February 23, 2025 • 57 mins
One month into Trump's second term and his actions, thus far, have been described as chaotic, anarchic, cruel, mercurial, authoritarianian, etc. At minimum, it's clear that Trump is single-mindedly focused on systematically dismantling the very institutions designed to uphold democracy. Our guest this week, Dr. Russell Muirhead, professor of Democracy and Politics at Dartmouth, and co-author of "Ungoverning: The Attack on the Administrative State and the Politics of Chaos" has a word for this to help us understand this concept - this experience. We discuss this disruptive strategy, tracing its dangerous evolution and impact on American democracy, especially during the Trump administration. From the philosophical seeds planted by Reagan to today's political climate, we examine how this shift from small government to outright chaos threatens to erode the societal bonds that hold democracy together.
We also examine how ungoverning permeates state politics and even the judiciary. Through the volatile role of the Supreme Court and state resistance, we discuss the increasing polarization and fragmentation of political alliances. Considerations on single-party states illustrate how these political strongholds potentially serve as bastions of resistance or exacerbation of national divides. In this context, Dr. Muirhead provides a critical lens on the intricate relationship between political loyalty and governance – a crucial factor in understanding the current state of American politics.
Finally, we talk about the human element of this political upheaval, the shifting attitudes of the American electorate, and the crucial role of public engagement in safeguarding democracy.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Dr. Muirhead (00:00):
You know, the Nazis didn't destroy the state,
they took it over.
I see you know the same thingobviously not in a violent way
in Orbán's Hungary Somebody whotakes over the state in order to
use it.
It's really weird to see peopleyou know want to take over the
state in order to justsystematically incapacitate
large swaths of it, includingparts of it that are pretty
(00:20):
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue pretty
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue.
I don't think you can reallyfind an example of a person or a
party who said we want to getin control so that we can
destroy the agency that raisesrevenue, not make it more
efficient, not change the taxcode or the basis of our taxes
(00:44):
so that they're fundamentallyreformed, just totally destroy
the IRS, the institution that'scharged with collecting taxes,
and that's weird.
It's come to a kind ofcrescendo under Trump.
Shawn (01:04):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig.
For decades, conservatives havechampioned small government,
but in the Trump era, thatrhetoric has evolved into
something far more dangerousUngovernment An intentional
effort to break the veryinstitutions that make democracy
function.
Rather than seeking to governeffectively, today's Republican
(01:28):
Party has embraced chaos as apolitical strategy, dismantling
regulations, gutting agencies,obstructing legislation and
eroding public trust ingovernment itself.
This isn't just dysfunction.
It's a calculated effort toensure that government becomes
so weak, ineffective anddistrusted that it can no longer
(01:50):
serve the public good.
Trump's first term gave us apreview Government shutdowns,
purges of career officials,attacks on the rule of law and
outright contempt for democraticnorms for democratic norms.
And now, just weeks into hissecond term, the project of
ungoverning has kicked intooverdrive, posing an existential
threat not just to efficientgovernance, but to the American
(02:12):
way of life, to Americandemocracy.
In this episode, dr RussellMuirhead, professor of democracy
and politics at DartmouthUniversity and co-author of the
book Ungovernment, the Politicsof Chaos and the Attack on the
Administrative State, joins thepod to discuss how this
deliberate dismantling ofgovernment threatens democracy
(02:33):
itself, how serious the projectof ungoverning in the second
Trump administration is, andwhat we can do to fight back.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
(02:55):
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
.
Let's do a deep dive.
Let's do a deep dive.
Dr Muirhead, thanks for beinghere.
How are you?
Dr. Muirhead (03:11):
I am doing pretty well.
All things considered, I'mdelighted to be here, thank you.
Shawn (03:17):
So, for all the talk about authoritarianism versus
democracy in this past electionand the, I think, very real fear
of democratic backsliding inthe United States, if not
outright rise ofauthoritarianism under this
second Trump presidency, one ofthe things that I've brought up
a few times on this show and oneof the things that I'm actually
maybe more worried about is abreakdown of civil society and
(03:40):
some type of a disintegration ofa functioning government.
Some just top of mind thingsthat I can imagine are things
like the weakening of theAmerican passport or the
dissemination of bad data andfacts to the American populace,
disruptions in processing ofthings like Social Security or
Medicare or Medicaid,intermittent delivery of mail,
ineffective response todisasters, mistakes in tax
(04:02):
return processing all kinds ofthings that I think would then
have a knock-on effect.
So one, it would, you know,dramatically erode trust in
government, which is a precursorto its potential collapse.
And then two has downstreameffects on how effective state
and local governments can be andhow we all view each other, our
neighbors, especially if, youknow, some of us seem more
favored than others, or if someof us are targeted over others,
(04:25):
or at least seem to be, and Ireally do feel like in just the
past couple of weeks, we've seenthis future become a very real
possibility, and this issomething you study, something
you write about, so I'm glad tohave you here to discuss it.
Dr. Muirhead (04:39):
Yeah, thank you.
I think I share your concernand I think I really appreciate
the way you specified it.
It's really too easy to say,well, we're at risk of sliding
into authoritarianism or the endof democracy, and it's sort of.
You know, when I hear a wordlike authoritarianism, it takes
me back to when I was getting myPhD.
(04:59):
I remember, you know, probablyone week in some seminar where
we had to define, study theconcept of authoritarianism and
of course, I came out of theweek feeling like it was
impossible to define.
And you know, these are bigconcepts and concepts are
intellectual creations.
What we're talking about is not, you know, concepts.
(05:20):
We're talking about a livedexperience, and so I love the
way you put it.
You know, the mail,intermittent delivery of the
mail.
That's a lived experience, Asituation where we have no idea
whether the information we'regetting is true or fraudulent.
There's just no way to reachpast through the flow of
information and check it,because everything is suspect of
(05:44):
information and check itbecause everything is suspect.
That's a lived experience.
And I think you know, that'sthe way we need to kind of
disaggregate these big conceptsinto things that are experiences
, things that are part ofeveryday life, in order to
specify, you know, to get realabout what we have to hope for,
what we have to fear.
Shawn (06:05):
I have referred to this I don't know how to characterize
it or conceptualize itphenomenon as like governmental
chaos, but you call itungoverning and I think in
practice ungoverning could beexplained away as traditional
partisanship or politicalobstruction, but that might be a
Trojan horse.
So could you explain whatungoverning is and how it's
(06:29):
unique, and then essentiallywhat the threat is?
Dr. Muirhead (06:32):
Yeah, it might.
You know, I have a co-author,nancy Rosenblum, and Nancy and I
created this term ungoverning,because our argument is I mean,
our sense is that what we'reexperiencing right now we've
never seen before.
That's a big claim.
As soon as you say somethinglike that, there are like 5,000
historians who will go aboutshowing you that you're
(06:52):
exaggerating.
But this is maybe to put itslightly more modestly.
We've hardly ever seen thisbefore in the annals of
political history, in the annalsof political history.
It's really really weird to seepeople who are elected to run a
government destroy thatgovernment that's really weird
(07:14):
and degrade its capacity.
Even you know, authoritarianswould be tyrants and
authoritarians of the right andthe left, whether you know it's
Lenin or fascists.
Traditionally, they want totake over a state in order to
use that state, and they want touse it very, very effectively.
(07:35):
When I look at nationalsocialism in Germany in the
1930s and 40s, I see a statethat's altogether too capacious,
that's so fearsome, that's soefficient in its machinery of
death and terror, and so theNazis didn't destroy the state,
they took it over.
I see the same thing obviouslynot in a violent way in Orbán's
(07:59):
Hungary somebody who takes overthe state in order to use it.
It's really weird to see peopleyou know want to take over the
state in order to justsystematically incapacitate
large swaths of it, includingparts of it that are pretty
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue.
It's you know, I don't thinkyou can really find an example
(08:23):
of a person or a party who saidwe want to get in control so
that we can destroy the agencythat raises revenue, not make it
more efficient, not change thetax code or the basis of our
taxes so that they'refundamentally reformed, just
totally destroy the IRS, theinstitution that's charged with
(08:43):
collecting taxes.
And that's weird.
It taxes and you know that'sweird.
It's come to a kind ofcrescendo under Trump.
It didn't start with Trump.
Think back to Governor Perry,rick Perry, texas running for
president was it 2016?
And in a debate with otherRepublicans, he brags that on
day one you know, day one I'mgoing to eliminate three
(09:07):
agencies Department of Education, department of you know he
names the second department.
Shawn (09:11):
Then he can't remember the third he can't remember the
third yeah, yeah, he's like.
Dr. Muirhead (09:16):
And his fellow Republican candidates just start
tossing out the names ofagencies energy, interior
agriculture and he's like no, no, no, I can't remember.
And then he says agriculture.
And he's like, no, no, no, Ican't remember.
And then he says oops.
And it's an incrediblyrevealing moment because what it
encapsulates, what itcrystallizes, is this
destructive impulse, totally,totally divorced from any kind
(09:38):
of policy objective.
It's not like he's saying, hey,the Department of Agriculture
meant something, when you know,80% of the workforce worked in
agriculture.
Now that, like less than 1%does, do we really need this?
I think we should reform it,maybe even eliminate it.
That wasn't the argument.
It wasn't some surgical, youknow mission to take out
(10:00):
something that had outgrown itspurpose.
It was just, you know, sort oferrant destructiveness.
And it didn't even matter thathe didn't know the names of the
agencies.
What mattered was the ethos ofdestruction that he was
communicating.
So that's ungoverning, it's anintentional destruction of
(10:21):
governmental capacity.
It's not just chaos, althoughit is chaotic.
I think we use the word chaosin our subtitle on governing the
politics of chaos.
But it's this really weirdthing.
It's like no, we're not goingto use the government for
conservative purposes.
We're going to just try todestroy it.
Shawn (10:39):
I'm glad you bring up the Republican Party, because I
think in 2015, 2016, and as youmentioned, the Republican Party
has kind of made a cottageindustry of running against the
government, and so you know,we've kind of gotten used to, or
we've acclimated to, theRepublican Party as supporting
whatever that might look like.
(11:00):
I don't think what we'reexperiencing right now is
ultimately what I thought theywere going for, and I also think
that in 2015, 2016, I don'tthink Trump is in the place that
he was now as it relates todismantling the government so
feverishly and so completely,and neither was the Republican
Party.
I could be wrong, but I feellike, while Trump and the
(11:22):
Republican Party were runningagainst the government, where
they are now is not what I thinktheir intent was in 2015 or
2016.
And in fact, trump for all ofhis faults, I do think was
trying to figure out how tooperate in his first term within
government and still achievewhat he wanted.
It feels like this time around,something happened both with the
(11:45):
Republican Party and with Trumpthat has really radicalized
them.
I've been somewhat surprised Idon't know why, but that the
Republican Party has been soacquiescent.
I mean, it could be justself-preservation, but that is
shocking to me.
Trump has come in like a bullin a china shop.
He's tearing things down leftand right and the Republican
Party is just so acquiescent toit.
(12:07):
So what do you think haschanged between then and now?
