A Dictator in the Making?

It's not uncommon to hear political commentators refer to President Trump as a "dictator", or marginally more temperately, an "authoritarian".

Here's an example from MSNBC's Morning Joe cited in the Washington Free Beacon:

MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski and analyst Steve Schmidt had strong language Tuesday for President Donald Trump and his Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, calling the former a "dictator in the making" and the latter "illegitimate" before he's even been confirmed.

Schmidt sarcastically complimented Trump as being "absolutely indefatigable" in his "vileness, his illiberalism, his fetish for autocracy."

"It exhausts everybody," Schmidt said. "The problem with it is that when you are in a fight, there's only two ways to win a fight. You either have to bring your opponent to submission … or you wear them out. Trump wears people out. He exhausts them. He numbs them, He completely—"

"That sounds like a dictator in the making, actually," Brzezinski said.

Maybe I'm simply lacking the acuity to see what these people see, but I just don't see much evidence that President Trump is either a dictator or an authoritarian. On the contrary, the evidence we have seems to lead to the opposite conclusion. Mr. Trump, to the extent that he has any ideology at all, seems to be very much a libertarian.

Here are three considerations which I think lead us away from the "dictator" designation:

• A dictator seeks to arrogate power to himself and to centralize government, but President Trump, by removing onerous regulations on business, attempting to reduce government involvement in our lives, e.g. by eliminating the individual mandate under Obamacare, and cutting taxes has done precisely the opposite. By improving the economy and putting money in the hands of individuals he is empowering citizens rather than empowering government.
• A dictator would seek to appoint judges and Supreme Court Justices who would disregard the Constitution and base their rulings on ideological fashion and political expediency. President Trump has consistently appointed jurists who revere the Constitution and who are loyal to the rule of law.
• A dictator would be secretive and uncommunicative, hiding his agenda to fundamentally transform the country from the citizenry until it's too late for them to do anything about it. President Trump, on the other hand, has been without a doubt one of the most transparent presidents ever to hold the office. He makes his agenda abundantly clear virtually every day. Anyone who's paying attention knows precisely what he wants to do and what he's thinking.

To be sure, Mr. Trump is unconventional and, regrettably, often unable to articulate what he means. It's unfortunate that a man who speaks the same language as the rest of us nevertheless still often requires an interpreter.

Even so, a dictator he's not, and if the good folks on the left want us to believe them when they accuse him of tyrannical tendencies they're going to have to adduce a lot more hard evidence than they have heretofore.