As tempting as it is to talk about President Donald Trump’s instinctive corruption or to analyze his enthusiasm for deploying federal law enforcement against the wishes of mayors and governors or to note his latest defiance of the courts and the Constitution or his recurring falsehoods about the pandemic or even to speculate about why he had warm words for someone accused of assisting a sexual predator, I can’t help it: I’m stuck on his inability to perform some of the more basic aspects of his job. — Jonathan Bernstein (“In Relief-Bill Talks, ‘Donald From Queens’ Isn’t Much Help”)
That — “his inability to perform some of the more basic aspects of his job” — (in my view) expresses the essential Donald Trump.
That, and Occam’s razor, is the reason I am skeptical of the explanatory value of speculation such as this:
Fixating on the Confederacy makes it seem like Trump’s goal isn’t reelection, but post-loss opportunities.
And:
Until now I had dismissed the “Trump WANTS to lose” hot takes out of hand but beginning to rethinking my position…
And even Bernstein, who cited both the Glassman and the Drezner tweets, and then added:
I’ve questioned for some time now whether Trump desperately craves re-election, and I think that’s the best framework here. It’s not that Trump doesn’t want to win. It’s that he’s not willing, as normal presidents are, to do whatever it takes. In particular, he doesn’t appear willing to do his job.
While perhaps literally true that Trump “doesn’t appear willing to do his job,” looking at what Trump appears willing to do, elides the primary point: Trump is incapable of doing his job.
He doesn’t have the chops. He’s a lousy negotiator. He doesn’t understand government. He is ignorant of policy. He acts more like a toddler, than a rational political actor. His actions — as president and candidate for reelection — are so often self-defeating it is confounding to make sense of them.
He has a narcissistic personality — and so he isn’t choosing to act badly; he is compelled to do so. He is (as George Conway has demonstrated) incapable of fulfilling the constitutional duties of president. This isn’t a case of wanting.
P.S. This brings to mind a discussion your fearless blogger has waded into in the past: is Trump a weak president? I wrestled with this because (i) of course Trump has many weaknesses as illustrated through the lens of Professor Neustadt (Presidential Power), but (ii) he also has extraordinary, unprecedented control over his political party unlike anything Neustadt had ever encountered. (I ultimately concluded that this historically unique strength was insufficient to move the Neustadt-inspired judgment on Trump from weak to strong.)
Drezner has observed (“It’s starting to fall apart”), “Trump’s iron control over his party has enabled him to be a somewhat stronger president than devotees of Richard E. Neustadt would otherwise expect.”
In my view, Neustadt’s analysis relies on assumptions of rationality that are completely reasonable and, furthermore, those assumptions have accurately characterized every other recent president (from FDR to Obama).
These assumptions don’t apply to Donald Trump. The Neustadt model doesn’t quite fit, because Trump is an anomaly. So, while devotees of Neustadt have struck the theme of a weak presidency since January 2017, and while this way of looking at Trump (as at earlier presidents) has explanatory force (illustrating many of his weaknesses), it misses the key to understanding Trump: his incapacity (psychological, intellectual, moral). He is unfit, incompetent, out of his depth to a degree that Neustadt could not possibly foresee, so the Presidential Power model falls short (or misdirects).
Back to the initial discussion: The simple, elegant explanation of Trump’s failures as president is found in the man’s incapacity to master what he has been called upon to do. We need not add musings about whether Trump wants to be reelected to explain a stance — his defense of the Confederacy — that appears to be a losing strategy for reelection, even though other recent presidents would know better.
(Image of William of Ockham from the Geograph Britain and Ireland Project.)