What’s cooking: Too many Trumps spoil the broth
Gail Collins
Oh gosh, we’ve got another Trump.
This has been very difficult, people. Every day, concerned citizens put together their critique of the president’s policies, and before nighttime he’s a completely different dude.
You remember the Somewhat Normal Republican Trump, who answers to both SNORE and SNORT, depending on his energy level at the moment. He mainly likes to repeal federal regulations — free mentally ill people to buy guns; don’t let a little clean water stand between coal owners and their yen to dump trash. Last week SNORT issued a tax reform plan that was classic GOP in its extreme vagueness on how to pay for its multitude of cuts.
Then suddenly, out of nowhere, came Weirdly Liberal Trump (WELT). He mused about breaking up the big banks; special aide Ivanka plugged helping Syrian refugees. Liberal Trump even expressed interest in a gas tax hike to pay for infrastructure repairs.
Lately Congress has been in an uproar over health care, and House Speaker Paul (My Life Is Ruined) Ryan is going crazy trying to placate both sides on the matter of insurance coverage for people with pre-existing medical conditions. WELT wants to be the progressive hero. “Pre-existing conditions are in the bill. And I mandate it. I said, ‘Has to be,’” Trump told CBS’ John Dickerson.
That was shortly before Trump went off the handle when Dickerson asked about his claims of being wiretapped by Barack Obama.
Viewers got to witness a transformation from the new liberal presidential version to the very familiar Nearly Unhinged Trump (NUT).
NUT tends to reside in the world of Twitter. And sometimes he fights with his other versions. Weirdly Liberal Trump was very happy when Congress came up with a spending deal that guarantees the government will continue operating through the summer. (“This is what winning looks like!”) Nearly Unhinged hated hated hated it. “Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess!” twittered NUT.
The quick shift between Trumps is a challenge to the minions in charge of interpreting him to the world. Budget director Mick Mulvaney said that the president was calling for a shutdown because he became “frustrated” when Democrats expressed pleasure at the resolution of the spending standoff.
Neither the liberal nor the normal-Republican Trump is very good at interesting new ideas that might actually, in the real world, happen.
He’s also unfettered by the restrictions in imagination that would come from previous knowledge of how government operates. It appears, for instance, that NUT was surprised by the discovery that it took 60 votes to pass most legislation in the Senate. This came out in a tweet expressing shock that 41 senators could force the majority into compromise. “Either elect more Republican senators in 2018 or change the rule now to 51 percent,” he recommended.
Senate Republicans dismissed the idea instantly. “We are not going to do that,” said Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Most of them had spent much of the Obama administration happily thwarting a Democratic president’s agenda with that very rule. Perhaps some of them were already anticipating that by 2021, it would come in handy again. Charles Krauthammer
With near unanimity, my never-Trump friends confess a sense of relief. It could have been worse. A deep apprehension still endures, but the international order remains intact, the republic still stands, and no “enemy of the people” has (yet) been arrested.
Admittedly, this is a low bar. And this is not to deny the insanity, incoherence and sheer weirdness emanating daily from the White House, with which we’ve all come up with our own coping technique. Here’s mine: I simply view President Trump as the Wizard of Oz.
What to do? Ignore what’s behind the curtain. Deal with what comes