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How Republics Die
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Monday, September 14th, 2020 
Dear Mustafa,

Last month a document was published in the US entitled ‘Preventing a Disrupted Presidential Election and Transition’ by a group called the Transition Integrity Project (’TIP’). The thrust of the paper is how to manage an orderly transition of power from a Trump to a Biden Presidency; they ‘war-game’ four scenarios, but upon review of these options not one of them envisages Trump winning. The most intriguing is scenario three: Trump wins the electoral college comfortably but Biden wins the popular vote - a similar situation to four years ago. But TIP suggests that Biden should not concede and should fight legally to alter the outcome. TIP describes Trump spending his final days destroying documents, pardoning cronies, and eventually being escorted from the White house. Only one scenario has a result actually being declared on November 3rd (a clear Biden win), all others stretch the outcome to January 2021. Such a brazen attempt to alter the Republic’s political architecture has an historical precedence and consequences. It reminds me of my Roman Republic history, a subject also close to the heart of many Founding Fathers.

Polybius was a Greek, a Roman hostage, and teacher to the Scipio clan, who believed that Republican Rome’s success stemmed from the checks and balances of its three branches of power: consuls as the elected executives, elites (Optimates) in the Senate, and the Tribunes of the Popular Assemblies (the Plebs); each group checked the power of the other. This may sound familiar as Polybius was cited regularly by the authors’ of the Federalist Papers who envisaged such a political system. So what cratered the Roman Republic? It was the altering of these structures under the excuse of safeguarding the Republic.

In Republican Rome, this began when the Tribunes of the Plebs, the Gracchi brothers wanted to redistribute land from the elites to the Plebs. These radical ideas were killed off, along with the brothers; even their high status as the grandchildren of Scipio Africanus could not save them from the Senate, who went on to dismantle the whole Tribune/Pleb infrastructure under the pretext of maintaining a safe status quo.

This is how Republics die. The elite don’t like what the masses are telling them and change the rules, only to be undone by these very changes in the future. The Roman Republic was fatally wounded by Julius Caesar and finally killed off by Augustus, who became emperor in all but name. Rome may have retained its ‘SPQR’ title - Senatus Populusque Romanus - The Roman Senate and People - but in reality the Republic was dead; its fate had been sealed earlier when the elite of the day could not stomach the representatives of the ‘vulgar crowds’. This is what Ben Franklin implied when he replied to a query to the outcome of the Constitutional Convention: “a Republic if you can keep it.” Checks and balances need to be maintained.

TIP, mostly ex Obama, Clinton and Bush officials, is outlining how to undermine the Republic in order to seize control of the Executive branch. This opens a window to new a new ‘Augustus’ who will be far more dangerous than a Gracchi-esque Trump. As of now, the stock markets have not noticed the possible political drama which may be ahead of us. We need to buckle up and tighten the toga!

See you next week. Chris
 
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