What would the American Marius look like?

Since the rise to prominence of Donald Trump in the GOP Primaries, the question on many disbelieving political players and pundits’ minds is: what is driving the Republican electorate away from the establishment conservative candidates and towards the unconventional Donald Trump? What is their beef?

As has been well laid out by the commentary, there is a disaffected white middle class that has seen its interests inexorably decline over the last 16 years resulting in an angry electorate looking to shake up Washington. But here’s where the commentary, particularly on the conservative side, starts to become confused. To some, conservative politicians have not been conservative enough nor consistent enough. In a sentence, they have not been consistently conservative enough, a line toed by Ted Cruz and his supporters. But the disenchantment is also purportedly fed by the functional breakdown in Washington, its inability to get things done, which is surely the consequence of the dogmatic positioning from the likes of Cruz.

Regardless, the real instigating factor for the extreme indignation being expressed by the GOP base is their betrayal; their betrayal at the hands of GOP functionaries over the course of the last two decades. This seems to be a blind spot that still haunts conservative commentators, such as William Kristol and David Brooks. The unconscionable politics of the Republican party started with the unholy alliance between Christian conservatism and corporate wealth that was turned into an indiscrete science by Karl Rove. As George W. Bush’s campaign manager, Karl Rove’s play was that by vigorously appealing to the religious and conservative base of the party, the Republicans could win elections with a mobilized base. The appeal to the base was, of course, purely on social issues, for, on economic issues, the GOP was beholden to the corporate dollars from primary and secondary industry tycoons (tertiary industry leaders were more inclined to push their dollars towards the progressive Democrats) that funded their campaigns. On a second front, the American middle class was let down by the push by the neoconservative movement, who had taken control of George W. Bush’s policy agenda with the placement of Dick Cheney as Vice President, Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense, and Paul Wolfowitz, as Deputy Secretary of Defense, to engage in Middle Eastern wars that proved disastrous for American interests. The prime benefactors of the US intervention in Iraq in 2003, on the superficial grounds of weapons of mass destruction, were al Qaida (which had, to that point, been suppressed by Saddam Hussein’s secular socialist Baathist regime), Tehran (whose Shiite allies now found themselves in control of Baghdad), and Halliburton (the military industrial corporation, managed by Cheney’s associates, which made billions of dollars through no-bid federal government contracts in support of the war effort).  

The middle class white voters who listened to the siren’s call to vote for Republicans on the basis of conservative politicians’ social values and command of security concerns have woken up to the fact that, on both counts, they have been played for fools. The appeal to social conservatism has been dispensed in conjunction with an economic policy that serves only the globalist corporate elites. In addition, there has been no reckoning on the unparalleled disaster that was the second Iraq war. Perhaps the GOP thought, after losing the White House to Barak Obama, that they could play down the policy failures that led to a war that history will surely condemn as ill-conceived in every measure. The assemblage of GOP support for the 2016 presidential bid by Jeb Bush, who remains an apologist for his brother, George W., and who surrounded himself with neoconservative foreign policy experts that aligned and overlapped with his brother’s foreign policy team, has proven to be a demonstrably monumental miscalculation. And yet many a conservative commentator remain blithely unaware of the sins of the past as they display bewilderment at the rise of Trump. Yet it will be recorded that, as Trump stands before them on a warm July day in Cleveland, accepting the Republican Party’s nomination to stand for president, their day of reckoning will have arrived.

Trump's campaign to date appears to have been perfectly tuned to speak to the dreams of the disaffected base of the Republican Party. To the white middle class who have seen their role within their own country diminish whilst the standing of their country also diminishes, the promise by Trump to make America great again is music to their ears. To those who say that his position is without any substance, that he is a sloganeer without any thought-through policy, there is indeed a radically substantive policy being proposed, and that is, the complete reversal of America’s role in the world, from that of global policeman in a unipolar world, to that of a country pursuant of its own interests within a world of competing interests. No longer will America work towards global freedoms; America will have its own interests at heart. A better world is not what is at stake, America’s prestige within it will become the priority, and with it, the restoration of the role of the white working American.

