good read on Slate re Democracy "The Strongman Gap"

[NRaleighLiberal]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/support-for-democracy-is-a-partisan-issue-now.html

The good news: Trump is curing Americans of their desire for a strongman leader. The bad news: It’s becoming a partisan issue.

By YASCHA MOUNK

MARCH 13, 20181:36 PM

Wakanda, the fictional and harmonious African country portrayed in the new movie Black Panther, has served as an escape fantasy for many Americans who are dismayed by the bigotry and rank incompetence of Donald Trump’s America. So it’s worth noting one of Wakanda’s most basic but rarely discussed features: It is a kingdom, not a democracy. The film’s hero, T’Challa, is a hereditary ruler, not an elected statesman. Even progressive writers who conjure up a better political world seem to find the idea of making it a democracy a little too far-fetched to be believable. When America dreams of a better future, it turns to that age-old fantasy of a benevolent dictator.

It is with this depressing realization on my mind that I turned to reading what is perhaps the most comprehensive study to date of public perceptions of democracy in the Trump era. Written by Lee Drutman, Larry Diamond, and Joe Goldman, it tries to answer a question first raised in work by Roberto Foa and me: Are citizens now so angry at the failings of their political institutions that they are growing increasingly disenchanted with democracy itself? Is this problem especially pronounced among the young? And what implications does that have for the future stability of our political system? (I present a lot of this work in my new book, The People vs. Democracy.)

Building on a new representative survey, the authors find both some moderately good and thoroughly bad news.

The good news is that Donald Trump seems to be healing some Americans of their long-standing desire for a strongman. As we showed in our original article, the share of respondents who wish for a “strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections” has been rising for the better parts of two decades. And while this increase was marked among all age groups, it was especially prevalent among the young. That trend has now broken. Perhaps in response to the authoritarian leanings of the president, the number of Americans who wish for a strongman leader has now receded back to the levels recorded in 1995. And this fall was especially marked among younger voters, who are also likely to hold the most negative views of Donald Trump.

snip

well worth reading the rest at the above link