Tag Archives: Jonathan Bernstein

2020 General Election, Democracy

Trump, whether he accepts it or not, is on the way out. What’s next for him and for a polarized nation?

Jonathan Bernstein notes the speculation about how long Donald Trump’s domination of the Republican Party will last:

You can’t shake a stick right now without hitting someone who thinks that outgoing President Donald Trump will dominate Republican politics while President-elect Joe Biden is in office, and will surely be nominated again in 2024. . . .

On one hand … sure, it’s plausible. . . .

On the other hand? I’m with Josh Chafetz, who says that it’s “equally plausible that he really fades.”

Both Bernstein and Chafetz look to Fox News as a key indicator. I agree that keeping Fox on board could be decisive in extending Trump’s influence. But I found this insight regarding a run for the 2024 Republican nomination from an insider — within the extended family, not a political source — to be altogether convincing: Trump will not run again in 2024. Because, as Mary Trump told Chris Cuomo: “He will never put himself in a position where he can lose like this again.“

Meanwhile, Amy Walter surveys the election results — where the Republican Party (aside from Trump) did very well — and sees continuing polarization, mistrust, and disillusionment as precluding any bipartisan cooperation in our future.

In the past, when I was asked what it would take to break the partisanship and gridlock in Washington, I said I thought it was going to take something truly horrible happening. Like a war. Or a Great Depression type of economic collapse. But, here we are, almost a year into the worst pandemic this country has seen in 100 years, and this crisis, instead of bringing us together, has become yet another one which divides us. And, even as we flirt with a dangerous descent into a deadly third wave of the virus this winter, those divisions are likely to remain. This is one time when I hope that I will be proven wrong. But, I fear that I won’t be. 

So do I.

Going back many months, watching the pandemic rage throughout the country on Trump’s watch, even as I realized we live in a deeply polarized country, I was convinced that Trump would pay a price with his base for his disastrous mismanagement of the coronavirus.

Headline after headline, day after day revealed his callous indifference — which continues apace. A report from today’s Washington Post (“More than 130 Secret Service officers are said to be infected with coronavirus or quarantining in wake of Trump’s campaign travel”) illustrates his ongoing failure to defeat the virus, with Trump’s rallies and White House events serving as superspreader events.

Masks and social distancing have been rejected — never mind the consequences. And contract tracing? The White House doesn’t even inform vulnerable staff members of outbreaks: “People present at Wednesday night’s campaign party in the East Room who were around Meadows, Lewandowski and other now-sick staffers say they have not been contacted by the White House.”

Yet the base stuck with him — 71 million strong. Isn’t that a testament to polarization?

Ezra Klein, who wrote a book about polarization, sees the problem as a lack of small-d democratic accountability. He observes that the traditional model of politics has gone belly-up:

The fundamental feedback loop of politics — parties compete for public support, and if they fail the public, they are electorally punished, and so they change — is broken. But it’s only broken for the Republican Party.

Because — in an era when Democrats are concentrated in densely populated urban areas, and Republicans dominate rural areas — the Electoral College, the U.S. Senate, gerrymandered House and state legislative districts, and a conservative judiciary, have given the GOP an electoral advantage. “As a result, Democrats and Republicans are operating in what are, functionally, different electoral systems, with very different incentives.”

The Republican Party has become increasingly extreme, yet even as it loses majority support, it flourishes. Klein concludes:

In politics, as in any competition, the teams adopt the strategies the rules demand. America’s political parties are adopting the strategies that their very different electoral positions demand. That has made the Democratic Party a big-tent, center-left coalition that puts an emphasis on pluralistic outreach. And it has let the Republican Party adopt more extreme candidates, dangerous strategies, and unpopular agendas, because it can win most elections even while it’s losing most voters.

(Image: Donald J. Trump on Twitter.)

2020 General Election, Democracy

The voting stops tomorrow. the counting begins. The litigation continues. And then — ?

FDR template

… I think this is a critically important election, because just think if Franklin Roosevelt had not been reelected in 1936, the whole definition of the presidency, the leader as this optimistic, rallying figure, inspiring figure, would never have come really to being into American life.

Roosevelt became the standard.

If Donald Trump is reelected in 2020, it will redefine the presidency and what Americans expect of the president and of each other. I don’t think he will be. I think Joe Biden will be elected next Tuesday, and for a whole host of reasons, that America, and especially at a time of this coronavirus, are — we are looking for a we president, and Donald Trump has been a me president.

He’s been quite incapable of addressing that, stepping up to it. He’s been on the river denial as far as the crisis itself is concerned, telling us, sort of in Pollyannish tones, that it’s going to be better, or it’s already better. We just don’t see that it’s better.

And I really think that Americans are looking for a different kind of leadership, decidedly different leadership. And I think Joe Biden represents that to them, and to a majority of them. — Mark Shields, NewsHour, October 30, 2020

Carnival presidency

“If you vote for Biden, it means no kids in school, no graduations, no weddings, no Thanksgiving, no Christmas and no Fourth of July together,” Trump said Wednesday in Goodyear, Ariz. “Other than that, you have a wonderful life.”

The Trump supporters in these crowds don’t care about the gaping holes in his arguments. They don’t mind his coarse behavior. They revel as he toggles between full-throated rage and offhanded sarcasm, exhorting and chuckling, taking selfies and videos, the consummate performer.

Trump’s glib flattery — his campaign sets up big video monitors only at important rallies, he fibs at every stop — is as authentic as professional wrestling. But crowds roar with approval at his jibes and insults, ready to deliver their lines on cue: “Four more years!” “Lock her up!” “CNN sucks!”

. . .

Trump’s final, frantic surge of rallies underscore how little the former reality TV star has changed in the White House. These carnivals of passion sustain him emotionally, but may not be enough to sustain his presidency. The narcissism could be self-defeating.

After five years of following Trump, I can hear the frustration in his words, thinly veiled by his anger and professions of confidence, the fear that he may soon become what he hates most of all — a loser. — Eli Stokols, Los Angeles Times, November 1, 2020

Not normal

… I have to agree with Larry Sabato: “Never in my 60 years around politics have I encountered this many people so tense, so full of dread and foreboding about an election — and what comes afterward. Of course, we’ve never before had a president undermining confidence and predicting fraud & mayhem — if he doesn’t win.”

That was before President Donald Trump applauded a group of supporters who attacked one of Joe Biden’s campaign buses; before it was reported that Trump plans to claim victory well before the votes are counted; before Trump’s staffers went on the Sunday shows and talked about their plans to stop states from counting legitimate ballots after Election Day; before the president talked about unleashing a blizzard of lawsuits as soon as the polls close; before he started fantasizing in public about assaulting Biden; and before Trump supporters shut down highways as part of … a protest? A threat? It wasn’t quite clear.

In other words: Before Sunday. — Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg Opinion, November 2, 2020

Likeable candidate

From the start of the Democratic primary, many Democratic voters prioritized electability, with plenty believing that Joe Biden was the most electable Democratic candidate in a general election against President Trump. Not everyone bought that argument …

. . .

