Some might wonder what if any relationship exists between the Austrian born mathematician, logician, and philosopher Kurt Gödel, best known for his contributions to mathematics and logic in the twentieth century, and the New York-born President-elect Donald Trump, a real estate mogul turned politician. Probably few people outside the fields of mathematics, logic, and philosophy know of Gödel and his famous incomplete theorems, while virtually everyone knows who Donald Trump is.
And yet, although unknown to most ordinary people, there is an ominous relationship between both individuals. Many are aware that President-elect Trump has flirted with the idea of being a “dictator,” allegedly for one day only, when he assumes the presidency on January 20, 2025. Less known is that when Gödel was studying the US Constitution to apply for his American citizenship in 1947, he shared with his friend and mathematician, Oskar Morgenstern, a member of the newly created Institute for Advance Study in Princeton, that he had discovered a contradiction in the US Constitution that could legally allow for the president to become a dictator. Morgenstern informed Albert Einstein, who was probably the most illustrious member of the Institute at the time, about Gödel’s revelation. However, it seems that Morgenstern and Einstein were not impressed by Gödel’s conjecture and probably conceived of it as a rather farfetched idea. So no one knows with certainty what Gödel thought at the time.
Of course, I do not pretend to know what Gödel had in mind when he made his intriguing observation. But given what President-elect Trump has said about his alleged one-day dictatorship, I propose to explore some possible conceptions of what Gödel might have conjectured regarding how the US Constitution could legally allow for a dictatorship. Since the constitution was silent back then about the possibility of an indefinite reelection of a president, he might have thought about the anomalous four consecutive terms of the 32nd president of the US, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Gödel could have believed that this anomaly was, if not self-contradictory, at least a flaw in our constitutional democracy, which was intended to curtail the detrimental effects of factions or parties and simultaneously had allowed for a president to be indefinitely reelected. Yet “We the People” fixed the flaw by proposing the 22nd Amendment in 1947 and ratifying it in 1951 to restrict future presidents to only two consecutive terms in office. Gödel might have thought that the indefinite reelection of a popular president, such as FDR, could have resulted in a de facto dictatorship undermining the legal restraints of American constitutionalism.
After all, Gödel had experienced the enactment of the Enabling Act of 1933, which gave Hitler and the Nazi Party the ability to stay in power indefinitely, rendering the Weimar Constitution moot. He might have also conceived of a real possibility that, for example, a populist presidential candidate could be democratically elected on a platform to amend Article V of the Constitution, so that it could be easier for him to pave the way for a dictatorship.
E. Guerra-Pujol argues that Gödel might have had in mind the possibility of amending Article V of the US Constitution. He refers to this possibility as “Gödel’s Loophole.” Article V provides for amending the constitution by an arduous process: two thirds of both houses must approve a newly proposed amendment first and then three fourths of the legislature of the states needs to approve it too so that it can be ratified and become law. The conundrum of Article V is that, like any other article in the constitution, it can also be amended. It is possible, although highly improbable, that a populist president, like President-elect Trump, whose party controls both chambers of Congress, could propose a constitutional amendment to amend Article V, making it possible for him to become more than a one-day dictator by quashing the 22nd Amendment.
Another possibility that Gödel might have conceived of is for POTUS to declare himself temporary dictator, and assuming that his party controls both Houses, especially the Senate, they would refuse to impeach him. Also, being the commander-in-chief of the US Armed Forces, to whom enlisted officers take an oath to protect the constitution but also to obey their commander in chief, they might go along with him. In case of a threat of prosecution, POTUS can always promise to exercise his power to pardon them.
For example, even though he did not do it, President Trump could have promised his former Vice President Mike Pence to pardon him if the vice president had been willing to go along with the January 6 insurrection. Even if the Supreme Court had decided that the president had committed a crime against the constitution, the president might argue that he could have pardoned himself, as he has suggested. He could argue that since Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution is silent about the power of self-pardoning, he has a right to do so. Perhaps Gödel was aware of the self-contradictory nature of the president’s power to pardon himself except in cases of impeachment. A shameless president might argue so, and SCOTUS might go along with it. After all, the officers of the armed forces of the US do not take an oath to abide by SCOTUS’s decisions; rather they take an oath to obey their commander-in-chief.
Of course, my suggestions of what Gödel might have thought can be inaccurate or just false. However, what is neither inaccurate nor false is what President-elect Trump has already stated. American democracy allows for “We the People” to choose whomever we prefer to be our president, including a convicted criminal. And yet, regardless of what Gödel might have thought, our American experiment is based precisely on avoiding a possible contradiction between our democratic practices and our constitutionalism or the rule of law. Even if it is the case that our constitutional text contains within itself what has been described as Gödel’s loophole, the spirit of American constitutionalism does not allow a president to be a dictator, not even for one day. To allow for such a temporary dictatorship would be to accept a contradiction. To allow for such a contradiction, however, would have been unacceptable to Gödel who, as a good logician, abhorred them because once we accept a contradiction anything and everything might follow from it, including the justification for a one-day (or longer) dictatorship.
Vicente Medina
Vicente Medina is a professor of philosophy at Seton Hall University where he has been teaching for the past thirty-two years. He has published on terrorism, political philosophy, applied ethics, and Latin American Philosophy.
