A Trump Writer’s Notebook, One Year On
And now a personal note. Roughly a year ago I decided to start a weekly writing project chronicling the presidency of Donald Trump. As a working premise I was willing to accept the idea that President Trump was going to bring a new perspective to the job. He would approach the challenges of the presidency with the data driven calculation of a businessman. People often wonder why government cannot be run like a business. Under Trump we would be putting the idea to the test.
I knew the project would be challenging, because I deeply believed last year and still believe today that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. As I wrote in one of my first columns, he simply lacks common decency. Even in this holiday season he seems unable to summon the slightest bit of good cheer. He demands love and respect from the news media, the voters and world leaders. He makes no effort to earn either, he simply demands both.
In spite of the many accomplishments he is happy to list any time he speaks to an audience of two or more, his approval ratings remain below 40. He and his White House staff are reportedly beginning to understand that the Trump presidency is on a path to a disastrous 2018 campaign season, because voters are not buying what he is selling. When political analysts and the man on the street are asked what bothers them most about the president the answer often involves his Twitter habit. Twitter is only a symptom. The underlying problem is the president, his personality and his morals. Twitter only puts on display his worst attributes, it is wrong to put the blame on social media. His approval ratings will remain low as long as he insists on being repulsive.
The year is coming to an end amidst a revolution on the issue of workplace sexual harassment against women. Almost daily, powerful and famous men are facing accusations that in some cases have been hidden for decades. Some are losing their jobs and careers without consideration of due process. Though the president has been accused of sexual harassment by more than a dozen women, he shows no shame. At the height of the controversy he attacked New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand with sexual innuendo after she called on him to resign. He has no sensitivity to the issues of the moment.
Recently, the president traveled to the FBI training center in Quantico, Virginia to speak to a group graduating from a special program. On the way there he criticized the FBI as an agency in turmoil. He is the only one who holds that view and it is fed by the fact his administration is under FBI investigation. He seemed unaware of the irony as he addressed the FBI audience. He then seemed to have lost his understanding of who he was speaking to as he fell into his familiar campaign riffs against the news media.
These are just two of the most recent examples that show we are dealing with a man in the White House who has no sense of normal human behavior and no sense of the responsibility set by previous presidents to serve as a role model.
For these reasons, I have failed almost entirely, to write a thoughtful column each week on President Trump’s application of private sector business practices to the management of the federal government. The president’s consistently abnormal behavior cannot be ignored. If the president has been using private sector strategies to manage our government, the experiment is an abysmal failure. But I don’t think he has tried.
He has presided over an administration dominated by chaos. Anyone paying attention can see he is consumed only with his own place in the daily news cycle and he measures victory in the same fifteen minute intervals we are told cats and dogs rely on to get through each day. With such a low bar there is little hope for substantial progress in the year ahead. Most journalists and political observers are facing the same challenge I have run up against over the last twelve months. It is very difficult to consider the policy implications of the president’s daily decision making when his personal behavior is so threatening.
There are those who say Trump is smarter than he appears to be and that the chaos is all part of a well-thought strategy. At the beginning of the year I was willing to consider the possibility, but as the year comes to a close there are few examples of how it has worked. Credit for the approval of a Supreme Court nominee and the just passed tax reform package belongs to Republican congressional leadership and would have happened earlier and with less drama if a different Republican had been president.
Like others, I have wrestled with the idea of just giving up the project of keeping an eye on the Trump administration. Some diseases cannot be cured. Some people defy understanding. Why bother trying to understand our current national predicament when the president is immune to criticism and will not accept advice meant to help him? The answer is a matter of civic responsibility.
If your government is not living up to your standards you have a responsibility to speak up. You cannot leave the hard work to someone else. President Trump is trying to win by wearing his critics down, by repeating half-truths and falsehoods so often that we lose interest in fighting back. If he wins that battle, who knows what he will try to do next. This is why I intend to keep watching and writing and that’s why everyone should pay attention to this White House like you have never paid attention before. Vigilance knows no holiday.
