Autocratic solipsism

“If a president does something which he believes will help him get elected in the public interest, that cannot be the kind of quid pro quo that results in impeachment”: Alan Dershowitz here advances a theory of what I’d call autocratic solipsism. The end justifies the means. And what justifies the end? A president’s estimate of his or her importance to the nation’s well-being. Dershowitz invites his audience to imagine a president who muses,

“I want to be elected. I think I’m a great president. I think I’m the greatest president there ever was. And if I’m not elected, the national interest will suffer greatly.”

What follows from such thinking, Dershowitz says, “cannot be an impeachable offense.”

Notice that Dershowitz conflates the interests of president and nation — what’s good for me is good for the country. And notice that Dershowitz doesn’t stop to consider that what might be in a president’s interest or a nation’s interest might also be contrary to law. And notice that he doesn’t stop to consider the possibility of a candidate not yet elected engaging in this same specious thinking. Notice too that Dershowitz never stops to consider that a president with the conviction of being “the greatest president there ever was” would appear to be suffering from dangerous delusions of grandeur and perhaps be unfit for office. But we already know who Dershowitz is aiming to please.

Alan Dershowitz, I regret to say, is the Rudolph Giuliani of Stanley Fishes.