Dr. Muirhead (12:10):
if you buy the argument that something has
changed, I agree with yourinterpretation idea that
government itself is problematicand that it'd be better if we
had a lot less of it is a strainof Republican, of the you know,
(12:31):
republican worldview that thatruns from 1932, from from
Franklin Roosevelt and the dawnof the new deal, you know, all
the way through Goldwater,through Reagan and and down down
to the present.
In some sense, you know, theRepublican party of the 1930s
opposed the entire New Deal, theentire development of the
administrative state, opposed,you know, social Security and
(12:54):
for a long time, the you knowthe idea of the Republican Party
was just to go back to the1920s, go back to Hoover, go
back to small government, goback to a government that did
nothing but deliver the mail andundo somehow the New Deal.
And I think there's always beenthat kind of, you know, anger
at the institutions that werebuilt up during the New Deal,
(13:14):
that were extended in the 1970sto cover things like clean water
and clean air, civil rights.
I think there's always beenthat strain and you can pick it
out in the inaugural address bythe first great conservative to
win the presidency sinceRoosevelt's election, ronald
Reagan 1981, giving hisinaugural, his first inaugural,
(13:35):
says government is not thesolution to our problems.
Government is the problem andyou know, for somebody like
Reagan that was a nice line, itwas a memorable line.
It's the kind of thing you knowif you're a writer you want to
put it in an inaugural speech.
But it was just one note in avery I think, much more
complicated symphony that Reaganwas actually playing and
(13:59):
directing.
It wasn't the whole of hispublic philosophy.
For instance, he wanted to usethe government to fight
communism, just as one example.
So it wasn't see even George WBush saying government.
(14:35):
You know he wants less taxesand, in some sense, less
regulation, but not just.
You know he doesn't hategovernment as such.
John Boehner doesn't hategovernment as such.
So it's just a note.
It's just a note in theRepublican symphony, but it
starts to become the only notein recent years.
It becomes exaggerated,amplified and distorted until
(14:58):
it's the only part ofconservatism.
Government is and look, if theonly thing you can think is that
government is the problem, wellthen, the solution is to get
rid of government.
So I think you're right thatthere's a way in which this has
you know exactly how it's cometo dominate.
Trump himself and his outlookis an interesting question.
But here's my thought.
I mean, I think that what Trumphates are the processes of
(15:23):
governmental administration, theprocesses of decision-making
that constrain the president'spersonal will and the processes
of consultation that engageexperts that also constrain the
president's dictatorial will.
And so I think he, because helikes personal power and wants
(15:46):
his will to be as you know, thepower of his will to be as
concentrated as it possibly canbe I don't think, you know, I
think in some sense he'stemperamentally opposed to the
institutions of administrationand government, that sort of
limit the president's will.
Shawn (16:02):
So I think it's one thing to study something like
ungoverning as an experience andconceptualize the role it plays
in our politics and, I suppose,democracy, in gradation to how
Republicans have kind ofpeppered their platform and the
way that they run and situatingthemselves as running against
(16:28):
the government prior, but itwasn't the, it wasn't one note
right in the way that has becomenow.
Yeah, yeah, but I do imagine ithas to be.
It is shocking Maybe it'sshocking even to you someone who
studied it, studies this tolook at the past three weeks and
not see this as likeungoverning on steroids.
(16:48):
It's not something that'shappening over a long period of
time and to me it feels likethat would have its own
implications for the ability ofgovernment and democracy to
respond and adjust in the sameway that it could or maybe has
in past, when it was just anelement of something right.
But I don't want to put wordsin your mouth.
So the speed, I suppose, whichthis is happening, is this
(17:10):
surprising to you and does itchange your calculus about the
threat it poses?
Dr. Muirhead (17:15):
Yeah, look, I mean , nancy Rosenblum, my co-author,
and I, in writing this book,were trying to distill and
interpret the fundamental kindof you know sources, principles
of movement in Trump's firstadministration in order to
assess, might even say predict,you know where it would go,
(17:37):
where the party that he came todefine would go and where he
would go if he were reelected.
And we decided that, you know,ungoverning was the dominant
principle.
But you could say, look, youknow, as you say, we're students
, we're, you know, teachers,we're just, it's just a
hypothesis, and even we're notsure.
By the way we write the book,you know, I'm pretty sure he's
(17:58):
going to be reelected, but Ican't predict the future.
I mean, I don't know what'sgoing to happen.
We just wrote it because wethought he was going to be.
But we're not sure.
And even in the moment, justprior, the week or two, just
prior to his inauguration, I waslooking at the people he was
appointing to his cabinet andI'm not really sure.
I think to myself, I'm not sureif this is the way, if
(18:20):
ungoverning is the way it'sgoing to go.
There are a lot of people he'sappointing who have an enormous
experience in government MarcoRubio, you know even Pam Bondi.
She's a very experienced lawyerand you know, not just you know
a personal friend or campaignsupporter or something like that
.
So Tom Homan, who's the borderczar, enormously experienced at
(18:45):
border control, starts out beinga border patrol agent.
He works in the Obamaadministration.
He's a prize winning civilservant in the in the Obama
administration.
So I'm seeing these people like, wow, okay, he's selecting for,
in some cases, experience andexpertise and he clearly has
policy goals that he wants toachieve, whether they have to do
(19:05):
with tariffs or border control.
So maybe we're wrong, maybethis isn't going to be the
dominant note in the Trumpadministration.
Well, as you say, three weeksin, I feel like in fact, we got
it right a policy-orientedadministration that's really
(19:29):
trying to lay down policies thatwill last, that will have
long-term effects and that willeven cause Donald Trump to be
able to shape American politicslong after he passes from the
scene.
I just don't see that and, asyou say, it's really been even
for Nancy and me kind offlabbergasting to witness.
I mean.
Quick example tariffs, donaldTrump's favorite word in the
(19:50):
dictionary.
He likes it better than love,better than faith.
It's his favorite word and sohe must have a tariff policy.
Well, what we get?
This surprise announcement 25%tariffs on um, on Mexico and on
(20:11):
probably the greatest ally thatany country's ever had in the
history of politics, canada, aclose, close friend, great
cooperator forces.
They send troops to, you know,afghanistan, to Iraq.
Keep those troops there for 20years.
This is a really good neighborand they stand alongside us in
(20:32):
everything.
And we're going to slap a 25%tariff on Canada and Mexico.
And I think, wow, I wasflabbergasted.
And it's not like this was awell-worked-out tariff policy
that engaged his commercesecretary, his treasury
secretary, sympatheticeconomists, that was part of a
(20:54):
global strategy to achieveparticular results.
And I couldn't believe it, eventhough I wrote the book called
Ungoverning.
And what happens then, though?
I wrote the book calledUngoverning and what happens
then?
By 3 pm East Coast time onMonday, not 48 hours later, the
tariffs are lifted.
Why?
Well, you can't, I don't, Istill can't figure out what
(21:15):
Canada did, you know, offered toget the tariffs lifted.
Mexico says something aboutsending, you know, 10,000 troops
closer to the border, orsomething.
I mean, they're just lifted,but he says only for 30 days.
And you think, well, okay, whathas to happen in the next 30
days for them to continue to belifted?
And the answer is well, no oneknows.
(21:36):
It just depends on thepresident's mood.
And this, you know, empoweringone person's mood is not
governing, it's the antithesisof governing.
It's not what the United StatesConstitution was meant to do.
Empower someone's mood, youknow it is, and that's why we
needed the new word ungoverning.
(21:57):
So, yes, it comes to be thedominant part of this
administration and I have to saywe're seeing a new example of
it every day.
Shawn (22:05):
And I have to say we're seeing a new example of it every
day, something that I dobelieve that Trump adheres to,
(22:38):
or at least he thinks he adheresto this idea that you know, if
you seem like the madman theory,if you seem like a madman,
you'll keep everyone on theirtoes and afraid of what you're
going to do and therefore peoplewill acquiesce and do what you
want.
I do think that's some of theapproach that he's taking.
The only way that I assume thatwe could continue to govern in
that space is to assume thatTrump has a handle on it and he
actually has some larger planand that he's not actually just
(23:01):
chaotic and unhinged andcompletely unmoored from any
actual governing.
Do you think there's any spacefor someone to play the role
that Trump is and I'm not sayingthat he's doing this, but we
could imagine some other figureplay the role that he is, which
is madman, which is chaotic andstill, under the surface, govern
effectively, or do you thinkthere's something about this
(23:23):
style in and of itself that justautomatically leads to
ungoverning?
Dr. Muirhead (23:29):
You know we mentioned words like
intelligence and chess checkers.
I would certainly.
You know, I'm not a goodestimate, I can't estimate
anybody's intelligence, I'm justnot very.
I don't know good at that, butjust you know good at that, but
(23:49):
just you know.
I guess as a kind of ordinaryperson I'm certainly kind of in
awe of Donald Trump'sachievements in his life.
I think he must be a very, verysmart guy, very capable guy.
You know, if you gave me anetwork TV show it would be
canceled in probably two minutes.
He kept it for 14 seasons.
That's got to be.
He converted kind of his realestate business into an amazing
(24:09):
television show, became anentertainer.
That's not an easy thing to do.
He then went into politics andgot himself elected to the
United States presidency twice.
It's not easy.
I actually serve in a very lowoffice.
Here.
I mean low, not meaning thathigh-end, high-status kind of
thing.
It's an important office butobscure.
(24:33):
And you know politics isn'teasy.
It's not even easy to be like atown select board member or
city council member, I mean.
So I certainly respect DonaldTrump's intelligence and would
never, you know, consider myself, I guess, smarter than he is.
He seems like a prettyimpressive guy.
(24:54):
The question is whether he'spursuing goals in a way that
will prove effective atrealizing those goals, and I
guess, if so, I'm not.
First of all, I'm not evenquite sure what his goals are.
Does he want to balance thebudget?
We have a $2 trillion deficit.
Is the purpose of Doge tobalance the budget?
Is it to cut a trillion dollarsfrom the budget?
(25:15):
I don't know what the purposeis, so it's hard to gauge
whether what he's doing, whichdoes seem pretty unpredictable
and chaotic, is going to beeffective, and I don't know what
he's aiming at, you know.
With respect to tariffs, doeshe want to create a
manufacturing economy in theUnited States so that we make
more things than we do now?
If so, what kinds of things Arewe supposed to make?
More cars?
(25:36):
Well, you know, the CEO of Fordjust said these tariffs are not
going to be very effective ifwhat you want is a country that
makes cars.
Are we supposed to make morechips?
That was one of Joe Biden'sgoals to create a semiconductor
industry where we make chips ofa certain sort.
Does Trump share that goal?
I have no idea.
Does he want a world in whichiPhones are not just designed in
(25:57):
California but made inCalifornia.
I mean that would be kind of anamazing thing given how hard it
would be to rebuild, to buildout those supply chains in the
United States.
I don't even know if that'swhat he's aiming at.
Does he want to make solarpanels, you know?
Do tariffs on aluminum meanthat he wants more aluminum to
be produced?
That's not really a high valueadded activity.
So I guess you know.
(26:19):
The first thing is it's justhard to.
It's hard to.
You know.
I know what a chess player isaiming at and so, even if I
don't understand every move, Iknow what the goal is for each
player.
I know what piece they'retrying to get in order to win
the game to.
(26:47):
I guess Trump wants to close theborder.
