“We will run the country,” Pres. Trump said of Venezuela’s future after capturing its dictator Nicolas Maduro. The use of the “Royal We” softens the reality of what he means—that Trump himself and a small group of his loyalists plan to “run” the South American country in the name and with the resources of the United States.
Anyone who has followed politics for the past decade knows this is one of Trump’s favorite ways to describe his domestic role as well. “I run the country and the world,” he told The Atlantic last year. It’s a term he has used regularly, going back to his first term and campaign.
Yet the penchant for running things isn’t limited to Trump. Joe Biden used similar language. When defending his supposed mental capacity, he told George Stephanopoulos “not only am I campaigning, but I’m running the world.” Biden’s online critics used the term even more often: “Who’s running the country?” was a common refrain during Biden’s undeclared regency. Notably, the media has also started using the phrase in stories and headlines without appearing to question its implications.
“Run” has hundreds of definitions, most of which at least vaguely suggest movement, activity, extension and direction. It is, accordingly, a lazy word—the kind we use when we know generally what we’re trying to say but can’t or won’t be specific. The etymology suggests that it comes from the combination of two Old English verbs, one of them intransitive (meaning it does not take a direct object—in this case, the sense of “flow” or “run together”) and the other transitive (taking a direct object—in this case, the sense of “reach a location” or “run a line”).
That difference remains in the multitude of meanings today. The sense in which President Trump, other politicians, and media personalities now so often use is clearly transitive: to manage, operate, or direct the affairs [of something]. Here the action is multivalent: There is a subject and object, an actor and a recipient of the action, an arrow pointing one way.
In the political realm, such linguistic choices can reveal underlying, perhaps unconscious assumptions both of the speakers and the listeners who hear the words. It has long been common to hear that the president’s job is to “run the government,” and that is at least a plausible simplification of the chief executive’s role. The notion that a country is something that can and should be “run” by those who hold political office is, on the other hand, antithetical to the republicanism and constitutionalism that were once defining characteristics of the American political tradition.
The phrase makes the country—its people, its ways, its economic life, its social institutions—an object to be acted on, the passive recipient of someone else’s designs. To say that the president will “run the government like a business” is simply to say he will make bureaucracy more efficient.
To say that he will “run the country”, however, is to imply a certain relationship between governor and governed. The former the subject, the latter the object; a potter and clay. Even in its most benevolent form, the idea of a chief executive “running” a country suggests that he and his servants know best what the country needs. The leader’s role is to set out a vision and issue orders. The country’s job is to receive these plans and act accordingly. It is a language of political servility.
Of course, one could argue that the phrase might just be casual shorthand for “govern” or “coordinate”. But it’s precisely the vague and ill-defined quality of “run” that tells us no such distinctions are being made. It conveys only the general impression of being in control.
Consider recent comments by Stephen Miller, who stated bluntly the view of the world that lurks below this sort of language. Marshaling the eloquence of an undergraduate who has just finished reading the Melian dialogue in Thucydides’ history of the Peloponnesian War, he declared that “We live in a world … that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” Speaking more directly on what it means to “run” Venezuela, he said “We set the terms and conditions…For them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission.”
On this scheme of things, “running a country” is about exerting power and issuing permission slips. It is a subject acting on an object, which seems to have no agency of its own. This simple and easy way to think about governing also seems to guide the president’s ambitions toward Greenland and the Middle East. Power, money, and a rewritten org chart are all that is necessary. No reason to worry about backlashes, unintended consequences, or the limits of one’s own judgment. And all three examples certainly indicate that “running a country” needn’t have much to do with the consent or cooperation of its people.
It’s worth rereading the Miller quote and noticing that Trump and his team use the same language to describe their view of domestic government. Even if one agrees with the necessity of enforcing immigration laws, the administration made a choice of tactics intended to emphasize that it wields overwhelming force. The world, after all, is “governed by power.” Exercise your power and create the society you want.
Early Americans saw a parallel between the methods of imperialism abroad and the methods of tyranny at home. “To follow the path of empire is to transform American identity and self-understanding,” wrote political scientist Michael Federici in the context of a previous brand of American imperialism. Unlimited power, the expectation of absolute command, the belief that one can “run” a country from a faraway metropole—these all make an imperial government intolerant of the limits, checks, and immunities that mark a free country.
Sadly, that process of decay has been ongoing throughout the twentieth and twenty-first century, a period marked by repeated wars abroad and eroding constitutionalism at home. “They need our permission” could, by now, be the motto of the federal government—particularly its executive branch.
Conservatives once offered at least some token resistance to these developments, but many failed to recognize war’s poisonous effects on a federal republic. And most were willing to ignore constitutional scruples when there was any hope that their own principles might animate federal overreach. Today, the “new right” has abandoned the pretense entirely, loudly and proudly capitulating to the Left’s understanding that both economic and social life are like clay, capable of being molded by those who hold power into whatever they desire. A new corresponding political morality has taken hold, centered on fealty to symbols of national powerand especially the head of state.
Any number of words could be used to convey this approach to government: “Command,” “manipulate,” “dominate,” “dictate,” “control.” But it seems fitting that America is accepting the vague and banal “run.” We have, after all, never really wanted to be upfront with ourselves about the change in our form of governance. When we have abandoned our liberty, we have often done so in the name of liberty itself—eroding constitutional limits so as to spread freedom abroad; giving up our right to self-government in the name of abstract rights supposedly found in “penumbras” of the Constitution; or handing over unchecked power to those who promise to free us from some supposed oppression. By muddying our language, we Americans could continue to congratulate ourselves on being a free people, while turning the institutions and moral expectations of freedom on their head. A phrase like “run the country” allows us to continue to avoid the issue. We all know what it means, but we don’t quite have to say it out loud.
We are entering the Semiquincentennial year. No doubt the same people who speak of “running the country” in one moment will praise the example of 1776 in another. Nothing could be more antithetical to the outlook of the original American patriots, though. They stubbornly refused to see themselves as objects to be managed and directed.
Can we still see today the jealous spirit of freedom among those who, as Burke put it, “augur[ed] misgovernment at a distance, and snuff[ed] the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze”? That the answer is “no” is validated every time someone speaks of “running the country” and is not met with universal howls of protest. If we hope to recover any semblance of that spirit, time may be running out.
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