KEEP BEN FRANKLIN’S REPUBLIC, FIXATE ON 2026

OUR BEST HOPE IN DEFEATING THE POWERFUL OLIGARCHICAL ELEMENTS OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION AND ITS MAGA SUPPORTERS IS TO CRUSH THEM IN 2026 AND RETURN AT LEAST ONE CHAMBER TO DEMOCRATIC CONTROL, AND PEHAPS BOTH. SO, WHAT’S MISSING?

I worry about 2028, about the remote but not impossible likelihood of a move by Trump to call a national emergency and cancel elections, or some other insane Bannon-like scheme to seize another term. But it is foolish to dwell on it, to obsess over an event three years in the future, particularly in the unpredictable and disordered circumstances that the American polity struggles with today. My approach, and the one I advocate for everyone who is fed up with this president and the countless men and women who side with him, enable him, make excuses for him, and especially those in congress who are too weak to act on the recognition that the republic is teetering, is to fixate intensively and unrelentingly on 2026. Long-term strategies are usually good, but a lusty short-term assault is much better and what is needed right now.

It is said that the key to politics is timing. There is clearly a stirring within the country, for a variety of very legitimate reasons, that is telling us that the end of 2025 and the first half of 2026 is almost certainly going to be a period of growing unrest and willingness to speak out. To raise voices against the fanciful and dangerous economic, domestic, and foreign affairs policies of the Trump coven unquestionably presents a rich opportunity that can and must be exploited. The next few months will be unlike anything we have seen at any time over the past ten or, for that matter, the wretched four years of his first term. This opportunity mustn’t be squandered through inaction or faint effort; the United States has arrived at that point in its history that the founders feared and knew could spell its end.

When Franklin issued his menacing answer about the kind government they had designed and said it would be a republic, “…if you can keep it”, to the now historic and probing question asked by a wife of a successful merchant , Elizabeth Willing Powell, there was an apocalyptic quality to it that implied a republic’s uncertainty. The founders liked to talk about the necessity for an abundance of virtue in a republic, the kind of goodness and selflessness they saw espoused in the writings of the Greek and Roman ancients and their classical teachings, literature that of the first four presidents of our country were very familiar with. The unconditional emphasis of those writings was on the quality of virtue in our leaders, something we would today refer to as good will, and it has been nearly bred out of public policy by Trump and those who sign up with him. The recovery of virtue is absolutely essential to the future of the country and there may be limited time left. Men don’t often or reliably recover their lost virtue, so the most expeditious route is to replace them rather than wait for the unlikely epiphany.

The esteemed author Thomas Ricks in his excellent new book about the influence of the classics on our founders, First Principles, wrote that John Adams had told a young law student, “Virtue my young friend, virtue alone is or can be the foundation of our new governments, and it must be encouraged by rewards in every department of civil and military”. He elaborated some months later: “Public Virtue cannot exist in a nation without private (virtue) and public virtue is the only foundation of republics. There must be a positive passion for the public good, the public interest, honor, power, and glory, established in the minds of the people or there can be no republican government nor any real liberty. And this public passion must be superior to all private passions.”. (I have added the italics because the glaring absence of any such passions within the Trump government underscores the baleful consequences of ignoring the foresight of Mr. Adams and more than a few unsuccessful Roman emperors.)

Virtue, however, may be reawakening. Several of the original number of law firms Trump bullied have won successful recourse through the courts. The entertainment industry, like the tech titans who frequent Trump’s lavish dinner tables, are showing a disappointing lack of such inclination, although there are exceptions. Support for public education is foundering but hanging on. Higher education is mixed in its own defense, with many universities of modest means caving and those better heeled stiffing the administration. Organized labor shows signs of increasing strength in the face of Trump’s ambivalence for middle American jobs, in contrast with his patronage at the head of a well fed and potent fraternity of oligarchs and plutocrats.

With every word written in support of these American institutions the foundational brickwork is buttressed and resistance to Trump’s vision of a vastly different future is strengthened. Every effort to recharge grand marches like “No Kings” and “Remove The Regime” should be made throughout the coming year. I am not a political strategist. But if those who are provide us with a good plan we should execute it with vigor. If you believe that our power is indeed in our people, and if more and more of our people are heard, then perhaps those distant if muted rumbles from within the Republican congressional caucuses will act after all, even if the absence of virtue on their part cannot be repaired, and if only because their fear of the people is greater than their fear of the president, then that will be a good thing.