I get that.
But you know it's not reallyclear to me, even on immigration
, what his goals are, say, overthe next five years.
Does he want literally zeroimmigration or just immigration
of white you know, afrikanersfrom South Africa?
I don't know.
If I did know, I'd be able toassess the kind of rationality
of these somewhat surprisingannouncements, maybe with more
(27:13):
confidence in which he wants.
You know the purpose, I think,of keeping everybody guessing
isn't to best realize a goal,but to take power away from
appointees, from senators, frommembers of Congress, and bring
(27:36):
that power not only into theWhite House but into the Oval
Office, so that it isconcentrated in him and
everybody has to wait to findout what he says or tweets or
announces today.
Shawn (27:53):
The implications of ungoverning and how it plays out
and when I say implications, Imean for effective governance
and also democracy is really upto, I suppose, the form that
ungoverning takes and then theplayers that are involved in
both governing and ungoverning.
So when I think about somebodylike Donald Trump, like you, I
don't question his intelligenceand I also don't.
I'm not in his head.
I don't know what he's thinking, but something tells me that he
probably believes that he knowswhat he's doing and that it
(28:17):
will ultimately all be fine.
If we go out a couple of layersbeyond him and we think about
his cabinet and we think aboutRepublicans in Congress,
particularly in the Senate, Iimagine what they're thinking is
that either they have the skillto hold this all together and
by that I mean effectivegovernance and American
democracy in some form maybe,unless their ultimate goal is
(28:37):
really to tear it all down orthat the system is just sturdy
enough to withstand all of this.
But I'm not sure that.
I believe that.
I feel like there's a bit ofhubris in that, and so I guess
what I'm wondering is how youthink this all plays out Like.
What are the risks of this typeof approach to governing?
What does this look like infour years when we wake up, if
this just continues to play outthe way it looks like it's going
(28:59):
to?
Dr. Muirhead (29:00):
So one risk, I mean we could go from like
highly probable risks to lowprobability risks that are, you
know, maybe very catastrophic.
So if we just start with a riskthat I think is very, very
probable, maybe that's alreadyyou know certain, and that is
that what marks a kind ofconstitutional decay, but not
(29:21):
necessarily destruction of, youknow, constitutional restraints
and mores.
What we've seen is thepoliticization of law
enforcement and of the most kindof coercive elements of the
executive branch.
So we've already seen, forinstance, the president assume
(29:43):
personal control of the FBI.
The FBI is a very, verydangerous institution.
We have a history.
It has a history, I think, alonger history of abuse than of
good behavior, if you think ofthe FBI of J Edgar Hoover.
So this is this institution,lon, that can investigate people
(30:04):
, investigate any American, canpersecute and prosecute any
American, very, very dangerous.
Render the FBI independent ofthe political incentives that
(30:33):
mark every politician and everypresident.
So the FBI is not the personalinvestigatory service of the
president that can be chargedwith investigating the
president's political opponentsand enemies and giving passes or
indulgences to the president'sfriends, and that's
institutionalized in thefollowing way the FBI director
has a 10-year term, and thatmeant, by the way, that Joe
(30:55):
Biden did not get to name an FBIdirector.
Why?
Because Donald Trump named anFBI director when he was
president in about 2017.
The person's name wasChristopher Wray.
He had a 10-year term.
So Joe Biden doesn't get toname his own director, and the
(31:16):
reason for that is that the FBIis not meant to be the personal
instrument of Joe Biden.
The FBI is meant to beindependent, so Trump's own
appointee, christopher Wray,runs it.
Well, trump is no soonerelected than he says.
I'm going to fire ChristopherWray and appoint my own new FBI
director, kash Patel.
It's not clear that thepresident even has the authority
(31:38):
to fire this person with a10-year term.
It's certainly a frontalassault on this norm, this
institutionalized norm of FBIindependence.
And he appoints this person,kash Patel, who has said that he
wrote a book saying I've got anenemies list and here it is.
And I said I want to close downthe DC office of the FBI
(32:01):
because it's dominated by, Iguess, deep state activists who
hate Donald Trump and we'regoing to turn it into a museum
of the deep state.
I'm not exaggerating.
He put that in his book andthat's the person that Trump
appointed to run the FBI, whothe Senate, I guess, is going to
rubber stamp into the FBI.
(32:22):
So this is an example of justthe politicization of the most
coercive parts of the executivebranch that used to be thought
of as independent.
And we all took it.
Sitting down, I mean, even Raysaid oh, you want to fire me?
Okay, I'll resign.
I guess he was loyal to Trumpin some weird way.
Department of Justice, which isthe larger department in which
(32:44):
the FBI is situated.
The Department of Justice sayshey, there's this buddy of
Donald Trump's.
He's the mayor of New York Cityand although we indicted him
for taking bribes, we're goingto let him off because we just
got word from the president.
The president wants us to givehim an indulgence and let him
off, wants us to give them anindulgence and let them off, and
(33:08):
the prosecutor would have tosign that directive.
Turns out to have been a womanby the name of Sassoon.
She's a conservative Republican, a brilliant lawyer who clerked
for Justice Scalia, probablythe most formidable conservative
intellect on the Supreme Courtin the last century, and she
says I won't do it becausethat's a political, it's an
(33:29):
intrusion of partisan politicsin the work of the FBI which,
excuse me, the work of theJustice Department, which is
charged with the impartialadministration of justice, and
she resigns.
I mean, this is incredible.
So look, this is alreadyhappening.
This is an assault on the ideaof constitutional democracy.
(33:52):
The idea of constitutionaldemocracy says political power
isn't about one person'spersonal rule.
Political power is about agovernment of laws, and even the
person charged with enforcingthe law is subject to the law.
And this has already happened.
It's going to continue tohappen.
And even the person chargedwith enforcing the law is
subject to the law.
And we have, you know, this hasalready happened, it's going to
continue to happen.
So let's call it a very highprobability event and a very
(34:14):
corrosive one, or development,very high probability
development, a very corrosiveone.
Shawn (34:19):
So, as long as you've brought up laws and you brought,
you mentioned the Supreme Court.
Let's talk about the SupremeCourt, because, in order for
ungoverning in its purest form,which is total annihilation, I
suppose, or the ultimate goalbeing total, you know,
disruption and dismantling ofour governance and our governing
system, in order to achievethat, you really have to bring
(34:39):
along all of the branches ofgovernment, and so that includes
not just the presidency, butalso Congress and the judiciary.
And notwithstanding, andirrespective of the fact that
you know, the Supreme Courtright now has Donald Trump was
able to appoint or confirm threeof the justices that are on the
court now, and, you know,irrespective of the fact that
(35:01):
the court can't enforce thedecisions that it makes, what
role do you see the judiciary,in particular the Supreme Court,
in either backstopping againstungoverning or contributing to
it?
And then I suppose, if we wantto talk about this moment in
history, how much faith do youhave in this Supreme Court to
play some type of a role incurbing that?
Dr. Muirhead (35:23):
Yeah, it's so interesting.
I mean, what we see on thiscourt are justices who
themselves have questioned theconstitutional legitimacy of the
entire administrative state.
There's a kind of rhetoric thatthe chief has used that
suggests, you know, the entireadministrative state is kind of
situated in a way that'sconstitutionally indeterminate,
(35:45):
hard to place it in one of thethree branches, and suggests
that he might view the entireapparatus as unconstitutional.
He hasn't actually this isalmost throwaway rhetoric in his
decisions.
It hasn't guided his particulararguments and decisions, but
it's there.
There are other justices thatseem profoundly loyal to Trump
(36:09):
personally, like Clarence Thomas.
So you know I suppose that youknow we might expect the Supreme
Court to be just as submissiveto Trump as the US Senate has
been, which you know when youthink about it is incredibly
surprising that these senatorsdon't have enough pride in their
(36:29):
own, in the independent powersof their own office, to just
mark their independence andauthority with respect to the
presidency.
Maybe the court will be just assubmissive, but I actually
think it won't be.
But I actually think it won'tbe.
(36:56):
I do think obviously somebodylike Justice Roberts is
conservative, but I do notbelieve that he's a partisan.
He's thinking to himself howcan I work out this argument so
that it maximally benefits theRepublican Party and the leader
of the Republican Party at thismoment in time, donald Trump?
In fact, you know, I don't knowJustice Roberts, but just read
(37:19):
his opinions and you know, Idon't think he, I think
everything about him, would beopposed to that kind of loyalty
and submissiveness.
I actually think the same ofsomebody like you know, justice
Gorsuch, amy Coney Barrett.
I don't think these people Ithink these are brilliant
(37:40):
jurists.
They have a kind of conservativeoutlook in the way they
interpret the Constitution, havea kind of conservative outlook
in the way they interpret theconstitution and maybe also in
the way they think about theirkind of ideal points in
practical politics.
But I don't think they think oftheir vocation as defined by
its, you know, service to theleader of the party that they
(38:01):
tend to vote for.
I think that they think ofthemselves as doing, you know,
legal analysis and good faith,grounded, justifiable
interpretations of how theConstitution applies to very
complicated and vexing concretecases.
And so I actually think thatthe Supreme Court is in the end,
(38:24):
you know, going to function asa limit on Trump and the thing
is it the end, you know, goingto function as a limit on Trump,
and the thing is it'll take,you know, it'll take a year or
more for that limit to be seen,and it's not at all clear that
the Republican Party, theRepublicans in the House, the
(38:45):
Senate and the executive branchwill be in any mood to respect
the court when it does happen.
Shawn (38:51):
It does strike me that what we might end up seeing as a
result of this is a schism orsome type of I don't know if
it's fair to characterize thisas like a civil war within the
federal judiciary, or maybe evenacross the judiciary, writ
large, in which the lower courtsare much more assertive and
aggressive in their responses tosome of the stuff that's
(39:12):
happening that puts them at oddswith the Supreme Court.
Dr. Muirhead (39:14):
Yeah, we don't know yet where the Supreme Court
is going to fall.
It's just like the lower courts.
That's where the cases start.
Yeah, so we've seen themalready.
I wouldn't, I really wouldn'tcount out the Supreme Court.
Shawn (39:24):
The reason I mentioned this, though, is because it's a
larger point, which is there is,I think, something unique Well,
not unique, maybe it's ironicalthough I feel like I use that
word incorrectly all the timebut there's something, let's
just go with it.
There's something ironic aboutthe process of ungoverning in
that it feels like what it couldgenerate in response in
(39:45):
resistance from people is a formof resistance that, in and of
itself, almost aids the processof ungoverning, because it
contributes to, kind of thechaos or the rupture.
Dr. Muirhead (39:55):
Yeah, interesting.
So just walk me through that alittle bit more.
How does the response amplifythe energy of ungoverning?
Shawn (40:03):
What immediately comes to mind is nullification.
So if states start to decidethat they so adamantly disagree
with some of the either SupremeCourt decisions or some of the
you know executive orders ordecisions or orders that are
coming out of the executivebranch or even out of Congress,
that they start to nullify right, they pass laws that either say
they're not going to abide bythat or they're going to do
(40:25):
something completely different,or they don't recognize the
authority of these embodied inat least these individuals at
this time.
