Character matters for the survival of democracy

By Loukis Skaliotis

The election of Donald Trump has captured the attention of media and individuals worldwide. My concern today, and what has troubled me the most with Trump’s win, is the reversal of what Val Jones, the CNN political commentator, expressed tearfully live on CNN on November 7, 2020 with the election of Joe Biden to the US presidency. Visibly unable to hold back the tears and in a broken voice he said: “It is easier to be a parent today, easier to be a dad. It’s easier to tell your kids character matters; telling the truth, matters; being a good person, being a good man matters.”

I am thankful that at least I have managed to raise my kids so that they are old enough not to have to worry too much about their upbringing anymore. But if the lesson of Trump’s win is that character does not matter in our society, or indeed it doesn’t matter in the people we choose to lead us, then we are in for an exceedingly difficult path ahead. A society which does not believe that character matters is a sure way for a society to fall into decay and self-destruct.

Plato talked about this in “The Republic” over 2,300 years ago. He argued that one of the most important attributes in leaders was truthfulness, while the surest signs of a bad leader were narcissism and self-indulgence. In 2019, “The Economist” taking up the principles outlined there, developed the Plato test (Bagehot, The Plato test, June 22, 2019), when it was concerned with Boris Johnson becoming prime minister in the UK. Johnson, according to the Economist, failed the character test, and sure enough turned out to be a disastrous prime minister.

Plato is also known for advocating that democracy is not a good system of government. He was haunted by the fear that democracies eventually degenerate into tyrannies for he believed democracy to be inherently unstable. “Citizens are so consumed by pleasure seeking, that they beggar the economy, so hostile to authority that they ignore the advice of experts; and so committed to liberty that they lose any common purpose,” he argued.

You do not need me to tell you that these characteristics that make a democracy unstable – the overconsumption, the hostility to experts and the emphasis on individual liberty neglecting the collective good – are ripe in America today. The above characteristics have been around to various degrees for some time. Yet, the strong coexistence of all three at the same time, seems to have reached a zenith with the arrival of Trump.

Plato concluded by rejecting democracy altogether as his preferred method of government. Yet, 2,300 years of history has not provided us with a workable alternative. Churchill famously declared that “democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…”

Given that constraint, the focus in the west has been to find ways in preventing democracy from degenerating into tyranny. In modern democracies this consists of creating independent institutions that provide checks and balances and act as a buffer to executive power. Yet, institutions can only fulfill their role if the people that lead them possess the character to rise to the task entrusted to them.

In the US today, it looks like the checks and balances that worked largely in 2020 to ensure the transfer of power to Biden are unlikely to hold beyond 2024. Trump has succeeded to have control in both chambers of Congress as well as the Supreme Court. His appointments to various institutions seem like they will undermine any checks and balances hitherto in place, despite the fact that Matt Gaetz’s character – Trump’s initial pick for US attorney-general – proved too hard for the system to stomach. Thus, I am afraid to say, it looks very likely that in the US, democracy will degenerate into tyranny. Let us not forget that Hitler rose to power in 1933 through a democratic system not a military coup. In the photo, Hitler is seen being congratulated over his appointment as chancellor by German President Paul von Hindenburg. It struck me as awfully reminiscent of Biden shaking hands with Trump in the White House a few days ago.

Europe and the UK need to carefully take stock of the above as they will have to shoulder the weight of keeping the liberal world order that served us since 1945 in place. Beyond the obvious diplomatic, economic as well as military challenges this will entail, just as important is, I will argue, to ensure that our societies preserve the idea that character does indeed matter. And I say preserving, because Europe and the UK (despite having forces drawing them to Trump’s America) are still different from the US. The history is different for one thing. See Columbia University Mark Mazower’s analysis in the Financial Times (“Trump’s victory will change America. But Europe can have a different future”, 16/11/2024). 

More importantly the economy is also different. Yale University professor Jason Stanley argues that democracy is at its most vulnerable when inequality in a society has become entrenched and grown too glaring. (“The end of US Democracy was all too predictable”, Project Syndicate, 7/11/2024). This is in line with thought in 6th century BC Athens, where it was felt that “very unequal societies are less stable, productive and humane than those where inequalities are held in check” (Erica Benner, “What the west forgot about democracy”, Financial Times 17/1/2024). The inequality gap as measured by the Gini coefficient (where 0 is total equality and 1 is total inequality) in the US is significantly higher compared to other developed nations and in 2022 stood at 0.4 (“Is higher inequality the price America pays for faster growth?,” The Economist, 14/10/2024).

The link between higher growth and higher inequality is a debate that is currently troubling the economics profession. While few would argue that a growing economy is not desirable, the danger that the profit motive if left unchecked will lead to extreme overconsumption, hostility to experts and overemphasis on individual liberty is all too real.

The UK and the EU should remember that. Despite the many flaws that a democratic system has – and needs correcting – the Europeans should take pride in the degree of social cohesion in their societies that, while holding the economy back somewhat, ensures that character does indeed matter.

Loukis Skaliotis is an economist