And you thought he might come to Ukraine’s defense! Poor Douglas Murray. What the world saw last Friday was the same, central Trump dynamic: the leader of a smaller democracy that has withstood three years of brutal attack by a far larger dictatorship ... was still publicly humiliated, because he dared air his concern of no security guarantees against Russia. “Just say thank you,” Vance harangued him. “Have you said thank you once?” I cannot recall any visiting head of state who has ever, ever been thrown out of the White House the way Zelensky was. Why? Because he did not submit.

he kind of democratic backsliding that has been most common in the first decades of the 21st century is characterized by the gradual aggrandizement of executive power, not by sudden military coups. Political scientists remain bad at predicting when these kinds of assault on democracy succeed, and when they fail. But one factor clearly does seem to matter. Because this form of democratic backsliding tends to be a slow process, a lot turns on the ability of would-be autocrats to sustain their popularity during their first years in office.