Trump Tested the System
I am not a Trump hater, but I do believe Trump tested the constitutional system after the 2020 election in ways conservatives should be honest enough to examine. Democrats were right to worry about what happened after 2020. Where they often go wrong, in my view, is assuming the answer is better norms, better character, better people, or criminal prosecution rather than better constitutional structure.
That view may make some of my Republican friends uncomfortable, but I think we need to say it plainly. After the 2020 election, Trump did more than complain about losing. He pressured state officials, challenged certified results, encouraged alternate theories about electors, and pushed the country toward a constitutional crisis. I do not say that as a Trump hater. I say it as a conservative who believes presidents should not be allowed to bend the machinery of government toward their own ambition.
Criminalizing Trump’s behavior may satisfy a political appetite, but criminal law is a poor substitute for constitutional design. Alan Dershowitz made a version of this argument in Trumped Up, warning that the criminalization of political differences can endanger democracy. Jefferson, writing in a very different moment, also understood the danger of over-punishing political resistance. After Shays’ Rebellion, Jefferson did not call first for vengeance. He wrote that the people’s spirit of resistance should warn rulers from time to time, and that the better remedy was to “set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them.”
I do not read Jefferson as excusing violence, lawlessness, or attempts to overturn elections. Nor do I read Dershowitz as saying presidential misconduct should be ignored. The point is more Madisonian. A republic should not depend on prosecuting every dangerous ambition after the fact. A republic should be designed so that dangerous ambition collides with other power before it succeeds.
State Authority Frustrated Trump
Democrats should also be willing to see why Trump failed. He did not control one national election office from Washington. He had to deal with Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, and other states. He had to deal with secretaries of state, governors, state courts, county election officials, recount procedures, certification rules, and electoral votes transmitted by state authority.
Federalism frustrated Trump. Madison would be smiling—not because he would take a side in our partisan fight, but because the system of power against power worked.
The states were not decorative features in the constitutional system. They were structural barriers. The unpopular old phrase is “states’ rights,” and Democrats have good reason to distrust it. But the more Madisonian phrase is federalism: power set against power, authority divided so that no one officeholder can command the whole.
One of history’s ironies is that modern Democrats, long suspicious of states’ rights language, were protected in 2020 by the very state-level authority they often distrust.
Nixon, Gore, and Trump
The contrast with earlier close elections helps. When Nixon lost to Kennedy in a tight election, his sense of restraint led him to step aside rather than drag the country through a bitter legal fight. When Gore lost to Bush, Gore did not go gentle into that good night. He fought through the courts, but the fight remained inside the constitutional system. After the Supreme Court ruled, Gore conceded.
Trump crossed a different line. When he lost to Biden, he challenged the results in court, but then pushed beyond ordinary legal contestation. He pressured state officials, encouraged alternate-elector theories, and looked for ways around certified state outcomes. State authority frustrated Trump’s maneuvering.
Why I Started Looking at Argentina and the Philippines
This question has been on my mind because I am spending this spring and summer thinking through another book. My earlier work has circled compromise, faction, Congress, and the structures that allow a republic to survive disagreement. The more I study the Founders, especially Madison, the less satisfied I become with explanations that depend mainly on better leaders, better norms, or better national character.
Trump may feel like an aberration to many Democrats, but Madison would warn against that kind of comfort. Ambition, faction, and demagoguery are not confined to one party. As the old saying goes, when one finger points outward in blame, three fingers point back at ourselves. Republicans should be honest about Trump, but Democrats should be honest, too. Figures such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and others can also appeal to passion, resentment, and sweeping promises. The cloth may be cut differently, but the temptation is familiar.
A more mechanical question keeps pulling at me: what structures actually hold a republic together when ambition rises, parties harden, and leaders test the limits of the system? Some mechanisms strengthen the republic. Some weaken over time. Some look strong on paper but fail when pressed by a determined executive.
Argentina and the Philippines caught my attention for that reason. Both had constitutions modeled in important ways on the United States. Both had written limits. Both still fell into dictatorship. My interest is not academic trivia. I am trying to understand what still works in our own system and what has grown dangerously thin. If America held in 2020, why did it hold? If other countries with similar constitutional words failed, why did they fail? My working answer is Madisonian: written rules matter, but power must be arranged so that power can resist power.
