John Adams famously wrote (quoting 17th-century political philosopher James Harrington) that a republic was “an Empire of Laws, and not of Men.” Donald Trump, if he has ever noticed that quotation or thought about it, thinks it’s a load of pious liberal crap. One of America’s big problems, at this moment of maximum existential and constitutional crisis, is that a whole lot of us believe, or suspect, that he isn’t entirely wrong.
Trump’s true genius, if we can call it that, lies in finding the weakness of his opponents — the chinks and crevices and loopholes through which he can force his greed, his hunger and his massive but fragile ego, like so much orange goo. Very often such weaknesses involve principles, since Trump has none, and so it is with his current opponent, the constitutional order of the United States of America, which was built upon a complicated set of interlocking principles that it only imperfectly upholds or, in many cases, does not uphold at all.