But it is increasingly looking like Democractic primary voters might have been right about Biden’s electability argument. In the face of relentless attacks from the Trump campaign, Biden hasn’t dipped in the polls; in fact, he’s actually become better liked, and has built a formidable favorability advantage over Trump.

. . .

Sometimes the conventional wisdom, even among voters, is right. — Matt Grossman, Five Thirty Eight, October 30, 2020

Too close to call

Five Thirty Eight, November 2, 2020 — 4:30 p.m. PT — https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/senate/

(Image: Donald Trump accepting the GOP nomination on the South Lawn of the White House via CNBC.)

Donald Trump

Politicial science, Occam’s razor, and answering the question: What is it with Donald Trump?

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.)

2020 General Election, Democracy

Protesting is powerful, but voting is critical to achieving victory in a democracy

I love this Jonathan Bernstein column (“Voting Is Essential. It Is Also Overrated”), though I disagree with the suggestion, even at a time when street protests have swept the country and appear to have shifted public opinion nationally, that voting is overrated. Beyond the provocative headline:

Is voting the fundamental act of democracy? It’s a fundamental act — but hardly the only one. It’s no more basic than protest marches, campaign rallies, board meetings of organized interest groups, donations to candidates and groups, seminars at think tanks, press reports of city council meetings, lobbying, interactions within a party network, and so on.

Bernstein argues that

voting is only a limited part of how a self-governing republic works. It’s a reminder that anyone who really wants to be in the business of republican governing needs to find ways of getting involved beyond being just a voter, whether it’s through social movements, organized interest groups, political parties, or more than one of these.

It’s the interactions of those groups and elected officials that set the agenda for government action and fill in the details; it’s also those groups, along with the mass media, that create and change public opinion, which in turn changes what elected officials and others in government choose to do. That’s where much of the richness and texture of self-government are really found, not in voting booths.

I thought of this richly textured milieu when reading yesterday’s Los Angeles Times (“Rein in police unions, some labor allies say”):

It was a far cry from “defund the police,” but the response was severe anyway. In 2019, Steve Fletcher, a first-term member of the Minneapolis City Council, decided to oppose a budget proposal to add more officers to the Police Department.

Business owners soon started calling Fletcher, who represents part of downtown, complaining of slow police responses to 911 calls about shoplifting. Store owners told Fletcher the officers who eventually responded had a message: “We’d love to help you with this, but our hands are tied by the council; talk to your council member,” Fletcher said in an interview.

The Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis declined to comment for the LA Times story; the Minneapolis Police Department denied there had been a deliberate slowdown. But, in fact, slowdowns – ‘work-to-rule’ – are a familiar tactic among public and private-sector unions. And law enforcement unions are among the most powerful labor groups in the country. California’s pension gap – a gargantuan issue for cities and counties, as well as the state – began with an extravagantly generous pension deal for the California Highway Patrol in 1999, during the second term (before he was recalled from office) of Democratic Governor Gray Davis. And candidates in both parties, in nonpartisan races, and at every level (and not just in California) covet the contributions and endorsements of law enforcement, which are touted in campaign fliers, direct mail, and radio, TV, and online advertising.

Police officers, who carry guns and badges (as well as billy clubs, rubber bullets, tasers, and chemical sprays), are more powerful than most individuals. Collectively, they are even stronger. Like the thuggish leadership of the NRA, police unions often seem to overplay their hands. (An example from the Washington Post: ‘the leader of the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation, Bob Kroll, has called the protests convulsing the city a “terrorist movement”; told officers that “the politicians are to blame” for the rioting and the police “are the scapegoats”; and described Floyd as a “violent criminal.” He has also fostered political division in the largely Democratic city; at one point, the union sold “Cops for Trump” T-shirts to raise money for charity.’) Then again (like the NRA), law enforcement unions are so well entrenched that they are accustomed to getting what they want. Niceties such as work-to-rule are overshadowed by episodes of police violence directed against protesters and journalists (and by contrasting instances where “the protesters had to deescalate the police”).

Street protests

For 23 days and counting, following the murder of George Floyd, there have been demonstrations in streets across the country (and abroad) protesting police brutality and, especially, police killings of black men. Young people have led and participated in large numbers in these protests (“These Kids Are Done Waiting for Change”).

In real life, Nya Collins, Jade Fuller, Kennedy Green, Emma Rose Smith, Mikayla Smith and Zee Thomas had never met as a group when they came together on Twitter to organize a youth march against police violence. It was unseasonably hot, even for Middle Tennessee, with rain predicted, and earlier protests here had ended in violence, with the Metro Nashville Courthouse and City Hall in flames. Collectively, these are not the most promising conditions for gathering a big crowd, much less a calm one. But the teenagers were determined to press on, even if hardly anyone showed up.

On June 4, five days later, the founding members of Teens for Equality — as the young women, ages 14 to 16, call their organization — were leading a march of protesters some 10,000 strong, according to police estimates. “I was astonished,” Kennedy Green, 14, told me in a phone interview last week. “I did not know there were that many people in Nashville who actually see a problem with the system. I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, there are so many people here who actually care.’”

The sustained demonstrations, day after day, have been regarded as extraordinary expressions of energy and commitment to end violence directed against black Americans by police officers sworn to protect our communities. It has been exhausting, even for young people (“Young Protesters Say Voting Isn’t Enough. Will They Do It Anyway?“).

“I’m tired. I’m literally tired. I’m tired of having to do this,” said Aalayah Eastmond, 19, who survived the 2018 massacre at her high school in Parkland, Fla., became a gun control advocate, saw many legislative efforts stall — and is now organizing protests in Washington over police violence against fellow black Americans.

And political activism can be frustrating:

The deaths of black people at the hands of law enforcement. The relentless creep of climate change. Recurring economic uncertainty — this time amid a pandemic exacerbated by missteps across the federal government.

“In an ideal world, all of these issues would be solved by going out and voting,” said Zoe Demkovitz, 27, who had supported Mr. Sanders’s presidential campaign, as she marched against police violence in Philadelphia. “I tried that. I voted for the right people.”

“And this,” she concluded, adding an expletive, “still happens.”

I thoroughly agree with Bernstein that political activism is “where much of the richness and texture of self-government are really found, not voting booths,” but I don’t accept at all that

voting by itself is … well, it’s not useless, but it’s a blunt instrument that can’t really do much. A vote can’t tell the government to reform the police force, let alone give specific instructions about how to do that or any other complex task. It can’t tell the winning candidate to lower taxes, or negotiate a trade treaty with China, or make abortion illegal or marijuana legal.

All it can really do is either throw the bums out or keep them in office. And that’s not a defect with the way that elections work in the U.S. It’s inherent in the nature of voting in mass electorates. 

It takes a blunt instrument to get the attention of people in power. Throwing the bums out (or not) is powerful. Even Mitch McConnell’s caucus is scurrying for cover. It may not be much, but they’re hoping their reform proposal puts them on the right side of this issue with voters. It’s because McConnell may lose his majority at the polls in November that he has bothered with even the pretext of doing anything about police violence.