And so what that ends up doingis kind of stokes more
resistance and stokes a sense of, you know, an us versus them,
and this is kind of part andparcel of what precipitated the
rise of what ultimately wouldbecome the Civil War right.
(40:46):
So I can see it inflaming thosetypes of tensions, not
deliberately, and not to saythat it's ungoverning is, then,
something we should ignore, butI do wonder if there's this odd
side effect that comes with it.
Dr. Muirhead (40:57):
Yeah, and it's interesting that when we look at
the state governments, what wetend to see now are, you know,
trifecta states.
There are red states, where theRepublicans run the state house
, the state senate and thegovernorship, and blue states,
blue trifecta states, theDemocrats run the whole show and
increasingly this is what wesee at the state level, as
(41:18):
opposed to kind of mixed states,divided party control.
And, yeah, in those trifectastates the ethos, the energy of
the national party is nowcompletely defining the state
party.
It's like there are no regionaldifferences anymore and so a
blue state is completely alignedwith the Biden administration,
(41:42):
a red state is completelyobstructive, you know, and vice
versa.
So we could see these trifectablue states big, big, powerful
blue states New York, california, you know, we could see them
function as kind of points ofresistance, in a kind of classic
federalist way to certaindirectives of the Trump
administration.
And, you're right, like when,that's the way it works, when
(42:05):
the states are, in a way, justparty to the national political
contest, it deepens, accentuatesand accentuates the national
contest and inflames, you know,polarization that much more,
making it that much harder tocome together and govern.
So if governing isn't justabout, you know, respecting the
(42:27):
institutions of government, butultimately about kind of coming
together in a broad, diverse,durable majority that can that
can you know elect majorities tothe House and the Senate, the
Electoral College, year afteryear if that's really what you
know governing is and that canalso inform candidates at the
(42:47):
state level.
Well, this kind of you know,this kind of federalism and
polarization takes us evenfarther away from that sort of
ideal of you know of governing,and I guess that's one of the
big questions right now.
I mean, one of the things thatinterests me is the extent to
which people are looking atTrump as a kind of realignment.
(43:11):
As you know, they're looking atthis as a not just a disruption
, but as a moment when, whencoalitions will coalesce
together in very, very differentways than they have over the
past 50 or 75 years and redefineparties in really interesting
ways, and maybe even where oneof those parties comes to be a
(43:33):
durable majority.
I think the biggest, mostambitious kind of
self-understanding amongRepublicans right now is that,
as Franklin Roosevelt was to theDemocratic Party in 1932, this
kind of harbinger of a new,durable governing majority, this
person who creates a newcoalition that can stand
(43:55):
together for 50 years.
So Trump is to the RepublicanParty in 2024.
And I have to say that's anambition I would almost invite
my friends in the RepublicanParty to take on, because if
they really take that seriously,they're going to have to take
policy seriously, they're goingto have to take governing
seriously, they're going to haveto get very clear about the
(44:16):
kinds of goals that they want toserve, they're going to take
responsibility for the policiesand they're going to have to
create a really great anddiverse coalition that can win
elections over time.
So you know that I think isgoverning and that's what I.
You know, gosh, that'd be theantidote, I think, ultimately to
ungoverning.
But I think you know you'reright, I think that's probably
(44:38):
not what we're going to see.
What we're going to see is ajust barely there coalition that
can just barely get to amajority and just barely hold it
together and will probably losethe House in two years.
Shawn (44:48):
I'm glad you bring up the people because we've spent the
majority of this conversationtalking about the kind of
internal actors.
I call them the endogenousfactors, the elites, political
elites.
But there are other factors,exogenous factors and that's
social, cultural, electoral, butit's really embedded in the
people factors, and that'ssocial, cultural, electoral, but
(45:08):
it's really embedded in thepeople.
When I was doing mydissertation, a big part of that
project involved fielding anational survey and the project
was kind of evaluating shiftingattitudes and trust in
institutions and legitimacy ofinstitutions primarily executive
, legislative and judicialbranches at the federal level,
primarily executive, legislativeand judicial branches at the
(45:29):
federal level.
And one of the questions that Iasked folks was not my own, I
actually poached it fromlegitimacy literature.
But if any one of thesebranches started to make
decisions that you rabidlydisagreed with, do you agree
that it would be better to doaway with that institution
altogether?
And over 20% of respondentssaid that they would.
I remember at the time there wasone, one professor in the
(45:50):
department that was just seeing.
That response was like well,this whole, this whole survey
then, is bunk right, like wecan't, like there's no way 20%
of the population believes it.
And whereas I took the, I was ofthe opinion that if 20% of the
population believes that, whileit's a minority, that's a pretty
significant chunk of thepopulation believes that, while
it's a minority, that's a prettysignificant chunk of the
population that's willing to doaway with one of our branches of
(46:11):
government, if not all of them.
And the reason I'm mentioningthis is because, if that's the
case, if we have now shiftedlet's say that was correct, it
was 20% If we have now shiftedto a point at which almost 50%,
if not 50%, of the population isin this camp of not just doing
away but like, let's say, justdismantling government or
completely revamping it, and ifthat means burning it down, then
(46:33):
so be it.
I guess I wonder how you thinkthe people, as players in this
process of ungoverning, haveinfluenced it and what you think
might be happening that isleading the electorate to take
this type of a position.
Dr. Muirhead (46:50):
So it's you know, I really don't think that at
this moment 50% of thepopulation want to see customary
, you know, constraints onpresidential will abolished,
like the 10-year term of the FBIdirector.
I don't think 50% want to seethe IRS systematically disabled
(47:15):
so that the wealthy, maybeeverybody, can just stop paying
their taxes and we go from a $2trillion deficit to a $6
trillion deficit.
And I don't think ungoverninghas that kind of constituency.
I think that the constituencyfor ungoverning is in fact, like
you were saying, a much smallerbut still potent minority of
about 20%.
(47:35):
And one of the reasons I thinkthat they really are content
with the idea of destroyinginstitutions is because I think
many of them would like to see,you know, a country of a sort
that they can't really convincetheir fellow citizens to embrace
.
I think many of them would liketo see a country that's, you
(47:59):
know, dominated by whites, wherethe greatness of America
reflects the kind of racialimage of America in the 1950s.
And it's very hard in apluralistic country like ours to
convince people to endorse thesort of, you know, christian
nationalist image of a greatAmerica.
So what ungoverning does is itallows that minority to get
(48:24):
closer to it, what it wantswithout having to go through the
trouble of persuading others.
I think a whole lot of peoplewho voted for Donald Trump, you
know, I think, appreciated thedisruptive energy that he would
bring.
They wanted to see a variety ofinstitutions disrupted and
(48:46):
tethered more strongly to commonsense and to popular interests
and passions.
But they were very concernedabout inflation, massive price
increases, especially in rentsas well as in ordinary food that
people eat every day.
They're, I think, very, veryconcerned about the border.
You know the New York Timesdidn't bother to print on that,
(49:09):
to report on this, until afterthe election, but in December
they printed a story showingthat immigration to the United
States during the Bidenadministration was controlling
for population greater than anyother time in American history,
including in the 1890s.
And you know, I don't know.
I remember going to Denver notthat long ago, last winter,
(49:30):
seeing the encampments in Denver, and I thought this isn't just
an abstract idea that we have tocontrol the border.
This is really pressuringcities from LA to Portland,
oregon, to Denver, to New YorkCity in profound ways.
And of course it's a countrywhere it's really impossible to
build anything because ofrestrictions on buildings.
So you're going to lend tomillions of people and not build
(49:52):
any housing.
It's not going to work verywell.
So I think a lot of peoplevoted for Donald Trump for those
reasons inflation, bordercontrol but they don't want to
see their governmentsystematically hobbled, disabled
and destroyed.
Shawn (50:06):
systematically hobbled disabled and destroyed.
So I always make the mistake ofasking people before we're
recording, so in the green room,questions that ultimately I
wish I had asked while we wererecording, so I'm going to do
that right now.
I am wondering, to your mind,given the style and form of
ungoverning that we'reexperiencing right now, how
worried are you about Americandemocracy?
Dr. Muirhead (50:28):
I have.
You know, I'm relativelysanguine in general as a matter
of temperament and I haveenormous confidence in my fellow
citizens, including those Iwork.
You know I work on a regularbasis with Republicans who
(50:50):
identify strongly as Republicansand as conservatives, and I
like and admire many of themvery, very, very much.
I think we can make a politicstogether that works for everyone
.
I we can make a country that'sprosperous, that's free, that's
(51:11):
tolerant, that's respectful.
I have a great deal of hope.
That said, you know, that said,I really am profoundly concerned
it's much, much easier todestroy stuff than it is to
build it back and I have many,many complaints to register
(51:31):
about the Democratic Party,which I of the independence of
the Department of Justice topoliticize the Department of
(51:52):
Defense, purge the generals whoaren't personally loyal to the
president and promote the others.
I think this kind of effort tomake the entire executive branch
submissive to the personal will, the unpredictable mercurial
will of one person, willpermanently weaken the United
(52:14):
States of America and the worldand will make us permanently
less prosperous than we couldotherwise be.
Shawn (52:22):
All right, On that note.
Final question you ready for it?
Dr. Muirhead (52:25):
Okay, I'm going to hang on.
I'm going to sit up straight.
I'm ready.
Shawn (52:29):
Okay, perfect.
What's something interestingyou've been reading, watching,
listening to or doing lately,and it doesn't have to be
related to this topic, but itcan be.
Dr. Muirhead (52:39):
You know, I just caught a little column by Annie
Duke in the Washington Post andshe wrote it for federal
employees who are trying toconsider whether to take this
early retirement offer that ElonMusk sort of put on the table.
And so there's this column byAnnie Duke, the famous
(53:02):
world-class poker player, andshe in this column walks through
sort of how to make decisionsand it's a very, you know,
analytic, logical approach todecision-making.
It actually, you know, doesn'treally have anything to do with
politics or with this particular, you know, doge offer to try to
(53:25):
reduce the workforce and thegovernment.
It just has to do with makinggood decisions under conditions
of enormous uncertainty.
Written by probably one of thegreat analytic geniuses of our
time, Annie Duke, thisworld-class poker player, and
it's just a help, I think, toanybody who's ever had a hard
(53:46):
decision to make.
So I'd recommend people look upthis wonderful column by Annie
Duke, Check it out.
Shawn (53:51):
Dr Weirhead, thanks for dropping by.
I've enjoyed the conversationand here's to days of governing
instead of ungoverning.
Dr. Muirhead (53:59):
Oh, I could give you a hug for that.
Thank you, thank you.
Shawn (54:10):
Ungovernment isn't just incompetence.
It isn't even just chaos.
It's an intentional strategy toweaken democracy and dismantle
government from within.
Trump seems to besingle-mindedly devoted to doing
just this accelerating thisdestruction, leaving
institutions hollowed out andpublic trust in American
(54:30):
democracy in ruin.
If it isn't clear by now, letme make it so.
Democracy isn't self-sustaining.
It requires active defense, andI know that right now it feels
hopeless.
The thing I hear most, thething I've felt myself maybe the
most, is that you don't knowwhat to do, that we're just
(54:53):
watching it all being torn down,with no ability to stop it.
And sure, no one of us has theability to save democracy.
