He has been in the public eye for 40 years. When he
announced his candidacy for President of the United States, he was viewed as a
clown jokester that got continually less funny over time. When the first votes
were counted, he leapt to the head of the large pack behind him and never
looked back. He surprised everyone by winning a major party’s nomination built
upon a wrecking-ball campaign against the political status quo. His
personality-driven campaign continued into the general election, which he was
given no chance of winning. But a last-minute surge of disaffected and
disenfranchised voters –mainly white, lower middle-income, conservative voters fearful over the loss of jobs
and the “traditional” social order – came together to give him the unexpected
win. On January 20th, 2017, Donald J. Trump became our President.
By all traditional measures, he is the most ill-prepared
President in our history. He ran as the advocate of the average citizen and
working man/woman. Yet he has never spent a single day in public service (much
less governance), never worked as anything but the absolute-control CEO of a
closely-held family business, never suffered the difficulty of losing a job or
being unemployed, never wondered where his next meal or dollar would come from.
So what are we likely to expect from a minimum of four years of a Trump
presidency? Speculating upon future political outcomes is always a risky sport,
but there are a few framing themes we can perhaps see in the haze of the
crystal ball.
1. No Core Principles. The bad news is that Trump has
few, if any, core philosophical or political principles that guide him. The
good news is that is that Trump has few, if any, core philosophical or
political principles that guide him. Which means that almost any
political/social position is theoretically possible to come out of a Trump
presidency. Trump is guided by end results, not philosophy or process. Get his
ear, convince him of a worthwhile financial or self-glorifying outcome, and
that can drive his version of policy. He will most certainly (and
intentionally) surprise us, frustrate both political friends and enemies,
confirm opponents’ suspicions, and inevitably disappoint his supporters’ high
expectations of him.
2. Rules Are For Others. Trump has never answered to
a boss/supervisor. He has never been accountable to a Board or to stockholders.
He has made his own rules, done what he has wanted how he has wanted. But a
Presidency is borne and bred within the nursery of tradition and imagery, and
Americans take their role expectations of “the President” very seriously. So
far Trump has delighted in flouting these expectations. His ridiculing comments
about people, his refusal to divest himself of conflicts of interest, his
decision not to release his tax returns, his push to confirm his Cabinet appointments
before being fully vetted, his personal attacks on the intelligence community
and other government employees, all fly in the face of presidential tradition.
It is a pattern that will permeate downward, and continually create unending
crises of moral compromises and ethical complaints for him and his
administration.
3. Beyond Criticism. The President is the most
criticized individual in the world. Almost everyone thinks they know better
than the President, and is free and willing to say so no matter how
inappropriate their ideas may be. Trump has shown no ability to let such
criticism slide off his back or to pick only worthwhile battles to fight.
Instead, we are treated to an unending series of petty fights not worthy of
presidential attention. Trump has shown no ability to debate criticism in
substantive terms. The argument never goes beyond highly personal insults that seek
to discredit the criticizer rather than disprove the criticism. People who
praise him are “great” and “beautiful”; people who disagree with him are “losers”
and their career accomplishments and organizations are “failures.” Credit is
taken for achievements not of his doing; responsibility is never taken for
failures; it is all “the media’s” fault. Trump lives in a self-made bubble
designed to insulate him from admitting the slightest shortcoming; “facts” are
invented out of nowhere without regard for truth or consistency to protect that
bubble. The credibility of the White House will progressively take a huge hit;
such erosion will do significant damage to the ability to lead the country. A
person who takes him-/herself this
seriously does not warrant being taken seriously. While a Trump supporter may
enjoy reading such insults in the moment, one should never forget that they
could well be the next target for Trump’s angry words.
4. Presidents Are Not That Powerful. The presidency
of the United States is the most powerful office in the world. But each
ex-president has acknowledged how limited that power actually is. There are the
Constitutional limitations on the president’s powers. There are the strong egos
and career experience of Cabinet appointees. There is the intentional distribution
of balanced power among the House, Senate, and Judiciary and the egos of these
officials. There is “the bureaucracy” that was there before you came and will
be there after you leave, the president being just “temporary.” There are 50
governors and state legislatures intent on going their own way. There are other
countries and their leaders. Regardless of their smaller size and military
prowess, they are sovereign nations able to make their own decisions
independent of American desires. And then there are “events” over which you
have no control (e.g. 9-11; school shootings; North Korean atomic weapons) but
which nevertheless dictate the agenda. Trump has been used to giving orders and
watching things automatically get done. The deliberateness of government and
international diplomacy will frustrate him and create adversaries everywhere.
5. No Pivot. During the early campaigning, pundits said
Trump would “pivot” and tone down the harsh and outlandish statements when the
primary voting started. Same after he won sufficient votes to ensure the
nomination. After the Republican Convention conferred the nomination, he would then
pivot and “act presidential” for the general election. After he became
president-elect, the weight of the impending office would sober him to leave
the campaign mode behind. It never happened. His transition as President-elect
has been a continuation of his campaign. He continually stepped on the toes of the
one sitting President, inappropriately trying to act as a “second president” by
commenting on national and international issues before his time. He conducted a
rerun of “The Apprentice” by publically parading potential cabinet choices
through Trump Tower in a disrespectful spectacle that demeaned their status
while trying to enhance his own image of authority. All while the ugly Twitter words
and criticisms continued to come. There was no Pivot. There will be no future
Pivot. Trump will be stuck in campaign mode for the next four years. He will
not act “presidential” as we have known it; he will act “Trumpial” as he
defines it. What we have seen is what we will continue to see. Americans are
noted for having a pretty short-term attention span; “Campaign Trump” will wear
pretty thin for everyone over a four year span.
6. Yardstick for Presidential Success. Trump’s whole
history is built around financial success. A large profit on one’s Income
Statement may be a satisfactory measure of business success; it is not a sole
measure of government service success. There are too many agendas, too many
diverse “stockholders,” and – in spite of all the campaign rhetoric and
economic statistics – too many financially successful citizens for economic
success to be solely sufficient. There are many other issues that will drive
the public’s response to Trump’s presidency. Unfortunately, it appears that
Trump is setting up a bifurcated presidency going forward. He seems very
interested in foreign affairs, defeating ISIS, negotiating trade deals and
creating more domestic jobs. So he will be very engaged with those Cabinet departments.
But domestic affairs / social issues will prove to be less interesting, so he
will pay only cursory interest there. This will leave Vice President Mike Pence
– the darling of social Conservatives – in de facto leadership over the
domestic agenda and those Cabinet departments, several of which have truly
reactionary Cabinet-level leaders. They will run amuck for a while in their
moment in the sun. It will last until the negative reaction sets in as the
public realizes that cutting budgets means cutting services, American jobs
means higher costs at Walmart, tariffs on imports means reciprocal tariffs on
exports, eliminating support for the Arts means no more Sesame Street for
parents, restricting voting rights hurts everyone, not just minorities. Trump
will cut heads when the blowback becomes personal against him.
Such is the framework for the next four years. Lacking both
a popular vote mandate and high approval ratings, the upcoming political landscape
will be an unending series of contentious adversarial encounters. We will each
find much to disagree with, whatever is our political positioning. But some
stuff will get done that we can agree with due to differing alliances on one
issue to the next. We need to pick our battles, select the Tweets worth
reading, conserve our energy, not get on the roller coaster. It is going to be
quite the ride, regardless of our politics and for whom we voted. A unified
America is not just around the corner.
© 2017
Randy Bell www.ThoughtsFromTheMountain.blogspot.com
