Eighty years ago, Friedrich Hayek wrote one of the most powerful books about threats to free society, The Road to Serfdom, as Europe collapsed into dictatorship. He devoted a chapter to the question of “Why the Worst Get on Top”.
The Austrian-British writer wanted to explain how someone like Hitler could possibly come to be and what sort of subordinates made it possible. Concentrated power doesn’t merely attract bad men, Hayek argued; it selects for them. A strongman needs lieutenants who will execute his commands without hesitation, so the qualities rewarded are not judgement or moral courage but pliability. A readiness to do whatever the leader wants becomes the path to promotion.
As I learned inside Trump’s first administration, people are policy. You can understand where Trump is headed not just by who he puts in charge but by how they got there.
In the dying weeks of Trump’s first term, the lawyers who told him the truth about his election loss were shoved aside. Those who rose in their place were willing to help him upend it: Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, John Eastman, Jeffrey Clark. The credential for last-minute advancement – into senior adviser roles to the leader of the free world – was apparently a willingness to burn the constitutional order for the boss and to do or say whatever was needed to justify the baseless claim that the election was “stolen”.