But we can each take actionsthat, in the aggregate, can make
a difference.
Volunteer as a poll worker,flood government meetings with
pro-democracy voices.
Learn the rules of governanceso you can call out the lies.
Support watchdog journalism.
(55:15):
Build community networks thatmake democracy personal.
Host civic dinners, fundlibraries, teach critical
thinking.
Hell run for office.
Democracy weakens when peopledisengage.
It strengthens when we show up.
So let's show up, all right,check back next week for another
episode of Deep Dive Chat soon,folks, thank you, Thank you.
(55:37):
You.
You know, the Nazis didn't destroy the state,
they took it over.
I see you know the same thingobviously not in a violent way
in Orbán's Hungary Somebody whotakes over the state in order to
use it.
It's really weird to see peopleyou know want to take over the
state in order to justsystematically incapacitate
large swaths of it, includingparts of it that are pretty
(00:20):
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue pretty
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue.
I don't think you can reallyfind an example of a person or a
party who said we want to getin control so that we can
destroy the agency that raisesrevenue, not make it more
efficient, not change the taxcode or the basis of our taxes
(00:44):
so that they're fundamentallyreformed, just totally destroy
the IRS, the institution that'scharged with collecting taxes,
and that's weird.
It's come to a kind ofcrescendo under Trump.
Shawn (01:04):
Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig.
For decades, conservatives havechampioned small government,
but in the Trump era, thatrhetoric has evolved into
something far more dangerousUngovernment An intentional
effort to break the veryinstitutions that make democracy
function.
Rather than seeking to governeffectively, today's Republican
(01:28):
Party has embraced chaos as apolitical strategy, dismantling
regulations, gutting agencies,obstructing legislation and
eroding public trust ingovernment itself.
This isn't just dysfunction.
It's a calculated effort toensure that government becomes
so weak, ineffective anddistrusted that it can no longer
(01:50):
serve the public good.
Trump's first term gave us apreview Government shutdowns,
purges of career officials,attacks on the rule of law and
outright contempt for democraticnorms for democratic norms.
And now, just weeks into hissecond term, the project of
ungoverning has kicked intooverdrive, posing an existential
threat not just to efficientgovernance, but to the American
(02:12):
way of life, to Americandemocracy.
In this episode, dr RussellMuirhead, professor of democracy
and politics at DartmouthUniversity and co-author of the
book Ungovernment, the Politicsof Chaos and the Attack on the
Administrative State, joins thepod to discuss how this
deliberate dismantling ofgovernment threatens democracy
(02:33):
itself, how serious the projectof ungoverning in the second
Trump administration is, andwhat we can do to fight back.
All right, if you like thisepisode or any episode, please
give it a like, share and followon your favorite podcast
platform and or subscribe to thepodcast on YouTube.
And, as always, if you have anythoughts, questions or comments
(02:55):
, please feel free to email meat deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom
.
Let's do a deep dive.
Let's do a deep dive.
Dr Muirhead, thanks for beinghere.
How are you?
Dr. Muirhead (03:11):
I am doing pretty well.
All things considered, I'mdelighted to be here, thank you.
Shawn (03:17):
So, for all the talk about authoritarianism versus
democracy in this past electionand the, I think, very real fear
of democratic backsliding inthe United States, if not
outright rise ofauthoritarianism under this
second Trump presidency, one ofthe things that I've brought up
a few times on this show and oneof the things that I'm actually
maybe more worried about is abreakdown of civil society and
(03:40):
some type of a disintegration ofa functioning government.
Some just top of mind thingsthat I can imagine are things
like the weakening of theAmerican passport or the
dissemination of bad data andfacts to the American populace,
disruptions in processing ofthings like Social Security or
Medicare or Medicaid,intermittent delivery of mail,
ineffective response todisasters, mistakes in tax
(04:02):
return processing all kinds ofthings that I think would then
have a knock-on effect.
So one, it would, you know,dramatically erode trust in
government, which is a precursorto its potential collapse.
And then two has downstreameffects on how effective state
and local governments can be andhow we all view each other, our
neighbors, especially if, youknow, some of us seem more
favored than others, or if someof us are targeted over others,
(04:25):
or at least seem to be, and Ireally do feel like in just the
past couple of weeks, we've seenthis future become a very real
possibility, and this issomething you study, something
you write about, so I'm glad tohave you here to discuss it.
Dr. Muirhead (04:39):
Yeah, thank you.
I think I share your concernand I think I really appreciate
the way you specified it.
It's really too easy to say,well, we're at risk of sliding
into authoritarianism or the endof democracy, and it's sort of.
You know, when I hear a wordlike authoritarianism, it takes
me back to when I was getting myPhD.
(04:59):
I remember, you know, probablyone week in some seminar where
we had to define, study theconcept of authoritarianism and
of course, I came out of theweek feeling like it was
impossible to define.
And you know, these are bigconcepts and concepts are
intellectual creations.
What we're talking about is not, you know, concepts.
(05:20):
We're talking about a livedexperience, and so I love the
way you put it.
You know, the mail,intermittent delivery of the
mail.
That's a lived experience, Asituation where we have no idea
whether the information we'regetting is true or fraudulent.
There's just no way to reachpast through the flow of
information and check it,because everything is suspect of
(05:44):
information and check itbecause everything is suspect.
That's a lived experience.
And I think you know, that'sthe way we need to kind of
disaggregate these big conceptsinto things that are experiences
, things that are part ofeveryday life, in order to
specify, you know, to get realabout what we have to hope for,
what we have to fear.
Shawn (06:05):
I have referred to this I don't know how to characterize
it or conceptualize itphenomenon as like governmental
chaos, but you call itungoverning and I think in
practice ungoverning could beexplained away as traditional
partisanship or politicalobstruction, but that might be a
Trojan horse.
So could you explain whatungoverning is and how it's
(06:29):
unique, and then essentiallywhat the threat is?
Dr. Muirhead (06:32):
Yeah, it might.
You know, I have a co-author,nancy Rosenblum, and Nancy and I
created this term ungoverning,because our argument is I mean,
our sense is that what we'reexperiencing right now we've
never seen before.
That's a big claim.
As soon as you say somethinglike that, there are like 5,000
historians who will go aboutshowing you that you're
(06:52):
exaggerating.
But this is maybe to put itslightly more modestly.
We've hardly ever seen thisbefore in the annals of
political history, in the annalsof political history.
It's really really weird to seepeople who are elected to run a
government destroy thatgovernment that's really weird
(07:14):
and degrade its capacity.
Even you know, authoritarianswould be tyrants and
authoritarians of the right andthe left, whether you know it's
Lenin or fascists.
Traditionally, they want totake over a state in order to
use that state, and they want touse it very, very effectively.
(07:35):
When I look at nationalsocialism in Germany in the
1930s and 40s, I see a statethat's altogether too capacious,
that's so fearsome, that's soefficient in its machinery of
death and terror, and so theNazis didn't destroy the state,
they took it over.
I see the same thing obviouslynot in a violent way in Orbán's
(07:59):
Hungary somebody who takes overthe state in order to use it.
It's really weird to see peopleyou know want to take over the
state in order to justsystematically incapacitate
large swaths of it, includingparts of it that are pretty
central to any state, like theability to raise revenue.
It's you know, I don't thinkyou can really find an example
(08:23):
of a person or a party who saidwe want to get in control so
that we can destroy the agencythat raises revenue, not make it
more efficient, not change thetax code or the basis of our
taxes so that they'refundamentally reformed, just
totally destroy the IRS, theinstitution that's charged with
(08:43):
collecting taxes.
And that's weird.
It taxes and you know that'sweird.
It's come to a kind ofcrescendo under Trump.
It didn't start with Trump.
Think back to Governor Perry,rick Perry, texas running for
president was it 2016?
And in a debate with otherRepublicans, he brags that on
day one you know, day one I'mgoing to eliminate three
(09:07):
agencies Department of Education, department of you know he
names the second department.
Shawn (09:11):
Then he can't remember the third he can't remember the
third yeah, yeah, he's like.
Dr. Muirhead (09:16):
And his fellow Republican candidates just start
tossing out the names ofagencies energy, interior
agriculture and he's like no, no, no, I can't remember.
And then he says agriculture.
And he's like, no, no, no, Ican't remember.
And then he says oops.
And it's an incrediblyrevealing moment because what it
encapsulates, what itcrystallizes, is this
destructive impulse, totally,totally divorced from any kind
(09:38):
of policy objective.
It's not like he's saying, hey,the Department of Agriculture
meant something, when you know,80% of the workforce worked in
agriculture.
Now that, like less than 1%does, do we really need this?
I think we should reform it,maybe even eliminate it.
That wasn't the argument.
It wasn't some surgical, youknow mission to take out
(10:00):
something that had outgrown itspurpose.
It was just, you know, sort oferrant destructiveness.
And it didn't even matter thathe didn't know the names of the
agencies.
What mattered was the ethos ofdestruction that he was
communicating.
So that's ungoverning, it's anintentional destruction of
(10:21):
governmental capacity.
It's not just chaos, althoughit is chaotic.
I think we use the word chaosin our subtitle on governing the
politics of chaos.
But it's this really weirdthing.
It's like no, we're not goingto use the government for
conservative purposes.
We're going to just try todestroy it.
Shawn (10:39):
I'm glad you bring up the Republican Party, because I
think in 2015, 2016, and as youmentioned, the Republican Party
has kind of made a cottageindustry of running against the
government, and so you know,we've kind of gotten used to, or
we've acclimated to, theRepublican Party as supporting
whatever that might look like.
(11:00):
I don't think what we'reexperiencing right now is
ultimately what I thought theywere going for, and I also think
that in 2015, 2016, I don'tthink Trump is in the place that
he was now as it relates todismantling the government so
feverishly and so completely,and neither was the Republican
Party.
I could be wrong, but I feellike, while Trump and the
(11:22):
Republican Party were runningagainst the government, where
they are now is not what I thinktheir intent was in 2015 or
2016.
And in fact, trump for all ofhis faults, I do think was
trying to figure out how tooperate in his first term within
government and still achievewhat he wanted.
It feels like this time around,something happened both with the
(11:45):
Republican Party and with Trumpthat has really radicalized
them.
I've been somewhat surprised Idon't know why, but that the
Republican Party has been soacquiescent.
I mean, it could be justself-preservation, but that is
shocking to me.
Trump has come in like a bullin a china shop.
He's tearing things down leftand right and the Republican
Party is just so acquiescent toit.
(12:07):
So what do you think haschanged between then and now?
Dr. Muirhead (12:10):
if you buy the argument that something has
changed, I agree with yourinterpretation idea that
government itself is problematicand that it'd be better if we
had a lot less of it is a strainof Republican, of the you know,
(12:31):
republican worldview that thatruns from 1932, from from
Franklin Roosevelt and the dawnof the new deal, you know, all
the way through Goldwater,through Reagan and and down down
to the present.
In some sense, you know, theRepublican party of the 1930s
opposed the entire New Deal, theentire development of the
administrative state, opposed,you know, social Security and
(12:54):
for a long time, the you knowthe idea of the Republican Party
was just to go back to the1920s, go back to Hoover, go
back to small government, goback to a government that did
nothing but deliver the mail andundo somehow the New Deal.