Democrats Should Not Surrender Federalism
Modern Democrats have good historical reasons to distrust “states’ rights” language. In American history, that phrase was too often used to defend slavery, segregation, Jim Crow, and resistance to civil rights. No serious defense of federalism can ignore that record, and no conservative should pretend that state power has always been a friend of liberty.
The irony, of course, is that Democrats were once the party most associated with states’ rights. That changed during the civil-rights era, when the national Democratic Party broke with its old segregationist wing and embraced federal power as necessary to protect equal citizenship. Today, Republicans are more often cast as the caretakers of states’ rights.
But federalism has more than one face. State power can be abused to protect local injustice, but state power can also be used to resist national authoritarianism. In 2020, state officials counted votes, state courts heard challenges, governors certified results, and local election administrators did their jobs under extraordinary pressure. Some were Democrats. Many were Republicans. The deeper point is that they possessed legal authority independent of the president.
That argument is not the old segregationist defense of “states’ rights.” It is pro-democracy federalism. Democrats should not surrender that idea simply because federalism has been abused in the past. The irony is hard to miss: a constitutional principle long distrusted by modern Democrats helped protect a Democratic victory from a Republican president who tried to overturn it. State control of elections helped hold the Madisonian dam against centralized ambition.
Republicans Should Not Pretend Concentrated Power Began With Trump
Republicans have their own legitimate complaint. Many conservatives hear lectures about democratic norms from Democrats and remember how flexible those norms seemed when Democrats held power. They remember Barack Obama’s “I won” posture early in his presidency. They remember the “pen and phone” presidency, in which executive action became a way to circumvent congressional opposition. Democrats often defended those actions as necessary because Congress would not act. Republicans saw the same actions as executive overreach.
The pattern did not begin with Obama. Presidents of both parties have expanded executive power. Each side condemns unilateral action when the other party controls the White House, then rediscovers its usefulness when its own party wins.
The same escalation happened with judicial nominations. Ted Kennedy’s attack on Robert Bork helped turn confirmation politics into ideological combat. Republicans retaliated. Democrats retaliated. Each side remembers the other side’s sin and forgets its own.
That pattern makes the simple “norms” argument incomplete. Norms matter, but norms are often remembered only when the other side violates them.
The Problem With Better Norms
Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s How Democracies Die is an important book. Their warning deserves to be taken seriously. Democracies do not usually die today because generals roll tanks into the capital. They often die because elected leaders hollow out institutions from within. The authors point to two democratic norms: mutual toleration and institutional forbearance. Political opponents must be treated as legitimate rivals, and leaders must resist using every legal power to its most destructive limit.
Truth lives in that argument. But I am not satisfied with saying America survived because we had better norms. Character changes. Norms change. Parties change. Ambition remains.
Madison understood the nature of man. The Founders did not design a republic on the assumption that leaders would always behave well. They designed one because leaders would not always behave well. The solution was not merely virtue. The solution was structure. Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. Power must be made to check power.
Argentina and the Philippines Had the Words
Argentina and the Philippines bring the argument into sharper focus.
How Democracies Die points out that both countries had constitutions modeled closely on the United States. Argentina’s 1853 constitution borrowed heavily from the American Constitution. The Philippines’ 1935 constitution also resembled the American model. They had presidents, legislatures, courts, rights, and written limits. Yet Argentina fell into Perón’s authoritarian populism, and the Philippines fell into Marcos’s martial law dictatorship. The familiar separation of powers among executive, legislative, and judicial branches was not sufficient to prevent executive ambition from hardening into authoritarian rule.
Madison’s design did not rest only on the separation of powers inside the national government. Argentina and the Philippines possessed versions of that arrangement on paper. The American system added another layer of resistance: a vertical division of power between the national government and the states.