Moreover, street protests are a blunt instrument. Staging a sit-in is a blunt instrument. Giving money to – or volunteering for – a candidate or a group pushing for change is a blunt instrument. Showing solidarity with a police union is a blunt instrument. For most political activists, all we have is blunt instruments. And we had better be prepared to exercise our right to vote (and encourage our community allies to do likewise) or wielding the other blunt instruments of self-government won’t amount to much.

I agree with Barack Obama, who has begun to speak out more often as the November elections grow nearer:

I’ve heard some suggest that the recurrent problem of racial bias in our criminal justice system proves that only protests and direct action can bring about change, and that voting and participation in electoral politics is a waste of time. I couldn’t disagree more. The point of protest is to raise public awareness, to put a spotlight on injustice, and to make the powers that be uncomfortable; in fact, throughout American history, it’s often only been in response to protests and civil disobedience that the political system has even paid attention to marginalized communities. But eventually, aspirations have to be translated into specific laws and institutional practices — and in a democracy, that only happens when we elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.

Young protesters and millions of Americans embrace ending police violence against black Americans as a compelling goal. But not everyone is on board. This is a struggle to increase accountability for a powerful group. Labor unions are not in the business of increasing accountability at the expense of job security. So of course police unions stand in opposition to this agenda, but they are hardly the most significant sources of opposition.

Add Donald Trump; Trump’s voting base; the political party that controls the White House, the Supreme Court, the U.S. Senate, and a majority of governorships and state legislatures. And as Democrats press the issue, police reform will inevitably become more partisan, with reflexive opposition from nearly half the country.

Jim Crow came into existence at the end of reconstruction in 1877 and stretched well into the mid-1960s. But, as we have seen with the aggressive voter suppression strategies of the Republican Party, the 1965 Voting Rights Bill was only an ephemeral victory. And as we have seen in recent years, in a flood of videos of the police shooting and strangling black men, racist violence — often with deadly consequences — is alive and well in America.

While recent polling suggests support for Black Lives Matter (such as a Pew survey that found: “67% of Americans say they strongly (38%) or somewhat (29%) support the Black Lives Matter movement, while smaller shares (31%) oppose the movement”), this can’t be regarded as a game changer. Folks had better be prepared to get out and vote if this agenda is going to continue to advance. We must “elect government officials who are responsive to our demands.”

(‘All Black Lives Matter’ painting of Hollywood Boulevard as seen on ABC7 Los Angeles.)

Donald Trump, Republicans

Making the case that Donald Trump is a strong president is harder than it looks

[Spoiler alert: The photograph by Doug Mills of the New York Times captures President Donald Trump, flanked, a few steps behind, by the Attorney General of the United States and the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff, making a triumphant walk into Lafayette Park. No other man in the country could have led this walk. No one else holds such a powerful position. Nonetheless, after trying to establish that Trump is a strong president, I conclude that this is not the case.]

In the United States we like to “rate” a President. We measure him as “weak” or “strong” and call what we are measuring his “leadership.” We do not wait until a man is dead; we rate him from the moment he takes office. We are quite right to do so. His office has become a focal point of politics and policy in our political system. – Richard Neustadt, Presidential Power, p. 3.

A number of political scientists and commentators, adhering to the Neustadt model of presidential power, have contended throughout his term that Donald Trump is a weak president. I made the case for this view in a previous post. In this post, I will argue that this conclusion leaves out a singular presidential power (unobserved by Neustadt) that greatly enhances Trump’s political influence. This must be factored into the equation in assessing Trump’s leadership. Yes, the man displays a profusion of weaknesses (reviewed in my original post), but in assessing his relative power as president, attention must be paid to an unprecedented strength that stems from Trump’s domination of the Republican Party.  

This domination has guaranteed Trump a measure of immunity from consequences that no president before him enjoyed. A Republican Party united in the refusal to buck its leader renders all criticism of Trump partisan, which transforms the narrative in the mainstream media into tiresome politics-as-usual bickering between the parties. Republican unity, in the face of off-the-rails leadership, is a huge asset, resulting in unprecedented presidential immunity from substantive objections or pushback from his party.

To set up my argument, I’ll begin with observations made last week on June 7 by George Will (interviewed after publication of his op-ed, “Trump must be removed. So must his congressional enablers.”). From the interview:

Twenty-sixteen: people faced with two candidates they didn’t like, opted for the one they knew least and that was Mr. Trump. Three and a quarter years later the fact is that 90-percent of the Republican Party approves of his conduct. Ninety percent. The Republican Party has never been so united in the 20th century – not really since it was founded in 1854.

It was divided between the Teddy Roosevelt and the Taft Republicans in 1912, between the Dewey and Taft Republicans in the 1940s, between the Goldwater and Rockefeller Republicans in the 1960s. Today it is a united party and united behind someone unfit to lead. That is a sobering thought.

Chuck Todd: … How do we fix this? … Is it a new party, new conservative party?

No, what you do is, is you give, as a disobedient child, is you give them a time-out. You give them time to reflect on the cost of suspending their judgment, and suspending their principles and convictions, and turning themselves into a cult of personality. Which is why I think a very thorough rejection of the party, top to bottom, in the elections, will cause them to pause and think: Is it worth it? What am I gaining from this acquiescence? In a man that no one, that – no Congressional Republican to speak of has any affection for the President. This is all fear.  Fear grounded in the 90-percent. [Link at MSNBC: Sorry, video is no longer available.]

The takeaway: Trump’s base – party activists, FNC viewers, talk radio listeners, devotees of rightwing websites and social media, and folks still chaffing at Obama’s election – will turn out in Republican primaries to punish office holders and candidates who have gotten on Trump’s bad side. It is hardly an exaggeration to refer to this, as Will does, as a cult of personality.

It had been uncommon, before Trump, for a president to go after a Senate or House member of his own party. Trump is ready, willing, and able to follow through with this threat, which can bring an abrupt end to a political career.

Politicians with an instinct for survival are quick learners. They watched the takedown of Mark Sanford, a member of the House Freedom Caucus, whose conservative credentials were solid, but who was a sometime Trump critic. He lost his primary when Trump turned on him. Another solid conservative, who decided not to seek reelection as a Senator after straying from the Trump fold, commented on the Sanford takedown:

“This is Trump’s party,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, a fierce critic of the President who decided not to run for re-election in Arizona. “We’ve all felt it. It was reiterated last night. If you want to win a Republican primary, you can’t deviate much from the script. It’s the President’s script. You can’t criticize policy or behavior.”

The resulting fear throughout the GOP caucuses of both houses ensures that contradicting Trump on anything that he cares about (which is always about him) is exceedingly rare. Trump speaks or tweets. And caucus members reinforce his message, comment evasively, or stand silent. The possibility of a bipartisan critique of presidential misbehavior vanishes. Republican Party unity means not giving an inch and being always “willing to engage in overlooking the truth, overlooking the facts.” Any rebuke or criticism of Trump is reported as just more squabbling between the parties because Republicans won’t criticize their leader. They’re with him come what may.

That’s powerful. That’s a presidential strength that would have prompted Richard Neustadt to add an additional chapter to his book, had he witnessed the phenomenon.

