there is--we are facing a kind of civil conflict in this country, and that the Republican Party cannot continue in its present form.

MR. CAPEHART: You were--I wanted to get that audience question in before I add--jump on to what you were talking about in terms of Christian nationalism, white Christian nationalism, because what it brought to mind was Father Coughlin in the America First movement in the--in the early 20th century. He's a precursor to Rush Limbaugh on the radio, Tucker Carlson on television. And I want to show people, for the many young ones who are watching and may never have heard of him, here's a clip of him talking. Just watch.

[Video plays]

MR. CAPEHART: Bob, tell us more about Father Coughlin, and what was--we know a bit of his message there. But what was his appeal?

MR. KAGAN: Well, I mean, he tapped into certain forces that I think are--that we're seeing again. Now, in particular, you know, Father Coughlin, interestingly, his story is interesting, partly because at the beginning when he first started out and when Roosevelt was elected, he was pro Franklin Roosevelt. He was in favor of Franklin Roosevelt's economic policies.

I think a turning point in Coughlin's behavior occurred with the Spanish Civil War, believe it or not, where--the key thing to know about Father Coughlin is that he was a very devout Catholic, and he felt that--and he was right that Catholics were being massacred in Spain by communists. And so he basically was holding the banner of anti-communism, and I would say fairly explicitly pro-Christianity and particularly pro-Catholic, and he felt that Catholics were--that the deaths of Catholics overseas were being ignored by the United States. And so he became furious as Hitler began attacking Jews in Germany, and there was an outpouring of sympathy for the Jews under Hitler in the United States. And he became anti-Semitic in part fighting against that sympathy. And so he became a leading voice for isolationism. He was very sympathetic to Franco in Spain. He was sympathetic to the fascist dictators.

If you look at it, it's interesting to watch his style of speaking. It looks like he's mimicking Mussolini in his sort of oratory--

MR. CAPEHART: Yeah.

MR. KAGAN: --and the way he throws his hands around, et cetera.

And so--and it's important to remember that in the 1930s, which is when he's speaking there, the late 1930s, you know, fascism is regarded as a very serious alternative to democracy, and many people thought fascism was the wave of the future. And so Coughlin was part of this whole group of, on the one hand, isolationists, but on the other, sort of basically trying to defend Christian America against Jews and others that included people like Charles Lindbergh, that included the leaders of the America First movement. It was a very prevalent set of views at that time, and I think we're clearly seeing echoes of that today.

MR. CAPEHART: Mm-hmm. And I want to apologize, mispronouncing his name. Father Coughlin.

So, the American First movement was isolationist, and today's iteration shares that inward disposition. But as observers like Anne Applebaum and The Post's Robyn Dixon have noted, Putin in Russia and Xi in China are making common cause with MAGA Republicans as they try to discredit liberalism and freedom around the world. Speak to the global nature of this antiliberalism.

MR. KAGAN: Well, again, it has been true for decades that the liberal world order has had challengers on all sides, and you know, China is clearly a challenger to the liberal order. It is fundamentally authoritarian. It is communist, but it's also nationalist. But one thing it certainly is not is liberal and democratic.

Putin, in particular, however, has taken leadership of the antiliberal forces, and he's frankly antiliberal. He is speaking for traditional values. He's pretending that he's trying to uphold the importance and influence of the Russian Orthodox Church. He speaks on behalf of traditional values, which he insists are being destroyed in the West. And in that respect, of course, he does have significant support on the MAGA side. It's clear that obviously Tucker Carlson is a huge fan of Putin. He went to interview him. He tried to persuade Americans that people in Russia live better than they do in the United States.

And all of this is, as you suggest, part of a unified, internationalist, antiliberal--an international antiliberal movement, which has got, you know, forces all over the place, including Viktor Orbán in Hungary and some leaders who are on the outside, but, you know, there's a reasonable chance of a Marine Le Pen victory in France.

And so these forces are out there, and I think we're in one of those times in history, which is very similar to the '30s, again, where democracy is at a low ebb. People have real doubts about democracy, and strongmen of one kind or another look like an appealing alternative, at least to some people. And what's shocking, of course, is that I think there are many Americans who would like to see a strongman here in the United States.

Trump says it explicitly. He knows that his voters like when he talks about being a dictator, and I think that's just a reality that we have to accept, shocking as it may be to us.

MR. CAPEHART: I'm trying to decide which question to go to. I'm just--let's just go right here, Bob.

You've warned--last fall, you took my breath away with your fantastic essay about how we were sliding into the potential of a Trump--a possible Trump dictatorship. With all that's been written about what a second Trump term would look like since last fall, when you issued that warning, what happens if Trump wins in November?

MR. KAGAN: Well, you know, again, you read that Economist editorial early on, and I just want to take issue with the way they describe the threat posed by Trump. I agree that Trump doesn't have some ideological desire to be a dictator, but I do think that if anyone who understands Trump's personality--and he proved this in his first term--he wants what he wants, and he wants to be able to get it, and he doesn't want to be told that he can't have it.

Now, a lot of people in the first term, a lot of people who work for him, including his chiefs of staff and national security advisors, repeatedly were telling him he couldn't do certain things like use the military in an inappropriate way domestically, for instance.

That is not going to be the case in a second term. I think--and he's already talked in great detail about using the military in ways that are historically inappropriate; for instance, you know, manning immigration depots or what have you or settlement or whatever they're going to be. And I think that we need to understand that, again, Trump doesn't have a developed ideology of dictatorship. He's just a natural dictator. That is his approach.

