Now that our new president quickly is going rogue, we're going to need a short, handy phrase to describe the new regime. "Trump administration" won't do because it's ambiguous. the administration isn't out to trump itself. It's out to trump democracy and due process, for ideological "principles," fun and profit. So what handy phrase could we employ? A particular phrase best sums up Agent Orange in his groping for raw, clumsy, over-reaching power: The Potemkin Presidency.
This is apt, given the clear connections between Trump, Russian bankers, and the Russian government. Now, some observers might say this doesn't reflect the sway that white nationalists and racists like senior political advisor Steve Bannon hold over the new president. How do you square being in bed with both far right wingers and the self-styled leftism of the Russian Federation?
For one thing, the Russian government is no longer Marxist -- it's crypto-capitalist, an elite kleptocracy with the same kind of authoritarian bent we see in conservative American politics. For another, former Breitbart (Fake) News boss Bannon also has described himself as a Leninist, as in Marxism-Leninism. An original Bolshevik.
In any event, what would Steve Bannon and Vladimir Putin have in common? Well, based on their words and deeds, it seems clear they both want to weaken and tear down the United States of America, and in the latter's case western democracy in general. They have different motives, perhaps, but their goals are surprisingly similar.
Doing this directly in a forthright, openly revolutionary manner would be difficult. So both men camouflage their tactics. At the moment, the Trump White House is focusing on how working closely with Putin is the best way to defeat ISIS. Sure it is. Of course. Yeah, that's the ticket.
What does "Potemkin village" mean, exactly? For those new to the term, read on. Potemkinism is well-known as a strategy in politics and economics. As Wikipedia explains:
"[A] Potemkin village (also Potyomkin village, derived from the Russian: Потёмкинские деревни, Russian pronunciation: [pɐˈtʲɵmkʲɪnskʲɪɪ dʲɪˈrʲɛvnʲɪ] Potyomkinskiye derevni) is any construction (literal or figurative) built solely to deceive others into thinking that a situation is better than it really is. The term comes from stories of a fake portable village ... built only to impress Empress Catherine II during her journey to Crimea in 1787. While some modern historians ... claim accounts of this portable village are exaggerated, the original story ... was that Grigory Potemkin erected the fake portable settlement along the banks of the Dnieper River in order to fool the Russian Empress... ."
This is respectable symbolism for the Trump regime. With his entourage and gaudy trappings like Trump Tower Manhattan, Air Force One, and the White House, Trump exudes success, wealth, and power. All presidents gain from such appearances, which to some extent has become a troublesome aspect of the federal executive branch. You might recall when President Richard Nixon, impressed with the pageantry he'd seen visiting heads of states in Europe, tried to outfit the White House Secret Service Uniformed Division in elaborate, royal-looking outfits, with military-style caps and gold-trimmed tunics. That stunt bombed in an era when Americans in general exhibited far more nuanced ideas about populism and democracy than they do today.
In Trump's case, however, the illusion is even more vital. Arguably, based on past reporting of his private business affairs and semi-public life, the man is an empty suit, highly disregarded by his apparent peers and those who have done business with him. Highly disregarded by the political establishment, too. Trump's Potemkin facade isn't just physical -- gold-plated bathroom fixtures on his private jet, for example. It's also ephemeral. His speech -- simplistic and bombastic -- is an intentional effort to appear decisive, all-knowing, and competent.
Yes, many observers eventually get to the point where they notice this self-styled emperor really doesn't have much hair and might even not be wearing clothes. But many others are happy to accept the superficial illusion. His rhetoric is an amped-up version of modern Republican rhetoric: Obamacare is "destroying" America. No else need be said, no evidence shared. Again, many people (a majority of actual voters in the November election included) don't buy this veneer of assertion, but many others do -- perhaps because they're just passing by and glancing at the finery, carefully crafted and displayed for merely casual inspection.
If Trump's support is skin deep but miles wide, so is his style and expertise. And, according to more than a few past news accounts, the Trump Organization's vast holdings are built on fast talk, broken promises and now perhaps more Potemkin-type brand licensing deals than actual ownership. Apparently, the organization was in such financial straits that Trump and his family began turning to dubious Russian financiers with ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin as a way to keep afloat their leaky boat.
