A more temperate Trump?
By
FOR much of his life, the new American president has been dismissed and mocked as a lowbrow tycoon by New York high society. Despite all his achievements, amassing billions of dollars by building monuments across continents and making his family name a global brand, Trump always struggled to win the respect of the liberal elite. His unorthodox manners, largerthan-life ego, mercurial character, curious relationship with facts (as opposed to fantasy), and paradoxical cocktail of self-doubt and megalomania – all of these became the stuff of tabloids, satirical magazines, and incredulous television reportage.
No wonder then, when Trump decided to run for office, barely anyone took him seriously, particularly among the media-policy-intellectual establishment. When he won the presidential race, even to his own astonishment, fear and trembling echoed across liberal America. And as soon as Trump stepped into office, he confronted a skeptical, hostile, and sarcastic audience in New York and other mega-cities across the country and beyond. Alec Baldwin, who landed a regular stint as Trump impersonator, has probably become the most popular man in liberal America.
In a revealing report by the The New York Times entitled “Trump and Staff Rethink Tactics After Stumble” (February 5, 2017), we see a president who is constantly glued to the television, anxiously tracking mainstream media’s (mostly negative) coverage of the Trump administration. Time and again, we have seen the POTUS (President of the United States) tweeting with sound and fury against comedians, satirists, and high-profile journalists, who have made a career out of bruising the fragile ego of the new occupant of the White House with particular verve and gusto.
In fact, the main narrative coming out of leading media outlets, intellectuals, and policy experts portrays the new president as temperamentally unfit for the most powerful office the world has ever known. The fact of the matter, however, is that Trump is now the de facto leader of the so-called “free world” of civilized nations, lording, over a military behemoth unrivaled in human history and (still) the world’s biggest economy (in nominal dollars).
So it is incumbent upon any serious observer of American foreign and domestic politics to scratch below the surface and transcend the caricature of Trump. The fact of the matter is that the past few days have seen indications that his tough-talking rhetoric isn’t translating into actual policy. At least, not under current circumstances.
During his presidential campaign, a particularly polarizing one tinged with shockingly protectionist and neo-isolationist slogans, Trump promised to bring the fight to China on trade and territorial disputes in East Asia, confront the leaders of North Korea, half-abandon treaty allies from Europe to Asia, and redraw the geopolitical landscape in the Middle East at the expense of Islamists and extremists and to the benefit of key allies such as Israel. Three weeks into his administration, we see a different picture.
Trump has softened his stance on the “One China” policy (to secure a phone call with President Xi Jinping), barely responded to ballistic missile tests by Iran and North Korea, and has promised to stand by Asian allies such as Japan “100 percent.” There are at least two reasons behind this more temperamentally sound Trump: He was checkmated by the judicial system after ramming through a controversial Muslim ban, while “grown ups” such as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Secretary of Defense James Mattis have gone the distance to rein in ideologues and hawks within the Trump administration. It is a battle for policy sanity that is likely to continue for years to come. But at least we are beginning to see the more predictable and pragmatic side of arguably the most polarizing American leader in modern history. Note: