Earlier this month the Public Religion Research Institute released its annual American Values Survey, which asked 5,352 Americans from all 50 states for their opinions on, among other things, the 2024 presidential election. Having been immersed in the topic of strongman leaders for Moment’s latest “Big Question,” one survey query caught my eye. It proposed a scenario whereby the respondent’s candidate of choice loses the election and then asked if said candidate “should declare the results invalid and do whatever it takes to assume [his or her] rightful place as president.” Nearly one in five Republicans—19 percent—agreed. And guess what? Among Democrats, 12 percent supported the strongman (or in this case, strongwoman) approach.
Yes, these numbers are small, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t scary. Doing whatever it takes to hold power is a hallmark of strongmen throughout history, and if citizens on both sides of the political divide start coming around to the idea, the American experiment could take a perilous turn.
Robert Penn Warren thought a lot about the lure of the strongman in writing All the King’s Men, his 1946 novel based on Louisiana politician Huey P. Long (nicknamed “The Kingfish”).
Through the voices of the political scientists, psychologists, historians and other thinkers we interviewed for the symposium, the strongman leader emerges as one who employs charisma, often a swagger, to win over the masses. He sows division and promises his followers redemption and prosperity where the powers that be have failed to deliver. And, once in office, the strongman uses the coercive power of the state to achieve personal and political ends, eschewing the checks and balances that would otherwise constrain executive authority.
“The framers of the U.S. Constitution were definitely worried about an authoritarian president. And I think they were really worried about demagogues, who are a bit like strongmen,” says Eric Posner, author of The Demagogue’s Playbook. And so by baking a certain tension between the governing branches into the Constitution, Posner says, “they tried to make a national government that was strong but not too strong, and a presidency that would be led by a strong leader but not too strong a leader.” Which is not to say there haven’t been American politicians with strongman tendencies. Posner cites Andrew Jackson, who, once in office, he says, “was quite destructive.”
Pointing to the early American example, historian David A. Bell (Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution) talks about how people were terrified that George Washington would become a dictator. “John Adams was constantly warning about this,” Bell writes. “He said, look, you guys are creating an idol to worship, and you’ve got to stop.” Of course, Washington did the opposite of a strongman move by stepping down, but Bell contends that his overall stamp led to the U.S. presidency being seen as an incredibly powerful and charismatic office. “The trouble with that is the tendency to put one’s faith in the man rather than in a system or a party or a set of ideas or rules,” Bell warns.
Symposium participant Paul Goldberg, who writes about Soviet strongmen, adds to this idea in discussing the power of mythology in forging the strongman. “You have to have a creation myth,” he says, offering Vladimir Lenin as a kind of fairy tale that ultimately led to Joseph Stalin. “Myths form around all kinds of leaders, not just despots,” he adds. “Like George Washington coming clean about chopping down the cherry tree.”
Robert Penn Warren thought a lot about the lure of the strongman in writing All the King’s Men, his 1946 novel based on Louisiana politician Huey P. Long (nicknamed “The Kingfish”). “Without this gift for attracting myth he would not have been the power he was, for good and evil,” he said of Long. “And this gift was fused, indissolubly, with his dramatic sense, with his varying roles and perhaps, ultimately, with the atmosphere of violence which he generated.”
Goldberg touches on the aspect of physical threat in describing the strongman’s promise to his followers: “We’ll take care of whatever the problems are the old-fashioned way, through violence, where everybody else has failed, where all those bleeding hearts have failed.”
Today, the strongman is on the rise, from Putin to Xi to Orban, from Maduro to Bukele and more. And even in Western liberal democracies, even in the United States, the specter of the strongman threatens to derail democratic norms. For more on how charisma, deception, self-delusion and even psychopathology factor into the strongman’s success, for more on what is it that appeals to the followers of a strongman—today and at other points in history—and for insights into how strongmen fall, read the entire symposium here. (Preferably with an open mind and an unclenched fist!)
In addition to asking experts about strongman leaders, the current issue of Moment also hears from everyday Americans about threats to democracy. For the past year, the Jewish Political Voices Project has followed 20 diverse Jewish voters throughout the United States, learning about their anxieties, fears and hopes before an important election. Check out their final thoughts in “Is the Roller Coaster Ride Nearing an End?”