Democrats have noticed Congressional Republicans’ submission to Trump. Sherrod Brown wrote after the Senate impeachment trial (“In Private, Republicans Admit They Acquitted Trump Out of Fear”):

In private, many of my colleagues agree that the president is reckless and unfit. They admit his lies. And they acknowledge what he did was wrong. They know this president has done things Richard Nixon never did. And they know that more damning evidence is likely to come out.

But:

They are afraid that Mr. Trump might give them a nickname like “Low Energy Jeb” and “Lyin’ Ted,” or that he might tweet about their disloyalty. Or — worst of all — that he might come to their state to campaign against them in the Republican primary. They worry:

“Will the hosts on Fox attack me?”

“Will the mouthpieces on talk radio go after me?”

“Will the Twitter trolls turn their followers against me?”

Republicans gave Donald Trump a pass on impeachment. Before that they gave him a pass on the abuses documented in the Mueller Report. Before that they gave him a pass on undermining the nation’s intelligence agencies, sabotaging international alliances that keep the peace, and wrecking relations with democratic governments across the globe. Republicans have given Trump a pass on moving millions of dollars from the U.S. Treasury to Trump family businesses. The list goes on: the hollowing out of the State Department, the purging of career professionals across the executive branch, and serial firings of inspectors general.

What has happened in the Department of Justice is especially egregious. Bill Barr has sought – with considerable success – to undo criminal prosecutions brought by Mueller’s team against Trump cronies and grifters, while weaponizing the justice department to go after Trump’s political enemies (from Senator Richard Burr to Joe Biden, the President’s 2020 opponent, as well as numerous career officials in place during the previous administration).

Checks and balances are anachronistic

In another era, Congress would have had an active role in uncovering and remedying much of the corruption and malfeasance in evidence. Not so long ago, the effort (in at least some instances) would have been bipartisan. No longer. The White House has stonewalled Congressional investigators in wholesale fashion and asserted broad executive privilege in court. It refused absolutely to cooperate with the House impeachment investigation – no documents, no witnesses:

Given that your inquiry lacks any legitimate constitutional foundation, any pretense of fairness, or even the most elementary due process protections, the Executive Branch cannot be expected to participate in it.

Trump has succeeded in neutering Congressional oversight (and with the firings of inspectors general, oversight within the executive branch) and in shrugging off checks on the White House to a degree unthinkable four years ago. And at every step, Congressional Republicans have gone along with whatever Trump has brought their way. The Republican Senate has gone further.

Trump directs the reality show

In another era, a conspiracy theory with a catchy name, but otherwise devoid of facts, evidence, or even a coherent theory of the case, wouldn’t receive much attention. Trump, who has cited “Obamagate” dozens of times, signals to Republicans to get on board with the charade:

On May 16 Trump, retweeting a complaint that McConnell has done nothing about “the Russian collulsion hoax,” sent a tweet directing McConnell to “Get tough and act quickly, or it will be too late.”

Three days later, McConnell gave “a full-throated endorsement of an aggressive Senate Republican investigation of the counterintelligence probe into whether the then-candidate and his campaign colluded with the Russians in 2016.” The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, chaired by Ron Johnson, and Lindsey Graham’s Judiciary Committee, have both opened investigations.

The President dominates his political party in a way that no previous president has done, and that no one would have expected of any presidential nominee of either party before Trump. Justin Amash has suggested that Trump’s shamelessness “gives him this superpower that other people don’t have.” I regard Trump’s immunity from consequences to be vastly more significant. Personal immunity to feelings of shame in a president goes a long way, but not nearly as far as historically unparalleled party unity. This is shamelessness writ large – across a whole political party following its leader: “…suspending their judgment, and suspending their principles and convictions, and turning themselves into a cult of personality.”

Taking a step back

Donald Trump has been a remarkable (and I would venture, consequential) president. Trump and the Trump presidency have generated much debate, including the disagreement about whether or not Trump is a weak or a strong president. Let’s review:

● Donald Trump has an historically unique set of strengths: 90% approval from Republican voters and the willingness – and ability – to punish Republicans (who dare venture criticism of the President) in primary elections. This has served to instill fear among Republicans in the House and the Senate, silencing dissent or criticism, and giving Trump immunity from bipartisan resistance to foolish, reckless actions. I regard this – especially within the context of the conventions of mainstream journalism – to be highly consequential.

● This could have only happened with a Republican president. Reflect on a single off-the-rails incident, the Helsinki summit conference, and consider a counterfactual. What political repercussions would have ensued, had Barack Obama sided with Vladimir Putin and against the U.S. Director of National Intelligence? This almost certainly would have split the Democratic Party in two. Many Democrats, concerned with national security and aware of Putin’s hostility to democracy, would have been unwilling to rally round the president.

Now consider that Helsinki was not a single off-the-rails incident. We’ve had many such incidents. And Trump’s conduct has become more deviant over time. Nonetheless, the GOP “has never been so united.”

● But this phenomenon is not just a function of the distinct character of the Republican Party in the highly polarized era of the Tea Party and Fox News Channel. Trump’s weaknesses – impulsive angry tweets, narcissistic sensitivity to criticism, and indiscriminate vindictiveness – have solidified his hold on the Republican Party. Trump’s unbridled lack of restraint has served to build that fear among Republicans and fortify maximal party unity.

Trump’s irrational, impulsive, narcissistic behavior has – in this regard – worked for him. None of Trump’s 2016 competitors for the party’s nomination could have expected to be as feared as Trump, or to have silenced criticism so effectively, since none of them would be at all likely to behave in ways that Trump by all appearances is compelled to do.

● Jonathan Bernstein and Matt Glassman, two prominent and consistent adherents of the Neustadt thesis, have argued that (apart from the tax bill) Trump has no legislative accomplishments. Republicans in Congress, in their view, aren’t afraid to buck Trump about issues where they disagree with the President. Glassman writes, “… GOP legislative power mostly lies in Congress right now. Republican leaders have almost completely ignored the policy priorities of President Trump.” Far from being dominated by Trump, on this view, Congressional Republicans control the agenda.

My reply: Yes, but only on issues that are of negligible concern to Trump. What matters to Trump are perceived slights, petty resentments, and personal payback. Seeing Mark Sanford go down matters. Trump has a short attention span and a meager interest in public policy. (Glassman makes this point as well.) The policy prescriptions Trump mentions – whether a payroll tax cut or an infrastructure bill or anything else – are idle chatter. Mitch McConnell and other Republicans understand this. Thus, they can control the (insignificant) legislative agenda (at least in the Senate).

As Bernstein has explained (“The Post-Policy Republicans Seized Control Long Ago”), Republicans have no interest in governing. Powerful people in the Republican Party – from the crew at FNC, to Rush Limbaugh et al. on talk radio, to the House Freedom Caucus – are focused on fanning the flames of resentment among the base, and decapitating leaders who aren’t on board with that, not on creating a governing agenda.

In Bernstein’s words (regarding GOP fears that the party’s angry base could wreak havoc on Republicans’ electoral prospects): “The hallmark of all this dysfunction is a political party that is rarely interested in, and increasingly unable, to articulate and enact public policy — a post-policy Republican Party.” (That’s why, for instance, after campaigning in 2010, 2012, 2014, and 2016 on the promise to repeal and replace Obamacare, Republicans never bothered to craft a replacement.) Trump’s indifference to legislation matches his party’s.