At what cost is Trump prepared to pay for this self-centered approach to policy-making? Trump is certainly unafraid to call on his supporters to take matters into their own hands when dealing with those of opposing views who turn up at Trump rallies, having, for example, expressed a desire to punch a protestor “in the face” and promising to “pay for the legal fees” for supporters who “knock the crap out of him”, in response to the prospect of a tomato thrower. Adding to the sense of palpable violence surrounding Trump is the rioting by anti-Trump protestors that occasioned his arrival to a rally in Costa Mesa, California, on April 29. Trump has also suggested that there will be riots at Cleveland if he is not nominated, given the healthy delegate and voter lead he has over his nearest rival, begging the question of whether he is issuing a threat or simply warning the Republican National Committee of the prospect of riots if they conspire to prevent him from reaching a majority delegate count.

It has always been my conviction that the continual political agitation between conservatives and progressives, between red states and blue states, would lead to levels of civil strife that will undermine the American Republic itself. It was a conviction that civil discord may open the door to demagoguery, although it appears, in the case of Trump, that demagoguery is prompting civil discord. Trump is nonetheless riding a wave of discontentment spawned from a changing demography across America. As changing demographics can shift the content of public discourse, it can also change the constitutional frameworks that are designed to guide public discourse.

The conviction that the American democracy is on the precipice of degradation is born from the patterns of history, reflecting upon the similiarities of the American Republic with that of the Roman Republic, and the manner in which the Roman Republic was torn down by intransigent partisan politics. The similiarities with the Roman Republic are numerous. The Roman Republic rose out of the ashes of the Greek influence across the Mediterranean in a similar fashion to the rise of the US from the European colonial empires, that is, as a technically adept power with heavy military capabilities and renown commercial assiduity, seen sometimes as less cultured than its Greek, or, in the case of the US, European, forebears. Under the Republic, Rome’s power base was the Senate, although the democratic popular assemblies had nominal sovereignty within Rome’s constitution. The Roman office of consulship, similar to an American President, though more focused on military campaign management, was restricted to two one-year terms, just as American presidents are restricted to no more than two four-year terms under the twenty-second Amendment. The stability of the Republican constitution was to ebb away as sweeping demographic changes saw a rise in Rome’s urban population as the rural population were forced from the countryside by the new equestrian class that took control of large farmlands. The new demographics of Rome brought about a political struggle between the Populares, a leftist reform platform, and the Optimates, the more conservative platform supported by senatorial elites. Much of this new urban population were soldiers, whose discontent would be exploited by political leaders, such as Gaius Marius, Lucius Sulla, Pompey the Great, Julius Caesar, and resulting finally in the replacement of the Republic by a Roman Principate under Augustus Caesar.

The first signs of mob violence were witnessed with the reforms by the Gracchi, two brothers, Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus, of the Populares, who, not unlike John and Robert Kennedy, were murdered as a result of their political successes in 133 BC and 121 BC respectively. Then in 104 BC, following a successful career as a military officer, Marius breached constitutional norms by accepting the consulship within ten years of previously having held it. He went on to hold the office of consul for five successive years through to 100 BC. Marius’ popularity was underpinned by the idea that he was an outsider to the political process, drawing on the impression that the senatorial nobility was incompetent at running military campaigns. In due course, Marius made military reforms that strengthened the loyalty held by soldiers towards their generals, and deployed mob tactics in Rome to further his military career, all of which paved the way for future politicians to cut through constitutional strictures in the search for greater power. Sulla, who engaged in an ongoing power struggle with Marius to become the first dictator of Rome in 82 BC, used precedents set by Marius as an excuse for his suspension of the constitution. Over the following generation, ambitious Roman leaders sought to take advantage of the allegiance of their armies and the jealousies of the mob to assume powers that were in full defiance of the laws of the Republic, culminating in Gaius Octavius assuming the title of Emperor Augustus in 27 BC.

Marius was undoubtedly a catalyst for constitutional instability, though scholars may see his role, more structurally, as an actor on a road towards empire that had already been laid by the forces of a changing demography. Today, should we view Trump similiarly, as a precipitator of disruption that will fracture the American Republic? Is Trump the American Marius? Whether he is to beat Hillary Clinton or wait for future political opportunities, he has demonstrated an ability to harness social instabilities and to paint himself as a successful businessman in contrast to the untrustworthiness and incompetence of the political class. And, just as history can provide prompts for what may be expected of the present, the present, perhaps, allows us to realize the past with greater resolution. With this in mind, do we see, in Trump’s bluster and bombast, features that may have accompanied Marius?