Give Him A Chance

It has been six months since one of the ugliest, divisive, most personal, non-issue based elections in American history. The popular vote results and the Electoral College outcome served as an appropriate statement of our ballot box indecisiveness. Two months later on Inauguration Day, Donald Trump started his presidency with the lowest approval rating on Day 1 of any modern-day president, a rating only gotten worse in the ensuing 100 days. Throughout this time, a steady call from some of his supporters has been, “give him a chance.” So 100 days in, what are we to conclude about Trump’s “Chance?”

Personally, few of my preconceptions about a Trump presidency have changed during these 100 days. As President, he is still acting as CEO of his family business. He assumes he is free to do whatever he chooses, accountable to no one, managing by direct orders to subservient underlings unwilling or unable to say No. His operating style reflects little knowledge of, or interest in, historical background, protocol, or precedent. It is all packaged in the personal aggrandizement of Trump the individual, with little awareness of fulfilling the larger presidential role.

There is certainly much talk coming from 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Trump’s presidential decisions are seemingly made in the wee hours of the morning, thereafter communicated to the public almost off-handily in 140-character Tweets in lieu of hours of thoughtful internal discussions among staff, advisors, and department heads. Instead, these individuals spend their post-Tweet days (or weeks) explaining, correcting, interpreting or translating to a national / international audience left scratching their heads by the latest out-of-the-blue nonsensical, factually incorrect, or unintelligible Trump-Tweet.

The kindest thing one can say about the Trump White House team is that it is pure amateurism on very public display. It is about power positioning, infighting, jockeying for position, causng personnel to trip all over each other instead of advancing any agenda. This should be no surprise given that, except for VP Pence, hardly a single person surrounding Trump has any government experience – including “the Boss” himself.  It is all well and good to play the role of the “outsider” brought in to shake things up. But outsider is a short-lived job title; one has to reach inside pretty quickly to actually get things done. And that means surrounding yourself with good people who know how to pull the levers, press the pedals, integrate the governmental structures, and avoid unproductive fights with the Washington machinery. The hardest job in Washington used to be the President. Now it is the Press Secretary who every day has to try to rationally explain this irrationality to an increasingly skeptical public.

The glimmer of hope is the national defense team that Trump has managed to assemble which may be able to keep us on a rational path. Meanwhile, his domestic and economic teams have been virtually invisible, excepting Jeff Sessions at Justice clearly intent on rolling back civil and gender equality gains. Where these other cabinet officials will attempt to go remains to be seen, but corporate interests and making money at the expense of other quality-of-life goals is likely to be the governing compass.

The result of this chaos is that virtually nothing of substance has gotten done this far. The only Trump victory has been confirming a Supreme Court nominee. Trump has loved signing all of his Executive Orders – it brings out the CEO style in him. Many of his EOs mainly set a tone, point a direction, or initiate a review. Most of those that have actual impact have unsurprisingly centered on a full frontal assault on standing environmental protections in favor of corporate expansion and profits. (Few of these profits will actually move to the new jobs and wages Trump voters expect.) Other EOs have been blocked by the courts (the Muslim ban; withholding funding to “sanctuary cities”) due to the legal sloppiness of their preparation and attempted implementation. For a Party that regularly criticized Obama for being an “imperial President,” Republicans have been conspicuously silent about Trump’s greater number of EOs.

Beyond these “actions?” Nothing. Not a single piece of significant legislation passed in Trump’s 100 Days. Only one piece was even filed: the long-promised Republican repeal (and now “replace”) of Obamacare. Trapped in their own longstanding rhetoric, this bill went down in flames without even getting a vote as Republicans discovered that the public has long since moved on to acceptance regarding this law. Everything else on Trump’s agenda has yet to be seen. A laughable 1-page “Tax Reform Plan” consisted mainly of cuts for the wealthy with no details offered; even his economic team could barely present it with a straight face (“Details to come!”). A proposed 2018 budget of draconian cuts to every “social good” program in sight, cast amid stupid statements like, “Meals on Wheels has no hard data to prove that it is working,” and “Not every student needs a computer.” A proposed huge corporate tax cuts which will reward corporate officers and Wall Street, but which will never “trickle-down” to the average worker and never generate enough GDP growth to avoid huge new government deficits. (See history of Reagan’s trickle down/voodoo economics.) A unilateral ripping up of existing trade agreements because they are “unfair” to America, even as much of corporate America lies in wait to preserve those agreements. Trump continues to preach about a return of jobs to America – which is never going to happen (see coal miners) – so he claims credit for job expansions decided well before his election. And as previously noted, Trumpcare is in chaos as low-middle income and older Americans watch their Obamacare benefits evaporate. Meanwhile, not one fencepost has been driven into the ground for the Mexican Wall, and it has been conceded that American taxpayers will foot the bill, not Mexico.

Internationally, American leadership is fading because of our now unpredictable lurching from one supposed policy to the next. After a brief missile show, a Syrian airbase and air force was back in business bombing its citizens the next day. War with North Korea no longer seems to be a fictional novel. Trump’s administration is drowning in ever-widening investigations about Russia, Trump/Putin coziness, and Michael Flynn’s illegal deceptions, issues he tries to hides behind his stone wall of denials and false counteraccusations.

Donald Trump is quickly finding out the limits of his power as he learns that Congress and the Federal Courts are truly “equal branches of government.” Ditto internationally with the 200+ independent sovereign nations of the world. They are not underlings waiting and receptive to being told what to do. Actually, Trump’s biggest “success” is the one thing that successful politicians never want to achieve: mobilizing one’s opposition. He has awakened an opposition force that has been passive for a long time and all but ignored by its traditional Democratic Party home. Whether this energy will come to achieve anything tangible is as yet unknown.

Ultimately, after the inexhaustible list of shortcomings, misstatements, and failures is detailed, evaluating Donald Trump still comes down to the fundamental issue ever-present since he announced for the Presidency: Personal Character. The concern for Character arises over the ease with which he lies and exaggerates, and his willingness to say any outlandish thing for attention; his disregard for factual information (“fake news”); his approach to and basis for decision-making; his consuming need for continuous attention and praise; his refusal to admit mistakes and take responsibility for them; his inability to debate issues in favor of personal attacks against those with whom he disagrees; his profound ignorance of history and the course of human relationships; the phoniness in which he voices people’s concerns while having no true understanding of people’s lives outside the orbit of his own narrow experience. Donald Trump is simply not a person worth respecting nor one who has earned our trust. Water that flows from a clear well in good earth will nourish many good results. Nothing much good comes from the dark water of a poisoned well. Once poisoned, there is very little chance of a dark well ever running clear again. We take a Chance and drink from that well at our own risk.

©   2017   Randy Bell               www.ThoughtsFromTheMountain.blogspot.com