● Furthermore, Trump gets his way even when he loses legislatively. Consider the wall, perhaps Trump’s premier campaign issue in 2016. I’ll grant that a ‘stronger’ president could have found a way to get Congress to fund it. It would have required negotiating with Democrats and a willingness to accept a legislative compromise. This was beyond Trump’s capacity.

But then what happened? Trump defied Congress and carried the day. In February 2019, Trump declared a national emergency and moved billions of dollars of military funding to construction of the wall. In July 2019, the five Republican men on the Supreme Court backed him up. In January 2020, Trump moved billions more – for a total of $18.4 billion – toward construction of his wall.

Trump won on his own terms. It was an ugly, drawn-out spectacle, but that might have won him points with his base. This president got what he wanted. Congressional Republicans acquiesced, rather than offering principled objections, jealously safeguarding Congressional prerogatives (contrary to the expectations of the Founders) or opposing presidential overreach.  

● Legislation aside, both Glassman and Bernstein insist that Senate Republicans, not Trump have the upper hand. Glassman has argued, “Senate Republicans—if they cared—could *still* demand Trump clean house in WH, install a real CoS, and start running administration in a modestly non-corrupt manner. Yes, they have a collection action problem and face some individual risk, but they have plenty of leverage, too.” Bernstein has argued:

At one point, Trump echoed civil-rights era reactionaries by threatening “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” only to back down when Republicans urged him to. That is, even when all Trump has is words, he’s easily rolled by his own allies. (They’re not willing to remove him from office, partly because they know how easy he is to defeat any time they want to.)

I disagree with both judgments. I believe that Trump is leading the Republican Party and McConnell (and other Republicans) are trailing in his wake. At this stage, it is fantasy to think that a significant handful of Senate Republicans would “demand that Trump clean house.” Not in the real world with 90% of the base backing him. And not the least because no rational Senator has reason to suppose that anything Senators could ‘demand’ could possibly put Trump’s White House on track. When Generals Kelly and Mattis and other ‘adults in the room’ surrounded Trump, things were less erratic. But no one, at this stage, is going to make Trump go back to those days. The men surrounding Trump now would push back as fiercely as Trump himself.

And, while I agree that we can make a case in some contexts that Trump “is easily rolled by his own allies,” it is only in some contexts. In this case, Trump has seen (what he has regarded as) his ticket to reelection (the good economy and rising stock market) disappear and has seen Biden leading in virtually every poll in the past year, with his lead increasing as we approach the election. Trump, who has a small bag of tricks, is in desperate straits. He is willing to listen occasionally, though not consistently. He will be beating the law and order drum – with demands for domination and violence on city streets again and again between now and November. His allies have won a news cycle at most. Trump is in charge. He dominates a Republican Party that might be better off without him, but the best evidence of the past three years is that Republicans can’t slip out of his grip.

So, is Trump a strong president?

No, he’s not. Here’s why: While Trump has unprecedented control of his party, and benefits from the consequences of that control, a solitary asset isn’t enough of a counterweight to Trump’s many glaring weaknesses. Trump is a poor strategist, a poor negotiator, and a poor manager. He is so obsessed with himself that he is compelled to do and say things every day that aren’t in the least helpful to a president. Wishful thinking, not planning, is the order of the day. Trump’s absolute failure to take command of the federal government to defeat the coronavirus is a case in point; instead he has imagined it magically going away. And, as the public health disaster continues to unfold, his hope for an economic rebound in the midst of the pandemic, is risible. He doesn’t have a plan. Not for the virus, not for the economy.

Not a day goes by when Trump’s weaknesses are not on full display. Steve Schmidt, speaking colloquially, rather than as a scholar, has said, “this is a moment of unparalleled national humiliation. Of weakness. When you listen to the President, these are the musings of an imbecile, an idiot.” The evidence for this view – whatever nouns and adjectives we choose – is overwhelming.

While Neustadt was in no position to evaluate Trump’s unique strength, we are. And the balance still tilts toward weak.

Dan Drezner has written, “If Neustadt is correct in his view that the chief power of the presidency is the ability to persuade, then Donald Trump has been a weak, ineffectual president.” Then, after reviewing the extensive damage Trump has done in three years, Drezner offers an assessment with reference to the Imperial Presidency. Drezner writes that

constraints on the presidency have been severely eroded in recent decades, enabling even a comparatively weak leader to be a powerful president. Trump assumed the office at the zenith of its power, and his willingness to flout norms has empowered the office even further. For half a century, Trump’s predecessors have expanded the powers of the presidency at the expense of countervailing institutions. Trump himself has attempted massive executive branch power grabs, but the underlying trends eroding formal and informal constraints on the president long predate his inauguration. They make the existence of a president with Trump’s peculiar psychology far more worrisome now than it would have been even amid the heightened tensions of the Cold War. Crudely put, Trump is a weak man who occupies a powerful office, and the power of the office demands that greater attention be paid to Trump’s unique psychology.

This matches Nancy Pelosi’s critique of the President. She takes for granted the power of the office and the capacity of a president to lead the nation, but regards Donald Trump as a weak man. In an April 14 press release, the Speaker takes Trump to task for his “incompetent reaction” to the pandemic: he dismantled the infrastructure to overcome a pandemic, ignored warnings, dithered instead of acting to prevent the death and disaster that ensued, failed to provide for testing, masks and PPE, and told his followers that the pandemic was a hoax that would magically disappear.  Describing Trump’s flight from responsibility, she says: “a weak person, a poor leader, takes no responsibility.  A weak person blames others.”

No walk through the park — no matter that only he can lead it — can change the fact that a weak man occupies the Oval Office.

[Post revised for clarity.]

Donald Trump

Making the case for the view of political scientists that Donald Trump is a weak president

Is Donald Trump a weak president? A number of political scientists and commentators have answered this question affirmatively. A strong case can be made for this view. I was in the affirmative camp in February 2019. By December 2019, I had begun to harbor doubts. In this post, I survey why Trump is regarded as a weak president. In a subsequent post, I will look at the strong grounds we have for challenging this view.

Presidential Power

Generations of political scientists have looked to Richard Neustadt’s analysis in Presidential Power, which suggests that our constitutional system, featuring separated powers, institutional constraints, and competition among political actors, limits what a president can accomplish through the sole exercise of formal powers (though these are substantial). Thus the president must elicit the cooperation of others to get things done. A president’s effectiveness is found in his power to persuade.

We might better think of ‘persuasion’ as negotiation, because Neustadt envisages “hard bargaining” and a give and take between the president and other political actors.

The essence of a President’s persuasive task, with congressmen and everybody else, is to induce them to believe that what he wants of them is what their own appraisal of their own responsibilities requires them to do in their interest, not his. Because men may differ in their views on public policy, because differences in outlook stem from differences in duty—duty to one’s office, one’s constituents, oneself—that task is bound to be more like collective bargaining than like a reasoned argument among philosopher kings.

