Fire when … oh, never mind
One of the raps on Bill Clinton as a presidential prospect in 1992 was that he was disconcertingly indecisive.
As governor, he vetoed a bill providing tax credits for donations to colleges and universities by stamp- ing “disapproved” on it. Then he dispatched a State Police trooper to use a coat-hanger to retrieve the bill from beneath the House clerk’s office door. Then he blackened over the “dis” in “disapproved.” Then, a year later, he had to call a special session to stem the revenue loss from the un-vetoed bill.
I remember telling a national reporter that it might not be possible to fire a missile and then un-fire it. I meant to invoke an extreme example of presidential indecision. I did not intend a prescient predicter of future presidential behavior.
Clinton was decisive enough for eight years as president. Now Donald Trump is lifting indecision and frantic late retrieval to his presidential essence.
Clinton and Trump are two of our more similar presidents. They are both physically large baby boomers
of privileged military avoidance and expansive, undisciplined personalities and appetites. They both routinely say things utterly untrue. They both stand accused of tomcatting widely and sexually harassing frequently. Now both happen to be accused of rape.
The main differences are that Clinton mastered policy while Trump mastered celebrity, and that one got impeached and the other hasn’t yet.
In the last two weeks, a pre-existing Trump pattern has accelerated to the point that Chuck Todd was asking Sunday on NBC if Trump hadn’t worn the pattern out. Commentator Peggy Noonan replied that Trump risks his presidency with “harem-scarem” that so exhausts the American people that it leads “to the point of aversion.”
In the span of two weeks, Trump:
■ Vowed to impose steep tariffs on Mexico if that country didn’t stop the flow of migrants to our southern border, then backed down at the last minute on an unsubstantiated claim that the Mexicans had given in.
■ Promised a dragnet deportation of undocumented persons this week, then backed down because, he said, the Democrats wanted a couple of weeks to work on another solution.
■ Directed the military to proceed with plans for a bombing strike on Iranian installations, then, minutes before the planes were to take off, said, uh, no, because, supposedly, he’d just been told for the first time that the strikes might kill 150 Iranians, which he considered way too many in comparison with the zero Americans killed in Iran’s shooting down of our drone.
The pattern is to declare with great certainty, indeed with bloviation and braggadocio, that a bold and unwise initiative is to be undertaken, then end up not taking that action while claiming some sort of credit for not doing the unwise thing he’d said he was going to do.
His supporters call these examples of the method to his madness, by which he stakes out a dreaded action to extract the incremental concessions and advancements he strategically had in mind all along.
If it’s that, then three international incidents averted at the last minute within two weeks may be giving away that he never means what he says, which could impair future results.
There are those who say Trump is like the boy who cried wolf when he, in fact, is himself the wolf. There are those who say it is his devious, megalomaniacal style—to start a fire so that he can claim credit for putting out the fire.
I see a possibility that it’s this variation: He strikes a match and promises that he’s going to start a fire unless … something … then cries “ouch” and shakes the match out when it starts to burn his fingers.
By any of those explanations, his leadership style is, while often satisfactory in results thus far, dangerous in its utter instability.
The best example is the Iran strike and non-strike, which Trump typically made all about himself.
The eventual 11th-hour decision was the right one, of course. But, by Trump’s account, he went along earlier in the day with a military plan to create 150 Iranian martyrs and risk throwing the Mideast into chaos, and ended it only at the last minute because he hadn’t previously thought to ask how many Iranians might have died—a question a responsible president would have asked long before, and information military officials surely voluntarily told in the beginning.
The result was that Trump allowed the world to know what his military people had planned by his early acquiescence, even to the point of identifying publicly the targets, and that this American president is, in the end, so much more mouth than action that he’s not to be taken seriously.
Teddy Roosevelt talked of walking softly and carrying a big stick. Trump tromps noisily and carries a flickering kitchen match.