The Circus of Democracy

When constitutional guardrails collapse

An analysis by Morgan Treadwell and Taylor Veritatis

The American experiment in self-governance was never meant to be a circus. Yet increasingly, that’s what it resembles—a three-ring spectacle where constitutional norms are treated as optional, expertise is subordinated to loyalty, and the audience watches in stunned disbelief as one institutional guardrail after another gives way.

The ringmaster’s consolidation of power

The circus now features a powerful ringmaster commanding all three rings simultaneously. With single-party control of the executive branch, both congressional chambers, and an ideologically aligned Supreme Court, the constitutional separation designed to prevent power concentration has weakened dramatically.

James Madison warned in Federalist No. 51 that “the great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.” Today’s ringmaster faces few such resistances.

This consolidation is particularly concerning given Trump’s demonstrated approach to institutional independence. During his first term, the Brookings Institution documented a 91% turnover rate among senior advisors—more than double that of previous administrations. Those who departed often described pressure to demonstrate personal loyalty over institutional mission.

Former FBI Director James Comey testified to Congress that Trump had demanded his “loyalty” in private conversations—an expectation fundamentally at odds with the FBI’s independent law enforcement role. Similar patterns emerged across institutions designed to operate with professional independence.

The clown car of cabinet appointments

The second-term cabinet selection process resembles nothing so much as clowns emerging from an impossibly small vehicle—each new appointment more surprising than the last in their lack of relevant qualifications.

Trump’s nomination of Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense represents a significant departure from traditional qualifications for this critical position. Hegseth, primarily known as a television personality, lacks the extensive defense leadership experience typical of previous appointees from both parties. When questioned about this disparity, Trump explicitly stated: “I’ve had the so-called experts before. This time I want people who are loyal.”

Similarly, the nomination of Tulsi Gabbard as Director of National Intelligence prioritized loyalty over intelligence experience. The last five DNIs appointed by presidents of both parties averaged 27 years of intelligence community experience; Gabbard has essentially none.

These appointments reflect a governance philosophy that values personal loyalty over institutional expertise—a pattern with profound implications for the checks and balances that depend on officials with primary allegiance to constitutional duties rather than to an individual.

The high-wire act of judicial independence

The judiciary, meant to be the safety net of constitutional governance, now performs a precarious balancing act under unprecedented pressure. Trump’s public criticism of judges who ruled against his administration during his first term often included personal attacks rather than legal arguments. In February 2017, he referred to Judge James Robart as a “so-called judge” after Robart ruled against the administration’s travel ban.

Such attacks continued throughout his first term. Following an adverse ruling in November 2018, Trump criticized the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, stating: “It’s a disgrace when every case gets filed in the Ninth Circuit… We get beaten, and then we end up having to go to the Supreme Court.”

These statements reflect a view of the judiciary not as an independent branch with constitutional authority, but as an impediment to executive action that should defer to presidential priorities. Trump stated this explicitly in a March 2020 press conference, saying: “I don’t know if I’ve ever spoken to her. I win, I win a lot. I have won a lot, I guess, recently before the Supreme Court. I’m on a roll. I’m winning.”

This personalization of judicial outcomes—framing them as personal victories or losses rather than constitutional adjudication—undermines the judiciary’s role as an independent check on power.

The billionaire sideshow

The sideshow of billionaire cabinet members creates a carnival of conflicts between public interest and private gain. Trump’s second-term cabinet selections have accelerated this pattern, with industry executives appointed to key regulatory positions.

Historical analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that during Trump’s first term, federal regulatory agencies issued 85% fewer penalties against corporate malfeasance compared to the previous administration’s equivalent period. This regulatory pullback manifested across environmental protection, worker safety, consumer financial protection, and antitrust enforcement.

When regulatory agencies are led by those with direct financial interests in the industries they oversee, the constitutional check of executive agencies enforcing congressional mandates breaks down. As Justice Louis Brandeis warned: “We can have democracy in this country, or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we cannot have both.”