Jonathan Bernstein, who argued before Trump’s inauguration that “We may be at the beginning of a historically weak presidency,” observes (in “The 1960 Book That Explains Why Trump Is a Failure“) that in Neustadt’s view:

“persuasion” doesn’t necessarily mean changing anyone’s mind. It may just mean convincing someone in a position of power to do nothing rather than something.

Bernstein also notes that

skilled presidents … rely on more than just threats. They work hard to build strong relationships, and know when to dangle carrots to loosely affiliated supporters, too.

A savvy and effective president makes good use of the tools at his command, which may include: a reservoir of knowledge and the know-how to command the levers of power; an understanding of the political interests and needs of, for instance, the senators and members of Congress with whom a president must deal; a reputation as someone who can articulate what he wants, whose word can be trusted, and is prepared to do what he says he will do; and a favorable standing with the American public.

Donald Trump lacks virtually every asset on the list. It is safe to say that Neustadt’s image of a strong president looked nothing like our current president. Several distinct critiques of Trump’s shortcomings illustrate why this is so. Let’s begin with Daniel Drezner’s “Immature Leadership: Donald Trump and the American Presidency.”

Trump as Toddler

Drezner notes Trump’s meager legislative accomplishments, feckless executive orders, and the absence of trade or arms control agreements, among other failures. Drezner attributes this record to specific psychological traits of the President. Drezner has observed that friend and foe alike (and even Trump himself) have depicted Trump in language applicable to “a rambunctious two-year old.”

Even a cursory examination of the Trump literature reveals a peculiarity unique to this president: almost all his biographers, even his acolytes, describe him in terms one would use for a toddler. He offers the greatest example of pervasive developmental delay in American political history.

Between April 25, 2017 – when Drezner posted a tweet noting that Trump’s staff talked about him like a toddler – and April 27, 2020 – three years later, Drezner had writen a book, The Toddler in Chief: What Donald Trump Teaches Us about the Modern Presidency, and posted 1,358 tweets citing references to Trump as toddler. “It is safe to say that Donald Trump has not grown into the presidency. At this point, the thread itself possesses more maturity than the commander in chief.”

Drezner identifies Trump’s quick temper, short attention span, and poor impulse control as primary traits that have greatly impaired Trump’s effectiveness as president. Making the case for Trump’s deficiencies, based on the review in “Immature Leadership,” is child’s play. Drezner concludes: “If Neustadt is correct in his view that the chief power of the presidency is the ability to persuade, then Donald Trump has been a weak, ineffectual president.”

Trump as Failed Deal Maker

We can make an equally strong case with a different approach. Consider a calling card of Donald Trump years before he ran for president. As the nominal author of Trump: The Art of the Deal (actually ghostwritten by a writer “who put lipstick on a pig“) and in his starring role as the chief executive on NBC’s “The Apprentice,” Trump convinced much of the country that he was a skillful deal maker. The evidence of the past 3+ years reveals the opposite. His shortcomings as a negotiator have become well known during his presidency. Seven months into his term, Calculated Risk, an economics blog, distinguished two kinds of negotiation – distributive (win-lose) and integrative (win-win) – to explain Trump’s failures as a negotiator.

Trump’s approach is win-lose. Distributive deals are zero-sum. Bluster, bluffing, empty threats, even lies might carry the day with the sale of real estate, especially if one has no intention of ever making another deal with the buyer. Take the money and don’t look back.

A successful president, on the other hand, must rely on integrative negotiating skills, which Trump lacks.

The approach to an integrative negotiation includes building trust, understanding the other party’s concerns, and knowing the details of the agreement – with the goal to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

Trump can’t be trusted, since he is both irresolute (saying one thing one day, and another thing the next) and has a reputation as a cheat (well-earned before he ran for president). He’s certainly not working hard “to build strong relationships.” He fails to master substantive matters, including policy choices, proposed legislation, and international conflicts. This deficit – and his lack of empathy or even a modicum of curiosity – blind him to the concerns and even the incentives of whoever is on the other side of the negotiating table.

More than once Trump’s threats to Democrats made no sense because he was warning of consequences that his own party had more reason to fear than did Democrats. His misreading of Kim Jong Un has been grotesque.

Trump’s reliance on gut instinct and on fantasies regarding personal relationships (and even ‘love letters’), and his aversion to strategic planning, have yielded few agreements after 40 months in office. His inability to persuade negotiators on the other side demonstrates glaring weakness.

Trump as Narcissist

Trump’s self-love and hunger for the adoration of others, which crowd out virtually everything else in his personal space, is in evidence every day.

Trump, as Ashley Parker put it last month, clings to a “me-me-me ethos.” In the face of a rising death toll, millions of unemployment claims, and long lines at food banks, Trump made the coronavirus briefings all about himself – “his self image, his media coverage, his supplicants and his opponents, both real and imagined.”

George Conway – employing DSM criteria for narcissism – has taken time and care to document Trump’s compulsive focus on himself and his profound lack of empathy for others (“Unfit for Office”). It is critical to note that Conway (an attorney, not a psychiatrist) is focused on Trump’s publicly observable behavior and how that renders Trump incapable of fulfilling the fiduciary responsibilities of the office of president. He has no interest in rendering a medical/psychiatric diagnosis.

There is no contradiction, in fact, in both calling Trump “a world-class narcissist” and declining to label him as mentally ill. It doesn’t take a degree in medicine or psychology to see in plain sight Trump’s extraordinary vanity and callousness. Conway argues convincingly that, “Trump’s ingrained and extreme behavioral characteristics make it impossible for him to carry out the duties of the presidency in the way the Constitution requires.”

For our purposes, we can conclude that his distinctive psychological makeup robs Trump of managerial competence and the capacity to persuade.

Trump as COVID-19 Bystander

Finally, the COVID-19 debacle, and Trump’s flight from accountability, is documented daily by the news media. Last month David Hopkins cataloged Trump’s blunders in response to the pandemic (“The Weakest Modern Presidency Faces a Pandemic From the Couch”), including failing to engage meaningfully with the issue. “According to recent reporting, Trump is unengaged with the substance of his administration’s COVID mitigation efforts: his discursive appearances at task force meetings reveal a limited understanding of relevant subjects when he attends at all, and he spends much of the workday watching cable television.”

Hopkins summarizes:

All of these traits were visible before COVID came along. But now the demands on this presidency have grown stronger while the president looks less and less comfortable in the job, unable even to mimic the seriousness of purpose that other elected officials have marshaled in the moment. [Emphasis added.]

Trump as toddler, failed deal maker, narcissist, and passive bystander: all point to the same conclusion. Trump lacks basic managerial skills, an affinity for negotiation, and an informed understanding of government. His deeply rooted self-absorption renders him incapable of acting as an effective executive. He is deficient in both credibility and the power to persuade anyone not predisposed to defer to him.

On the other hand

As strong as the case is for the conclusion, ‘Trump is a weak president,’ it leaves something out: Trump’s singular, imposing dominance over the Republican Party, which is without precedent among other presidents stretching back to FDR (Neustadt’s starting point). While Trump displays many conspicuous weaknesses as president, his command over the GOP undermines the conclusion.

Mark Shields alluded to this dominance in December, noting (in my words, not his) that LBJ was a weakling compared to Trump regarding the fear that each man generated among the party faithful. The fearsome LBJ could only dream of dominating the Democratic Party as Trump dominates the GOP.

