Will Democracy Survive President Trump? Two New Books Aren’t So Sure - The New York Times

Will Democracy Survive President Trump? Two New Books Aren’t So Sure - The New York Times
Book review by Jennifer Szalai

TRUMPOCRACY
The Corruption of the American Republic
By David Frum
301 pages. Harper/HarperCollins Publishers. $25.99.

HOW DEMOCRACIES DIE
By Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt
312 pages. Crown. $26.

In one of the most original turns in the book, Levitsky and Ziblatt assiduously dismantle the myth of American exceptionalism. Even during the supposed heyday of 20th-century bipartisan cooperation, “the norms sustaining our political system rested, to a considerable degree, on racial exclusion.” Jim Crow was allowed to flourish in a South that was “profoundly undemocratic.” The post-Confederate states had changed their constitutions and laws to deprive African-Americans of the vote, while Democrats and Republicans found common cause in a political system that was largely restricted to white people.

The authors hazard that most of the norm-breaking in the last few decades has been conducted by the Republican Party because, unlike its rival, it “has remained culturally homogeneous.” The Democrats have had to negotiate among varying interests in their ranks; the Republicans have not, allowing them to be more single-minded — and reckless, this book suggests — in their pursuit of power. But Levitsky and Ziblatt oppose those liberals who advise compromising the concerns of ethnic minorities in order to make Democrats more appealing to Trump’s white working-class base: “It would repeat some of our country’s most shameful mistakes.”