Deep Dive with Shawn

Burn It Down and Rule the Ashes: Trump’s Ungoverning Agenda (Featuring Dr. Russell Muirhead)

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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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Dr. Muirhead:

You know, the Nazis didn't destroy the state, they took it over. I see you know the same thing obviously not in a violent way in Orbán's Hungary Somebody who takes over the state in order to use it. It's really weird to see people you know want to take over the state in order to just systematically incapacitate large swaths of it, including parts of it that are pretty central to any state, like the ability to raise revenue pretty central to any state, like the ability to raise revenue. I don't think you can really find an example of a person or a party who said we want to get in control so that we can destroy the agency that raises revenue, not make it more efficient, not change the tax code or the basis of our taxes so that they're fundamentally reformed, just totally destroy the IRS, the institution that's charged with collecting taxes, and that's weird. It's come to a kind of crescendo under Trump.

Shawn:

Welcome to Deep Dive with me, s C Fettig. For decades, conservatives have championed small government, but in the Trump era, that rhetoric has evolved into something far more dangerous Ungovernment An intentional effort to break the very institutions that make democracy function. Rather than seeking to govern effectively, today's Republican Party has embraced chaos as a political strategy, dismantling regulations, gutting agencies, obstructing legislation and eroding public trust in government itself. This isn't just dysfunction. It's a calculated effort to ensure that government becomes so weak, ineffective and distrusted that it can no longer serve the public good. Trump's first term gave us a preview Government shutdowns, purges of career officials, attacks on the rule of law and outright contempt for democratic norms for democratic norms. And now, just weeks into his second term, the project of ungoverning has kicked into overdrive, posing an existential threat not just to efficient governance, but to the American way of life, to American democracy.

Shawn:

In this episode, dr Russell Muirhead, professor of democracy and politics at Dartmouth University and co-author of the book Ungovernment, the Politics of Chaos and the Attack on the Administrative State, joins the pod to discuss how this deliberate dismantling of government threatens democracy itself, how serious the project of ungoverning in the second Trump administration is, and what we can do to fight back. All right, if you like this episode or any episode, please give it a like, share and follow on your favorite podcast platform and or subscribe to the podcast on YouTube. And, as always, if you have any thoughts, questions or comments, please feel free to email me at deepdivewithshawn at gmailcom. Let's do a deep dive. Let's do a deep dive. Dr Muirhead, thanks for being here. How are you?

Dr. Muirhead:

I am doing pretty well. All things considered, I'm delighted to be here, thank you.

Shawn:

So, for all the talk about authoritarianism versus democracy in this past election and the, I think, very real fear of democratic backsliding in the United States, if not outright rise of authoritarianism under this second Trump presidency, one of the things that I've brought up a few times on this show and one of the things that I'm actually maybe more worried about is a breakdown of civil society and some type of a disintegration of a functioning government.

Shawn:

Some just top of mind things that I can imagine are things like the weakening of the American passport or the dissemination of bad data and facts to the American populace, disruptions in processing of things like Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid, intermittent delivery of mail, ineffective response to disasters, mistakes in tax return processing all kinds of things that I think would then have a knock-on effect. So one, it would, you know, dramatically erode trust in government, which is a precursor to its potential collapse. And then two has downstream effects on how effective state and local governments can be and how we all view each other, our neighbors, especially if, you know, some of us seem more favored than others, or if some of us are targeted over others, or at least seem to be, and I really do feel like in just the past couple of weeks, we've seen this future become a very real possibility, and this is something you study, something you write about, so I'm glad to have you here to discuss it.

Dr. Muirhead:

Yeah, thank you. I think I share your concern and 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 end of democracy, and it's sort of. You know, when I hear a word like authoritarianism, it takes me back to when I was getting my PhD. I remember, you know, probably one week in some seminar where we had to define, study the concept of authoritarianism and of course, I came out of the week feeling like it was impossible to define.

Dr. Muirhead:

And you know, these are big concepts and concepts are intellectual creations. What we're talking about is not, you know, concepts. We're talking about a lived experience, and so I love the way you put it. You know, the mail, intermittent delivery of the mail. That's a lived experience, A situation where we have no idea whether the information we're getting is true or fraudulent. There's just no way to reach past through the flow of information and check it, because everything is suspect of information and check it because everything is suspect. That's a lived experience. And I think you know, that's the way we need to kind of disaggregate these big concepts into things that are experiences, things that are part of everyday life, in order to specify, you know, to get real about what we have to hope for, what we have to fear.

Shawn:

I have referred to this I don't know how to characterize it or conceptualize it phenomenon as like governmental chaos, but you call it ungoverning and I think in practice ungoverning could be explained away as traditional partisanship or political obstruction, but that might be a Trojan horse. So could you explain what ungoverning is and how it's unique, and then essentially what the threat is?