I will argue in a subsequent post that Trump’s domination of the GOP is not an empty illusion (contrary to advocates of the view that Trump is a weak president); that as ham-handed, uninformed, and constrained by compulsive self-absorption as Trump is, he has become more powerful over the past three years; and that these (and other) considerations undercut the conclusion.  

(Image: small man creates a commotion, flailing and whining about how unfairly others treat him, and grasps for a simplistic solution.)

2020 General Election, Democracy, Republicans

GOP will gladly accept an extended contested election — if they think it may help them win it

“No one wants the uncertainty of an extended contested election with complaints like those we heard about the recent Wisconsin primary or the Iowa caucuses in February.”

No one? Suppose Mitch McConnell were offered a choice: a free and fair election (that Democrats likely win) or a contentious argument with weeks or months of turmoil about a result that is finally decided (perhaps by the United States Supreme Court) in Republicans’ favor. Does anyone doubt the choice he makes?

How about Kevin McCarthy? Or Bill Barr? Brian Kemp, Robin Vos, Kris Kobach? What would be the preference of John Roberts, whose career in restricting voting rights stretches back to 1982?

The consensus among Republicans in Washington, and in state houses across the country, would be to make the choice that Mitch McConnell would make. The GOP is committed to winning any way it can. Free and fair be damned.

That stark fact – that Republicans don’t hesitate to cheat to win elections – is why the report (“Fair Elections During a Crisis: Urgent Recommendations in Law, Media, Politics, and Tech to Advance the Legitimacy of, and the Public’s Confidence in, the November 2020 U.S. Elections”) by an ad hoc committee put together by Richard Hasen is going to win favor with good government groups and with Democratic leaders, but not with the leadership of the Republican Party.

Jonathan Bernstein’s commentary (“How to Hold a Fair Election in November”) – in which the quoted sentence appears – provides context, describes the report’s overall strategy (ensuring “a diversity of avenues for voting”), and recommends both the report and Hasen’s recent book (Election Meltdown: Dirty Tricks, Distrust, and the Threat to American Democracy).

I’m on board with the thrust of Bernstein’s post. Richard Hasen has been sounding the alarm regarding the threats to free and fair elections for many years. Voting is under attack and Hasen is well-qualified to offer viable reforms to ensure the integrity of the process and to boost Americans’ faith in elections. The coronavirus pandemic, exacerbated by Donald Trump’s abdication of responsibility, is yet another threat.

However, although the sentiment expressed in the quotation above is virtually de rigueur for an op-ed advocating democratic reform, we can’t count on it. Republicans are convinced – and have been for decades – that restricting voting turnout is good for them. In 1980 Paul Weyrich, during the fall campaign for Ronald Reagan, mocked “the goo-goo syndrome – good government,” arguing that “our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up, as the voting populace goes down.” From the Brooks Brothers riot to Wisconsin’s recent election, we see that this is an enduring calculation.

And that’s not all: Republicans benefit when Americans are bitterly divided and when government is discredited. An extended contested election – win or lose – redounds to the advantage of Republicans.

[Photo of poster by Robbie Conal.]

Donald Trump, Off the Rails

One constant in Trump’s erratic vacillation: A furious flight from accountability

Accountability is anathema to Donald Trump. Between now and November 3, he will frantically flee from even a modicum of responsibility for the tens of thousands of deaths from coronavirus that will continue to take place on his watch. Fox News Channel, with the rest of the conservative media universe, the White House, the Trump campaign, and every Republican official in Washington will pull out all the stops to prevent Trump from being called into account for the ongoing disaster he is presiding over.

The President’s dithering, fabrications, and missteps have aggravated the public health calamity:

The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus — the first of many — in the President’s Daily Brief.

And yet, it took 70 days from that initial notification for Trump to treat the coronavirus not as a distant threat or harmless flu strain well under control, but as a lethal force that had outflanked America’s defenses and was poised to kill tens of thousands of citizens. That more-than-two-month stretch now stands as critical time that was squandered. the coronavirus

Trump’s baseless assertions in those weeks, including his claim that it would all just “miraculously” go away, sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.

As the pandemic spread around the globe and deep into our country, Donald Trump denied and diminished the grave threat to Americans. Jeremy Peters reports on how conservative media amplified, and sometimes inspired, Trump’s tall tales. This is part of Job #1 – venerating Donald Trump and impugning his critics – for Fox News Channel, conservative talk radio, et al. (Accurate information isn’t a priority.)

Peters describes a four step process: blame China (while sometimes adding conspiracy theories to the tales told); play down the risks (just as Donald Trump did for weeks and weeks, until his turn on March 16—though he still shifts back to denial); share ‘survivor’ stories (coronavirus is really no worse than a “bad cold”); and then, when the infection rate and the body count make denial impossible to sustain, pivot and blame the left: the President is a victim of his political enemies.

The pervasiveness of the denial among many of Mr. Trump’s followers from early in the outbreak, and their sharp pivot to finding fault with an old foe once the crisis deepened, is a pattern that one expert in the spread of misinformation said resembled a textbook propaganda campaign.

As the rightwing echo chamber swerves from one fable to the next, yesterday’s account is forgotten. (We’ve always been at war with Eurasia.) Consistency and coherence, truth and facts, don’t matter. But the shifting narratives have this in common: they stoke a fundamental partisan divide. It’s us vs. them. Trump and his conservative base vs. Democrats/liberals/the left, that is to say, the enemies of America.

Peters references Rush Limbaugh’s denunciation of the Four Corners of Deceit (government, academia, science, and the media), which – as it happens – are sources of information independent of the right’s narrative of the day (whatever that happens to be). Limbaugh, with a bigger audience than FNC, deserves a gold star (to go along with his Presidential Medal of Freedom) for yeoman service to the misinformation campaign on behalf of Donald Trump.

Limbaugh, February 24: “Folks, this coronavirus thing, I want to try to put this in perspective for you. It looks like the coronavirus is being weaponized as yet another element to bring down Donald Trump. Now, I want to tell you the truth about the coronavirus. You think I’m wrong about this? You think I’m missing it by saying that’s — Yeah, I’m dead right on this. The coronavirus is the common cold, folks.”

And March 27: “We didn’t elect a president to defer to a bunch of health experts that we don’t know. And how do we know they’re even health experts? Well, they wear white lab coats, and they’ve been in the job for a while, and they’re at the CDC and they’re at the NIH, and they’re up, well — yeah, they’ve been there, and they are there. But has there been any job assessment for them? They’re just assumed to be the best because they’re in government. But, these are all kinds of things that I’ve been questioning.”

The duplicity, the conspiracy theories, the eagerness to play the victim: the charade is over the top because the failure is catastrophic. Donald Trump, who doesn’t focus much beyond the next news cycle, has abdicated a leadership role in this crisis (though he relishes his time on center stage at the daily coronavirus briefings). I noted last month that the United States had no national strategy for combating the coronavirus. It still doesn’t, because President Trump insists that the nation’s governors are responsible for protecting the public, while the federal government will play only a “backup” role.

