Dubya’s Lesson for Trump
Remember all your voters
AFTER pulling off the greatest political feat in modern American history — and maybe in all of American history — Donald Trump is in an enviable position.
With the exception of the very specific guarantee that he will “build the wall,” Trump’s outrageous campaign stances have been effectively rendered obsolete by the election he won.
Let me explain. In 2012, Mitt Romney’s campaign spokesman Eric Fehrnstrom was roundly criticized for saying that the shift from the primaries to the general election was an “Etch-a-Sketch” moment when Romney could shake off the polarizing positions he was forced to adopt to win his party’s nomination and reset his candidacy for the general electorate.
That was a huge problem for Romney, because it made it seem as though he was a man of no fixed principles and that he had been lying to Republican voters to secure their votes. Fehrnstrom’s boneheaded remark had the ironic result of limiting Rom- ney’s ability to pivot to the center.
Trump doesn’t have Romney’s pre-existing authenticity problem. Even the fact that the president-elect was capable of taking three different positions on his own tax policy and to say wildly contradictory things about almost every major topic from foreign policy to health care to immigration somehow only made him seem more authentically himself.
He promised during the primaries he would “pivot” to a more presidential mien in the general election and never did — and that refusal to alter course may only have enhanced the “he tells it like it is” quality that seems to have impressed so many of his voters.
Since his core supporters apparently weren’t bothered by his policy contradictions, Trump now has a freedom most presidents-elect before him haven’t had. His base gives every indication it will not hold him accountable for changing his mind as long as he doesn’t change his tune. If he continues to serve as their tribune, as the vessel for their anger, they will back him to the hilt.
So he is now in the rare position of being able to pick and choose.
Which of his more general statements of purpose will be developed into full-blown legislative proposals requiring congressional approval and, following their passage into law, capable of withstanding constitutional challenge in the courts?
Which will only receive lip service? And which will simply and quietly be discarded?
If Trump reads the present situation correctly — and given his ability to read the national mood correctly, who better? — he will understand that his astonishing victory was partially if not largely attributable to an anti-Clinton wave demonstrated by the shocking withdrawal in key states of support for the Democratic candidate.
When all the votes are in, Trump will likely end up with only 2 million more votes nationally than John McCain received in the 2008 Barack Obama landslide — while Clinton will end up with 6 to 7 million fewer votes than Obama got that year. Even so, she will likely win the national popular vote by around 1.5 million.
Practically speaking, then, Trump is roughly where George W. Bush was when Bush assumed the presidency in 2000. Like Bush, Trump won around 48 percent (though he won 30 more electoral votes), and lost the popular vote.
It is long forgotten that Bush took office having appointed a very conservative cabinet — and then set himself the task of getting a major piece of legislation passed through bipartisan means. He teamed up with Teddy Kennedy on the No Child Left Behind Act. Conservatives hate that bill like poison.
9/11 and its aftermath changed the partisan dynamic Bush had sought to kick into gear, but until then he was aiming to win re-election as a bipartisan problem-solver. What if the noise surrounding Trump’s transition is meaningless, and he tries to do something similar?
Don’t forget that Trump has often said a colossal infrastructure bill is his first priority. To pass that, he’ll have to go bipartisan — he’ll need at least half a dozen Democratic senators to support it, since he’ll have to beat back a filibuster and votes against it by the likes of Rand Paul and Ben Sasse. But Chuck Schumer will be happy to make that deal.
Trump won enormous numbers of extremely conservative voters. Yet the candidate they championed might begin his tenure with a bill that rivals Obama’s stimulus package in size.
Opposing the 2009 stimulus was the key to triggering the Tea Party anti-spending movement that brought the GOP back from the brink after Obama’s massive triumph in 2008.
The danger of the bipartisan Trump strategy, if it’s pursued with a big spending bill, is that he would tear the heart out of the very movement that began the Republican Party renaissance his election completed.