David Frum is a senior editor at the Atlantic and a contributing editor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD. Frum is a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and the author of nine books, the most recent of which is Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic. This week we exchanged emails, discussing his new book, the presidency, and contemporary politics.
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Adam Rubenstein: In your chapter titled “Hope,” you write about notions of “truth” and objective reality. You say: “when the phrase, ‘post-truth’ began to circulate in the 1980s, it originated as something close to a compliment. The idea that things were ‘true’ or ‘false’ was outmoded, even reactionary!” And you cite the Polish poet Czeslaw Milosz, who said in his 1980 Nobel Prize lecture, “in a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy of silence, one word of truth sounds like a pistol shot.” You follow with a discourse on how this trend began among those tasked with “education of the young and the sustaining of high culture.” How so? Has the right, in your view, reverted to a form of relativism that had predominated on the left?
David Frum: President Trump’s intellectual defenders are not relativists. Relativists are at least modest: They concede that their own perceived truths are probably no more truthful than anybody else’s. President Trump’s intellectual defenders are not modest. They are absolutely determined to impose their vision of reality upon others. It’s just that their version of reality is based upon easily refutable lies.
All civilized persons in any cosmopolitan society must be relativist to some degree. “To me my religion, to you your religion,” as it says in one of the most admirable passages in the Koran. That’s not the direction in which Donald Trump is leading. He believes instead that power can dictate belief: the method of the tyrant in all times.
AR: But how had this “conspiracy against the ideal of truth [gained] the upper hand among those entrusted with the education of the young and the sustaining of high culture?” This claim is about pre-Trump America. It seems important to understand it alongside your twin suggestion, that “Trump’s incessant lying has indeed warped the minds of his core supporters.”
DF: That’s a long story, well told by—among others—Allan Bloom in The Closing of the American Mind. In the academic world, the claim that “there is no truth, only power” strongly appealed to those who hankered after power, rather than truth.
AR: You take issue not just with the president’s antics, but with the system that has propped him up. You credit his rise, among other things, to slow economic growth and increasing ethnic competition. How much is this a distinctly American problem, versus a Western problem? How well do our mediating institutions insulate from populism? The broader question is really about Lockean systems generally: How much illiberalism can liberal institutions tolerate, before they cease to be liberal? How open can we be to ideas that would fundamentally change our order?
DF: Trump-like figures have arisen in many Western democracies—so to that extent the problem is not distinctly American. What is distinctly American is the polarization within the two-party system—and the resource that polarization offers a president who refuses to abide by the rules of the game.
The question about illiberal ideas is an interesting one, but not actually germane to the moment. Trump’s challenge to American democracy is not a challenge of ideas. He is not a jihadist or a communist or even really a fascist (although some of his supporters are well on their way to that last destination). He is, simply, a crook with a lot of dirty secrets. He needs to break the independence of the legal system for self-protection, not for some grand illiberal ideological project.
AR: Your position on immigration is an interesting one, it sets you apart from many in the center today. You’ve said that “we need a lot less immigration,” explaining in the Atlantic that, “this calculus is not a purely economic one. Loss of cultural cohesion is a harm. Fostering a more divisive and radical politics is a harm. The corrosion of legality is a harm.” Could you explain your position in more depth; why should more in the center and on the Left be “pro-enforcement”?
DF: I’m in the throes of a big article for the Atlantic on this very subject, so I’ll postpone most of my answer to this question until then. For now, I’ll just note that immigration is the issue most often seized upon by authoritarian populists in this country and in Europe. Historically, liberal societies have contained extremists by finding ways to meet the authentic grievances extremists exploit. Remember, what killed off the original populists who stalked U.S. politics from the 1870s until the 1890s was that the two traditional parties swiped their most popular ideas.
AR: Jeffrey Tulis’ study of presidential speech-giving, The Rhetorical Presidency, argues that since Woodrow Wilson’s tenure, “direct popular appeal has been the central element of a political strategy.” And rhetoric, Tulis argues, “has become a principal tool of presidential governance.” You were a speechwriter for George W. Bush, a writer, in the most crude sense, of presidential rhetoric. To what degree is the amount of public speech required of the modern executive a problem? Today’s presidents, must be explainers—and policy at the executive level is often complicated—so the quickest, shortest explanation wins out in the minds of the many, especially during elections. So is Tulis right, has the presidency become too reliant, too focused on rhetoric and the shaping of public perception through speech?
DF: It’s clearly true that explaining things is—and always has been—a central necessity in any government that rests on any degree of popular consent. The later Caesars didn’t need to give speeches, but Cicero did. But let me say as a former sometime speechwriter: the power of rhetoric is HUGELY over-estimated by people adept with words. President Eisenhower was not a powerful speaker. He didn’t need to be: He delivered results. By contrast, the greatest of all presidential explainers—Abraham Lincoln—would probably have lost the presidency in 1864 if Sherman had not taken Atlanta in the nick of time.
AR: But do modern presidents simply talk too much? Are the rhetorical demands of the president, whomever he or she may be, too high? How has the presidency changed in the age of Twitter?
DF: I worry more about the ability of the modern presidency to deliver prosperity and security. The world is changing in ways not to America’s advantage. The U.S. and its most trusted allies account for an ever-shrinking share of the planet’s wealth. The liberal world order that seemed so ascendant in 1990 is cracking apart. The conventional military power at which the U.S. excels counts for less and less; historic U.S. deficiencies, like intelligence-gathering and unconventional warfare, count for more. The best rhetoric is success—and it’s been a long time since U.S. policy looked successful.
AR: What do you say to those who’d claim that your dislike of Trump constitutes a “derangement syndrome?” I’m sure you’ve heard this applied to those in both the pro- and and anti-Trump camps. The essential claim is that both sides have their judgment clouded, or are blinded by a distaste or an admiration for the man. How do you view Republicans who have embraced him as any other, friends among them? How might this be reconciled in elections to come?
DF: There are many different reasons that conservatives and Republicans embrace Trump.
Some are following the ancient rule, “The ends justify the means.” They are committed to tax-cutting or restricting abortion or thwarting gun regulation. Trump will do that for them. So they overlook or condone or deny his misconduct in the service of what they regard as a greater good.
Some have careers and clients to consider. You get your patronage appointment from the president you have, not the president you want. And for the many, many people in Washington who earn their living lobbying—or whatever euphemism the trade now goes by—access is access.
Some enjoy the spectacle of Donald Trump’s cruelty and brutality. One of the things revealed by social media is just how many of our fellow human beings derive pleasure from hurting others—and if you like that sort of thing, then Donald Trump is just the thing you’ll like.
Some hope to make the best of a bad situation. Like it or not, Donald Trump exercises the powers of the presidency. Working with him may mitigate the risk of a trade war or worse. And this president demands that anyone who aspires to work with him must publicly defend him.
And some, frankly, are just stuck. They made a big bet in 2016 that Trump would not be as bad as feared. That bet has, in my opinion, proved wrong. But if you are the person who made the bet, it’s not comfortable to admit the mistake. Then you might have to do something to retrieve the situation.
As for the question about me personally: I try to live by the rule, “No arguments about arguments.” If I’m mistaken in any of my particulars about Donald Trump, tell me why. I’ll listen. If you cannot do that, however, then please let’s not waste any time talking about me, when we should be talking about a presidency that is doing so much damage both to American institutions and to U.S. world leadership.
