Coda: The Power of the Long Game
Lewis Powell’s 1971 memorandum set in motion a series of events that he could not foresee and did not intend. His only objective was to strengthen the business community’s influence on federal government policymaking by reshaping the cultural centers of society to be more receptive to their arguments. Social issues like abortion and gay marriage – often used as wedge issues to drive the political divide – were not within his field of view. The opposition to and undermining of expert knowledge that untethered the GOP from its conservative roots was the antithesis of the intellectual foundation he proposed.
Nevertheless, he laid out a blueprint for a culture change that was decades in the making. The news media – the guardians of democracy – allowed its own excellent reporting to be submerged, ignoring the warning signals from within the party as it instead normalized the party’s steady shift toward authoritarianism through its coverage of partisan division. It wasn’t until Trump’s arrival as a candidate in 2016 that the media began to peel back the layers of its own narrative to reveal the inevitable endgame of the widening divide.
In 2019, the New Republic ran an article with the headline, After 48 Years, Democrats Still Haven’t Gotten the Memo. In it, writer and democracy activist Adam Eichen chided the Democratic Party for failing to grasp the depth of Powell’s work and fully execute on its recommendations to regain control of the levers of power.
Democrats, however, won’t be able to do it alone. They will need the help of lower case “d” democrats – the conservative Republicans and Independents who believe in the Constitution and American democracy. That collaboration is beginning to take shape to defend against the threat of a second Trump presidency. But like the Reagan coalition that slowly dismantled the scaffolding of democratic rule, it will take time for this new coalition to rebuild and strengthen the checks and balances that define government of the people, by the people, and for the people.