And I think there's always beenthat kind of, you know, anger
at the institutions that werebuilt up during the New Deal,
(13:14):
that were extended in the 1970sto cover things like clean water
and clean air, civil rights.
I think there's always beenthat strain and you can pick it
out in the inaugural address bythe first great conservative to
win the presidency sinceRoosevelt's election, ronald
Reagan 1981, giving hisinaugural, his first inaugural,
(13:35):
says government is not thesolution to our problems.
Government is the problem andyou know, for somebody like
Reagan that was a nice line, itwas a memorable line.
It's the kind of thing you knowif you're a writer you want to
put it in an inaugural speech.
But it was just one note in avery I think, much more
complicated symphony that Reaganwas actually playing and
(13:59):
directing.
It wasn't the whole of hispublic philosophy.
For instance, he wanted to usethe government to fight
communism, just as one example.
So it wasn't see even George WBush saying government.
(14:35):
You know he wants less taxesand, in some sense, less
regulation, but not just.
You know he doesn't hategovernment as such.
John Boehner doesn't hategovernment as such.
So it's just a note.
It's just a note in theRepublican symphony, but it
starts to become the only notein recent years.
It becomes exaggerated,amplified and distorted until
(14:58):
it's the only part ofconservatism.
Government is and look, if theonly thing you can think is that
government is the problem, wellthen, the solution is to get
rid of government.
So I think you're right thatthere's a way in which this has
you know exactly how it's cometo dominate.
Trump himself and his outlookis an interesting question.
But here's my thought.
I mean, I think that what Trumphates are the processes of
(15:23):
governmental administration, theprocesses of decision-making
that constrain the president'spersonal will and the processes
of consultation that engageexperts that also constrain the
president's dictatorial will.
And so I think he, because helikes personal power and wants
(15:46):
his will to be as you know, thepower of his will to be as
concentrated as it possibly canbe I don't think, you know, I
think in some sense he'stemperamentally opposed to the
institutions of administrationand government, that sort of
limit the president's will.
Shawn (16:02):
So I think it's one thing to study something like
ungoverning as an experience andconceptualize the role it plays
in our politics and, I suppose,democracy, in gradation to how
Republicans have kind ofpeppered their platform and the
way that they run and situatingthemselves as running against
(16:28):
the government prior, but itwasn't the, it wasn't one note
right in the way that has becomenow.
Yeah, yeah, but I do imagine ithas to be.
It is shocking Maybe it'sshocking even to you someone who
studied it, studies this tolook at the past three weeks and
not see this as likeungoverning on steroids.
(16:48):
It's not something that'shappening over a long period of
time and to me it feels likethat would have its own
implications for the ability ofgovernment and democracy to
respond and adjust in the sameway that it could or maybe has
in past, when it was just anelement of something right.
But I don't want to put wordsin your mouth.
So the speed, I suppose, whichthis is happening, is this
(17:10):
surprising to you and does itchange your calculus about the
threat it poses?
Dr. Muirhead (17:15):
Yeah, look, I mean , nancy Rosenblum, my co-author,
and I, in writing this book,were trying to distill and
interpret the fundamental kindof you know sources, principles
of movement in Trump's firstadministration in order to
assess, might even say predict,you know where it would go,
(17:37):
where the party that he came todefine would go and where he
would go if he were reelected.
And we decided that, you know,ungoverning was the dominant
principle.
But you could say, look, youknow, as you say, we're students
, we're, you know, teachers,we're just, it's just a
hypothesis, and even we're notsure.
By the way we write the book,you know, I'm pretty sure he's
(17:58):
going to be reelected, but Ican't predict the future.
I mean, I don't know what'sgoing to happen.
We just wrote it because wethought he was going to be.
But we're not sure.
And even in the moment, justprior, the week or two, just
prior to his inauguration, I waslooking at the people he was
appointing to his cabinet andI'm not really sure.
I think to myself, I'm not sureif this is the way, if
(18:20):
ungoverning is the way it'sgoing to go.
There are a lot of people he'sappointing who have an enormous
experience in government MarcoRubio, you know even Pam Bondi.
She's a very experienced lawyerand you know, not just you know
a personal friend or campaignsupporter or something like that
.
So Tom Homan, who's the borderczar, enormously experienced at
(18:45):
border control, starts out beinga border patrol agent.
He works in the Obamaadministration.
He's a prize winning civilservant in the in the Obama
administration.
So I'm seeing these people like, wow, okay, he's selecting for,
in some cases, experience andexpertise and he clearly has
policy goals that he wants toachieve, whether they have to do
(19:05):
with tariffs or border control.
So maybe we're wrong, maybethis isn't going to be the
dominant note in the Trumpadministration.
Well, as you say, three weeksin, I feel like in fact, we got
it right a policy-orientedadministration that's really
(19:29):
trying to lay down policies thatwill last, that will have
long-term effects and that willeven cause Donald Trump to be
able to shape American politicslong after he passes from the
scene.
I just don't see that and, asyou say, it's really been even
for Nancy and me kind offlabbergasting to witness.
I mean.
Quick example tariffs, donaldTrump's favorite word in the
(19:50):
dictionary.
He likes it better than love,better than faith.
It's his favorite word and sohe must have a tariff policy.
Well, what we get?
This surprise announcement 25%tariffs on um, on Mexico and on
(20:11):
probably the greatest ally thatany country's ever had in the
history of politics, canada, aclose, close friend, great
cooperator forces.
They send troops to, you know,afghanistan, to Iraq.
Keep those troops there for 20years.
This is a really good neighborand they stand alongside us in
(20:32):
everything.
And we're going to slap a 25%tariff on Canada and Mexico.
And I think, wow, I wasflabbergasted.
And it's not like this was awell-worked-out tariff policy
that engaged his commercesecretary, his treasury
secretary, sympatheticeconomists, that was part of a
(20:54):
global strategy to achieveparticular results.
And I couldn't believe it, eventhough I wrote the book called
Ungoverning.
And what happens then, though?
I wrote the book calledUngoverning and what happens
then?
By 3 pm East Coast time onMonday, not 48 hours later, the
tariffs are lifted.
Why?
Well, you can't, I don't, Istill can't figure out what
(21:15):
Canada did, you know, offered toget the tariffs lifted.
Mexico says something aboutsending, you know, 10,000 troops
closer to the border, orsomething.
I mean, they're just lifted,but he says only for 30 days.
And you think, well, okay, whathas to happen in the next 30
days for them to continue to belifted?
And the answer is well, no oneknows.
(21:36):
It just depends on thepresident's mood.
And this, you know, empoweringone person's mood is not
governing, it's the antithesisof governing.
It's not what the United StatesConstitution was meant to do.
Empower someone's mood, youknow it is, and that's why we
needed the new word ungoverning.
(21:57):
So, yes, it comes to be thedominant part of this
administration and I have to saywe're seeing a new example of
it every day.
Shawn (22:05):
And I have to say we're seeing a new example of it every
day, something that I dobelieve that Trump adheres to,
(22:38):
or at least he thinks he adheresto this idea that you know, if
you seem like the madman theory,if you seem like a madman,
you'll keep everyone on theirtoes and afraid of what you're
going to do and therefore peoplewill acquiesce and do what you
want.
I do think that's some of theapproach that he's taking.
The only way that I assume thatwe could continue to govern in
that space is to assume thatTrump has a handle on it and he
actually has some larger planand that he's not actually just
(23:01):
chaotic and unhinged andcompletely unmoored from any
actual governing.
Do you think there's any spacefor someone to play the role
that Trump is and I'm not sayingthat he's doing this, but we
could imagine some other figureplay the role that he is, which
is madman, which is chaotic andstill, under the surface, govern
effectively, or do you thinkthere's something about this
(23:23):
style in and of itself that justautomatically leads to
ungoverning?
Dr. Muirhead (23:29):
You know we mentioned words like
intelligence and chess checkers.
I would certainly.
You know, I'm not a goodestimate, I can't estimate
anybody's intelligence, I'm justnot very.
I don't know good at that, butjust you know good at that, but
(23:49):
just you know.
I guess as a kind of ordinaryperson I'm certainly kind of in
awe of Donald Trump'sachievements in his life.
I think he must be a very, verysmart guy, very capable guy.
You know, if you gave me anetwork TV show it would be
canceled in probably two minutes.
He kept it for 14 seasons.
That's got to be.
He converted kind of his realestate business into an amazing
(24:09):
television show, became anentertainer.
That's not an easy thing to do.
He then went into politics andgot himself elected to the
United States presidency twice.
It's not easy.
I actually serve in a very lowoffice.
Here.
I mean low, not meaning thathigh-end, high-status kind of
thing.
It's an important office butobscure.
(24:33):
And you know politics isn'teasy.
It's not even easy to be like atown select board member or
city council member, I mean.
So I certainly respect DonaldTrump's intelligence and would
never, you know, consider myself, I guess, smarter than he is.
He seems like a prettyimpressive guy.
(24:54):
The question is whether he'spursuing goals in a way that
will prove effective atrealizing those goals, and I
guess, if so, I'm not.
First of all, I'm not evenquite sure what his goals are.
Does he want to balance thebudget?
We have a $2 trillion deficit.
Is the purpose of Doge tobalance the budget?
Is it to cut a trillion dollarsfrom the budget?
(25:15):
I don't know what the purposeis, so it's hard to gauge
whether what he's doing, whichdoes seem pretty unpredictable
and chaotic, is going to beeffective, and I don't know what
he's aiming at, you know.
With respect to tariffs, doeshe want to create a
manufacturing economy in theUnited States so that we make
more things than we do now?
If so, what kinds of things Arewe supposed to make?
More cars?
(25:36):
Well, you know, the CEO of Fordjust said these tariffs are not
going to be very effective ifwhat you want is a country that
makes cars.
Are we supposed to make morechips?
That was one of Joe Biden'sgoals to create a semiconductor
industry where we make chips ofa certain sort.
Does Trump share that goal?
I have no idea.
Does he want a world in whichiPhones are not just designed in
(25:57):
California but made inCalifornia.
I mean that would be kind of anamazing thing given how hard it
would be to rebuild, to buildout those supply chains in the
United States.
I don't even know if that'swhat he's aiming at.
Does he want to make solarpanels, you know?
Do tariffs on aluminum meanthat he wants more aluminum to
be produced?
That's not really a high valueadded activity.
So I guess you know.
(26:19):
The first thing is it's justhard to.
It's hard to.
You know.
I know what a chess player isaiming at and so, even if I
don't understand every move, Iknow what the goal is for each
player.
I know what piece they'retrying to get in order to win
the game to.
(26:47):
I guess Trump wants to close theborder.
I get that.
But you know it's not reallyclear to me, even on immigration
, what his goals are, say, overthe next five years.
Does he want literally zeroimmigration or just immigration
of white you know, afrikanersfrom South Africa?
I don't know.
If I did know, I'd be able toassess the kind of rationality
of these somewhat surprisingannouncements, maybe with more
(27:13):
confidence in which he wants.
You know the purpose, I think,of keeping everybody guessing
isn't to best realize a goal,but to take power away from
appointees, from senators, frommembers of Congress, and bring
(27:36):
that power not only into theWhite House but into the Oval
Office, so that it isconcentrated in him and
everybody has to wait to findout what he says or tweets or
announces today.
