Trump achieves his agenda unconventionally
P residents are not born on Inauguration day. They bring to office formative experiences, with political and communication strategies that worked well for them as they developed their political careers. President Donald Trump brought bluster and flamboyance to the White House. While you were focusing on those traits, he was accomplishing his conservative agenda.
Without political career or background, Trump entered the presidency having spent his formative years working with his father and having developed a persona and communication style molded by an uninhibited business environment and later, by freewheeling reality TV programming. This is reflected in his unrestrained use of Twitter, employment of untamed reality TV tactics in running in his administration (telling employees frequently “you’re fired”), and the confrontational and self-promotion style of the post-election campaign rally.
Trump uses these personality traits and communication tactics to openly express his unfiltered thoughts, stake out policy positions, justify his behavior, and lash out at opponents.
His approach appears to be working as he continues to solidify support with his considerable base among the red-state and rust-belt disaffected and resentful — the group that Hillary Clinton so dismissively termed the “basket of deplorables” and criticized as not taking the initiative in the digital economy.
However, President Trump’s communication effectiveness beyond this base appears uncertain. The rest of the populous cannot quite determine what to make of Trump, so unlike other residents of the White House. However, the base is loyal, with polls showing that most people who voted for the president would do so again.
The media and political opponents continually obsess about every outrageous behavior, twitter comment, or statement of the president. He is a gift that keeps on giving. However, their obsessive preoccupation has little impact. Democratic candidates exclusively running narrow, anti-Trump campaigns, such as John Ossoff in Virginia, have lost. Candidates campaigning on broader issues, such as Connor Lamb in Pennsylvania, have won.
Further, Trump’s outrageous antics and the attendant media noise that follows have obscured the success of Trump’s basically conservative first-year agenda. He has a list of substantial achievements: conservative judicial appointments, deregulation, reversing environmental initiatives, diminishing Obamacare, tax cuts aimed at the wealthiest and large corporations, ICE raids and deportations, an anti-immigrant narrative, and new foreign policy directions.
It would be wrong to underestimate or dismiss the success of the Trump effort or the long-term negative impact of much that he has done.
It could very well be that Trump’s fake-populism and uncongenial conduct is a subterfuge that masks and draws attention from his conservative agenda.
Translating a president’s style of communication into a political asset is related to personality, political skills, and the context of historic time. Despite, or more accurately because of, Trump’s non-conventional presidential personality, formidable political skills and ripe historical opportunity due to a fallen industrial sector, the president has had substantial success.
Firing so many administrative officials is unprecedented, but so is our president. Turning over personnel until he finds a comfort level with those who work for him is the style he learned in his business career. While we look on in amazement, his agenda is being put into place.
In short, while the public focuses on style, the president is focusing on substance — furthering a conservative agenda that will be difficult to unravel for years.
Joshua Sandman is a professor of political science at the University of New Haven, where he has studied the American presidency for 50 years.