The Lure of Caesarism

Richard Fernandez writes about "The Men Who Would Be Kings." After discussing the inherent instability of autocracies, and the assumed "inevitability" of a Hillary presidential nomination, Fernandez observes:

The American founding fathers were well acquainted with the world of kings and rejected it, feeling that a mighty nation founded on boring public consensus led by ordinary men would fare better than under a monarch; not perfectly, but better. The modern American elite has rejected this wisdom. They envy the kings of the world. Even the greatest servants of the American Republic are paupers by comparison to foreign autocrats. CNN Money has a chart comparing the richest American politicians to their Chinese counterparts. It is easy to see how the American political elite can be dazzled, not only by their wealth, but their unfettered raw power. 

... Should anyone succeed at “Caesarism” there might be personal glory in it a spell.  But Caesar would still live under the Hollow Crown and such a system would bring lasting instability to the magnificent — and regrettably ordinary — Republic.

Fernandez cites to an article by Ross Douthat in the New York Times. Douthat focuses on comments by Dan Pfeiffer, the outgoing White House advisor, suggesting that liberal, unilateral action has "worked" better for Obama than attempting to compromise with Republicans. Douthat questions whether it "worked" in the sense that it helped Obama's popularity with the political middle. Instead, the evidence seems to indicate that it alienated the political middle.

Unless, of course, you just define “worked” to mean “changed public policy without the opposition being able to stop us,” in which case we’re just dealing with Caesarism justified by consequentialism, and Pfeiffer’s argument is the boasting of a successful machiavel, unmoored both from constitutional norms and his boss’s own once-professed ideals. Which seems like the more accurate reading of the account he’s giving Chait: It’s less a story of how this president forged a political strategy better suited to our polarized times than it is a story of how Obama realized that a second-term president in an era of gridlock doesn’t need to be politically successful to put his stamp on major policy arenas … he just needs to let go of any principled concerns about what a president can and cannot do. 

And note that those concerns don’t even seem to rate a mention in the Pfeiffer-by-way-of-Chait description of the White House’s internal deliberations. (Any more than the fact that the president spent years lying about his own religious convictions troubles Pfeiffer’s portrayal of Obama’s “shift” on same-sex marriage as a key moment of progressive heroism … though in fairness, the right to lie shamelessly is a much more traditional presidential power.) Instead, expediency is all: A given move is a success if the opposition fails to find a way to block it, the hemmers and hawers are proven wrong if the president isn’t impeached, and the state of your party doesn’t really matter because an unbound presidency is all that progressivism really needs. 

Presumably there are still binding limits out there somewhere; even the president’s courtiers would concede that much. But for now, with re-election already accomplished, with a Congress too dysfunctional to effectively fight back, it clearly feels pretty good to be — or serve — the king.

Oswald Spengler looked forward to the rise of Caesarism; James Blish, writing in 1978, believed that we had nearly passed through that period. However, I think that we have only just entered into the period of Caesarism.