Former President Donald Trump announced his 2024 candidacy for the White House last month. Trump’s political opponents, both inside and outside the current administration, have labeled the former president, his supporters, and even the GOP itself as “threats to democracy.”
The goal of such hyperbole seems to be to force Trump out of the race preemptively, or at the very least to make his candidacy unthinkable in the public square. Indeed, the FBI’s raid on Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence earlier this year led some to think President Joe Biden was abusing his executive power to sink any chance of a Trump revival. Other investigations into Trump’s business dealings and his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot similarly suggest an effort to bar Trump from another term.
Former presidents are indeed liable to criminal prosecution, but this is the first time in American history that this legal fact has become a political reality. Moreover, there is a strong argument that exerting every effort to bar Trump from seeking the White House again is just as much a “threat to democracy” as Trump supposedly is himself.
Alexander Hamilton articulated some of the hazards of such an effort and provides a warning for those convinced that scuttling all things Trump will benefit the constitutional order and democracy in America.
In Federalist 67-77, Hamilton defends the national executive in Article II of the proposed Constitution. He argues for a “unitary executive” and the vesting of the executive power in a single individual. The key to a properly functioning executive was an institutional structure that incentivized executive energy and responsibility. Essential to both was that executive power be lodged in a single individual. With one person responsible for final decisions, there could be no shifting of responsibility to their councilors. The praise and blame for their decisions would be focused on the president. In the president, the public would have a single object for their affection and their animosity.
In George Washington, the Framers had an example of the near fanatical devotion that a single person could inspire in the people. In King George III, they saw the visceral hatred that one man could arouse. In short, the rise of a figure like Trump would not have surprised the Framers in the least. Trump is a particularly powerful example of the love and hatred that a single individual can inspire in the public, their representatives, elites on both Left and Right, and the press.
Democrats know this intrinsically, which is why they focused much of their midterm election strategy on drawing voters’ attention to Trump.
This isn’t to say that there are no risks to elevating polarizing figures like Trump. The Framers made it clear they knew the political dangers presented by such individuals, but still thought they were outweighed by the need for a responsible and energetic president eligible for reelection.
In Federalist 72, Hamilton defends the four-year term of the president and his reelection for consecutive or non-consecutive terms without term limits. Hamilton harbored no illusions about the kind of person who might ascend to the presidency. In his description of one worrisome type, one cannot help but think of Trump. “A man of irregular ambition … would, with infinite reluctance, yield to the necessity of taking his leave forever of a post in which his passion for power and pre-eminence had acquired the force of habit.” When such a one, Hamilton continues, is “fortunate or adroit enough to conciliate the good-will of the people,” then he could appeal to them if the Constitution (or, in our case, a hostile branch of the government) barred the people from returning him to office, that it would be “very odious and unjustifiable … to debar [the people] of the right of giving a fresh proof of their attachment” to him through reelection.
Only the most blindly partisan observer of the 2020 election would deny that Trump has a knack for garnering the affection of a significant part of the electorate. And there’s little question that Trump’s ambition for “power and pre-eminence” remains.
Ever the pragmatist, Hamilton argued that the negative political consequences of keeping even a Trump from seeking reelection are graver than the damage he might do while president. “There may be conceived circumstances,” Hamilton warns, “in which this disgust of the people, seconding the thwarted ambition of such a favorite, might occasion greater danger to liberty, than could ever reasonably be dreaded from the possibility of a perpetuation in office, by the voluntary suffrages of the community, exercising a constitutional privilege.”
Those who see Trump, his allies, and his supporters as a threat to democracy would scoff at Hamilton’s advice. What could be worse, they would ask, than a resurgence of Trump and MAGA, with its bluster, vulgarity, and rashness?
Hamilton responds to those who think that by checking Trump and his supporters they are saving American democracy. “There is an excess of refinement in the idea of disabling the people to continue in office men who had entitled themselves, in [the peoples’] opinion, to approbation and confidence.” In other words, it’s too smart by half to think we can save the people from themselves by ensuring they cannot reelect candidates that we consider unsuitable.
According to Hamilton, the advantages of barring the people from reelecting a candidate are “at best speculative and equivocal, and are overbalanced by disadvantages far more certain and decisive.” What could be more “speculative and equivocal” than calling someone “a threat to democracy?” Especially when that supposed “threat to democracy” is really just the people exercising their democratic rights in a way the political elite dislike?
Moreover, those worried about Trump seem to forget that our constitutional system was designed to withstand the many kinds of men who might seek power — Trump included. Our elections, for example, are a check on the president, as are the two other branches of government.
Our elections are also a vital channel for the passions of the people, and one within the bounds of the constitutional order. Abraham Lincoln asked the right question: “How much would [we] gain by forcing the sentiment which created [this situation] out of the peaceful channel of the ballot-box, into some other channel? What would that other channel probably be?”
Hamilton believed thwarting the political desires of a significant portion of the public could pose a grave threat to the political order. We should ask ourselves whether, in the uncompromising effort to stop the resurgence of Trump, we might do more harm than good to American democracy.
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Peter Campbell is an associate professor of political science at Baylor University.
