Even when they start with a good point, they shoot themselves in the foot

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The first modern democratic republic was founded on this healthy distrust of human nature, which led the Founders to construct a web of checks and balances to create the first nation of laws, not of men. The Founders were so skeptical because what they were attempting had no precedent. They prepared for the worst because they saw it all over the world: a world ruled by monarchs and dictators and warlords.

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The authors of the Constitution fretted about a democracy that might slide into mob rule, or a President who might fashion himself emperor. They worried that too much political influence could accrue to small groups with extreme positions, and that a largely uneducated populace could be easily swayed by a demagogue who preyed on voters' basest instincts and self-interest.

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This elasticity also means it's possible for the wrong man at the wrong time to do significant damage if the checks decline to check and the balance becomes unbalanced. It has been 44 years since the test of Richard Nixon, and the American system has become loose and lax from a generation of partisan pushing and pulling.

Every abuse by one party is in turn embraced and expanded on by the other, and so on in a vicious downward spiral. As the institutions weakened, the people's faith in them — and the belief in the principles underlying them — have weakened as well.

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While much work is simply left undone, undelegated power accrues upward, to the Oval Office, which is right where Trump wants it, free of oversight and public scrutiny. This has left the least-prepared, most unstable individual in the history of the presidency to conduct foreign policy by Twitter.

The charades and parades taking place between the Koreas right now is a perfect example. The photo-ops and proclamations are hollow at best, and at worst they risk empowering and prolonging the life of the North Korean concentration camp nation for years.

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These dangerous trends are what led me to form the Renew Democracy Initiative a year ago. I first reached out to some friends who were horrified by what the Republican Party had become under Trump's influence. The original group included Octavian investor and publisher Richard Hurowitz, and prominent conservative intellectuals Anne Applebaum, Max Boot and Bret Stephens.

We all agreed that Trump is a symptom, not a cause. The populist nationalism he represents is like an opportunistic infection that takes advantage of an immune system weakened by years of poor diet and heavy smoking. A healthy body politic cannot produce a President like Trump any more than a healthy political party could choose him as its nominee.

To get to the root of the crisis, we knew we had to expand our group both ideologically and geographically. We reached out across the aisle and across the ocean with a manifesto that decries the extremism and hyper-partisanship that has made it increasingly difficult to discuss politics without hatred and hysteria.

I'm delighted that many leading lights on the left have joined us, from renowned legal scholar Laurence Tribe to proud "Hollywood elite" Rob Reiner.

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