Prime minister is the most powerful Indian leader in a generation, working in secret and challenging bureaucrats; cabinet got 20-minute heads-up on cash crunch
It was a quintessential move by Mr. Modi, planned in secret with a handful of close advisers. He announced it to the country only hours before it went into effect. His own cabinet ministers knew just 20 minutes before the announcement.
.. A victory, particularly in India’s most-populous state of Uttar Pradesh, would give the BJP more strength in Parliament and momentum for a widely expected re-election bid by Mr. Modi in 2019. If his party loses, opponents will be emboldened to block more of his legislative agenda.
.. In 2014, Mr. Modi’s political party became the first in three decades to win a majority in Parliament, campaigning on a promise to restore the prime minister’s authority.
.. Critics ranging from human-rights groups to student unions have accused Mr. Modi’s party of propping up his popularity by stirring sectarian resentments and Hindu nationalism.
.. Even his staff is sometimes caught off-guard by his decisions. On Christmas Day in 2015, he called Pakistan’s prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to wish him a happy birthday. Mr. Modi then decided on the spur of the moment to fly to the Pakistani city of Lahore to celebrate in person with Mr. Sharif.
.. “It’s command and control,” said Jairam Ramesh, a former minister in the opposition Congress party, of Mr. Modi’s relationship with his cabinet. “You don’t have alternative points of view. You don’t have discussion.”
.. According to an official who was there, the prime minister recalled a re-election campaign in Gujarat when he refused to match another party’s promise to make electricity free. Mr. Modi pledged only to make the power supply more reliable and was re-elected.
.. Late in the process, Mr. Modi asked that the new rupee notes be printed with the name of his “Clean India” public-sanitation drive. He also wanted the new money to show off the campaign’s logo: a drawing of Mohandas Gandhi’s round eyeglasses.
.. During the chaotic aftermath, Mr. Modi praised what he called the sacrifices of Indian citizens for the sake of the “historic rite of purification.”
.. One snag: The new rupee bills were designed to be smaller in size than the ones they replaced
.. But all 200,000 automated teller machines in India had to be manually configured so they could dispense the new money. The process ended up taking weeks, slowing the rollout of new cash.
Shekhar Gupta, a political analyst in New Delhi, said the cash exchange shows what can go wrong when “one man comes up with the ideas and everybody else just implements.”
You Don’t Have to Think Trump Is an Authoritarian to Worry about His Presidency
there are three types of conservative at present: “Trumpers,” who believe that “Trump has made good appointments” and is “working to keep campaign promises” and should therefore “be vigorously defended from criticism”; anti-Trumpers, whose “argument is that despite the areas of policy agreement between conservatives and Trump, Trump’s characterological problems present” a sufficiently large peril as to make realistic the prospect that he will “[lose] the republic”; and “anti-anti-Trumpers,” who are “reluctant to criticize Trump, but who aren’t particularly interested in defending him, directly.”
.. there are three types of conservative at present: “Trumpers,” who believe that “Trump has made good appointments” and is “working to keep campaign promises” and should therefore “be vigorously defended from criticism”; anti-Trumpers, whose “argument is that despite the areas of policy agreement between conservatives and Trump, Trump’s characterological problems present” a sufficiently large peril as to make realistic the prospect that he will “[lose] the republic”; and “anti-anti-Trumpers,” who are “reluctant to criticize Trump, but who aren’t particularly interested in defending him, directly.”
.. I was concerned that Trump lacks character and knowledge; that he is a habitual liar; that he has an embarrassing tendency to lash out verbally at anyone he dislikes; and that, on balance, he might end up ruining the party he was conscripted to lead. In describing him, I used the word “authoritarian” on more than one occasion, but my intent in so doing was to warn against Trump’s approach, not to hype the likelihood of his rendering America a tyranny.
I was concerned that Trump lacks character and knowledge; that he is a habitual liar; that he has an embarrassing tendency to lash out verbally at anyone he dislikes; and that, on balance, he might end up ruining the party he was conscripted to lead. In describing him, I used the word “authoritarian” on more than one occasion, but my intent in so doing was to warn against Trump’s approach, not to hype the likelihood of his rendering America a tyranny.
.. Throughout his life, Wilson was openly hostile to the Constitution, had nothing but loathing for the separation of powers, described as “nonsense” the “inalienable rights of the individual,” and submitted that the United States should move “beyond the Declaration of Independence.”
.. As president, he championed the Espionage and Sedition Acts (under which it was a crime to criticize America’s efforts in World War I, to use “disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language” against the federal government, and to mail opinions critical of the state through the U.S. Postal Service); had tens of thousands of Americans arrested and prosecuted — including after the war (see: Palmer Raids); and, in 1915, uttered these incredible words during his State of the Union address:
I am sorry to say that the gravest threats against our national peace and safety have been uttered within our own borders. There are citizens of the United States, I blush to admit, born under other flags but welcomed under our generous naturalization laws to the full freedom and opportunity of America, who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life; who have sought to bring the authority and good name of our Government into contempt, to destroy our industries wherever they thought it effective for their vindictive purposes to strike at them, and to debase our politics to the uses of foreign intrigue. Their number is not great as compared with the whole number of those sturdy hosts by which our nation has been enriched in recent generations out of virile foreign stock; but it is great enough to have brought deep disgrace upon us and to have made it necessary that we should promptly make use of processes of law by which we may be purged of their corrupt distempers.