Dr. Muirhead:

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're experiencing right now we've never seen before. That's a big claim. As soon as you say something like that, there are like 5,000 historians who will go about showing you that you're exaggerating. But this is maybe to put it slightly more modestly. We've hardly ever seen this before in the annals of political history, in the annals of political history.

Dr. Muirhead:

It's really really weird to see people who are elected to run a government destroy that government that's really weird and degrade its capacity. Even you know, authoritarians would be tyrants and authoritarians of the right and the left, whether you know it's Lenin or fascists. Traditionally, they want to take over a state in order to use that state, and they want to use it very, very effectively. When I look at national socialism in Germany in the 1930s and 40s, I see a state that's altogether too capacious, that's so fearsome, that's so efficient in its machinery of death and terror, and so the Nazis didn't destroy the state, they took it over. I see the same thing obviously not in a violent way in Orbán's Hungary somebody who takes over the state in order to use it.

Dr. Muirhead:

It's really weird to see people you know want to take over the state in order to just systematically incapacitate large swaths of it, including parts of it that are pretty central to any state, like the ability to raise revenue. It's you know, I don't think you can really find an example of a person or a party who said we want to get in control so that we can destroy the agency that raises revenue, not make it more efficient, not change the tax code or the basis of our taxes so that they're fundamentally reformed, just totally destroy the IRS, the institution that's charged with collecting taxes. And that's weird. It taxes and you know that's weird. It's come to a kind of crescendo 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 other Republicans, he brags that on day one you know, day one I'm going to eliminate three agencies Department of Education, department of you know he names the second department.

Shawn:

Then he can't remember the third he can't remember the third yeah, yeah, he's like.

Dr. Muirhead:

And his fellow Republican candidates just start tossing out the names of agencies 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, I can't remember. And then he says oops. And it's an incredibly revealing moment because what it encapsulates, what it crystallizes, is this destructive impulse, totally, totally divorced from any kind 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.

Dr. Muirhead:

That wasn't the argument. It wasn't some surgical, you know mission to take out something that had outgrown its purpose. It was just, you know, sort of errant destructiveness. And it didn't even matter that he didn't know the names of the agencies. What mattered was the ethos of destruction that he was communicating. So that's ungoverning, it's an intentional destruction of governmental capacity. It's not just chaos, although it is chaotic. I think we use the word chaos in our subtitle on governing the politics of chaos. But it's this really weird thing. It's like no, we're not going to use the government for conservative purposes. We're going to just try to destroy it.

Shawn:

I'm glad you bring up the Republican Party, because I think in 2015, 2016, and as you mentioned, the Republican Party has kind of made a cottage industry of running against the government, and so you know, we've kind of gotten used to, or we've acclimated to, the Republican Party as supporting whatever that might look like. I don't think what we're experiencing right now is ultimately what I thought they were going for, and I also think that in 2015, 2016, I don't think Trump is in the place that he was now as it relates to dismantling the government so feverishly and so completely, and neither was the Republican Party. I could be wrong, but I feel like, while Trump and the Republican Party were running against the government, where they are now is not what I think their intent was in 2015 or 2016. And in fact, trump for all of his faults, I do think was trying to figure out how to operate in his first term within government and still achieve what he wanted.

Shawn:

It feels like this time around, something happened both with the Republican Party and with Trump that has really radicalized them. I've been somewhat surprised I don't know why, but that the Republican Party has been so acquiescent. I mean, it could be just self-preservation, but that is shocking to me. Trump has come in like a bull in a china shop. He's tearing things down left and right and the Republican Party is just so acquiescent to it. So what do you think has changed between then and now?

Dr. Muirhead:

if you buy the argument that something has changed, I agree with your interpretation idea that government itself is problematic and that it'd be better if we had a lot less of it is a strain of Republican, of the you know, republican worldview that that runs from 1932, from from Franklin Roosevelt and the dawn of the new deal, you know, all the way through Goldwater, through Reagan and and down down to the present. In some sense, you know, the Republican party of the 1930s opposed the entire New Deal, the entire development of the administrative state, opposed, you know, social Security and for a long time, the you know the idea of the Republican Party was just to go back to the 1920s, go back to Hoover, go back to small government, go back to a government that did nothing but deliver the mail and undo somehow the New Deal. And I think there's always been that kind of, you know, anger at the institutions that were built up during the New Deal, that were extended in the 1970s to cover things like clean water and clean air, civil rights. I think there's always been that strain and you can pick it out in the inaugural address by the first great conservative to win the presidency since Roosevelt's election, ronald Reagan 1981, giving his inaugural, his first inaugural, says government is not the solution to our problems. Government is the problem and you know, for somebody like Reagan that was a nice line, it was a memorable line. It's the kind of thing you know if you're a writer you want to put it in an inaugural speech.