Shawn (27:53):
The implications of ungoverning and how it plays out
and when I say implications, Imean for effective governance
and also democracy is really upto, I suppose, the form that
ungoverning takes and then theplayers that are involved in
both governing and ungoverning.
So when I think about somebodylike Donald Trump, like you, I
don't question his intelligenceand I also don't.
I'm not in his head.
I don't know what he's thinking, but something tells me that he
probably believes that he knowswhat he's doing and that it
(28:17):
will ultimately all be fine.
If we go out a couple of layersbeyond him and we think about
his cabinet and we think aboutRepublicans in Congress,
particularly in the Senate, Iimagine what they're thinking is
that either they have the skillto hold this all together and
by that I mean effectivegovernance and American
democracy in some form maybe,unless their ultimate goal is
(28:37):
really to tear it all down orthat the system is just sturdy
enough to withstand all of this.
But I'm not sure that.
I believe that.
I feel like there's a bit ofhubris in that, and so I guess
what I'm wondering is how youthink this all plays out Like.
What are the risks of this typeof approach to governing?
What does this look like infour years when we wake up, if
this just continues to play outthe way it looks like it's going
(28:59):
to?
Dr. Muirhead (29:00):
So one risk, I mean we could go from like
highly probable risks to lowprobability risks that are, you
know, maybe very catastrophic.
So if we just start with a riskthat I think is very, very
probable, maybe that's alreadyyou know certain, and that is
that what marks a kind ofconstitutional decay, but not
(29:21):
necessarily destruction of, youknow, constitutional restraints
and mores.
What we've seen is thepoliticization of law
enforcement and of the most kindof coercive elements of the
executive branch.
So we've already seen, forinstance, the president assume
(29:43):
personal control of the FBI.
The FBI is a very, verydangerous institution.
We have a history.
It has a history, I think, alonger history of abuse than of
good behavior, if you think ofthe FBI of J Edgar Hoover.
So this is this institution,lon, that can investigate people
(30:04):
, investigate any American, canpersecute and prosecute any
American, very, very dangerous.
Render the FBI independent ofthe political incentives that
(30:33):
mark every politician and everypresident.
So the FBI is not the personalinvestigatory service of the
president that can be chargedwith investigating the
president's political opponentsand enemies and giving passes or
indulgences to the president'sfriends, and that's
institutionalized in thefollowing way the FBI director
has a 10-year term, and thatmeant, by the way, that Joe
(30:55):
Biden did not get to name an FBIdirector.
Why?
Because Donald Trump named anFBI director when he was
president in about 2017.
The person's name wasChristopher Wray.
He had a 10-year term.
So Joe Biden doesn't get toname his own director, and the
(31:16):
reason for that is that the FBIis not meant to be the personal
instrument of Joe Biden.
The FBI is meant to beindependent, so Trump's own
appointee, christopher Wray,runs it.
Well, trump is no soonerelected than he says.
I'm going to fire ChristopherWray and appoint my own new FBI
director, kash Patel.
It's not clear that thepresident even has the authority
(31:38):
to fire this person with a10-year term.
It's certainly a frontalassault on this norm, this
institutionalized norm of FBIindependence.
And he appoints this person,kash Patel, who has said that he
wrote a book saying I've got anenemies list and here it is.
And I said I want to close downthe DC office of the FBI
(32:01):
because it's dominated by, Iguess, deep state activists who
hate Donald Trump and we'regoing to turn it into a museum
of the deep state.
I'm not exaggerating.
He put that in his book andthat's the person that Trump
appointed to run the FBI, whothe Senate, I guess, is going to
rubber stamp into the FBI.
(32:22):
So this is an example of justthe politicization of the most
coercive parts of the executivebranch that used to be thought
of as independent.
And we all took it.
Sitting down, I mean, even Raysaid oh, you want to fire me?
Okay, I'll resign.
I guess he was loyal to Trumpin some weird way.
Department of Justice, which isthe larger department in which
(32:44):
the FBI is situated.
The Department of Justice sayshey, there's this buddy of
Donald Trump's.
He's the mayor of New York Cityand although we indicted him
for taking bribes, we're goingto let him off because we just
got word from the president.
The president wants us to givehim an indulgence and let him
off, wants us to give them anindulgence and let them off, and
(33:08):
the prosecutor would have tosign that directive.
Turns out to have been a womanby the name of Sassoon.
She's a conservative Republican, a brilliant lawyer who clerked
for Justice Scalia, probablythe most formidable conservative
intellect on the Supreme Courtin the last century, and she
says I won't do it becausethat's a political, it's an
(33:29):
intrusion of partisan politicsin the work of the FBI which,
excuse me, the work of theJustice Department, which is
charged with the impartialadministration of justice, and
she resigns.
I mean, this is incredible.
So look, this is alreadyhappening.
This is an assault on the ideaof constitutional democracy.
(33:52):
The idea of constitutionaldemocracy says political power
isn't about one person'spersonal rule.
Political power is about agovernment of laws, and even the
person charged with enforcingthe law is subject to the law.
And this has already happened.
It's going to continue tohappen.
And even the person chargedwith enforcing the law is
subject to the law.
And we have, you know, this hasalready happened, it's going to
continue to happen.
So let's call it a very highprobability event and a very
(34:14):
corrosive one, or development,very high probability
development, a very corrosiveone.
Shawn (34:19):
So, as long as you've brought up laws and you brought,
you mentioned the Supreme Court.
Let's talk about the SupremeCourt, because, in order for
ungoverning in its purest form,which is total annihilation, I
suppose, or the ultimate goalbeing total, you know,
disruption and dismantling ofour governance and our governing
system, in order to achievethat, you really have to bring
(34:39):
along all of the branches ofgovernment, and so that includes
not just the presidency, butalso Congress and the judiciary.
And notwithstanding, andirrespective of the fact that
you know, the Supreme Courtright now has Donald Trump was
able to appoint or confirm threeof the justices that are on the
court now, and, you know,irrespective of the fact that
(35:01):
the court can't enforce thedecisions that it makes, what
role do you see the judiciary,in particular the Supreme Court,
in either backstopping againstungoverning or contributing to
it?
And then I suppose, if we wantto talk about this moment in
history, how much faith do youhave in this Supreme Court to
play some type of a role incurbing that?
Dr. Muirhead (35:23):
Yeah, it's so interesting.
I mean, what we see on thiscourt are justices who
themselves have questioned theconstitutional legitimacy of the
entire administrative state.
There's a kind of rhetoric thatthe chief has used that
suggests, you know, the entireadministrative state is kind of
situated in a way that'sconstitutionally indeterminate,
(35:45):
hard to place it in one of thethree branches, and suggests
that he might view the entireapparatus as unconstitutional.
He hasn't actually this isalmost throwaway rhetoric in his
decisions.
It hasn't guided his particulararguments and decisions, but
it's there.
There are other justices thatseem profoundly loyal to Trump
(36:09):
personally, like Clarence Thomas.
So you know I suppose that youknow we might expect the Supreme
Court to be just as submissiveto Trump as the US Senate has
been, which you know when youthink about it is incredibly
surprising that these senatorsdon't have enough pride in their
(36:29):
own, in the independent powersof their own office, to just
mark their independence andauthority with respect to the
presidency.
Maybe the court will be just assubmissive, but I actually
think it won't be.
But I actually think it won'tbe.
(36:56):
I do think obviously somebodylike Justice Roberts is
conservative, but I do notbelieve that he's a partisan.
He's thinking to himself howcan I work out this argument so
that it maximally benefits theRepublican Party and the leader
of the Republican Party at thismoment in time, donald Trump?
In fact, you know, I don't knowJustice Roberts, but just read
(37:19):
his opinions and you know, Idon't think he, I think
everything about him, would beopposed to that kind of loyalty
and submissiveness.
I actually think the same ofsomebody like you know, justice
Gorsuch, amy Coney Barrett.
I don't think these people Ithink these are brilliant
(37:40):
jurists.
They have a kind of conservativeoutlook in the way they
interpret the Constitution, havea kind of conservative outlook
in the way they interpret theconstitution and maybe also in
the way they think about theirkind of ideal points in
practical politics.
But I don't think they think oftheir vocation as defined by
its, you know, service to theleader of the party that they
(38:01):
tend to vote for.
I think that they think ofthemselves as doing, you know,
legal analysis and good faith,grounded, justifiable
interpretations of how theConstitution applies to very
complicated and vexing concretecases.
And so I actually think thatthe Supreme Court is in the end,
(38:24):
you know, going to function asa limit on Trump and the thing
is it the end, you know, goingto function as a limit on Trump,
and the thing is it'll take,you know, it'll take a year or
more for that limit to be seen,and it's not at all clear that
the Republican Party, theRepublicans in the House, the
(38:45):
Senate and the executive branchwill be in any mood to respect
the court when it does happen.
Shawn (38:51):
It does strike me that what we might end up seeing as a
result of this is a schism orsome type of I don't know if
it's fair to characterize thisas like a civil war within the
federal judiciary, or maybe evenacross the judiciary, writ
large, in which the lower courtsare much more assertive and
aggressive in their responses tosome of the stuff that's
(39:12):
happening that puts them at oddswith the Supreme Court.
Dr. Muirhead (39:14):
Yeah, we don't know yet where the Supreme Court
is going to fall.
It's just like the lower courts.
That's where the cases start.
Yeah, so we've seen themalready.
I wouldn't, I really wouldn'tcount out the Supreme Court.
Shawn (39:24):
The reason I mentioned this, though, is because it's a
larger point, which is there is,I think, something unique Well,
not unique, maybe it's ironicalthough I feel like I use that
word incorrectly all the timebut there's something, let's
just go with it.
There's something ironic aboutthe process of ungoverning in
that it feels like what it couldgenerate in response in
(39:45):
resistance from people is a formof resistance that, in and of
itself, almost aids the processof ungoverning, because it
contributes to, kind of thechaos or the rupture.
Dr. Muirhead (39:55):
Yeah, interesting.
So just walk me through that alittle bit more.
How does the response amplifythe energy of ungoverning?
Shawn (40:03):
What immediately comes to mind is nullification.
So if states start to decidethat they so adamantly disagree
with some of the either SupremeCourt decisions or some of the
you know executive orders ordecisions or orders that are
coming out of the executivebranch or even out of Congress,
that they start to nullify right, they pass laws that either say
they're not going to abide bythat or they're going to do
(40:25):
something completely different,or they don't recognize the
authority of these embodied inat least these individuals at
this time.
And so what that ends up doingis kind of stokes more
resistance and stokes a sense of, you know, an us versus them,
and this is kind of part andparcel of what precipitated the
rise of what ultimately wouldbecome the Civil War right.
(40:46):
So I can see it inflaming thosetypes of tensions, not
deliberately, and not to saythat it's ungoverning is, then,
something we should ignore, butI do wonder if there's this odd
side effect that comes with it.
Dr. Muirhead (40:57):
Yeah, and it's interesting that when we look at
the state governments, what wetend to see now are, you know,
trifecta states.
