A well-known author, political scientist, and historian  – someone I have read and admire – wrote to me yesterday about demagogues and how they rise and always fall. Like the picture of Zinnia I took this morning, it might make anxious patriots feel better.

I wrote a piece last week called “The Cuomo Brothers Versus President Trump: What A Show,” and it has, as of this morning, received 180,000 shares on Facebook and has gone viral on the Internet.

The piece casts these two competing daily press conferences as a reality show and suggests that together they tell us a great deal about where the country is and where it might be going.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is the first of President Trump’s political opponents to figure out how to use Trump’s media and reality TV skills successfully against him.

I got messages about this piece from all over the world, it is, by far, the most widely-read essay I have ever written, and the most praised. I’m surprised but also happy.

A friend wrote to say the piece should be in the New York Times; she wanted my permission to ask them to reprint it.

I told her thanks, but no thanks. My media critic and political reporter days are over, at least after the coronavirus fades. And besides, my blog has more readers than they do; I sniffed. (I loved writing that.)

The political scientist complimented me on the piece and asked me to speak to his class when it resumes meeting. “You wrote about the impact of culture on politics better than I have ever lectured about it,” he wrote, sparking a blush and a warm gushy feeling.

I don’t take praise too much to heart, but the reaction to this piece was special, I won’t lie about it. Being a dog and an animal writer keeps me humble, I don’t usually hear from people like that, which is a good thing, or it would mess up my head.

The professor gave me his phone number and asked me to call him, and I did, and we had a fascinating talk, just like the pundits in  Washington must do all the time. Today, I am probably the most important pundit in Cambridge, New York.

Hunter Thompson (we worked together at Rolling Stone Magazine) once told me, “always stay crazy; they will leave you alone.” Done.

I told my friend that I am a Beavis & Butthead kind of guy: because I am stupid, I am free; because I never learned what I am supposed to think, I can think.

The professor, who has written extensively and successfully about democracy (he asked not to be named, he’s working on a book) said people who love democracy are suffering now, partly because of what is happening and Washington and to some degree because they don’t know their history.

Demagogues are a part of democracy and a part of our history.

“Demagogues (Father Coughlin, Huey Long, George Wallace) appear when governments fail to keep their promises to people,” he wrote. “They are skilled at exploiting anger and resentment, and they can do great harm. But they aren’t skilled at much of anything else. History tells us they almost always fail because those skills are only effective at getting into office. Once there, they have no idea about how to govern.  So things soon fall apart, and they fail.”

Or, he added, great crises arrive, and they are overwhelmed. You just have to ride out the storm, he said, it’s part of living in a democracy. If you love democracy, he said, you have to accept losing as well as winning.

It’s essential, I think (this is me talking) to understand the difference between a dictator and a demagogue.  The term “dictator” came from the Greeks, as did the idea of democracy. A dictator is a ruthless ruler with absolute power over a country, usually obtained by force and intimidation.

Some people believe our President is trying to be a dictator. This will be an uphill climb.

He has not gained power by force and has nothing like absolute power over so diverse and historically independent a citizenry and government, as he is learning and whining about every day. He may not act like it, and many people don’t like it,  but he was legally and democratically elected.

The demagogue is different. A demagogue is someone who rhetorically exploits an issue for political purposes in a way designed to appeal to the desires and prejudices of “ordinary people,” a/k/a the masses—Bing, bing, bing.

They make sense to large numbers of people, they speak to them in the way journalists and convention politicians can’t or won’t. But they never seem to win.

Historians write a lot about how the Founding  Fathers – mostly business and farming elites –  and how they feared our having a King. Still, if you read Thomas Jefferson or Madison, it seems they were much more frightened of a Trump and his followers, a demagogue who flames the grievance and prejudices of what the pols call “ordinary people.”

Jefferson was worried about mobs, that’s why they created the Electoral College. They wanted to give the power to the people, but not all the power.

One dictionary of history defines a demagogue as one who “seems more interested in demagoguing the issue in media statements and interviews than in dialogue?” I hear that bell ringing again.

H.L. Mencken, one of the best and most cynical scholars of democracy, had a more direct definition of a demagogue:

“The demagogue is one who preaches doctrines he knows to be untrue to men he knows to be idiots,” he wrote.

Like many of the Founding Fathers,  he was skeptical of the notion that our country is made of wise and democratic citizens.

“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance,” he wrote.

I don’t share Mencken’s contemptuous view of the ordinary citizen. They always tend to be underestimated by journalists and other politicians.

Rural and working people had lots of good reasons for voting for Donald Trump. They’ve been ignored for decades and screwed over by Democrats and Republicans alike. It is understandable that they want a new system, and someone to dismantle the existing one.

Just because the media and the political elites missed the significance of  Trump doesn’t mean there wasn’t a lot to it, or that everyone who voted for him is a bigot or a fool. I would say 2016 showed us that most of the fools were on the other side, or sitting in cable newsrooms bloviating.

It’s not smart to be smug and condescending. Because “progressives” love to romanticize the “ordinary American” without ever knowing them, they are traumatized when they don’t behave as they want them to.

This idea of the wise electorate is one of the things that has so many Trump opponents so deeply disappointed and upset. If you believe that the ordinary citizen has special wisdom and perception, then Trump’s rise seems inexplicable.

If you accept H.L. Mencken’s view of the world, this seems inevitable, at least from time to time. He saw democracy as a mess, the best political system in the world, but still an awful mess.

It seems clear to me that our President is a demagogue. He exploits, inflames, and encourages grievance and prejudice wherever he can, from immigrants  (Mexicans, people from “shit-hole” countries, Muslims,  foreigners, journalists to anyone who opposes his policies and opinions.

But becoming a dictator is a lot harder than running a reality TV show every day from the White House and Mar-A-Lago. The professor reminded me that the most successful and menacing dictators in the world were a lot smarter, eloquent,   better organized – and homicidal –  than Trump seems to be.

But, indeed, many got ahead by demonizing groups that many people fear – refugees, immigrants, Catholics,  foreigners, Jews.

The professor’s idea that demagogues always fail in the same way that protagonists in Greek drama always fail struck home with me. The Greeks were pretty smart about human nature.

As the coronavirus tragedy unfolds, it seems to me (speaking only for myself) that there is no part of this Pandemic that the President has handled well, or seems prepared for.

He didn’t get ahead of the crisis, listen to the right people, react to it quickly and forcefully, tell the truth to a frightened and confused public, make sure there was enough equipment for the doctors and hospitals, or show empathy for the people who suffer and die from the disease and from its aftermath.

His ideas seem chaotic, he is all over the place, and there is no joy in me for writing that.

Mostly, he seems frantic to cover his own ass, which makes him look immoral as well as incompetent.

He seems addicted to lying and bullying when he is in trouble, and even Mencken wouldn’t have argued that most people are that stupid as to not eventually see through this; it is simply too much, too often, too obvious.

The President would do much better to let someone else take the microphone and do the talking, he just is no good at it, as Governor Cuomo is demonstrating every day.

He can yell at all the reporters he wants; the public doesn’t need to depend on what the reporters say, the truth is all around them now, more visible every day.

A demagogue has no real idea what to say or do in a vast, global, scientific catastrophe like this, governing requires an entirely different set of skills.

One is delegating to the best people; another is accepting responsibility.

And yes, I think I will take a trip to Washington in the Fall and speak to the professor’s class. I like being praised.

I’ll bring Zinnia and give them a look at the other side of the world.