Why Trump has reverted to Republican type
It is wrong to write off the US president’s first 100 days – much of what he has done is worth celebrating
Acountry brought to the brink of nuclear war by a first-time commander-in-chief. A chaotic White House filled with television-ready personalities more interested in fighting internecine battles than furthering the president’s agenda. A celebrity hairdo wildly unprepared to run a country. Foreign policy operated by fiat, resulting in soured relations with strategic allies. A president grudgingly living in the shadow of his more charismatic predecessor. Lingering murmurs about a lost popular vote and the lack of a mandate to govern. One hundred days come and gone, with no real legislative accomplishments to list.
Donald Trump cannot claim to be first to claim any of these presidential booby prizes. These 100-day assessments belonged to John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan, Jimmy Carter, George HW Bush, George W Bush and Gerald Ford, respectively. Many journalists, and certainly most Democrats in Washington would be out of a job if they did not report every turn of Trump’s presidency as an unprecedented car crash – but don’t let that fool you into thinking there is anything new under the sun. A more honest message would be: don’t panic.
Trump’s promises to turn the government on its head, his failure to do so in three months, and the resulting fretful coverage about the rest of his time in office are a traditional form of Beltway kabuki theatre. He, like many new presidents before him, has discovered the genius of the Founding Fathers: the federal government is a monolith uniquely equipped to resist wholesale change.
His likely accomplishments as president, especially based on this first measure of his time in office, will toe a traditional Republican line. His most controversial policy proposals are either politically untenable, or entirely outside his control. Excepting the Armed Forces, the president has few powers that can be exercised without the authorisation of Congress or the oversight of the federal judiciary.
His “Muslim ban” has been tied up in the courts for weeks, and is likely to remain in legal limbo indefinitely; his border wall is unpalatable to most of Congress, which would have to approve funding for the project before the first shovel could hit the ground. His military policy, while flashy, is fundamentally hawkish and in line with establishment Republican thinking on the use of force and priorities amongst our allies. This is likely because he is guided by those who are of the Washington “establishment” – another way of saying they have proven experience in military and diplomatic statecraft. This should come as some comfort to those who do not trust the president’s instincts in the Situation Room.
For his remaining 1,360 days in office, we can expect continued sound and fury, much of it emanating from his own Twitter feed, and those foolish enough to respond to it. But we can also expect a president who instinctively understands the challenges that businesses face in modern America, and who appreciates that a well-functioning free market is the best guarantor of a free and prosperous people.
His proposal to overhaul the taxation system is genuinely ambitious – a distinction made necessary because of what counts as a ‘win’ in politics these days. The American corporate tax rate is one of the highest in the developed world. Capping these taxes at 15 per cent and ending universal taxation of foreign income will come as a relief.
The personal taxation system is no better. Federal, state and local taxes are currently riddled with exemptions, deductions and extraneous complications which reward those who have either the time or funds to manoeuvre around their top-line rates. The president’s proposal would cap the highest rate at 35 per cent, and reduce the number of tax brackets and deductions – except for childcare, which would be introduced as a new tax credit available to working families. The hated death tax would be eliminated altogether.
These are common-sense measures that have been advocated by bipartisan groups for decades, and ignored by presidents concerned with how much political capital would be required to successfully push through an overhaul. It will be, perhaps, the good fortune of the American taxpayer that Trump has not yet realised that few presidents recover from swinging for the fences twice, and missing. His hubris could well deliver us from an arcane, uncompetitive tax system – and while that will not be achieved within the arbitrary 100-day mark, it will be worth celebrating nonetheless.
Donald Trump seems new, and either exciting or terrifying depending on your position on the political spectrum, because he has packaged himself that way. But virtually nothing about the way he has operated thus far is new in the Oval Office. However improbably, he is the President of the United States. While he’s no Boy Scout, he’s also not going to single-handedly bring down the federal government. FOLLOW