For weeks now, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia has been launched on what seems to be the world's most improbable redemption arc.
At first, she just broke with her party on the Epstein files and Israel. But I didn't think much of this at the time. Some observers theorized that these moves represented an emerging effort to distance herself from Trump—but I wasn't persuaded. I could think of a much darker through-line connecting these cases.
MTG had made her career in Congress by spouting antisemitism-tinged conspiracy theories, after all; so for her to choose Israel, and Israel alone, as the issue on which to buck her colleagues didn't exactly fill me with confidence (even if a stopped clock could be right twice a day when it came to the Gaza war, say).
As for the Epstein files—I just figured for a while that MTG was in the "true believer" camp on the Q-Anon conspiracy theory—so perhaps this was merely another case of the proverbial stopped clock; since now there really was a lurid case coming to light that involves a sex trafficker who appears to have maintained close personal ties to much of the country's political and social elite.
But no, the antisemitism- or conspiracy-pilled theory of MTG wouldn't account for what has happened in the days since these early fissures emerged in her relationship with her own party.
A couple weeks ago, she sat for a shockingly polite and friendly interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN. Not only was she surprisingly warm and cordial in the discussion—given that this was the sort of media outlet she once would have denounced as an organ of the blood-drinking pedophile cabal—but she also clearly strove to position herself in the interview as a centrist moderate.
She spoke at length about how she was sick of politics being dominated by "theater" instead of real issues. Which is pretty rich coming from her. (Oh—"real issues" like space lasers and chem trails and secret government weather machines, you mean?)
But in her comments yesterday—in another CNN appearance—she reportedly not only doubled down on her "moderate" turn; she also displayed some capacity for self-reflection this time. Even as she denounced "toxic" partisan politics and their divisiveness, she also acknowledged forthrightly that she had participated in them a great deal herself. And she apologized for it.
There are many ways to theorize what's going on here. Maybe MTG is positioning herself for a 2028 GOP primary run (she has the nationwide name recognition for it)—or for one of Georgia's senate seats—and she knows that she suddenly has to think about the median voter for a change; rather than the extremists in her own district. Maybe it's all a long con by a deeply disingenuous person.
But a more optimistic read on the situation would be to simply say: this is how democracy is supposed to work. This is proof that there's life in the old democratic order yet. After all—under a system of competitive elections with universal suffrage—when public opinion changes, politicians eventually have to change their positions.
Which means that, no matter how much Trump tightens his grip on the Republican Party—if he becomes genuinely unpopular, members of that party will eventually have an incentive to drift away from him.
I confess that—at the start of Trump's second term—I didn't think this was possible. I thought: Trump has already purged the party of anyone who had the character or integrity to stand up to him. The John McCains and Mitt Romneys are long gone. Indeed—Trump had even managed to chew through a whole secondary layer of the party's inner defenses—alienating people like Mike Pence and Bill Barr too.
I thought: the party has been stripped down now to just the complete sociopaths. None of these people will ever turn on Trump now—because he's deliberately eliminated anyone with either a spine or a heart.
But who could have foreseen that Marjorie Taylor Greene—of all people—would be the one to flip? Who would have thought she would discover any reserve of integrity or moderation or independence of spirit within her? Yet, here we are.
I recall, back at the start of Trump's term, someone on the Rational Security podcast pointed out that a similar dynamic occurred in the first Trump administration. Then, too—by the end of his time in office—people thought he had stripped his government down to just a hard kernel of partisan hacks. People like Mark Esper were seen—when they first joined the administration—as loyalist lickspittles.
But then, Mark Esper surprised everyone by turning into a major Trump critic and an internal check on some of the president's worst abuses.
It's possible that we could be seeing something similar unfolding here.
But why does this keep occurring? Why do Resistance people keep turning up in Trump's inner circle, no matter how much he tries to rid the Republican Party of anyone with the spirit or decency to oppose him?
Perhaps it's because these people are opportunistic; or because they are trying to read the tea leaves on future elections.
But it's also possible that holding office is itself a kind of training in integrity (counterintuitive as that may sound, given all the corruption and self-dealing we witness in high office). Hear me out.
I was reading Wendell Phillips's 1881 Phi Beta Kappa address last night—the one in which he makes a then-controversial but perennially powerful defense of the radical democratic convictions that he held throughout his life—and he writes at one point:
"Mark the critic out of office: how reckless in assertion, how careless of consequences; and then the caution, forethought, and fair play of the same man charged with administration."
Phillips's point is that democratic government is itself the greatest school for administration that could ever have been devised. People—even the most unserious or unscrupulous—often discover new virtues within themselves, under a system of democratic rule, simply because they have to. Once they are charged with running things, they have to figure out how things actually work.