Dr. Muirhead:

But it was just one note in a very I think, much more complicated symphony that Reagan was actually playing and directing. It wasn't the whole of his public philosophy. For instance, he wanted to use the government to fight communism, just as one example. So it wasn't see even George W Bush saying government. You know he wants less taxes and, in some sense, less regulation, but not just. You know he doesn't hate government as such. John Boehner doesn't hate government as such. So it's just a note. It's just a note in the Republican symphony, but it starts to become the only note in recent years. It becomes exaggerated, amplified and distorted until it's the only part of conservatism.

Dr. Muirhead:

Government is and look, if the only thing you can think is that government is the problem, well then, the solution is to get rid of government. So I think you're right that there's a way in which this has you know exactly how it's come to dominate. Trump himself and his outlook is an interesting question. But here's my thought. I mean, I think that what Trump hates are the processes of governmental administration, the processes of decision-making that constrain the president's personal will and the processes of consultation that engage experts that also constrain the president's dictatorial will. And so I think he, because he likes personal power and wants his will to be as you know, the power of his will to be as concentrated as it possibly can be I don't think, you know, I think in some sense he's temperamentally opposed to the institutions of administration and government, that sort of limit the president's will.

Shawn:

So I think it's one thing to study something like ungoverning as an experience and conceptualize the role it plays in our politics and, I suppose, democracy, in gradation to how Republicans have kind of peppered their platform and the way that they run and situating themselves as running against the government prior, but it wasn't the, it wasn't one note right in the way that has become now.

Shawn:

Yeah, yeah, but I do imagine it has to be. It is shocking Maybe it's shocking even to you someone who studied it, studies this to look at the past three weeks and not see this as like ungoverning on steroids. It's not something that's happening over a long period of time and to me it feels like that would have its own implications for the ability of government and democracy to respond and adjust in the same way that it could or maybe has in past, when it was just an element of something right. But I don't want to put words in your mouth. So the speed, I suppose, which this is happening, is this surprising to you and does it change your calculus about the threat it poses?

Dr. Muirhead:

Yeah, look, I mean, nancy Rosenblum, my co-author, and I, in writing this book, were trying to distill and interpret the fundamental kind of you know sources, principles of movement in Trump's first administration in order to assess, might even say predict, you know where it would go, where the party that he came to define 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, you know, as you say, we're students, we're, you know, teachers, we're just, it's just a hypothesis, and even we're not sure. By the way we write the book, you know, I'm pretty sure he's going to be reelected, but I can't predict the future. I mean, I don't know what's going to happen. We just wrote it because we thought he was going to be. But we're not sure. And even in the moment, just prior, the week or two, just prior to his inauguration, I was looking at the people he was appointing to his cabinet and I'm not really sure. I think to myself, I'm not sure if this is the way, if ungoverning is the way it's going to go.

Dr. Muirhead:

There are a lot of people he's appointing who have an enormous experience in government Marco Rubio, you know even Pam Bondi. She's a very experienced lawyer and you know, not just you know a personal friend or campaign supporter or something like that. So Tom Homan, who's the border czar, enormously experienced at border control, starts out being a border patrol agent. He works in the Obama administration. He's a prize winning civil servant in the in the Obama administration. So I'm seeing these people like, wow, okay, he's selecting for, in some cases, experience and expertise and he clearly has policy goals that he wants to achieve, whether they have to do with tariffs or border control. So maybe we're wrong, maybe this isn't going to be the dominant note in the Trump administration. Well, as you say, three weeks in, I feel like in fact, we got it right a policy-oriented administration that's really trying to lay down policies that will last, that will have long-term effects and that will even cause Donald Trump to be able to shape American politics long after he passes from the scene.

Dr. Muirhead:

I just don't see that and, as you say, it's really been even for Nancy and me kind of flabbergasting to witness. I mean. Quick example tariffs, donald Trump's favorite word in the dictionary. He likes it better than love, better than faith. It's his favorite word and so he must have a tariff policy. Well, what we get?

Dr. Muirhead:

This surprise announcement 25% tariffs on um, on Mexico and on probably the greatest ally that any country's ever had in the history of politics, canada, a close, close friend, great cooperator forces. They send troops to, you know, afghanistan, to Iraq. Keep those troops there for 20 years. This is a really good neighbor and they stand alongside us in everything. And we're going to slap a 25% tariff on Canada and Mexico. And I think, wow, I was flabbergasted. And it's not like this was a well-worked-out tariff policy that engaged his commerce secretary, his treasury secretary, sympathetic economists, that was part of a global strategy to achieve particular results. And I couldn't believe it, even though I wrote the book called Ungoverning.

