Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

by Robert Kagan

When the founders established the checks and balances to ensure against the rise of a tyrannical demagogue, they did not envision national parties uniting broad coalitions of interregional interests. The world they lived in was centered on the states; it was more a confederation of independent countries than a unified nation. Regional differences seemed as enormous as the vast distances that separated them in the days before motorized transportation; the needs of the growing West were radically different from the needs of the Northeast and the South. The idea that a national party could speak for all those disparate state and regional interests seemed unlikely. Nor did they imagine that a single demagogue could gain a national following, for much the same reason. The founders also hoped that the checks and balances they established in the Constitution would be sufficient to contain the ambitions of a demagogue. But this assumption rested on a further expectation: that the three branches of government—Congress, the executive, and the judiciary—would jealously guard their institutional prerogatives. For most of the country’s history, this has held true. Even when Congress was controlled by the president’s party, congressional leaders resisted executive encroachments on the legislature’s constitutional authority. But today party unity trumps interbranch rivalry. Party leaders in Congress increasingly do as their presidents bid them. Certainly, this Republican Party has become...