The congressional lion tamers who won’t tame

Congressional oversight—meant to tame executive overreach—has been replaced by performances of deference. The current congressional leadership has explicitly rejected its oversight role, with House Speaker Mike Johnson stating in January 2025: “We’re here to support the president’s agenda, not to question it.”

This approach represents a fundamental misunderstanding of Congress’s constitutional role. As the Supreme Court wrote in Watkins v. United States (1957), congressional oversight exists to ensure “that the executive’s action shall be in conformity to the people’s will as expressed by their Congress.”

When congressional leadership views its primary function as supporting rather than scrutinizing executive action, a core constitutional check disappears from the democratic circus.

The tariff cannon: economic policy as surprise attack

The use of tariffs as surprise announcements—often via social media without interagency review—has become the economic equivalent of a cannon shooting a human performer across the circus tent. The sudden impact is both dramatic and potentially catastrophic.

Trump explicitly acknowledged using tariff threats as leverage in unrelated policy areas. In May 2019, he announced plans for tariffs on Mexican imports unless Mexico stopped migration across the southern border—linking trade policy to immigration in a way that bypassed Congress’s authority in both areas.

This approach continues in his second term, with February 2025 bringing announcements of new tariffs on European goods as leverage in NATO funding negotiations—again creating foreign and economic policy without congressional input.

The economic consequences are significant. A 2020 Federal Reserve study found that Trump’s first-term tariffs cost American companies $1.4 trillion in stock market value and reduced investment by 1.9%. Yet the political cost—the normalization of unilateral presidential action in areas constitutionally reserved for Congress—may be even greater.

The disappearing diversity act

The systematic dismantling of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives across federal agencies represents one of the circus’s most deliberate vanishing acts. Trump’s Executive Order 13950 during his first term prohibited federal agencies and contractors from conducting diversity training that included concepts like “systemic racism” or “unconscious bias.” When reinstated in expanded form in February 2025, this order led to the cancellation of thousands of training programs designed by career professionals based on empirical research.

The DEI rollback represents a broader pattern of policy implementation based on ideological preference rather than evidence-based governance. When political alignment outranks professional expertise, the civil service’s role as a check on partisan excesses erodes.

The social media trapeze artists

Perhaps most revealing is the emergence of social media following as an apparent qualification for government service. Several recent appointments to key positions share limited relevant experience but substantial social media presence and demonstrated loyalty.

These trapeze artists swing from platform to platform with impressive social metrics but questionable policy substance. This pattern suggests a governance model that prioritizes communication loyalty over administrative competence—an approach at odds with the professional civil service established by the Pendleton Act of 1883 specifically to prevent a patronage-based government.

When appearance outranks substance in government appointments, the institutions designed to implement laws based on professional standards rather than political loyalty cannot function as intended.

When the circus threatens the republic

The American constitutional system wasn’t designed for entertainment value but for the prevention of tyranny through institutional competition. As Madison explained in Federalist No. 51: “The great security against a gradual concentration of the several powers in the same department consists in giving to those who administer each department the necessary constitutional means and personal motives to resist encroachments of the others.”

When personal loyalty to the ringmaster outranks institutional mission, the “personal motives to resist encroachments” Madison described disappear. The result isn’t just policy change but constitutional transformation—from a system of competing institutions to a circus of consolidated power.

This transformation transcends partisan advantage. As conservative legal scholar and former Bush administration official Jack Goldsmith noted in a January 2025 Lawfare article: “The health of our constitutional system depends on officials throughout government maintaining primary loyalty to their institutional role and constitutional oath rather than to any individual. When that ordering of loyalties reverses, the entire system of checks and balances is at risk.”

The circus of democracy entertains in the moment but threatens the republic in the long term. The question facing American democracy isn’t whether we’re amused by the spectacle, but whether our constitutional infrastructure can withstand its greatest stress test since the founding. That answer depends not on courts or Congress alone, but on citizens’ willingness to demand governance that respects constitutional constraints even when they limit a preferred leader’s power.

The circus may have come to town, but the republic need not become its permanent venue.

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Morgan Treadwell and Taylor Veritatis are the founding editors of Beyond the Spectacle, an independent platform examining governance patterns and their implications for democratic institutions.