Dr. Muirhead:

And what happens then, though? I wrote the book called Ungoverning and what happens then? By 3 pm East Coast time on Monday, not 48 hours later, the tariffs are lifted. Why? Well, you can't, I don't, I still can't figure out what Canada did, you know, offered to get the tariffs lifted. Mexico says something about sending, you know, 10,000 troops closer to the border, or something. I mean, they're just lifted, but he says only for 30 days. And you think, well, okay, what has to happen in the next 30 days for them to continue to be lifted? And the answer is well, no one knows. It just depends on the president's mood. And this, you know, empowering one person's mood is not governing, it's the antithesis of governing. It's not what the United States Constitution was meant to do. Empower someone's mood, you know it is, and that's why we needed the new word ungoverning. So, yes, it comes to be the dominant part of this administration and I have to say we're seeing a new example of it every day.

Shawn:

And I have to say we're seeing a new example of it every day, something that I do believe that Trump adheres to, or at least he thinks he adheres to this idea that you know, if you seem like the madman theory, if you seem like a madman, you'll keep everyone on their toes and afraid of what you're going to do and therefore people will acquiesce and do what you want.

Shawn:

I do think that's some of the approach that he's taking. The only way that I assume that we could continue to govern in that space is to assume that Trump has a handle on it and he actually has some larger plan and that he's not actually just chaotic and unhinged and completely unmoored from any actual governing. Do you think there's any space for someone to play the role that Trump is and I'm not saying that he's doing this, but we could imagine some other figure play the role that he is, which is madman, which is chaotic and still, under the surface, govern effectively, or do you think there's something about this style in and of itself that just automatically leads to ungoverning?

Dr. Muirhead:

You know we mentioned words like intelligence and chess checkers. I would certainly. You know, I'm not a good estimate, I can't estimate anybody's intelligence, I'm just not very. I don't know good at that, but just you know good at that, but just you know. I guess as a kind of ordinary person I'm certainly kind of in awe of Donald Trump's achievements in his life. I think he must be a very, very smart guy, very capable guy. You know, if you gave me a network TV show it would be canceled in probably two minutes. He kept it for 14 seasons. That's got to be.

Dr. Muirhead:

He converted kind of his real estate business into an amazing television show, became an entertainer. That's not an easy thing to do. He then went into politics and got himself elected to the United States presidency twice. It's not easy. I actually serve in a very low office. Here. I mean low, not meaning that high-end, high-status kind of thing. It's an important office but obscure. And you know politics isn't easy. It's not even easy to be like a town select board member or city council member, I mean. So I certainly respect Donald Trump's intelligence and would never, you know, consider myself, I guess, smarter than he is. He seems like a pretty impressive guy.

Dr. Muirhead:

The question is whether he's pursuing goals in a way that will prove effective at realizing those goals, and I guess, if so, I'm not. First of all, I'm not even quite sure what his goals are. Does he want to balance the budget? We have a $2 trillion deficit. Is the purpose of Doge to balance the budget? Is it to cut a trillion dollars from the budget? I don't know what the purpose is, so it's hard to gauge whether what he's doing, which does seem pretty unpredictable and chaotic, is going to be effective, and I don't know what he's aiming at, you know. With respect to tariffs, does he want to create a manufacturing economy in the United States so that we make more things than we do now? If so, what kinds of things Are we supposed to make? More cars? Well, you know, the CEO of Ford just said these tariffs are not going to be very effective if what you want is a country that makes cars. Are we supposed to make more chips? That was one of Joe Biden's goals to create a semiconductor industry where we make chips of a certain sort. Does Trump share that goal? I have no idea. Does he want a world in which iPhones are not just designed in California but made in California. I mean that would be kind of an amazing thing given how hard it would be to rebuild, to build out those supply chains in the United States. I don't even know if that's what he's aiming at. Does he want to make solar panels, you know? Do tariffs on aluminum mean that he wants more aluminum to be produced? That's not really a high value added activity. So I guess you know.

Dr. Muirhead:

The first thing is it's just hard to. It's hard to. You know. I know what a chess player is aiming at and so, even if I don't understand every move, I know what the goal is for each player. I know what piece they're trying to get in order to win the game to.

Dr. Muirhead:

I guess Trump wants to close the border. I get that. But you know it's not really clear to me, even on immigration, what his goals are, say, over the next five years. Does he want literally zero immigration or just immigration of white you know, afrikaners from South Africa? I don't know. If I did know, I'd be able to assess the kind of rationality of these somewhat surprising announcements, maybe with more 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, from members of Congress, and bring that power not only into the White House but into the Oval Office, so that it is concentrated in him and everybody has to wait to find out what he says or tweets or announces today.

