THEY GOT DON WRONG
Hysterical liberals called him a ‘fascist’ but two months of President Trump proves he’s anything but
WHEN Donald Trump moved into the White House, were you under the impression it was tantamount to either Fifth Avenue Moses coming in to part the filthy waters of the Swamp, or MussoHitler about to bring down the mighty hammer of neo-fascism upon the US?
If so, the joke’s on you. If there’s any ancient tale that presaged the start of the Trump Era, it’s the Voyage to Lilliput in “Gulliver’s Travels.”
Gulliver-like, Trump finds himself tied down by a thousand tiny strings, paralyzed by micro-people he can barely detect. Because of their combined power, he can’t do much of anything. If it’s the system vs. Trump, the system is winning, bigly. But it isn’t Berserkeley radicals or marching feminists in pussy hats who are leading the charge to #resist. Resistance to change is as natural in Washington as cherry blossoms in spring.
Since being promoted from private citizen to president, the only thing Trump has exercised undisputed authoritarian control over has been his Twitter account. And even that mysteriously seems to go silent at the exact times his aides are being badgered with questions about his latest tweet.
Thanks to two judges (Derrick K. Watson of Hawaii and Judge Theodore D. Chuang of Maryland) who didn’t star in a hit reality TV show, aren’t the most famous dudes on Earth and don’t have 27 million Twitter followers, Trump’s latest executive order restricting immigration from six countries with major terrorism problems is on hold.
The judiciary is a check on the president. Trump’s predecessor found that out, too, when the Fifth Circuit court upheld a lower court order that blocked Obama’s immigration plan (which would have shielded 5 million illegal aliens from deportation). There’s no such thing as doing an end-around the system (or, if you like, the Swamp).
Even with his party in control of both houses in Congress, Trump is finding major limits to what he can do legislatively. The American Health Care Act is not going to pass (without major changes) because, as Trump himself so memorably put it, health care is “an unbelievably complex subject.” The Jenga game that is ObamaCare is so wobbly that removing a single block could cause the health-care system to come crashing down. Which is why Republicans can’t agree on whether AHCA leans too far in the direction of the free market, or not far enough.
Passing a budget? Hey, guess what? The president can’t spend a dime without Congress. AsMarcoRubio so cruelly, but accurately, put it: “Wedo the budget here. The administration makes recommendations, but Congress does budgets.” Marco may still be little. But Congress is still big.
Liberals should have had more respect for our national institutions than to think that one man could simply have trashed them all. Yet The New York Review of Books called Trump an autocrat in a Nov. 10 story that warned, “Institutions will not save you” and said Trump was the new Vladimir Putin.
The Atlantic called Trump an autocrat in its March cover story, imagining that the president would force Jeff Bezos to sell The Washington Post. Instead, the WaPo has been running pieces like “Donald Trump is actually a fascist” (Dec. 9) and “Trump’s Twitter feed is a gateway to authoritarianism” (March 6). The New Yorker, having called Trump a fascist many times (May 16, July 14, Nov. 4, etc.), has now turned around and begun portraying him as a helpless naif, the opposite of a strongman. “Trump Is Still Trapped in His Campaign,” read a March 16 piece that gently tsk-tsked Trump for being unable to get anything done. Even more on point was a New Yorker humor piece by Andy Borowitz: “Trump Says He Has Been Treated Very Unfairly By People Who Wrote the Constitution.”
Oh, that old thing? It’s been there all along, and it is a lot stronger than any president. Liberals didn’t see that because, up until 10 minutes ago, they thought the Constitution was a bad thing due to its ability to frustrate rapid progressive change.
Remember when The New Yorker was running “Our Broken Constitution” (Dec. 9, 2013) and saying, “The compromises, misjudgments and failures of the men in Philadelphia haunt us still today.”? Remember “Let’s Give Up on the Constitution”? (New York Times op-ed, Dec. 30, 2012 and “Let’s Stop Pretending the Constitution is Sacred” (Salon, Jan. 4, 2011)?
Stopping someone like Trump (or Obama, or Reagan or FDR) from doing too much with just his pen and his phone is exactly the point of the checks and balances installed by the Framers.
If Trump wants to get anything done in Washington, he’d better learn that he wasn’t elected dictator. Being an effective president means much more (and less) than grand speeches riffing about Hillary Clinton in front of roaring crowds. It means homework. It means recognizing the importance of all the boring stuff like making the right judicial appointments and sub-Cabinet hires. It means getting out of the White House to sell his ideas to Washington insiders, not just to adoring crowds of fans. Trump needs to learn about compromise, negotiation and sweet talk. To succeed as president, he needs to study up on what someone once called the art of the deal.