A Day in the Life of a President
The below scenario is not "real," but this is how things happen in this "Democracy."
When the president wakes in the morning, he lies in his bed and tries to recall his dreams. He calls this little exercise “mining the subconscious for visions of how to rule.” After a little while, and needing to pee, he gives up padding toward the bathroom: “TV. Turn on.” The unseen flatscreen silently pops to life, and his favorite talking heads appear. They are, of course, talking about him and his latest musings on the state of the world. He smiles and thinks, “Gee, if only Mom and Dad could see me now.”
Noticing they are still ooh-and-ahhing over his previous day’s proclamations, he decides to add more fuel to the fire lest it go out entirely. He reaffirms that his idea from the day before is quite genius, and he will issue a protocol today requesting an action plan by month’s end. The message flies off into the virtual unknown, and within minutes, the talking head tells the world what he just wrote. Sitting on the edge of his bed, wearing a bathrobe, he marveled at how an entire nation waited with bated breath his every utterance.
Arriving at his office, his aides wait to assess his mood. When he is in a good mood, their jobs are more manageable, and innocent people don’t suffer. His aides try to decipher what they mean as ideas flow out of his dark, inner consciousness. How can the fragments of thoughts be reordered and combined to form an image of something recognizable? Each aide has their favorite member in the legislature, and if the ramblings can be quickly translated into something tangible, then it can be passed on.
Once passed, the chosen legislative member can take to the floor and speak to the president’s recently mined ramblings. Assuming that the member is privy to something, the media tentatively begins to cover the member’s speech. Upon seeing that his ideas are already being packaged and delivered to the world and the reaction is relatively positive, the president decides to own the idea. He digitally takes credit and calls on all patriots to back the idea. The dubious legality of the measure means nothing to anyone: If the president wants it, the legislature will make the laws fit.
With control over the legislative branch and judicial branches, the president seldom has to worry about his less-than-legal ideas being overturned. Sure, sometimes a rogue judge will challenge the legality of something but that is done more for the show, and there will always be another judge along the way who will override the opposition. All usually works out just the way the president wants it.
On the occasions when the president hasn’t shared his ramblings with anyone, and his proposal shocks the world, the legislative members race to podiums and microphones to shout their support for the president’s latest bout of lunacy: “Yet again, the president is showing how he is a truly an out-of-the-box thinker. We should all be grateful for his creative leadership.”
The description of a “day in the life of a president in a leading democracy” does not refer to Donald Trump. I am describing how things work in Russia, which, after all, still considers itself a democracy.
Donald Trump hopes and prays for the above scenario. Republican members of Congress have surrendered their power to him in the same way Russia’s Duma has to Putin. With the Supreme Court in his pocket, Trump is counting on arriving at the day when his illegal orders will no longer be challenged but tacitly adhered to.
America, though, is not Russia, and while Republicans may be okay with turning the country into a dictatorship, there are a lot of Democrats and anti-Trump bureaucrats who are going to fight back. As Ezra Klein from The New York Times said the other day, Trump’s first two weeks have not expanded his popularity but rather weakened it. Trump and the sycophants are the best defense against Trump becoming a dictator.