Shawn:

The implications of ungoverning and how it plays out and when I say implications, I mean for effective governance and also democracy is really up to, I suppose, the form that ungoverning takes and then the players that are involved in both governing and ungoverning. So when I think about somebody like Donald Trump, like you, I don't question his intelligence and 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 knows what he's doing and that it will ultimately all be fine.

Shawn:

If we go out a couple of layers beyond him and we think about his cabinet and we think about Republicans in Congress, particularly in the Senate, I imagine what they're thinking is that either they have the skill to hold this all together and by that I mean effective governance and American democracy in some form maybe, unless their ultimate goal is really to tear it all down or that 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 of hubris in that, and so I guess what I'm wondering is how you think this all plays out Like. What are the risks of this type of approach to governing? What does this look like in four years when we wake up, if this just continues to play out the way it looks like it's going to?

Dr. Muirhead:

So one risk, I mean we could go from like highly probable risks to low probability risks that are, you know, maybe very catastrophic. So if we just start with a risk that I think is very, very probable, maybe that's already you know certain, and that is that what marks a kind of constitutional decay, but not necessarily destruction of, you know, constitutional restraints and mores. What we've seen is the politicization of law enforcement and of the most kind of coercive elements of the executive branch. So we've already seen, for instance, the president assume personal control of the FBI. The FBI is a very, very dangerous institution. We have a history. It has a history, I think, a longer history of abuse than of good behavior, if you think of the FBI of J Edgar Hoover. So this is this institution, lon, that can investigate people, investigate any American, can persecute and prosecute any American, very, very dangerous. Render the FBI independent of the political incentives that mark every politician and every president. So the FBI is not the personal investigatory service of the president that can be charged with investigating the president's political opponents and enemies and giving passes or indulgences to the president's friends, and that's institutionalized in the following way the FBI director has a 10-year term, and that meant, by the way, that Joe Biden did not get to name an FBI director. Why? Because Donald Trump named an FBI director when he was president in about 2017. The person's name was Christopher Wray. He had a 10-year term. So Joe Biden doesn't get to name his own director, and the reason for that is that the FBI is not meant to be the personal instrument of Joe Biden. The FBI is meant to be independent, so Trump's own appointee, christopher Wray, runs it. Well, trump is no sooner elected than he says. I'm going to fire Christopher Wray and appoint my own new FBI director, kash Patel. It's not clear that the president even has the authority to fire this person with a 10-year term. It's certainly a frontal assault on this norm, this institutionalized norm of FBI independence. And he appoints this person, kash Patel, who has said that he wrote a book saying I've got an enemies list and here it is. And I said I want to close down the DC office of the FBI because it's dominated by, I guess, deep state activists who hate Donald Trump and we're going to turn it into a museum of the deep state. I'm not exaggerating. He put that in his book and that's the person that Trump appointed to run the FBI, who the Senate, I guess, is going to rubber stamp into the FBI. So this is an example of just the politicization of the most coercive parts of the executive branch that used to be thought of as independent. And we all took it. Sitting down, I mean, even Ray said oh, you want to fire me? Okay, I'll resign. I guess he was loyal to Trump in some weird way.

Dr. Muirhead:

Department of Justice, which is the larger department in which the FBI is situated. The Department of Justice says hey, there's this buddy of Donald Trump's. He's the mayor of New York City and although we indicted him for taking bribes, we're going to let him off because we just got word from the president. The president wants us to give him an indulgence and let him off, wants us to give them an indulgence and let them off, and the prosecutor would have to sign that directive.

Dr. Muirhead:

Turns out to have been a woman by the name of Sassoon. She's a conservative Republican, a brilliant lawyer who clerked for Justice Scalia, probably the most formidable conservative intellect on the Supreme Court in the last century, and she says I won't do it because that's a political, it's an intrusion of partisan politics in the work of the FBI which, excuse me, the work of the Justice Department, which is charged with the impartial administration of justice, and she resigns. I mean, this is incredible. So look, this is already happening. This is an assault on the idea of constitutional democracy.

Dr. Muirhead:

The idea of constitutional democracy says political power isn't about one person's personal rule. Political power is about a government of laws, and even the person charged with enforcing the law is subject to the law. And this has already happened. It's going to continue to happen. And even the person charged with enforcing the law is subject to the law. And we have, you know, this has already happened, it's going to continue to happen. So let's call it a very high probability event and a very corrosive one, or development, very high probability development, a very corrosive one.

