The buck stops with Trump
US President owns up to failure of his healthcare reform Bill
Washington: Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office in an unfamiliar position – having to own failure.
His healthcare reform, his very first significant legislative proposal, had fallen at the first hurdle in a friendly Congress.
For sure, the 70-year-old businessman had faltered before – from bankrupt casinos to shuttered hotels. But until now bravado was enough to keep his brand intact, and carry him all the way to the White House.
Now – in the fiercest spotlight in the world, as president of the United States – there was nowhere to hide.
Fittingly perhaps, Trump addressed his failure from behind a desk in the Oval Office.
It was in that same spot that Harry Truman kept a sign that encapsulated all the pressures and accountability of an imperial presidency: “The buck stops here.”
Trump was not ready to take quite that much ownership, although he did profess to be “a little surprised” by the plan’s failure.
“We got close,” he said, as if it mattered.
But Trump offered surprisingly little criticism for his brothers-inarms. That may come when the dust falls.
His criticism of the Democrats – none of whom were ever going to vote for a Bill that dismantled Barack Obama’s signature health reform – felt almost formulaic.
At the end of the day Republicans control the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House, they should not have needed Democratic votes.
There was no avoiding it: the self-professed “closer” had struck out.
That leaves Trump, after just two months in office, facing a dilemma that may define the rest of his presidency: can he continue with the bareknuckle, alpha male approach that brought him to the summit of global politics.
His erratic tweets have already called his credibility into doubt, most seriously when he accused his predecessor Obama – without proof – of wiretapping his phones.
His approach to policymaking – all about speed, with little consultation – has also shown its limits as his order to curb immigration from some Muslim-majority nations was twice frozen by the courts. When it comes to substance, the ill-fated healthcare Bill put contradictions between free market Republicans and the economic populism embodied by Trump’s chief strategist Steve Bannon into sharp relief.
The Bill, if successful, would have left millions of the Americans who voted for Trump without coverage, leaving some inside the White House to wish it dead.
The ideological gap within the Republican party, masked by years united in opposition, was just too big to span.
And bridging that divide will prove just as difficult when it comes to choosing between paying for programmes for the poor and tax cuts for companies and the wealthy.