Trump, Bannon learning ‘Washington Always Wins’
It was one of those large holiday-season receptions that take place in every capital city before Christmas 2014, only months before the end of the Harper decade. The setting was a fine old home in Rockcliffe, the Rosedale of Canada’s capital. The usual collection of journalists, diplomats, politicians and their staffs, lobbyists and bureaucrats were there. Many had known each other for decades, often switching from one camp to another, in the permanent government.
Late in the evening, one cynical oldtimer stood in an arched doorway, eavesdropping on the dozens of derisive to angry anecdotes being shared loudly around him, in each of the large elegant rooms. Tales of the latest malaprop by this minister or this week’s offence by one of the PMO short pants hardnoses.
This aging civil servant and former journalist said with quiet astonishment, “You know this is the first government in my lifetime that is going to leave town with fewer friends and allies than when they arrived — and they had almost none when they first stormed the gates. Everyone here hated them then and do now. Really, most peculiar, no?”
Stephen Harper had made one of those gaffes that come when a politician is inadvertently candid, toward the end of his second campaign.
He declared defensively that Canadians need not be afraid of what the Conservatives in power might attempt. They would be kept in check by the officials, judges and placeholders of the Ottawa establishment, he declared.
It was curiously revealing moment from our most aggressively defensive prime minister ever.
Unlike Steve Bannon, he did not appear to relish the establishment’s contempt, he just accepted that it was his reality. But like Bannon he did not understand that the interlocking institutions and elders that make up every capital’s permanent government never ever lose.
Oh, they can be squeezed into submission for a while. Then they will use devious back channels, leaks and carefully placed gossip to ensure their survival. But a permanent defeat, a revolutionary upheaval that replaces one power centre with another, hardly ever.
Jean-Paul Marat, Stalin and Mao each came to understand this reality, even in post-revolutionary societies. Their solution was mass murder of establishmentarians, rich peasants and other nominal class enemies. Despite the millions slaughtered by Stalin and Mao, in the end, they still lost.
So Harper’s legacy is a bitterly divided party, and an official Ottawa in league with their usual political masters taking a million digital erasers to the years 2006-2015.
Steve Bannon and his small band of followers are beginning to angrily chew the curtains as the recognition slowly dawns that the old saw “Washington Always Wins” is as true today as it was for Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama — each of whom arrived “to change things.” Draining the swamp is a marvellous political metaphor, but the reality is that the swamp swallows all.
The few transformational governments that leave legacies lasting generations are those with two or three big ideas. They focus on them relentlessly, seduce potential allies’ support, then execute their battle plan with discipline. They don’t attack in every direction, they don’t launch 10 big half-formed policy initiatives. They learn how to win cooperation — however grudging — from the permanent government they have been forced to live with.
Roosevelt and Reagan, Trudeau One and Mulroney, each approached their mandates from different starting points, but each arriving in power with deep skepticism about the entrenched power centres. They were united in one learned epiphany: the swamp denizens must be co-opted not confronted.
Donald Trump, faced with the dawning recognition of this reality, has begun to pivot. He desperately wants to be accepted in the best New York salons, to be respectfully reported by the New York Times, but also to hang onto to his enraged populist base. Sadly, for America and for Trump himself, he seems to lack the one quality shared by every successful leader — a fierce self-discipline. It would be silly to expect a 70-year-old lifelong self-indulgent to achieve such a transformation.
However, his measured attack on Syria, his successful encounter with Chinese President Xi and, most jaw-dropping, his fulsome praise of NATO, all signal a turn.
Perhaps, maybe — yes, wish is father to this thought, I concede — we may hope that he will allow the generals and CEOs, who each rode careers to the top won through disciplined execution, to make the administration’s big decisions; that he will permit his more mature children and their mates to apply their better judgment to his self-preservation.
And before the cherry blossoms have papered the gardens of the White House, his putative Svengali may be retired to the alt-right rest home.