Shawn:

So, as long as you've brought up laws and you brought, you mentioned the Supreme Court. Let's talk about the Supreme Court, because, in order for ungoverning in its purest form, which is total annihilation, I suppose, or the ultimate goal being total, you know, disruption and dismantling of our governance and our governing system, in order to achieve that, you really have to bring along all of the branches of government, and so that includes not just the presidency, but also Congress and the judiciary. And notwithstanding, and irrespective of the fact that you know, the Supreme Court right now has Donald Trump was able to appoint or confirm three of the justices that are on the court now, and, you know, irrespective of the fact that the court can't enforce the decisions that it makes, what role do you see the judiciary, in particular the Supreme Court, in either backstopping against ungoverning or contributing to it? And then I suppose, if we want to talk about this moment in history, how much faith do you have in this Supreme Court to play some type of a role in curbing that?

Dr. Muirhead:

Yeah, it's so interesting. I mean, what we see on this court are justices who themselves have questioned the constitutional legitimacy of the entire administrative state. There's a kind of rhetoric that the chief has used that suggests, you know, the entire administrative state is kind of situated in a way that's constitutionally indeterminate, hard to place it in one of the three branches, and suggests that he might view the entire apparatus as unconstitutional. He hasn't actually this is almost throwaway rhetoric in his decisions. It hasn't guided his particular arguments and decisions, but it's there. There are other justices that seem profoundly loyal to Trump personally, like Clarence Thomas. So you know I suppose that you know we might expect the Supreme Court to be just as submissive to Trump as the US Senate has been, which you know when you think about it is incredibly surprising that these senators don't have enough pride in their own, in the independent powers of their own office, to just mark their independence and authority with respect to the presidency. Maybe the court will be just as submissive, but I actually think it won't be. But I actually think it won't be.

Dr. Muirhead:

I do think obviously somebody like Justice Roberts is conservative, but I do not believe that he's a partisan. He's thinking to himself how can I work out this argument so that it maximally benefits the Republican Party and the leader of the Republican Party at this moment in time, donald Trump? In fact, you know, I don't know Justice Roberts, but just read his opinions and you know, I don't think he, I think everything about him, would be opposed to that kind of loyalty and submissiveness. I actually think the same of somebody like you know, justice Gorsuch, amy Coney Barrett.

Dr. Muirhead:

I don't think these people I think these are brilliant jurists.

Dr. Muirhead:

They have a kind of conservative outlook in the way they interpret the Constitution, have a kind of conservative outlook in the way they interpret the constitution and maybe also in the way they think about their kind of ideal points in practical politics. But I don't think they think of their vocation as defined by its, you know, service to the leader of the party that they tend to vote for. I think that they think of themselves as doing, you know, legal analysis and good faith, grounded, justifiable interpretations of how the Constitution applies to very complicated and vexing concrete cases. And so I actually think that the Supreme Court is in the end, you know, going to function as a limit on Trump and the thing is it the end, you know, going to 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, the Republicans in the House, the Senate and the executive branch will be in any mood to respect the court when it does happen.

Shawn:

It does strike me that what we might end up seeing as a result of this is a schism or some type of I don't know if it's fair to characterize this as like a civil war within the federal judiciary, or maybe even across the judiciary, writ large, in which the lower courts are much more assertive and aggressive in their responses to some of the stuff that's happening that puts them at odds with the Supreme Court.

Dr. Muirhead:

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 them already. I wouldn't, I really wouldn't count out the Supreme Court.

Shawn:

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 ironic although I feel like I use that word incorrectly all the time but there's something, let's just go with it. There's something ironic about the process of ungoverning in that it feels like what it could generate in response in resistance from people is a form of resistance that, in and of itself, almost aids the process of ungoverning, because it contributes to, kind of the chaos or the rupture.

Dr. Muirhead:

Yeah, interesting. So just walk me through that a little bit more. How does the response amplify the energy of ungoverning?

Shawn:

What immediately comes to mind is nullification. So if states start to decide that they so adamantly disagree with some of the either Supreme Court decisions or some of the you know executive orders or decisions or orders that are coming out of the executive branch or even out of Congress, that they start to nullify right, they pass laws that either say they're not going to abide by that or they're going to do something completely different, or they don't recognize the authority of these embodied in at least these individuals at this time. And so what that ends up doing is kind of stokes more resistance and stokes a sense of, you know, an us versus them, and this is kind of part and parcel of what precipitated the rise of what ultimately would become the Civil War right.

Shawn:

So I can see it inflaming those types of tensions, not deliberately, and not to say that it's ungoverning is, then, something we should ignore, but I do wonder if there's this odd side effect that comes with it.