Wilson also took it upon himself to re-segregate Washington, D.C., thereby reversing one of the few civil-rights victories of the post-bellum world.
.. That much of what Roosevelt did was popular is neither here nor there; properly understood, authoritarianism is structural, not substantive. Indeed, as David Frum warns in the essay Last cites, “many of the worst and most subversive things Trump will do will be highly popular.”
In fact, I concluded that there can be no such list, because many of the worrisome things that an antidemocratic president might do look just like things that other presidents have done. Use presidential power to bully corporations? Truman and Kennedy did that. Distort or exaggerate facts to initiate or escalate a war? Johnson and George W. Bush did that. Lie point-blank to the public? Eisenhower did that. Defy orders from the Supreme Court? Lincoln did that. Suspend habeas corpus? Lincoln did that, too. Spy on American activists? Kennedy and Johnson did that. Start wars at will, without congressional approval? Truman did that. Censor “disloyal” speech and fire “disloyal” civil servants? Wilson did that. Incarcerate U.S. citizens of foreign extraction? Franklin D. Roosevelt did that. Use shady schemes to circumvent congressional strictures? Reagan did that. Preempt Justice Department prosecutors? Obama did that. Assert sweeping powers to lock people up without trial or judicial review? George W. Bush did that. Declare an open-ended national emergency? Bush did that, and Obama continued it. Use regulatory authority aggressively and, according to the courts, sometimes illegally? Obama did that. Kill a U.S. citizen abroad? Obama did that, too. Grant favors to political friends, and make mischief for political enemies? All presidents do that.
.. But whatever one’s preference, we should acknowledge that all of these things happened, and that they all seemed like crises at the time. Moreover, we should try to avoid the worst form of arrogant hindsight, under which we conclude that because we’re okay now we must never have been under threat in the first place. “All’s well that ends well”
Authoritarian: Based on what you do, not what you say
It’s not hard to find people who insist Trump is authoritarian because of the things he says. But authoritarians are not defined by the things they say; they’re defined by the things they do. The judicial branch already struck down Trump’s executive order on refugees. Despite Trump’s hyperbolic denunciations of the media, America’s press remains as free and vibrant as ever. The first weeks of the new presidency have not been marked by a meek and obedient Congress but by one that can’t unify behind a single legislative agenda.
My country had its own Trump. Here’s how we beat him.
Having first secured control of public broadcasting and other media outlets, Meciar was extremely effective in keeping his core group of supporters energized, but not much else. For other voters his frequent outbursts became increasingly off-putting. Even apathetic segments of the electorate were alarmed when, under Meciar’s watch, the secret service cameunder suspicion for kidnapping and nonfatally electrocuting the son of the Slovak president, Michal Kovac, who was Meciar’s political nemesis. The key witness in the case was later killed in a car bombing. These crimes were later amnestied by Meciar during his brief stint as acting president in 1998.
.. Second, Meciar’s demise was precipitated by the emergence of an effective opposition that coalesced around the questions that mattered the most: rule of law and Slovakia’s place among European democracies. Like Trump, Meciar first rose to power by sidelining rivals in his own party and staging a flurry of media stunts that left his opponents paralyzed and divided.
.. if Trumpism is to be defeated, it will require politicians on the center-right and the center-left to get organized around questions that matter — most importantly, the defense of the liberal democratic character of the U.S. government.
.. In defending himself, he tried to sell his voters a grotesque idea of an international conspiracy directed against Slovakia. His domestic critics, too, were smeared as paid agents of anti-Slovak forces abroad. That message resonated with Meciar’s core supporters, but more and more Slovaks saw that their country’s growing isolation was purely of their own government’s making.
.. Corruption, which reached gigantic proportions under Meciar, has never gone away. Meciar took pride in his crony privatization, which created what he called a “Slovak capital-owning class,” loyal to him. Today, politically connected businesses are enriched through overpriced procurement tenders or tax fraud.
.. Meciar’s infamous amnesties for what were widely believed to be acts of political violence have left a traumatic legacy too, creating an ominous sense of impunity for those in power. His years also entrenched a generation of communist-era judges, many of them in cahoots with the political class. According to a recent survey, only a third of Slovaks trust the court system.
.. nurturing the institutions of liberal democracy requires much more work than simply keeping aspiring authoritarians at bay. It requires ensuring that liberal democratic governments are seen as legitimate and effective at delivering key public goods, including justice and security.