The pragmatic U.S. president
In Tuesday night’s State of the Union, Donald Trump was there to tell Congress that America is doing great. Amazing. Better than ever. It’s funny how a country can go from “terrible” to “beautiful” in one year, but you don’t have to buy the hype to concede that what was once campaign rhetoric has turned into policy, even delivery. The better we know Trump, the more substance we find. His America First agenda isn’t nice but it is rational and coherent. And it has profound implications for the very nature of the presidency.
We saw some of Trump’s potential in an interview this past weekend with Piers Morgan on Britain’s ITV, in which Morgan used shameless flattery to get his subject to open up — like a delicate flower. Here was a Trump we could imagine winning an election: charming, self- aware and, most importantly of all, enthusiastic. An effective salesman believes in the product, heart and soul.
Trump has graduated from selling himself to selling America, and he judges success not in terms of equality, diversity or arcs of progress but in jobs and stock market performance. He is a Darwinian. Life is a series of deals in which there are winners and losers, and his goal is to make America win more. During the election, he sold this as withdrawal of military forces and protection of blue- collar jobs. In office, he has not only discovered that the Washington constituency for that kind of nationalism is very small but also that American greatness is better measured by its position in the global arena. How much investment can it attract? How much power can it project? Trump is now trying to radically restructure the government in pursuit of these objectives.
As I said, ruthless pragmatism is not necessarily nice. Take foreign policy. The Islamic State appears to have been beaten back to the margins of the Middle East, while an anti- Iran alliance is emerging between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Trump’s strategy is to pick a side, arm it to the teeth and get it to fight on your behalf. America and its friends are winning, but that means there are losers, too. The U. S. and U. K. have thrown their support behind Saudi Arabia in its repugnant war in Yemen: at least 10,000 civilians are reportedly dead and three million have been displaced. Trump has also accelerated Barack Obama’s reliance upon aerial warfare ( there were over 8,000 strikes in Syria alone in 2017) and changed the rules of engagement to speed things up. In the past, everything had to be authorized by the Oval Office. Trump has unleashed the generals.
There’s a story, reported in The Washingtonian, that the Secretary of Defense, Gen. Jim Mattis, once rang the president for permission to attack a Syrian village. Trump said: “Why are you calling me? I don’t know where this village is at.” Mattis replied that this was what they did under Obama. Trump asked who suggested the attack and Mattis replied that it was a first-class major. Trump said: “Why do you think I know more about that than he does?” Then he hung up.
Trump is deregulating war. He’s pursuing what Steve Bannon, his former chief adviser, called “the deconstruction of the administrative state”: get bureaucracy out of the way and let generals and businessmen get on with their jobs.
Trump overestimates the scale of his success. He claims to be cutting 1,579 domestic regulations. But hundreds were not going to happen or were already dead; one calculation puts the figure of deregulatory steps taken closer to 67. But those 67 matter. Gone are certain controls on gun sales, mining, fracking and consumer rights. And these reforms go hand- in- glove with a tax bill that could transform the U.S. economy.
For decades, well-paid jobs have fled abroad. Trump is bribing employers to bring them back. The corporate tax rate will fall from 35 to 21 per cent. Any money returning to the U. S. will be lightly taxed. And new purchases of buildings and equipment will enjoy generous expensing.
Trump isn’t rejecting globalization; he’s trying to do it on America’s terms — just as he insists he isn’t technically anti- immigration, but wants America to be able to decide who comes in. There will be a wall with Mexico, says Trump, but “there’ll be a big beautiful door in it” for anyone with skills.
Is Trumpism working? Well, the economy is doing rather better than predicted. When Trump won the election, liberal economist Paul Krugman said the stock market would “never” recover. The Dow is actually up 44 per cent. Growth is solid. Black unemployment is the lowest since records began. Apple has announced it will repatriate US$ 250 billion currently overseas and create 20,000 new jobs. Fiat Chrysler is building a new car factory in Michigan worth 2,500 jobs. And, yes, Trump’s tax cuts are aimed at the rich, but roughly 250 firms have let the wealth trickle down in pay and benefits. Some 125,000 workers at Disney are getting a one- time payment of US$ 1,000. Chrysler’s giving away bonuses of US$ 2,000. It’s like a cash grab on a game show.
The good times pose a problem for the Democrats. With the economy and the Middle East going Trump’s way, the most powerful weapon they’re left with is moral disgust. There’s plenty of it out there to tap. The populist president is surprisingly unpopular — he can only attract the approval of around 40 per cent of voters — and many Americans who like the substance of his program cannot stand Trump as a person. But here’s the million- dollar question: is Middle America really going to vote for decency over prosperity?
The man who stood before Congress Tuesday night makes for an unusual president. Most politicians who enter the White House succumb to its spirituality, its myth of moral authority. Trump has remained immune — and that’s one thing I admire about him. For too long the presidency has been allowed to accrue imperial powers, while the president himself — no matter how stupid or devious — gets to act like he’s the Pope.
Trump doesn’t bother. His take on the presidency is transactional: “You hired me to do a job, I will do it.” If he fails, and maybe he will, then he’ll lose in 2020. If he succeeds, that means re-election, and a shift in expectations of how the government should be run and what it is for — what the very purpose of America is. Moral beacon or land of opportunity? Perhaps a combination of both is possible, but right now Trump is turning his country into a shining casino on a hill.