Dr. Muirhead:

Yeah, and it's interesting that when we look at the state governments, what we tend to see now are, you know, trifecta states. There are red states, where the Republicans run the state house, the state senate and the governorship, and blue states, blue trifecta states, the Democrats run the whole show and increasingly this is what we see at the state level, as opposed to kind of mixed states, divided party control. And, yeah, in those trifecta states the ethos, the energy of the national party is now completely defining the state party. It's like there are no regional differences anymore and so a blue state is completely aligned with the Biden administration, a red state is completely obstructive, you know, and vice versa. So we could see these trifecta blue states big, big, powerful blue states New York, california, you know, we could see them function as kind of points of resistance, in a kind of classic federalist way to certain directives of the Trump administration. And, you're right, like when, that's the way it works, when the states are, in a way, just party to the national political contest, it deepens, accentuates and accentuates the national contest and inflames, you know, polarization that much more, making it that much harder to come together and govern. So if governing isn't just about, you know, respecting the institutions of government, but ultimately about kind of coming together in a broad, diverse, durable majority that can that can you know elect majorities to the House and the Senate, the Electoral College, year after year if that's really what you know governing is and that can also inform candidates at the state level. Well, this kind of you know, this kind of federalism and polarization takes us even farther away from that sort of ideal of you know of governing, and I guess that's one of the big questions right now.

Dr. Muirhead:

I mean, one of the things that interests me is the extent to which people are looking at Trump as a kind of realignment. As you know, they're looking at this as a not just a disruption, but as a moment when, when coalitions will coalesce together in very, very different ways than they have over the past 50 or 75 years and redefine parties in really interesting ways, and maybe even where one of those parties comes to be a durable majority. I think the biggest, most ambitious kind of self-understanding among Republicans right now is that, as Franklin Roosevelt was to the Democratic Party in 1932, this kind of harbinger of a new, durable governing majority, this person who creates a new coalition that can stand together for 50 years. So Trump is to the Republican Party in 2024.

Dr. Muirhead:

And I have to say that's an ambition I would almost invite my friends in the Republican Party to take on, because if they really take that seriously, they're going to have to take policy seriously, they're going to have to take governing seriously, they're going to have to get very clear about the kinds of goals that they want to serve, they're going to take responsibility for the policies and they're going to have to create a really great and diverse coalition that can win elections over time. So you know that I think is governing and that's what I. You know, gosh, that'd be the antidote, I think, ultimately to ungoverning. But I think you know you're right, I think that's probably not what we're going to see. What we're going to see is a just barely there coalition that can just barely get to a majority and just barely hold it together and will probably lose the House in two years.

Shawn:

I'm glad you bring up the people because we've spent the majority of this conversation talking about the kind of internal actors. I call them the endogenous factors, the elites, political elites. But there are other factors, exogenous factors and that's social, cultural, electoral, but it's really embedded in the people factors, and that's social, cultural, electoral, but it's really embedded in the people. When I was doing my dissertation, a big part of that project involved fielding a national survey and the project was kind of evaluating shifting attitudes and trust in institutions and legitimacy of institutions primarily executive, legislative and judicial branches at the federal level, primarily executive, legislative and judicial branches at the federal level. And one of the questions that I asked folks was not my own, I actually poached it from legitimacy literature. But if any one of these branches started to make decisions that you rabidly disagreed with, do you agree that it would be better to do away with that institution altogether? And over 20% of respondents said that they would.

Shawn:

I remember at the time there was one, one professor in the department that was just seeing.

Shawn:

That response was like well, this whole, this whole survey then, is bunk right, like we can't, like there's no way 20% of the population believes it.

Shawn:

And whereas I took the, I was of the opinion that if 20% of the population believes that, while it's a minority, that's a pretty significant chunk of the population believes that, while it's a minority, that's a pretty significant chunk of the population that's willing to do away with one of our branches of government, if not all of them. And the reason I'm mentioning this is because, if that's the case, if we have now shifted let's say that was correct, it was 20% If we have now shifted to a point at which almost 50%, if not 50%, of the population is in this camp of not just doing away but like, let's say, just dismantling government or completely revamping it, and if that means burning it down, then so be it. I guess I wonder how you think the people, as players in this process of ungoverning, have influenced it and what you think might be happening that is leading the electorate to take this type of a position.

Dr. Muirhead:

So it's you know, I really don't think that at this moment 50% of the population want to see customary, you know, constraints on presidential will abolished, like the 10-year term of the FBI director. I don't think 50% want to see the IRS systematically disabled so that the wealthy, maybe everybody, can just stop paying their taxes and we go from a $2 trillion deficit to a $6 trillion deficit. And I don't think ungoverning has that kind of constituency. I think that the constituency for ungoverning is in fact, like you were saying, a much smaller but still potent minority of about 20%. And one of the reasons I think that they really are content with the idea of destroying institutions is because I think many of them would like to see, you know, a country of a sort that they can't really convince their fellow citizens to embrace. I think many of them would like to see a country that's, you know, dominated by whites, where the greatness of America reflects the kind of racial image of America in the 1950s. And it's very hard in a pluralistic country like ours to convince people to endorse the sort of, you know, christian nationalist image of a great America. So what ungoverning does is it allows that minority to get closer to it, what it wants without having to go through the trouble of persuading others.

