Party Animals
More than half a decade of intense debate on what is now routinely referred to as a crisis of democracy hasn’t produced much in the way of remedies. It has clarified, however, intellectual and political battle lines. On one side are the so-called institutionalists: scholars and politicians who aim to defend existing democratic bodies, such as independent courts, against all manner of wreckers and norm-breakers. On the other side are those who see such institutionalists as complacent defenders of a pre-crisis status quo that cannot—and should not—be restored. Two note-worthy recent books on threats to democracy both fall into the institutionalist camp but still offer very different answers to the question of how best to defend and, ideally, deepen democracy: One looks mainly to the rule of law, while the other gestures at transformations of party politics.
Allan J. Lichtman, a well-known scholar of U.S. political history, focuses on the troubles at home. Partly because U.S. President Donald Trump was so savvy at—to borrow a phrase from his onetime strategist Steve Bannon—“flood[ing] the zone with shit,” one might easily forget many of his seemingly endless scandals, misdemeanors, and violations of even the most basic precepts of political ethics. Lichtman’s new book, Thirteen Cracks: Repairing American Democracy After Trump, helpfully groups these various breaches together in separate categories in order to identify 13 particularly vulnerable points in American democracy, or what he calls “cracks,” in language echoed by Democratic Rep. Adam Schiff, who worries about “how ruinous these cracks in our democratic foundation can be.”
Lichtman’s book reads like an exercise in Trump detox. In 13 concise chapters, he offers to patch the cracks he identifies with various forms of—well, pick whatever metaphor might fit—caulking, dry wall, bricks and mortar, or something stronger still. The fact that he advertises his remedies as “simple, quick, and practical” would appear to suggest caulking.
Yet fixing institutions, for Lichtman, often
