America’s new path
The next chapter in nation’s experiment in democracy begins by looking inward.
On a cold, cloudy winter day in Washington, D.C., with a sprinkling rain falling on the shoulders of dignitaries gathered on the western front of the U.S. Capitol and several hundred thousand onlookers crowded onto the National Mall, the most unlikely president in American history vowed to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
And so it began, this extraordinary experiment in democracy in the person of 70-year-old Donald J. Trump, a billionaire businessman and reality-TV showman with no experience in politics or public service, a man with troubling business entanglements and mysterious ties to an autocratic leader whose interests are not America’s. It may seem surreal — even to his supporters, we suspect — but this man is now president of the United States and leader of the free world. The nation and the world await — with hope, with anxiety, with deep concern — what comes next.
President Trump’s relatively brief, somewhat desultory remarks on Friday were basically a reprise of the populist nationalist campaign themes that got him elected, without the bombast, braggadocio and self-aggrandizement the world has come to know. He proclaimed that “we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another, but we are transferring power from Washington, D.C., and giving it back to you the people.” Listeners on the Mall, many wearing red “Make America Great Again” ball caps, roared their approval.
Based on what he said Friday, and during the campaign, Trump envisions an inward-looking America, a nation focused on how it can help itself rather than engaging with the rest of the world. “From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first. America first,” the president said, apparently unconcerned — or, more likely, unaware — that the phrase originated with nativist opponents of American entry into World War II.
Trump’s America, despite historically low levels of crime, high levels of employment and an economy in better shape than it’s been in years, is dark and foreboding. Echoing his campaign theme, he described on Friday a nation beset by drugs, gangs, poverty, failing schools, crime and unemployment. “This America stops right here and stops right now,” he proclaimed.
The new president barely touched one of the most divisive themes of his campaign: building a big and beautiful border wall to keep drug-dealers, rapists and undocumented immigrants out. He promised stronger borders but didn’t go into detail. He also promised that his administration would “eradicate completely” radical Islamic terrorism. Otherwise, his was basically an isolationist view of America’s foreign involvement.
After the speech-making, after this weekend’s partying, it’s anybody’s guess about what happens next. An exultant Kevin Brady, the Republican House Ways and Means chairman who represents The Woodlands, thinks he knows. “Now we go on offense,” he told a Capitol Hill reception on Thursday, “and it’s going to be really exciting.”
Brady’s rub-your-hands-together glee is easy to understand. Like rampant lions on triumphal marble statuary, his party rules the White House, both houses of Congress, most governorships and most state legislatures. Soon Republicans will reshape the U.S. Supreme Court.
What the GOP doesn’t control is the erratic, impulsive, disturbingly contradictory mind of the man who occupies the Oval Office. Trump’s view of the world and his gut-instincts are not necessarily those of an establishment Republican like Brady. Trump’s policy objectives, to the extent they can be discerned, don’t necessarily adhere to the trade-friendly, no-new-taxes, anti-government orthodoxy of today’s Republican Party.
Nearly half of the American populace is euphoric on this, the first weekend, of a new administration; at least that many are in despair. We share the latter group’s concerns, if not its despair. Tumultuous times may be ahead, but this nation’s history tells us that good sense can prevail, however long it takes for us to recognize it.