Back in 2016, former eBay and Hewlett-Packard CEO (and, of course, failed California gubernatorial candidate) Meg Whitman gave a stirring interview to The New York Times about democracy.
Democracies, Whitman said, have rarely lasted longer than a few hundred years, with the implication being that for America, which will celebrate its 250th anniversary in 2026, the clock is ticking. Whitman said anybody who thought American democracy would last forever was being naïve.
Of course, at the time, Whitman was talking about Donald Trump, the “demagogue” that elites from both major political parties said would drag America away from a constitutional republic and toward dictatorship — the bogeyman that even enlightened Republicans like Whitman refused to support.
They were wrong: Despite his flaws, Trump was never a threat to democracy. He did not cancel elections like some claimed he would do. He did not crack down on civil liberties. When he did go too far, America’s institutions — especially the courts — checked those abuses. California filed more than 100 lawsuits against the Trump administration. That’s the way American government is supposed to work.
For good measure, voting rights also expanded while Trump was president. More people voted in the 2020 presidential election than any other election in American history.
But Whitman was right: American democracy is under attack. All Western democracies are under attack. And we shouldn’t assume they’ll survive. But Trump is not the threat. The elites themselves are the threat. They are the demagogues. And their hypocrisy and
