MAGA is destroying Madisonian democracy

I have previously attributed the troubling rise of national political polarization to the erosion of the middle class — a deep concern of thinkers as far removed in time and space as Aristotle and James Madison.  But what about the link between the rise of polarization and the concentration of power in the person of the president?

James Madison feared both. In a famous phrase from The Federalist Papers, he warned that “the accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny.”  

He concluded that “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition” — that each branch of government must have “the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.” 

Were he still alive, Madison would no doubt be dismayed at Congress's dereliction in this regard — and this 119th Congress has been startlingly passive. Republican majority members, fearful of being primaried, refuse to assert their constitutional powers or even carry out basic obligations to vet President Trump's nominees. 

Madison saw “faction” — that is, rivalry between elected officials across political parties — as anathema to good government. But he saw rivalry between branches of government as essential. 

He feared majoritarian tyranny if one political party, representing a set of narrow interests or ideologies, achieved dominance. He also feared that such tyranny was far more likely when the various branches of government became too chummy, failing to defend their own constitutionally assigned powers. So he aimed at a hybrid and multi-layered political structure that would preclude concentration of power in any one person, institution or interest group. 

The Marshall Plan is a shining example of Madison’s vision: sound policy emerging from cooperation across parties and competition across branches. A Democratic president, Harry Truman, initiated the massive European aid scheme in 1947 — and it could never have been legislated without considerable support from congressional Republicans, who controlled both houses. But the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the one-time isolationist Arthur Vandenberg, was no rubber stamp. He insisted on the plan requiring annual appropriations, strong market mechanisms to ensure productive use of aid, an independent body to administer it and military backing to prevent Soviet subversion of it.

Today, we have the opposite. Few congressional Republicans would ever have dreamed of levying massive global tariffs and changing their rates at whim. Yet virtually none have stood up to assert Congress’s prerogatives and oppose this. Even when Trump endangers national security by reinstating high-end chip exports to China, Republicans stay silent. 

They have further been complicit in ensuring that there are precious few competent and independent voices in the White House by confirming unquestioning Trump loyalists to positions for which they are unqualified, ranging from Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy.

On deck now is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Commissioner nominee, and Trump supporter, E.J. Antoni, whose elevation threatens to undermine the integrity of the nation’s most important and consequential jobs and inflation statistics. It is hard to imagine any of these performance artists passing Congressional muster under earlier administrations. 

Outside Washington, electoral gerrymandering, once pursued with a courtly disingenuity, is now being pursued with an oafish partisan gusto. The president himself says his party is “entitled to five more [House] seats” in Texas. 

In an astounding 80 percent of our states, a single party already controls the House, Senate and governor’s office — a so-called trifecta — or has enough power to block gubernatorial vetoes from the other party. With further redistricting, this figure could hit 90 percent before the end of Trump’s term.  

The upshot is that Americans are increasingly living in airtight partisan state and local political bubbles, while being governed nationally by a single individual openly hostile to the interests of half the population.

From a Madisonian perspective, American democracy is at present spiraling headlong in the wrong direction. In the words of famed Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt, Trump has established and demonstrated his position as “sovereign” by repeatedly “deciding” unilaterally on “exceptions” to the constitutional order, then designating for punishment political “enemies” he sees as obstacles to the exercise of his sovereign will. 

He has singled out former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden, former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, former CIA director John Brennan, former FBI director James Comey, Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and New York Attorney General Letitia James for legal retribution — even declaring some of them guilty of “treason.” He has shaken down law firms and universities and even refuses to rule out pursuing a constitutionally prohibited third term. 

Abroad, he has declared outlandishly bogus “emergencies” under the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act to threaten or impose massive import tariffs — tariffs such as those targeted at Brazil for its judicial prosecution of former president Jair Bolsonaro. He has even threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal.  

Schmitt, who only died in 1985, would no doubt consider Trump the clearest possible evidence that Madisonian liberal democracy had always been living on borrowed time. If it crumbles further, it may be tragically impossible to recreate. Power is rarely restored to a legislature when arrogated by an executive — particularly when enabled by a partisan judiciary.

Should Democrats regain both Congress and the White House in 2028, payback will likely take priority over reestablishing constitutionalism. Performative conflict will take priority over good-faith cross-party bargaining on policy and personnel.

The burden of saving our system therefore rests with MAGA Republicans, who must slam on the brakes before the road ends.

Benn Steil is director of international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of "The World That Wasn’t: Henry Wallace and the Fate of the American Century."