Trump’s saving grace is his incompetence
As Donald Trump’s bizarre administration continues to lurch from one crisis to another, the “impeachment” word is increasingly being speculated about.
While such conjecture might be comforting for some, it is premature and probably misplaced. In the three instances in United States history when the procedure has been invoked at the presidential level, it has proven to be more of a political than a legal device. In other words, it isn’t going anywhere so long as Republican congressional officials are unwilling to challenge the sympathies of Republican voters, some 80 per cent of whom feel the president is doing a good job.
Most of these Republican legislators have few illusions about Trump’s lack of competence, and opposed him for the party nomination, but they are trapped between the concerns of the Republican core electorate, and American voters at large who are increasingly hostile to the president. Elected Republicans who succumbed to a “deal with the devil” thinking he would sign ideological legislation, are coming to understand that the president’s antics are blocking their ability to accomplish much of anything, but they are now stuck with him. This situation is unlikely to change, until and unless Republican voters start deserting Trump in significant numbers.
Among the counterproductive tactics that are difficult to understand about Trump’s chaotic approach is that he isn’t even trying to reach out beyond the 38-40 per cent of voters that constitute his “base”. He has already jettisoned many of the independent swing voters who disliked Hillary Clinton more than him, bringing his election night total to 46 per cent, still short of Clinton’s 48 per cent. His victory depended upon the fluke electoral college configuration which allowed him razor thin margins in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. He now seems to think that a further reduced number of perhaps 40 per cent will be enough to re-elect him.
There has been much rumination as to what motivates Trump to behave in the confrontational manner he does, but the best analysis I have seen was provided by David Brooks in his New York Times column (May 16). He suggests that Trump suffers from arrested personality development, where he has the emotional deportment of a 10-year-old, the inability to sustain attention span on an issue for very long, the lack of empathy for others, an inability to have self-awareness of how others see him, and a narcissistic obsession with himself always in the middle of everything. These are the puerile characteristics of a child.
Because he came into office with little awareness of history (his ridiculous comments about Frederick Douglass and Andrew Jackson), the Constitution, how the political process works (he acts as if he has never even taken an introductory U.S. government course), and any sense of strategy beyond influencing the next day’s media headlines. He has purposely selected an inexperienced senior staff that is in constant conflict with each other, and is probably responsible for many of the embarrassing leaks Trump complains about. This, however, seems to be mitigated by the fact that he rarely listens to them anyway, and prefers to rely on his gut feeling in making decisions.
After claiming his prowess as a great deal-maker, he has been uniquely unable among post Second World War presidents to accomplish anything much legislatively at this point in his term. He doesn’t even seem interested in policy details beyond a bit of sloganeering. His desire to claim wins on the scoreboard has led him to have celebratory pen-signing ceremonies for executive orders, most of which are symbolic and substantively meaningless.
His one big claim of a legislative victory was to have the American Health Care Act (supported by only 17 per cent of the public) narrowly pushed through the House of Representatives. This was followed by a party at the White House, which critics compared to spiking the ball after reaching the 50-yard line. A more accurate representation of the football analogy would be to suggest that the bill had reached his own 25-yard line.
As things stand, the health care bill is as likely to be stymied by legislative gridlock as tax cuts, infrastructure, his budget proposal, and legislation to build a wall on the Mexican border. Another forthcoming challenge will be raising the debt ceiling, as Republican House members are fractured by the absolutism of the most extreme faction in the legislature, the Freedom Caucus.
Returning to the matter of impeachment, even if they could achieve it, why would Democrats choose to replace a president so fundamentally incompetent with an alternative who is less flawed temperamentally, more ideologically focused, and politically aware, like Mike Pence. These calculations might well change following the midterm elections in November 2018. The nonpresidential party (Democrats) customarily gains seats in such elections and recent results in special elections in Georgia, Kansas and Montana suggest these trends are stronger than usual.
If one puts this all together, it suggests that Trump’s most endearing trait for Democrats is his bullheaded incompetence.