POTUS: Season 1
For a man who thinks little of keeping promises, President Trump has been remarkably true to every reasonable expectation of America’s first reality-show administration. Year (season?) one of his presidency delivered a dubious and shifting cast of characters, manufactured drama and conflict, and a corrosive emptiness of substance or purpose. Here at the cliff-hanger, the porn star his lawyer reportedly paid off is a household name, Twitter insults and Oval Office epithets hurtle around the world, and even keeping the government open turns into a big showdown with the rival Democrats.
Trump was sworn in a year ago before “the largest audience ever to witness an inauguration, period.” As delivered by long-gone fan favorite Sean Spicer, that statistic foreshadowed the tenor of the next 365 days: unapologetically trifling, obsessively backward-looking and ostentatiously false.
The trouble of course is that this isn’t just a bad television show; it’s bad government of the world’s wealthiest, mightiest and, until recently, most esteemed nation. Gallup reported this week that Germany has replaced the United States as the best-regarded global power for the first time since it began the survey in 2005. In just a year, our median global approval rating has fallen from 48 percent to 30 percent, near that of China and Russia, the lowest level recorded. Some of the most precipitous declines took place among neighbors in the Americas and allies in Europe, including drops of more than 40 percentage points in Canada and Norway.
That helps answer Trump’s infamous question about why there won’t be more immigration from, say, Norway instead of “shithole countries” in Africa, which provided an apt epitaph for his first year. The president uttered it in the process of rejecting a compromise to restore protections for immigrants brought to the country illegally as children, a deal he had asked for to solve a problem he created. That pushed the government to the brink of a shutdown by upsetting concurrent spending talks.
Trump’s insult, and its consequences for young, blameless, largely Latino immigrants who in many cases hardly know another country, also exemplified the administration’s constant appeals to racism and bigotry. Trump has advocated needless fortifications against dwindling border crossings, attacked legal immigration from nonwhite countries, attempted to purge transgender troops from the military, exaggerated urban crime, fomented anti-Muslim paranoia and apologized for white supremacists.
His lone legislative accomplishment, a tax cut, divides us by other means, favoring the rich, punishing states that voted for his opponent and undermining health coverage for those of modest means. And his environmental policies have perpetuated divisions that should have faded, denying overwhelming evidence of climate change and pushing a boundless, backward faith in fossil fuels.
It’s no wonder this president already faces unprecedented unpopularity, portents of political backlash, and an investigation that has ensnared a former campaign chairman and his first national security adviser. What’s next? Unfortunately, with hundreds of channels but only one country, we have no choice but to stay tuned.