Trump gives Eddie Haskell State of the Union address
President Trump no doubt remembers Eddie Haskell of “Leave It to Beaver.” Haskell was sycophantically respectful toward parents to their faces, but always plotted and schemed when their backs were turned. To a generation, Haskell symbolized hypocrisy.
Trump’s address Tuesday was the Eddie Haskell State of the Union — although Haskell’s performances were more artful because he only turned nasty when the elders weren’t looking. In Trump’s case, his two-faced politics was on display in the very same oration.
At the outset, Trump tried to be a bipartisan unifier in the manner of Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying, “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future.”
The meaning of Trumpian solidarity slowly emerged: Give in to me on everything and avoid conflict.
For one thing, he insisted on referring to the Democratic agenda as a “Democrat agenda” — the most tired of McCarthy-era rhetorical tricks. Who throws insults at the people you say you want to work with?
And most of his speech, especially the replay of his Chamber-of-Horrors bombast on immigration, was nothing but partisanship. The usual cast was there, the “ruthless coyotes,” the “cartels, drug dealers and human traffickers,” and, of course, the “caravans.”
He told us about those “sexually assaulted on the long journey north” and sold “into prostitution and modern-day slavery,” but never mentioned separating children from their parents at the border.
There was also a mind-boggling moment of perverse Marxism: “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards.” (Never mind that his tax cuts likely helped them pay for those things.) Perhaps Trump’s effort to build the border war is an ultra-liberal wall redistribution program.
His main warning was: “An economic miracle is taking place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations. If there’s going to be peace and legislation, there cannot be war and investigation.”
So there it is: (1) Investigations are as bad as wars; (2) all investigations are “ridiculous partisan investigations”; and (3) if the economy tanks, it’s because Democrats are investigating him. Trump also warned of socialist Democrats. “America will never be a socialist country,” he promised. Take that, Sweden and Norway!
The Democratic response to Trump from Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia last year, won unusually good reviews for speeches of its genre, partly because it was compact compared with Trump’s sprawling, undisciplined jumble.
Abrams said what she meant and didn’t pretend we were about to enter a fantasyland of miraculously dissolving party differences. Rat-a-tattat, she catalogued the issues Democrats wanted to address: Trump’s foolish shutdown, gun safety, student loans, voting rights, the GOP’s reactionary tax bill, farmers caught in a trade war, protecting the Affordable Care Act, climate change, LGBTQ rights.
To Trump’s canard that all who oppose his immigration policies favor “open borders,” Abrams said, “Compassionate treatment at the border isn’t the same as open borders.”
But Abrams’ most powerful contribution to her party’s discourse may have been her open invocation of religious commitment and the virtues it can promote. “These were our family values,” she said of her Methodist home, “faith, service, education and responsibility.”
She spoke of the “uncommon grace of community” and recited the creed of all who embrace a healthy, measured individualism but reject the narcissistic kind: “We do not succeed alone.”
That Eddie Haskell would never think like that is a measure of who won the night.