An Impulsive Authoritarian Populist in the White House

On Thursday evening, Jason Furman, the chairman of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, tweeted out a picture of himself leaving his office for the last time, with the message “Turning out the lights.” Whether it was deliberate or not, Furman’s message echoed the words of Lord Edward Grey, the British foreign secretary, who remarked to a friend, in August, 1914, “The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”