Elon Musk is Ross Perot on Crack

The Republic Through Electronic Plebiscite

With a strange combination of satisfaction and dismay, I consistently find my chosen era of research to be relevant to the present day. When I decided to take a close look at Ross Perot for my book, the parallel was obviously Trump: a “pragmatic” billionaire who presented himself as the radical solution to the country’s ills. I had some inkling he reflected something else in our era: the growing domination of tech oligarchs. But little did I know…

Perot was an early tech biz success story: his Electronic Data Systems sold computing services when a single computer required entire rooms and even floors. The US government was the only customer big enough to keep his company afloat, so he had to maintain very close ties to politicians, much like someone else we know. Eventually, he got fed up with trying to bribe and suborn politicians and decided he could do the whole thing better himself. So, he ran for president. He wanted to wage a war on bureaucracy and “waste.” And one of his big ideas was to replace creaky old Congress with a public electronic thermometer. Here’s how Sidney Blumenthal described it in The New Republic back in 1992:

His one big new idea is the abolition of representative democracy. Instant plebiscites--electronic "town halls"--would in effect supplant Congress as the deliberative body. The taxing power, Perot urges, would be removed from Congress and subject to instant polls to advise the executive-exactly the concentration of power the Framers warned against.

On "Larry King Live" on April 16 he explained, for example, how he would settle the gun control issue: "We go through television through the town hall, we explain that to the American people, we build a consensus, we pass the laws, and we move on to the next problem." Thus the Madisonian system would be replaced by the Geraldo system; checks and balances by applause meter. This "democracy" is of course susceptible to easy manipulation by populist demagogues and big money-both possibilities Perot uniquely personifies.

Horribile dictu, this morning’s news from Axios relates how Musk used X to sink a spending bill in Congress. One notable quote: “’Republican lawmakers got "instant and overwhelming feedback. Before, it had to be slowly funneled through the conservative press ... [N]ow there is a megaphone." The old mediating institutions—congress, the press—are no longer necessary, just some machine that gives the appearance of public acclamation. This was Perot’s dream, realized.

While plebiscites might look like direct democracy manifest, they are among autocrats’ favorite tools for ending public deliberation, manufacturing consent, and dismantling republics: both Napoleon I and III made use of them, and, yes, so did Adolf Hitler. But we aren’t supposed to talk about “authoritarianism” or “threats to democracy” anymore. That’s old hat. And so soon might be the United States of America.