A Dangerous Situation
My fellow Americans, specifically the 63 million who voted for Donald Trump to be president; are you beginning to see why the rest of us(66 million) thought it was a bad idea? Are things working out as planned?
With the finish line to President Trump’s first 100 days in office on the horizon it is not hard to argue that he has failed in every respect. Worse for him and the country, these early failures make it very difficult for him to recover. He has given Democrats in Congress the code for how to defeat him, he has gone to war with almost every agency of government he needs to work with to get things done, and he has shown no ability to learn from his mistakes. The phrase “doubling-down” does not do mathematical justice to Trump’s commitment to bad political strategy. His approval rating is falling into the low 30’s which means members of Congress will find it easier and in some cases even necessary to run from him.
Why was this outcome inevitable? Because the movie plot idea that you can take a businessman with no experience in government or politics and put him in charge of the most complicated government machine in the world was doomed to failure. Thinking that Donald Trump, or anyone who has never shown an interest in public policy, could just walk into the White House and begin applying Wharton business school management techniques to the U.S. government, as if the government is the equivalent of a large mom and pop grocery store, is terribly flawed. For the same reason you would not hire Barack Obama to lead a New York real estate development firm, you wouldn’t hire Trump to run the government if you were using common sense.
Three months in, Trump is still surrounded by the same group of campaign aides he dragged along behind him on his way to the White House. Numbering less than a dozen, they too have no significant experience in government at the local, state or federal level. According to several reports published over the last week, they are not only helping Trump wage his cartoon like war on the world, but they are at war with each other internally as they struggle for personal survival on a ship captained by someone who is not in control of his impulses.
Three months in, Trump has made no sincere effort to bring a divided country together. Except for a few throw away remarks in his inaugural address and a few other stray promises to be a president for all Americans, his lack of action on uniting the country does not match his scripted words. A president who came to office having lost the popular vote needs to expand his base of support. Trump does not understand this and doesn’t even know where to begin. Neither do his advisors.
Three months in, the first major legislative initiative of the Trump administration is failing. The effort to replace Obamacare is bogged down and threatening the rest of the president’s agenda, because if Republicans lose on this one, or jam through a replacement using only Republican votes, Democrats will have no reason to cooperate on anything going forward. Trump, in particular, clearly has no understanding of the healthcare debate or how to fix the system. He simply believes that as the all powerful CEO of the American government his main role is that of cheerleader. He doesn’t care what he is cheering for as long as he can take credit for it when it crosses his desk. It doesn’t matter if it actually works, because he will simply spend the next four years claiming it does.
Three months in, Trump’s signature initiative, the banning of Muslims from entering the country, has been rejected by the courts for a second time, largely because Trump and his aides have never been able to hide the fact that their real goal is to make an entire religion the enemy of the American state.
Three months in, Trump’s bizarre claim that former President Obama tapped the phones at Trump Tower during the campaign, has dramatically eroded the president’s credibility and led some to question his mental stability. His aides’ insistence on defending Trump’s claims is ruining their own personal and professional reputations. Trump has now managed to drag both the British and the Germans into his paranoid fantasy. Trump’s false rantings are more than a personality quirk to be ignored.
Overall this is a dangerous situation. At the very least, the Trump White House is unpredictable and unpredictable is a bad thing to be in politics and international relations. At worse, Trump is on the road to a failed presidency. This would be more than a loss for Trump. A shrinking presidency will result in diminished capacity for our government as a source of leadership. The first job of the next president will be to restore the credibility of the White House as an institution, because Trump is turning the place into a shack.
