A true game-changing week for Trump? Only if Democrats keep stroking his ego
The Donald Trump presidency is a lot like a box of chocolates: you never know what you’re gonna get. My apologies from the outset for using a line from probably the worst film (Forrest Gump) ever to win the award for best picture at the Academy awards. But after the bizarre last week in American politics (even by Trumpian standards), it seems strangely apt.
In the space of only a few days, Trump made not one but two separate deals with the Democratic leaders of the House of Representatives and Senate, both of which badly undercut the leaders of his own Republican party.
First, Trump hastily accepted an offer from Senate minority leader, Chuck Schumer, and House minority leader, Nancy Pelosi, to tie emergency funding for those hurt by Hurricane Harvey to a three-month extension of the debt limit and the federal government’s spending powers. The agreement flew in the face of a concerted Republican effort to tie Harvey relief money to a longer 18-month extension of the debt limit. Republicans wanted to push the debt fight further into the future because they need Democratic votes to extend it, since a vast number of party members are congenitally opposed to voting yes for anything that appears to increase the government’s ability to borrow and spend money.
By making the deal – and ensuring that the debt limit fight will arise again in December when Congress will probably be debating a number of other must-pass bills, including a trillion-dollar spending bill – Trump handed the Democrats enormous leverage. That was bad enough, but a few days later Trump compounded Republican misery by making another deal with the duo he’s been calling “Chuck and Nancy”. At a White House dinner, Trump apparently agreed to support legislation protecting from deportation “dreamers” – the children of undocumented immigrants who are not legally considered citizens.
This was an even more headsnapping concession since, just the week before, Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, announced that the Trump administration intended to wind down the programme that protects Dreamers. Moreover, Trump has made immigration enforcement and deporting undocumented immigrants perhaps the only consistent element of his administration. In return, the president supposedly got the Democrats to agree to support more money for border security, but not the border wall that Trump made the centrepiece of his 2016 campaign. For an allegedly top-notch deal-maker, this is a terrible deal.
What made Trump’s efforts to reach across the aisle to Democrats even more bemusing is that it stands in sharp contrast to pretty much everything else he’s done as president. Indeed, even though Trump appears to have no fixed principles, no moral centre and was previously a Democrat, he’s governed like a doctrinaire conservative Republican.
Since taking office, he and his Republican colleagues in Congress have pushed to reduce business and environmental regulation, repeal Obamacare (unsuccessfully), increase defence spending, slash anti-poverty programmes, push back on voting rights and civil rights protections and practically take the federal government out of the fighting climate change business.
On the few issues where Trump failed to heed Republican orthodoxy during the campaign – such as his calls to pull out of trade agreements, avoid foreign military entanglements and protect social insurance programmes such as Medicare and Medicaid – Trump has reversed course.
So why the sudden outreach to Democrats? Has a president with historically low approval ratings decided to work across the aisle in order to bolster his political fortunes? Has he, as some have suggested, come out as a true political independent? Or is Trump seeking to find a third political way between Democrats and Republicans?
The problem with even this type of speculation is that it completely misunderstands Trump. If there’s one thing we have learned over the past two years about America’s man-child president, it’s that all of his actions (not some, but all) are guided by his ego. There is no larger strategy at play and no long-term thinking afoot. The constant effort by journalists and pundits to place Trump on some recognisable political or ideological spectrum remains a fool’s errand. Trump is a reactive, impulsive, thin-skinned and easily flattered narcissist who has almost no understanding of, or interest in, actual policy issues. Anyone trying to predict what he’ll do next, based on a past understanding of how politicians are supposed to act, will almost certainly be wrong.
Indeed, there’s some evidence that one of the reasons Trump has warmed to Chuck and Nancy is that, according to one report, they “talk more in non-Washington terms that he understands”. He prefers them to the cold Republican leaders, Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and House speaker, Paul Ryan. Then there’s the fact that Trump phoned both Schumer and Pelosi after their initial agreement to boast about the great press reception it was receiving. It’s not hard to imagine that a president in desperate need of constant validation and affirmation made the most recent deal on immigration because he wanted the same media members, whom he regularly berates, to say nice things about him.
It’s insane to suggest that the president would backtrack on a key campaign promise, alienate his political supporters and provide a lifeline to 800,000 undocumented immigrants all to win the 24-hour new cycle, but honestly with Trump, it’s almost certainly the best explanation.
All of this actually presents a unique short-term opportunity for Democrats, one that reminds me of one of my favourite (albeit unfair) jokes from the television show Seinfeld. According to the show’s most unlikable character, George Costanza, you could hold former British prime minister Neville Chamberlain’s head in the lavatory and “he’d still give you half of Europe”.
For Democrats, the path to policy success is more straightforward and less violent – flatter Trump, stroke his ego, speak in a language he understands and he might very well give you the political equivalent of “half of Europe”: single-payer health insurance, universal childcare and perhaps a pony for every American. I joke but, frankly, Chuck and Nancy would be fools not to make the effort. After all, it’s only a matter of time before Trump’s attention turns or he takes to his Twitter account to lash back at those politicians, journalists or Hollywood actresses who have wounded his fragile selfesteem.
If all of this sounds like America has kind of lost its mind… well, here we are. Welcome to Trump’s bizarro America where none of us knows what exactly will happen next.