And surely, this does actually describe the arc of several members of Trump's administration. I certainly don't say that Kash Patel or Dan Bongino, say, have displayed any tendency toward "fair play" once in office—quite the opposite! But they certainly have had to change their tune, compared to how they used to talk about issues.
How "reckless in assertion," how "careless of consequences" they were when "out of office"—as podcasters and pundits—when they could fan the flames of conspiracy theories as much as they wanted. And see, by contrast, how they scramble to try to douse the same fires of demagogy, now that they are in office, that they once set themselves.
And perhaps the same thing is happening with MTG. She has had to become more moderate and pragmatic simply because that is what participation in democratic government does to people. They have to figure out practically how to govern themselves. "Necessity is the mother of invention," as Phillips puts it.
In making these and similar points, Phillips in the lecture provides one of the most stirring and persuasive defenses of the democratic faith that could be penned. He does so, crucially, not by saying that the majority is always right or that the populace is always wise. The H.L. Menckens of the world could make short work of that argument. Rather: he says that democracy is the only way to make them wise.
The democratic majority elected Trump, as we know. Clearly, they do not always make good decisions. But—Phillips's point is—the only way to learn how to make better decisions is to learn from one's mistakes.
Besides—if we do not pursue this method of self-government, what other is there? As even Mencken was forced to admit—every organized minority or coterie of self-appointed elites proves to be just as unwise and self-interested as the mass in aggregate; if not more so.
As Phillips points out—in every angry or violent or vengeful "mob" he's ever seen—it is always the "educated" and "respectable" element that predominates. It is the elite of property and a declining aristocracy that leads the charge in every demagogic movement.
Mere majority rule—mere universal suffrage—may have proved itself time and again to be an imperfect guardian or protector of minority rights and the civil liberties of the individual. But—Phillips points out—it is the only possible one we have. Mere written laws and courts will not save our rights, if public opinion turns against them.
As even Mencken pointed out, in his critique of democracy—the Supreme Court has often operated as little more than a bellwether for public opinion. Often—it has even lagged several steps behind that opinion; bowing to prejudice and partisan interest. But even if it didn't—the Court itself would have no power if ordinary people ceased to accept its legitimacy and the binding force of its rulings.
Never in our history have the mere words of the Bill of Rights saved a person from unjust prosecution; unless the citizenry as a whole believed those rights were worth defending. Just about every gain for civil rights or voting rights or the freedom of the individual in this country has come about through democratic means, rather than through judicial interpretation of a dead letter.
"The experience of the last forty years," as Phillips puts it, "shows every man that law has no atom of strength, either in Boston or New Orleans, unless, and only so far as, public opinion indorses it, and that your life, goods, and good name rest on the moral sense, self-respect, and law-abiding mood of the men that walk the streets, and hardly a whit on the provisions of the statute-book."
Democracy, then—public opinion—the will of the majority—imperfect vehicles as these may be—are the only ones we have. As Carl Sandburg once said of "the people—the mob—the crowd—the mass"—"all the great work of the world is done" through them.
And if we are all forced to depend upon public opinion as our final resort—whether we like it or not (for, as Ortega y Gasset once drove home, even an autocratic government depends on the acceptance on the part of the public of its own legitimacy and normative force)—then our only option is to try to educate public opinion.
And for this—Phillips argues—no better school has ever been devised than democracy itself. Self-rule. Learning by doing.
There is little reason to find hope in mere book-learning, says Phillips. People have to actually try to govern before they gain instruction in the practical realities of administration. They will only learn "caution, forethought, and fair play" once they realize from their own experience that these are required to manage a complex society.
And perhaps this is what the improbable MTG evolution shows us. Even when the government has been deliberately stripped down to only its worst possible people—even when everyone with integrity has been weeded out or fled—those worst people start to develop unexpected virtues. Simply because they have to. That's what democracy does to people.
And so there is hope, then—in spite of the cynicism of the Menckens—that people in aggregate can govern themselves; that our electoral democracy is not doomed merely to empower a series of absurd demagogues (as MTG was for most of her career in Congress up to this point).
People in aggregate are also our last best hope. And the record shows that they do eventually learn from their mistakes.
As Carl Sandburg's poem—quoted above—continues: "When I, the People, learn to remember, when I, the People, use the lessons of yesterday and no longer forget who robbed me last year, who played me for a fool—then there will be no speaker in all the world say the name: 'The People,' with any fleck of a sneer in his voice or any far-off smile of derision.
"The mob—the crowd—the mass—will arrive then."
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