There is a story today, widely distributed, that residents of Arkansas made homeless by recent tornados have been denied federal recovery aid by President Trump because he rejected the request from the state that impacted regions be designated major disaster areas.
Interestingly, the request was made by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders after devastating storms and tornados crashed through the state. You will recall that Sanders was Trump’s press secretary during his first term and has been one of he most vocal allies.
Trump’s refusal to help was consistent with executive orders calling for the federal government do less and states do more when it comes to extreme weather events. Historically, this has been seen as a federal responsibility, especially when involving a number of states, but shrinking the size of the federal government seems to be the only priority that matters.
In conventional terms, there are many things successful politicians need to do and one of them is to keep their friends happy. It seems simple enough. Trump, as a less conventional operative, works from a different playbook. He threatens his friends to keep them in line, which likely makes them unhappy, but as long as Trump remains popular enough to control their political future, those who might have a complaint will take it and like it.
I haven’t dusted off this chestnut in a while, but a certain passage from Machiavelli’s The Prince comes to mind. While Machiavelli acknowledges that it is better for rulers to be both loved and feared, if that is not possible, one is advised to be feared.
“it is much safer to be feared than loved because …love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails.”
In other words, people are fickle; though they may follow you because they profess to love you, such a sentiment and decision is entirely at their own discretion, something that they can withdraw. If they fear what a ruler might do to them, that fear is something the ruler can control and manipulate at his own discretion.
Machiavelli scholars can weigh in, but in a more general sense, it’s an interesting idea in contemporary politics. Years of reading political biography suggest to me an important qualifier. When a ruler is riding high and has the power, his allies are likely to comply with his wishes out of fear. But when that ruler hits a rough patch, when their power is in any way attenuated, those who only comply out of fear will be looking for an opening, a way to assert themselves. If, however, they truly love the ruler, or the political leader in our case, that love may provide much needed support for a compromised ruler when he is most in need of that support.
I am not suggesting Trump is unloved by all those in his political universe, or that they are supporting him simply out of fear. Nor do I expect Gov. Sanders to jump ship any time soon because he denied her state federal funding. But Trump’s entire way of operating seems to be heavily dependent on threats to both foe and friends. With his polling numbers coming down, with dissatisfaction in how he is managing the economy, with cuts to government spending that impact even red states, and with growing concern about his attitude towards the constitution and democracy, will there come a point amongst a handful of Republicans in the House and Senate, which is all it would take, in which they say we no longer fear this man and we have never really loved him?
Retired political staffer/civil servant. Dual U.S./Canadian citizen writing about politics and the arts on both sides of the border.