Putin himself has not shied from using the device of Potemkin illusions that, after all, originated in the earlier history of his country. In 2013 before his visit to Suzdal, some old, decrepit houses in the city center were covered with large posters depicting life-sized doors and windows. Likewise, some accommodations for visitors attending the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi were, according to Wiki, "more Potemkin village than Olympic village." Although the accommodations looked like four-star hotels from the street and upon entry, with gilt and brocade in chandeliered lobbies, "15 minutes on the premises showed the feint behind the facade."
Thus, to the extent it turns out that Putin propped up Trump with cyber-hacking and other forays into American elections plus government and business affairs -- and the only issue at this point is over extent, not about whether it happened -- we can regard the new POTUS as a Potemkin presidency, more appealing, patriotic, and capable on the surface than he actually is. It's meant to please and deceive, not provide real value.
Too, let's bear in mind the Republican Party itself to great extent engineered this Potemkin village presidency, carved out of what Putin helped stimulate. On the surface a populist who says both parties fail the citizenry and who promises to only serve that populace and not the elites, Trump nevertheless was persuaded by his advisers and party officials to surround himself with some of the very elites he supposedly disdains.
Of course, he would appoint billionaires to his cabinet, because he identifies with that class of elites and perhaps thinks they boost his own reputation. But they are also extremist right-wingers, not populists of any meaningful sort, and so constitute the great majority of appointees to the Trump cabinet and administration.
Worse, those non-billionaire wingnuts on his team are rock-ribbed, tea party types to a default. And who helped bring them aboard? Why Vice President Mike Pence, a born-again, Christian, right-wing GOP politician from the old school. Who might replace Trump if he were impeached or driven from office? Pence, of course, who breaks bread regularly with the mainstream GOP establishment Trump claims to abhor. The only question is whether Pence is more powerful than Trump chief strategist Bannon. My money is on Bannon, by far. He's Trump's Dick Cheney, only on speed.
Trump is only the newest expression of the Potemkin village in American public affairs. Invocations of the Potemkin village idea have come along here and worldwide, as media culture drive the view that appearances matter more than value.
In 1998, for example, later-shuttered and disgraced Enron Corp. built and maintained a fake trading floor in its Houston headquarters. As Wikipedia put it, "the trading floor was used to impress Wall Street analysts attending Enron's annual shareholders meeting and even included rehearsals conducted by Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling."
Former Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez (whose populist reign has been compared to Trump's White House) reportedly set up Potemkin-style streets in Caracas that would be on routes used by foreign dignitaries. Workers fixed up properties along the way, painting even painting rocks and other fragments that were inside of potholes
In 2010, nearly two dozen vacant houses in a blighted part of Cleveland were, according to Wikipedia, "disguised with fake doors and windows painted on the plywood panels used to close them up, so the houses looked occupied." Similar treatments were applied to neighborhoods in Chicago and Detroit during the World Series in 1984.
In the early '90s, when speculation created housing gluts in some U.S. cities, I was taken aboard an official bus tour of a large new subdivision in Dallas that -- as I later learned -- was entirely vacant. To create verisimilitude, the developers or city had rounded up a number of used automobiles and parked them on selected driveways to provide an illusion of residency.
Along some American highways and freeways, such as one extensive, clear-cut forest region in northern Minnesota, travelers are shielded from tree-stump views by Potemkin forests, so-called "aesthetic strips," a half-dozen trees thick, providing an illusion of a vast forest that no longer exists.
In law, there is the notion of "Potemkin courts," whose purpose is legally defined but for practical purposes dubious. Consider the case of the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court created after 9/11. It's a secret body that exists to more or less rubber-stamp requests from clandestine agencies wishing to wiretap or otherwise gather information on suspects.
And now, arguably, the Executive Branch, one of the three main sections of our federal government, is a put-up job, in place to pursue dark, narrow purposes but dressed to look like a wide-open, populist, Andrew Jackson-style presidency; Potemkinesque in the extreme.