19 January 2017:
In The Beginning
The realities of Trumpism
by J.R.Thomas
Mr Trump cannot carry on like this. He is a nightmare to journalists, commentators, and analysts everywhere. No sooner has the scribe finished polishing his thoughtful exposition on the latest astonishing happenings in Trump Tower, than something even more extraordinary happens and the whole thing has to be restarted.
Yet, there is a logic in The Donald’s ever moving policies and thoughts. Oddly, it is one that Mrs May might understand, though she possibly needs to sign up to a Trump University course to really get the style perfected. Donald is doing what any businessman will do. He is negotiating, and he is being careful not to show his hand whilest giving indications of what he is broadly thinking. At the same time he is trying to perplex his opposite numbers and set competing suppliers against each other. In business this often works well in managing the expectations and weaknesses of those about to be seated around the negotiating table. (Mrs May is doing well on keeping her cards close to her chest, and maybe in managing expectations after her speech on Tuesday, though on the “perplexing her opponents” measure, her opponents, who seem to be unused to this game, just think she is in a weak position.)
This at any rate is the kindly, give-him-time, view of what Mr Trump is up to. Given that Donald has been a businessman for nearly fifty years, it is not surprising that he is starting his political career thinking as a businessman. And Donald thinks this is a good approach to running a country and the world’s largest economy anyway. His cabinet is very strongly weighted with businessmen, successful businessmen, with a leavening of top retired generals. Donald is not much of a supporter of the professional political class, and it is showing strongly in the way he is setting up for his executive duties. He is being much criticised for this stepping away from conventional political behaviour (in fact, it is difficult to think of much for which the incoming President is not been criticised) but it does seem entirely in line with the general thrust of his campaign for the Presidency – to bring an entirely new approach to politics and to Washington in particular, and to “drain the swamp”. If you are going to drain the swamp there is not much point in employing the same old alligators.
But politics is, of course, not business. It involves, in a way that most business does not, the creation of consent, of building alliances and support, of trading the means of reaching one objective in return for the surrender of another. In politics there is a deal of horse trading – much more than there is in horse trading in fact- conducted with one wary eye on the electorate at all times. Even Mr Putin still makes sure that he has the Russian electorate behind him, and also the Russian army – at least The Donald does not have that worry. A key question is to what extent Donald’s men will be able to hone their behaviour to resolve the challenges that they will face in getting things done with a Congress which is not, shall we say, naturally sympathetic to Mr Trump. They may well be more skilled at this than the general opinion of today has it – they did not, after all, get where they are today without a fair degree of skill in persuading others to do what was wanted. Their first task in most cases will be to persuade those involved in the Congressional confirmation hearings to let them have the jobs – we will learn much about them individually and the new Administration from how that goes.
Donald is probably not greatly worried about the outcome of the next Presidential election. He seems unlikely to run for a second term – and his cabinet of non-politicians are probably not very interested either. The man to watch though will be Mike Pence, the incoming Vice President, who does have strong political ambitions, and if things turn out right over the next four years could well be the 2020 Republican candidate for the Oval Office. He is Trump’s connection to conventional, or old fashioned, call it what you will, politics; he will be the man who enables the Trump government to do things, to get legislation onto the books – or off them, to enable government life to function – or not to. Crucially, he will need to ease opposition to new appointments to the Supreme Court, which could be a real issue during the next four years – there is an existing vacancy to fill, and of the eight justices only one is under 60 years of age, and three are over 78. The composition of the Court will greatly affect the balance of American politics for possibly as long as a generation and it could fall to Mr Trump to deal with sufficient new appointments, even in a four year term, to do just that. Those appointments, if at all controversial, will be very hard fought at the confirmation level.
So what will be the thrust of the new Presidency? Clearly the new President does not work in traditional and conventional political ways. He communicates often randomly, in sound-bites, by Twitter, and these brief bursts, often in emotional tones, are often confusing and sometimes contradictory. His broader approach, as we have said, is that of a man used to giving instructions and getting things done. He has passed over in his appointments the seniors of the party which he nominally represents. He seems determined to upset some of those who one might reasonably expect that he wished to be his friends, or at least to form alliances with. Those who fear that a Trump Presidency will be unpredictable, unstable, and destructive to America’s interests in both economics and in the wider world are presently fearing, or gleeful, that they are right.
But this column likes to look on the sunny side; it tries to consider its glass as at least half full. So it would urge Trump opponents and those nervous at the Trump style to try to be calm, at least for a while. The Trump cabinet may be non-political in its experience, but is generally mainstream Republican in its orientations. There is a difference between form and function, and, whilst the new forms may be unexpected, there are signs that what actually takes place may be much less radical than feared by many, including those busy boycotting the inauguration and preparing to demonstrate on the day (thirty demonstration licences have been applied for in central Washington alone). And although Mr T may express things in, shall we say, inflammatory ways, much of what he has said so far enjoys political support in the country – for an example, NATO may not seem out of date from a European perspective, but from an American point of view, carrying the greater part of the cost of an organisation rarely deployed, let alone deployed to ease the burden on the US military, might seem pretty pointless. (That might be different if the European members got back to the two percent funding principle, easing the cost to the US; remember our comments on negotiating styles).
A major task for any politician is to create a sense of leadership, a sense of success in the nation he leads, to reflect the will of the people and to channel it to what needs to be done (with the executive in place to it). To do that, rather than to rush about trying to do everything personally, marks a successful Presidency. It was what Reagan did, and what Kennedy did, but what Carter and Johnson failed to do. It is just possible that this is what Trump may succeed in doing too. Anyway, we have little choice but to see if he does, so let’s not be ungracious yet, and give him the benefit of the doubt. Happy Inauguration, Mr President.
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