And more importantly are the people who are going to be serving him. If you look at, you know, The Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, if you look at things that Trump said in his Time magazine interview recently, it couldn't be clearer what the intentions are, and I think people are just whistling past the graveyard thinking that none of that has any real meaning.

He is going to be--and let me just end on this. He is going to be the most powerful--if he's reelected, he'll be the most powerful president, the most unconstrained president that I could possibly imagine. If the Congress is controlled by Republicans, Congress will not be a check. It's very clear already the Supreme Court is not going to be a check because there are too many pro-Trump sympathizers on the court.

It's already clear that the court system seems to be unable to handle Donald Trump, even when he's a civilian, let alone when he's president. And I think people really need to show a little imagination if you take someone like Donald Trump and give him unchecked power in the United States. I think any sensible person would find that a frightening proposition.

MR. CAPEHART: [Laughs] Yes, Bob. I don't know if you can see me, but you just took my breath away with your answer.

So now let me give part two of the question. If Trump loses, you write the country could fracture as well. What would that look like?

MR. KAGAN: Well, it's very clear that Trump is--if he loses, he's going to declare that it was a fraudulent election. He's declared every election that he's run in fraudulent, including the one that he won in 2016, he also said was fraudulent because he actually won in a popular vote landslide, which is clearly not true. So, he's going to claim that it's a fraudulent election.

And then the question is, what does the Republican Party do? You know, I think the Republican Party found that kind of an embarrassing situation in 2020. I think this time they're going to line up with him. I have a hard time imagining that someone like Mike Johnson, never mind Elise Stefanik, never mind Marjorie Taylor Greene, are going to agree that it is, in fact, a fraudulent election.

And if the Republican Party takes the position officially that the election was fraudulent, that could lead to all kinds of interesting dynamics--for instance, in the states. You know, secession used to be a fairly common threat in the United States. There were many secessionist movements in the 19th century. There haven't been so many since then, but the system is still the same. The states still have at least the theoretical option of not agreeing with what the federal government is doing if they wish, and so I wonder whether there might not be some, you know, Republican-dominated states where you have a Republican governor and a Republican legislature just declaring that they don't accept the legitimacy of the election, that they don't accept the legitimacy of Biden's second term, which would put our system in limbo at that point.

Now, in theory, there's all kinds of things that an administration, a federal government could do in response to those states. While most secession movements have only been prevented by the threat of force, or in the case of the Civil War, the use of force, I think we will be in a very dicey situation if we get to that point. We'll have a very unresolved--even with a victory by President Biden, I think we will have a lot of turmoil and potentially violence, because we know that Trump is capable of summoning violent groups who are all too ready to move when he gives the order. And so I think we have a real danger, even if Biden wins, in the months that follow.

MR. CAPEHART: So, Bob, last question, and I'm hoping we can end on a hopeful note. America has faced, as we've been discussing, these antiliberal movements throughout its history. We've gotten past them. We've gotten beyond them. How do we get beyond this one? Is it just sheerly people showing up and voting for the person who will uphold the Constitution and the rule of law, or is there more?

MR. KAGAN: No, the terrible thing is, is that no one has to take any great personal risk in order to prevent the possibility of dictatorship in the United States. They just simply have to not vote for the person who is the greatest threat to that kind of--to a real change of government and something that looks like dictatorship.

All they have to do is not vote for Donald Trump in November, and then I believe that if we can dodge this bullet, I do think the country can move beyond this and partly just for demographic reasons. You know, the core of Trump's movement, as I've said, is a white nationalist movement. It's a white Christian nationalist movement. As they know perfectly well, they are a shrinking portion of this population. We are moving toward becoming a majority-minority country, and it's not going to be even remotely a white person's country. And, in fact, I think a lot of what is motivating some of the Trump supporters is their understanding that this may be their last chance.

You know, a lot of what--a lot of the sort of bursts of liberalism that we've seen in our history, chiefly in the civil rights era, are in part a result of demographic shifts. You know, the conservative antiliberals shut down immigration in 1924 with the Immigration Act, but up before then, there were so many millions of foreigners who came in, so many millions of immigrants of so many different backgrounds, that they basically changed the complexion of the country. That happened again after 1965 in the reform of that--in that immigration reform.

And so the country is moving in a certain direction demographically which is contrary to what the Trump movement stands for. So, I think if we get past this election, there will be turmoil. There will always be these forces present, but I don't think they'll have another opportunity potentially to put someone like Donald Trump in office, I hope. That's the optimistic scenario.

MR. CAPEHART: Bob, you know I could sit and talk to you all day long, but we don't have all day. We are actually over time. Robert Kagan, author of "Rebellion: How Antiliberalism is Tearing America Apart Again," thank you, as always, for coming back to "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.

MR. KAGAN: Thank you, Jonathan. I appreciate it.

MR. CAPEHART: And thank you for joining us. For more of these important conversations, sign up for a Washington Post subscription. Get a free trial by visiting that site there on the bottom of your screen, WashingtonPost.com/live. WashingtonPost.com/live.

Once again, I'm Jonathan Capehart, Associate Editor at The Washington Post. Thank you for watching "Capehart" on Washington Post Live.

[End recorded session]

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Transcript: Election 2024: The Stakes