The lesson is not simply that Argentina and the Philippines lacked American-style constitutional language, or even American-style norms of national character. Constitutional words are not enough. Written laws are not enough. Parchment barriers do not save a republic when real power has not been arranged to resist real power. National character is not enough either. Perón and Marcos did not need to erase every constitutional promise at once. They needed to bend enough institutions, intimidate enough opponents, and concentrate enough authority until written limits became easier to ignore.
Madison warned of this problem in Federalist No. 48, where he argued that parchment barriers alone would not restrain power. He sharpened the solution in Federalist No. 51: ambition must be made to counteract ambition. Written laws and character norms may help, but neither can bear the full weight of preserving a republic. A national government balanced against multiple state governments became one of the most important principles of America’s federal system.
Argentina was federal on paper, but its provinces were far more vulnerable to national intervention, military disruption, fiscal dependence, and presidential dominance. The Philippines had a U.S.-style presidential constitution, but not U.S.-style federalism. Local governments in the Philippines were not independent counterweights comparable to American states. When Marcos declared martial law, the path from presidential power to national domination was much shorter. States’ rights, in the American sense, barely existed as a counterweight in either Argentina or the Philippines.
The American Constitution supplied more than parchment barriers. American federalism created the structural tension Madison understood: power arranged to resist power.
The States Were Not Decorative
American states are not mere administrative districts. They have governors, legislatures, courts, constitutions, election systems, police powers, taxing powers, and their own political legitimacy. They existed before the Constitution. They are not simply branch offices of Washington.
State power matters when a president overreaches. In a centralized system, an aspiring autocrat can focus on capturing the capital. Capture the executive, the national police, the courts, the media, and the election machinery, and the nation may follow. In the American system, national capture is harder because power is scattered. A president can win Washington and still face hostile governors, state courts, county officials, and state election laws.
State power does not make federalism morally pure. Federalism protected slavery. Federalism protected segregation. Federalism protected Jim Crow. Federal power was necessary to vindicate the rights of citizens when states violated them. But federalism also fragments power, and fragmented power is harder for a national demagogue to seize.
Mature constitutional thinking must hold both truths. Sometimes, federal power must restrain abusive states. Sometimes, independent states must restrain an abusive federal executive.
Both Sides Win, Then Both Sides Lose
Democrats win the first round of this argument. They were right that Trump posed a test of constitutional democracy. They were right to worry when he attacked the legitimacy of elections and pressured state officials to change the outcome.
Republicans win the second round. They were right that concentrated federal power is dangerous. They were right to worry when Obama used executive action to work around Congress. They were right to see that political norms had been eroding long before Trump.
Then both sides lose. Democrats condemn executive overreach when Trump does it and excuse it when Obama does it. Republicans condemn executive overreach when Obama does it and excuse it when Trump does it. Each side tells a story where its own ambition is justice, and the other side’s ambition is tyranny.
Madison would not have been surprised. He expected ambition to dress itself in noble language. His design did not depend on one side having better motives. His design depended on ambition meeting ambition, power checking power, and no faction getting everything it wants.
The Answer Is Power Against Power
The answer is not better character alone. Character matters, but character changes. The answer is not norms alone. Norms matter, but norms erode. The answer is not written law alone. Written law matters, but clever people find ways around words.
A republic needs tension. A republic needs rival power centers. A republic needs states strong enough to resist a grasping president, federal power strong enough to protect citizens from abusive states, courts independent enough to say no, legislatures jealous enough to guard their authority, and voters wise enough to distrust factions, including their own.
Argentina and the Philippines remind us that copying the American Constitution is not enough. The words can be similar, while the structure beneath them is too weak to resist concentrated power. Trump’s failed effort after 2020 reminds us that American federalism still matters. He could pressure the states, but he could not simply command them.
The lesson is Madisonian.
A republic does not survive because one side has better character. A republic survives because power is arranged against power. Ambition meets ambition. Federal authority meets state authority. Faction meets faction. The goal is not perfect harmony. The goal is a constitutional system strong enough to keep any one faction, party, president, or level of government from getting everything it wants.
AI Disclaimer: This essay was developed with assistance from ChatGPT, which helped with wording, structure, and historical framing. The argument, conclusions, and any remaining mistakes are mine.
