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Author And Historian: Founders Would Oppose Donald Trump

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Author and history professor at the University of Texas, HW Brands, believes the authors of the Constitution would be appalled at the possibility of Donald Trump becoming President and tried to write the founding document in a way that prevented such an ascendancy.

Brands, who wrote a piece entitled How Trump Proved The Founders Right for Politico, told Chris Stigall during an interview on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that Donald Trump is the last thing they were looking for in a President.

 

"The idea of somebody like Donald Trump just parachuting in from the top, never having won elective office, that was exactly what they were worried about. Someone who could play on the passions of the masses and then get themselves elected. There's no telling what that kind of person would do."

He is sure they would side with the political insiders or the Washington establishment today in a battle against insurgent candidates in either party.

"They were the elite of the day. They were well educated. They were well off. They were wealthy, for the most part and they believed that you had to have that kind or expertise, you had to have that kind of disinterest, so that you could make good choices. Ordinary people would simply vote out of their ignorance and selfishness and they would make bad choices. This is most important at the national level because what would ordinary people in Massachusetts know about candidates from Virginia? That required the folks who were well connected, the ones who did know the candidates to make the right choices."

Brand also points out how the founders opposed the very idea of political parties.

"They would've thought this idea of primary elections, in which voters would determine the nominees of the two parties, was very bizarre. They thought the two parties were a very bad idea. They wrote the Constitution, which of course, they wrote in Philadelphia, as a stop-gap against party. They thought parties were the worst thing that could happen to a republic because the parties would have the interest of the party ahead of the interest of the nation."

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