There are red states, where theRepublicans run the state house
, the state senate and thegovernorship, and blue states,
blue trifecta states, theDemocrats run the whole show and
increasingly this is what wesee at the state level, as
(41:18):
opposed to kind of mixed states,divided party control.
And, yeah, in those trifectastates the ethos, the energy of
the national party is nowcompletely defining the state
party.
It's like there are no regionaldifferences anymore and so a
blue state is completely alignedwith the Biden administration,
(41:42):
a red state is completelyobstructive, you know, and vice
versa.
So we could see these trifectablue states big, big, powerful
blue states New York, california, you know, we could see them
function as kind of points ofresistance, in a kind of classic
federalist way to certaindirectives of the Trump
administration.
And, you're right, like when,that's the way it works, when
(42:05):
the states are, in a way, justparty to the national political
contest, it deepens, accentuatesand accentuates the national
contest and inflames, you know,polarization that much more,
making it that much harder tocome together and govern.
So if governing isn't justabout, you know, respecting the
(42:27):
institutions of government, butultimately about kind of coming
together in a broad, diverse,durable majority that can that
can you know elect majorities tothe House and the Senate, the
Electoral College, year afteryear if that's really what you
know governing is and that canalso inform candidates at the
(42:47):
state level.
Well, this kind of you know,this kind of federalism and
polarization takes us evenfarther away from that sort of
ideal of you know of governing,and I guess that's one of the
big questions right now.
I mean, one of the things thatinterests me is the extent to
which people are looking atTrump as a kind of realignment.
(43:11):
As you know, they're looking atthis as a not just a disruption
, but as a moment when, whencoalitions will coalesce
together in very, very differentways than they have over the
past 50 or 75 years and redefineparties in really interesting
ways, and maybe even where oneof those parties comes to be a
(43:33):
durable majority.
I think the biggest, mostambitious kind of
self-understanding amongRepublicans right now is that,
as Franklin Roosevelt was to theDemocratic Party in 1932, this
kind of harbinger of a new,durable governing majority, this
person who creates a newcoalition that can stand
(43:55):
together for 50 years.
So Trump is to the RepublicanParty in 2024.
And I have to say that's anambition I would almost invite
my friends in the RepublicanParty to take on, because if
they really take that seriously,they're going to have to take
policy seriously, they're goingto have to take governing
seriously, they're going to haveto get very clear about the
(44:16):
kinds of goals that they want toserve, they're going to take
responsibility for the policiesand they're going to have to
create a really great anddiverse coalition that can win
elections over time.
So you know that I think isgoverning and that's what I.
You know, gosh, that'd be theantidote, I think, ultimately to
ungoverning.
But I think you know you'reright, I think that's probably
(44:38):
not what we're going to see.
What we're going to see is ajust barely there coalition that
can just barely get to amajority and just barely hold it
together and will probably losethe House in two years.
Shawn (44:48):
I'm glad you bring up the people because we've spent the
majority of this conversationtalking about the kind of
internal actors.
I call them the endogenousfactors, the elites, political
elites.
But there are other factors,exogenous factors and that's
social, cultural, electoral, butit's really embedded in the
people factors, and that'ssocial, cultural, electoral, but
(45:08):
it's really embedded in thepeople.
When I was doing mydissertation, a big part of that
project involved fielding anational survey and the project
was kind of evaluating shiftingattitudes and trust in
institutions and legitimacy ofinstitutions primarily executive
, legislative and judicialbranches at the federal level,
primarily executive, legislativeand judicial branches at the
(45:29):
federal level.
And one of the questions that Iasked folks was not my own, I
actually poached it fromlegitimacy literature.
But if any one of thesebranches started to make
decisions that you rabidlydisagreed with, do you agree
that it would be better to doaway with that institution
altogether?
And over 20% of respondentssaid that they would.
I remember at the time there wasone, one professor in the
(45:50):
department that was just seeing.
That response was like well,this whole, this whole survey
then, is bunk right, like wecan't, like there's no way 20%
of the population believes it.
And whereas I took the, I was ofthe opinion that if 20% of the
population believes that, whileit's a minority, that's a pretty
significant chunk of thepopulation believes that, while
it's a minority, that's a prettysignificant chunk of the
population that's willing to doaway with one of our branches of
(46:11):
government, if not all of them.
And the reason I'm mentioningthis is because, if that's the
case, if we have now shiftedlet's say that was correct, it
was 20% If we have now shiftedto a point at which almost 50%,
if not 50%, of the population isin this camp of not just doing
away but like, let's say, justdismantling government or
completely revamping it, and ifthat means burning it down, then
(46:33):
so be it.
I guess I wonder how you thinkthe people, as players in this
process of ungoverning, haveinfluenced it and what you think
might be happening that isleading the electorate to take
this type of a position.
Dr. Muirhead (46:50):
So it's you know, I really don't think that at
this moment 50% of thepopulation want to see customary
, you know, constraints onpresidential will abolished,
like the 10-year term of the FBIdirector.
I don't think 50% want to seethe IRS systematically disabled
(47:15):
so that the wealthy, maybeeverybody, can just stop paying
their taxes and we go from a $2trillion deficit to a $6
trillion deficit.
And I don't think ungoverninghas that kind of constituency.
I think that the constituencyfor ungoverning is in fact, like
you were saying, a much smallerbut still potent minority of
about 20%.
(47:35):
And one of the reasons I thinkthat they really are content
with the idea of destroyinginstitutions is because I think
many of them would like to see,you know, a country of a sort
that they can't really convincetheir fellow citizens to embrace
.
I think many of them would liketo see a country that's, you
(47:59):
know, dominated by whites, wherethe greatness of America
reflects the kind of racialimage of America in the 1950s.
And it's very hard in apluralistic country like ours to
convince people to endorse thesort of, you know, christian
nationalist image of a greatAmerica.
So what ungoverning does is itallows that minority to get
(48:24):
closer to it, what it wantswithout having to go through the
trouble of persuading others.
I think a whole lot of peoplewho voted for Donald Trump, you
know, I think, appreciated thedisruptive energy that he would
bring.
They wanted to see a variety ofinstitutions disrupted and
(48:46):
tethered more strongly to commonsense and to popular interests
and passions.
But they were very concernedabout inflation, massive price
increases, especially in rentsas well as in ordinary food that
people eat every day.
They're, I think, very, veryconcerned about the border.
You know the New York Timesdidn't bother to print on that,
(49:09):
to report on this, until afterthe election, but in December
they printed a story showingthat immigration to the United
States during the Bidenadministration was controlling
for population greater than anyother time in American history,
including in the 1890s.
And you know, I don't know.
I remember going to Denver notthat long ago, last winter,
(49:30):
seeing the encampments in Denver, and I thought this isn't just
an abstract idea that we have tocontrol the border.
This is really pressuringcities from LA to Portland,
oregon, to Denver, to New YorkCity in profound ways.
And of course it's a countrywhere it's really impossible to
build anything because ofrestrictions on buildings.
So you're going to lend tomillions of people and not build
(49:52):
any housing.
It's not going to work verywell.
So I think a lot of peoplevoted for Donald Trump for those
reasons inflation, bordercontrol but they don't want to
see their governmentsystematically hobbled, disabled
and destroyed.
Shawn (50:06):
systematically hobbled disabled and destroyed.
So I always make the mistake ofasking people before we're
recording, so in the green room,questions that ultimately I
wish I had asked while we wererecording, so I'm going to do
that right now.
I am wondering, to your mind,given the style and form of
ungoverning that we'reexperiencing right now, how
worried are you about Americandemocracy?
Dr. Muirhead (50:28):
I have.
You know, I'm relativelysanguine in general as a matter
of temperament and I haveenormous confidence in my fellow
citizens, including those Iwork.
You know I work on a regularbasis with Republicans who
(50:50):
identify strongly as Republicansand as conservatives, and I
like and admire many of themvery, very, very much.
I think we can make a politicstogether that works for everyone
.
I we can make a country that'sprosperous, that's free, that's
(51:11):
tolerant, that's respectful.
I have a great deal of hope.
That said, you know, that said,I really am profoundly concerned
it's much, much easier todestroy stuff than it is to
build it back and I have many,many complaints to register
(51:31):
about the Democratic Party,which I of the independence of
the Department of Justice topoliticize the Department of
(51:52):
Defense, purge the generals whoaren't personally loyal to the
president and promote the others.
I think this kind of effort tomake the entire executive branch
submissive to the personal will, the unpredictable mercurial
will of one person, willpermanently weaken the United
(52:14):
States of America and the worldand will make us permanently
less prosperous than we couldotherwise be.
Shawn (52:22):
All right, On that note.
Final question you ready for it?
Dr. Muirhead (52:25):
Okay, I'm going to hang on.
I'm going to sit up straight.
I'm ready.
Shawn (52:29):
Okay, perfect.
What's something interestingyou've been reading, watching,
listening to or doing lately,and it doesn't have to be
related to this topic, but itcan be.
Dr. Muirhead (52:39):
You know, I just caught a little column by Annie
Duke in the Washington Post andshe wrote it for federal
employees who are trying toconsider whether to take this
early retirement offer that ElonMusk sort of put on the table.
And so there's this column byAnnie Duke, the famous
(53:02):
world-class poker player, andshe in this column walks through
sort of how to make decisionsand it's a very, you know,
analytic, logical approach todecision-making.
It actually, you know, doesn'treally have anything to do with
politics or with this particular, you know, doge offer to try to
(53:25):
reduce the workforce and thegovernment.
It just has to do with makinggood decisions under conditions
of enormous uncertainty.
Written by probably one of thegreat analytic geniuses of our
time, Annie Duke, thisworld-class poker player, and
it's just a help, I think, toanybody who's ever had a hard
(53:46):
decision to make.
So I'd recommend people look upthis wonderful column by Annie
Duke, Check it out.
Shawn (53:51):
Dr Weirhead, thanks for dropping by.
I've enjoyed the conversationand here's to days of governing
instead of ungoverning.
Dr. Muirhead (53:59):
Oh, I could give you a hug for that.
Thank you, thank you.
Shawn (54:10):
Ungovernment isn't just incompetence.
It isn't even just chaos.
It's an intentional strategy toweaken democracy and dismantle
government from within.
Trump seems to besingle-mindedly devoted to doing
just this accelerating thisdestruction, leaving
institutions hollowed out andpublic trust in American
(54:30):
democracy in ruin.
If it isn't clear by now, letme make it so.
Democracy isn't self-sustaining.
It requires active defense, andI know that right now it feels
hopeless.
The thing I hear most, thething I've felt myself maybe the
most, is that you don't knowwhat to do, that we're just
(54:53):
watching it all being torn down,with no ability to stop it.
And sure, no one of us has theability to save democracy.
But we can each take actionsthat, in the aggregate, can make
a difference.
Volunteer as a poll worker,flood government meetings with
pro-democracy voices.
Learn the rules of governanceso you can call out the lies.
Support watchdog journalism.
(55:15):
Build community networks thatmake democracy personal.
Host civic dinners, fundlibraries, teach critical
thinking.
Hell run for office.
Democracy weakens when peopledisengage.
It strengthens when we show up.
So let's show up, all right,check back next week for another
episode of Deep Dive Chat soon,folks, thank you, Thank you.
(55:37):
You.
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