Dr. Muirhead:

I think a whole lot of people who voted for Donald Trump, you know, I think, appreciated the disruptive energy that he would bring. They wanted to see a variety of institutions disrupted and tethered more strongly to common sense and to popular interests and passions. But they were very concerned about inflation, massive price increases, especially in rents as well as in ordinary food that people eat every day. They're, I think, very, very concerned about the border. You know the New York Times didn't bother to print on that, to report on this, until after the election, but in December they printed a story showing that immigration to the United States during the Biden administration was controlling for population greater than any other time in American history, including in the 1890s.

Dr. Muirhead:

And you know, I don't know. I remember going to Denver not that long ago, last winter, seeing the encampments in Denver, and I thought this isn't just an abstract idea that we have to control the border. This is really pressuring cities from LA to Portland, oregon, to Denver, to New York City in profound ways. And of course it's a country where it's really impossible to build anything because of restrictions on buildings. So you're going to lend to millions of people and not build any housing. It's not going to work very well. So I think a lot of people voted for Donald Trump for those reasons inflation, border control but they don't want to see their government systematically hobbled, disabled and destroyed.

Shawn:

systematically hobbled disabled and destroyed. So I always make the mistake of asking people before we're recording, so in the green room, questions that ultimately I wish I had asked while we were recording, so I'm going to do that right now. I am wondering, to your mind, given the style and form of ungoverning that we're experiencing right now, how worried are you about American democracy?

Dr. Muirhead:

I have. You know, I'm relatively sanguine in general as a matter of temperament and I have enormous confidence in my fellow citizens, including those I work. You know I work on a regular basis with Republicans who identify strongly as Republicans and as conservatives, and I like and admire many of them very, very, very much. I think we can make a politics together that works for everyone. I we can make a country that's prosperous, that's free, that's tolerant, that's respectful. I have a great deal of hope.

Dr. Muirhead:

That said, you know, that said, I really am profoundly concerned it's much, much easier to destroy stuff than it is to build it back and I have many, many complaints to register about the Democratic Party, which I of the independence of the Department of Justice to politicize the Department of Defense, purge the generals who aren't personally loyal to the president and promote the others. I think this kind of effort to make the entire executive branch submissive to the personal will, the unpredictable mercurial will of one person, will permanently weaken the United States of America and the world and will make us permanently less prosperous than we could otherwise be.

Shawn:

All right, On that note. Final question you ready for it?

Dr. Muirhead:

Okay, I'm going to hang on. I'm going to sit up straight. I'm ready.

Shawn:

Okay, perfect. What's something interesting you've been reading, watching, listening to or doing lately, and it doesn't have to be related to this topic, but it can be.

Dr. Muirhead:

You know, I just caught a little column by Annie Duke in the Washington Post and she wrote it for federal employees who are trying to consider whether to take this early retirement offer that Elon Musk sort of put on the table. And so there's this column by Annie Duke, the famous world-class poker player, and she in this column walks through sort of how to make decisions and it's a very, you know, analytic, logical approach to decision-making. It actually, you know, doesn't really have anything to do with politics or with this particular, you know, doge offer to try to reduce the workforce and the government. It just has to do with making good decisions under conditions of enormous uncertainty. Written by probably one of the great analytic geniuses of our time, Annie Duke, this world-class poker player, and it's just a help, I think, to anybody who's ever had a hard decision to make. So I'd recommend people look up this wonderful column by Annie Duke, Check it out.

Shawn:

Dr Weirhead, thanks for dropping by. I've enjoyed the conversation and here's to days of governing instead of ungoverning.

Dr. Muirhead:

Oh, I could give you a hug for that. Thank you, thank you.

Shawn:

Ungovernment isn't just incompetence. It isn't even just chaos. It's an intentional strategy to weaken democracy and dismantle government from within. Trump seems to be single-mindedly devoted to doing just this accelerating this destruction, leaving institutions hollowed out and public trust in American democracy in ruin. If it isn't clear by now, let me make it so.

Shawn:

Democracy isn't self-sustaining. It requires active defense, and I know that right now it feels hopeless. The thing I hear most, the thing I've felt myself maybe the most, is that you don't know what to do, that we're just watching it all being torn down, with no ability to stop it. And sure, no one of us has the ability to save democracy. But we can each take actions that, in the aggregate, can make a difference. Volunteer as a poll worker, flood government meetings with pro-democracy voices. Learn the rules of governance so you can call out the lies. Support watchdog journalism. Build community networks that make democracy personal. Host civic dinners, fund libraries, teach critical thinking. Hell run for office. Democracy weakens when people disengage. 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. You.

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Shawn C. Fettig

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