SEVEN DAYS IN MAY

In my early teens, growing up in Cleveland, Ohio, I was a regular reader of Fletcher Knebel’s political humor column, Potomac Fever, which ran in The Plain Dealer. So, when the film version of Seven Days in May was recommended to me recently, I knew the reference although I had neither read the book nor viewed the movie. My interlocutor had just watched the film, and on the eve of President Trump’s Flag Day 2025 birthday parade found it disturbing. “What if those 60,000 troops don’t go home?” I have since read the book and watched the movie.

You might think that it can’t happen here or maybe you think that it already has. Fascism’s militaristic vestments notwithstanding, like Communism, it is a civilian republican theory of government. While military rule survives in some nations today, the rise of republicanism after the Enlightenment made it exceptional for the head of state to be the active commander of the armed forces. (The powers and duties of the President are defined in Article II Section 2 of the Constitution.)  

The last significant example of a head of state commanding an army in the field was Louis Napoleon III of France who was captured by the Prussians at Sedan in 1870. Previously, Napoleon III had successfully commanded the French at the Battle of Solferino; the army of their ally, Piedmont-Sardinia, was commanded by Vittorio Emanuele II, later king of the newly unified Italy. Significantly, no emperors were in the field for World War I.

George Washington defined the paradigmatic corollary of a general (or admiral) becoming the head of state through civilian electoral process. Of the 45 US Presidents only 14 had no prior military service. The two short lists of exceptions  run: Taft, Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt; and then: Clinton, Obama, Biden, and Trump. 

When I read the book, the characters seemed unreal to me until I removed myself and accepted that the authors were accomplished journalists and therefore, these portrayals were derived from their own experiences, being composites or sketches of actual people. My personal experience had been that in public you call a colonel “Colonel” rather than “Jiggs” no matter how well you know them. Clearly, the previous age was a different time. 

As to whether a military coup d’etat could happen here, this story may have been influenced by the events in France in 1961, with over thirty attempts on the life of Charles de Gaulle, a military putsch in Algeria, and the threat of civil war within metropolitan France. 

“How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?” 

— Charles de Gaulle.

As for the storyline of the conspiracy itself, it seemed to me that the refusal of the Chief of Naval Operations to go along would have required his removal and replacement by the conspirators. They could not have moved forward while lacking one of the other Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The President’s summary speeches in front of the White House reporters for the major news media also encapsulated another problem with the tale, in effect asking rhetorically, “What was their plan for the day after tomorrow?” Once you have captured and isolated the President and Vice President, then what? The Constitution has no provision for that. The order of succession was fixed by law, but in this story, the generals did not intend to install the Speaker of the House. They intended to rule directly by martial law. How and when they intended to stop ruling was never clear in the story. 

That  raises the deeper question of whether and to what extent the People would accept military rule. The movie version did show Gen. James M. Scott being wildly popular among some factions, especially at a mass rally of  the American Veterans Organization. The cinema version opened with a scuffle between pro-Gen. Scott and pro-Pres. Lyman supporters picketing the White House. It is easy to transpose that to January 6, 2021. Following the dreamland fantasy in which the rioters succeeded in hanging Vice President Mike Pence, certifying their own election results, declaring Donald Trump the President, following which he rides down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Capitol and assumes office—then what? How long could that situation have remained stable? 

If Seven Days in May echoed the crisis in France, that model depended specifically on the personality of Charles de Gaulle, who had been a public literary figure and a charismatic politician within the military even before World War I. Of Gen. James M. Scott, we had only a sketchy portrait of a decorated air ace. In the book, more context was developed to set the story a few years in its future, from 1963 to 1972, following a military failure in Iran and its partitioning. To me, that was not enough to sell Gen. Scott to the reader as the Man of the Hour, though in the book, the line is offered that every twenty years, we seek a man on a white horse.

It Can’t Happen Here

It Has Happened Here

In our world of 1968, Gov. George Wallace received 46 electoral votes. That was perhaps the only modern challenge to mainstream politics until the ascendency of Donald Trump. Wallace’s choice of Gen. Curtis LeMay as his running mate was problematic on several grounds and did little to help the campaign. (See Wikipedia on the 1968 Wallace campaign.) Furthermore, it is salient that Donald Trump’s vice president was, indeed, the very person who refused to certify his 2020 election and thereby became a target for the January 6 rioters, perhaps personifying the distinction between traditionalist and populist conservatism in America. 

Contrary to the plot of Sinclair Lewis’s warning, the actual attempt at a fascist coup in America came not from a populist groundswell but from a Wall Street cabal, the 1933 "Business Plot." Now, our hillbilly Vice President starred at Yale Law School and worked for a venture capital firm before entering Ohio politics. So, comparisons and contrasts are at once parallel and skew, depending on your perspective. And four dimensions might not be enough for an accurate projection onto our political Flatland. 

The State of Texas just enacted a law to require that the Ten Commandments be posted in every public school classroom. It was quickly challenged in court by self-identified Christian leaders. 

In other news, the State House and Senate passed a new bill to ban marijuana gummies and drinks and the Governor vetoed it, calling them back into session to write a law that can be enforced to the benefit of the State via taxes and regulation.

PREVIOUSLY ON NECESSARY FACTS

Book Review: Timothy Snyder’s “On Tyranny” 

I Stopped Listening to NPR 

The GOP as Pushy Beggars 

Morality and the Philosophy of Science 

Against Gulching