“Massive amounts of medical supplies, even hospitals and medical centers, are being delivered directly to states and hospitals by the Federal Government. Some have insatiable appetites & are never satisfied (politics?). Remember, we are a backup for them….”

The coronavirus is a national threat, which doesn’t recognize state boundaries. Containment – to be effective – can’t be a patchwork. It makes little sense to fob off responsibility to 50 state governors, who are placed in a position of outbidding each other, and FEMA, for test kits, personal protective equipment, ventilators, and other scarce equipment, as the infection spreads throughout the country. The President of the United States, who possesses authority and commands resources beyond the reach of any governor, could – if he chose – take charge. But he doesn’t.

“Remember, we are a backup for them.”

Doctors, scientists, public health experts, including senior officials in past administrations of both parties, agree that the Trump administration’s disavowal of responsibility will cost thousands of American lives. The failures are ongoing, increasing the death toll (“Trump administration’s lack of a unified coronavirus strategy will cost lives, say a dozen experts”):

The Trump administration has declined to nationalize the medical logistics system and hasn’t executed a national testing strategy. Although the president likely lacks the legal authority to impose a national stay-at-home order, he has declined to urge each governor to do so. Seven states haven’t imposed one, including Texas.

The results are clear: Governors and doctors report critical shortages of gear, it remains very difficult to get tested for the virus, and some Americans still aren’t heeding guidance to keep away from others.

That NBC report references an editorial this week in the New England Journal of Medicine, “Ten Weeks to Crush the Curve,” proposing a strategy for eradicating the coronavirus in a “forceful, focused campaign.” Donald Trump has declared himself a “wartime president” battling an “invisible enemy.” NEJM insists, “It’s a war we should fight to win.” The first step, the step that only a president can take: “Establish unified command.”

This country has never had a Commander in Chief in wartime who deferred to states and localities for leadership. Our erratic, irresolute president can’t settle on a strategy for more than a few hours. This makes little sense, though it is a means to distance Trump from the consequences of COVID-19. It facilitates a dodge of responsibility.

More troubling, Trump’s three years of misrule have undermined the administration’s capacity for effective action. He has hollowed out the executive branch, traded competence for sycophancy, and enfeebled the federal government.

Susan Glasser tells the story in the New Yorker:

“When you are done being angry about all the crazy, nasty, inconsistent, and untrue things that Donald Trump says each day about the coronavirus and other matters, remember that the flood of words is cover for an Administration that in some ways barely exists relative to its predecessors, especially when it comes to crucial areas of domestic, economic, and international security—or even straightforward crisis management. Turnover at the upper levels of Trump’s White House stands at eighty-three per cent, according to a Brookings Institution tracker. In his Cabinet, Trump has had far more turnover than Presidents Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama, and both George Bushes. The capacity of the federal government to respond to this catastrophe—even if Trump had been so inclined—has never been weaker. The virus was not of Trump’s making, but his government’s incoherent, disorganized response to it was utterly predictable.” [My emphasis.]

It is not just the White House that has lost capacity. Vacancies in the Treasury Department have already begun to impair administration economic policy. And, as Jonathan Bernstein suggests, Trump’s economic policies are already shaky:

Trump … likes the idea of big, unprecedented action, which is a perfect match for the current situation. But in three-plus years, he still doesn’t appear have any idea how the government works, what he’s supposed to do to make things happen, or anything about the economy outside of how it affects him personally.

Donald Trump’s shortcomings have been evident for all to see throughout the past three-plus years. National Republicans, making a cynical trade-off, have given him a pass. With the arrival of COVID-19, the country is paying dearly for Republicans’ political calculations.

Now, still all-in with Trump, the party will scramble furiously to avoid a reckoning.

(Image: On April 1, Trump brought out the generals.)

Democracy, Donald Trump

Amid deep background reporting and anonymous bravado, the overall picture is unchanged: a train wreck of a presidency

In a week when Bob Woodward’s “Fear” paints in chilling detail a portrait of a White House engulfed in conflict, chaos, and covert insubordination, and an anonymous op-ed in the New York Times attests to the derisive views of President Trump by those closest to him and persistent workarounds to keep him from getting his way, what have we learned?

Conflict in presidential administrations is commonplace. Appointees often represent wings of a political party with different priorities than the president. Directives are often ignored by cabinet members. Aides try to protect the president from his worse impulses. This is all normal.

“But,” Jonathan Bernstein writes, “what we’re hearing about in these Trump stories is sort of a radical version of standard operating procedure for White House staff and the executive branch when faced with a president who is utterly unfit for the job.”

Donald Trump is impulsive, indulges in reckless rants and incoherence, has a short attention span, is easily distracted, lacks intellectual curiosity, is ignorant of history and policy, and reveals an irrepressible narcissism. We already know all this (which touches only on Trump’s mental capacity, not on his prejudice, avarice, or lack of principle) from watching the public Donald Trump and, for anyone who reveres democratic government, this is frightening. In Bernstein’s words:

What’s really scary is that Trump’s ineptitude at his job means that the normal constraints that keep presidents from doing terrible things may simply not apply. Normal presidents care about their professional reputation among those they work with, and about their popularity among the nation at large, and so they attempt to do the sorts of things that would enhance their reputations and make voters like them. Because he’s unable to even try to do those things — because he has apparently has no sense at all of how the job works — Trump doesn’t see the clear warning signs and then back off things that damage himself and the nation.

Or, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Timothy L. O’Brien puts it, “he generally doesn’t care about the long-term damage he might inflict on himself or those around him as long as he’s the center of attention.” That’s truly scary because the entire political system, as those who have read Federalist 51 will recognize, depends on politicians who care deeply about avoiding damage to themselves.

Federalist 51, generally attributed to James Madison, describes the features of the Constitution intended to “furnish the proper checks and balances between different departments” of government, such as constraints on personal ambition and buffers against encroachment of one branch on another. As remarkable as Donald Trump’s incapacity is, equally remarkable is the implacable abdication of the Republican majority in Congress to provide oversight over the executive branch.

Two of the President’s ‘critics’ in the majority party – both of whom have chosen not to seek reelection, which would require them to face the GOP voter base (still in lockstep with Trump) – find no grounds for disputing the devastating portrait of their leader.

Senator Bob Corker: “This is what all of us have understood to be the situation from day one… I understand this is the case and that’s why I think all of us encourage the good people around the President to stay. I thank General Mattis whenever I see him…”

Senator Ben Sasse: “It’s just so similar to what so many of us hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week. So it’s really troubling, and yet in a way, not surprising.”

Neither Senator proposed any activity by Congress to remedy the situation our nation finds itself in. Congressional investigations of the executive branch are commonplace, even when the same party controls both Congress and the White House. Yet taking a closer look at what is going on is not in the cards for this Congress.

There is ample evidence, dating back to Newt Gingrich’s first days as Speaker of the House, of Republicans paring back the capacity of Congress to do its job. The inability to repeal the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) is the most glaring example of this failure in the current Congress (in part because no one on the Republican side of the aisle had developed the policy expertise to understand the ACA or to craft a plausible alternative, and no one in the leadership or among committee chairmen cared enough to do so).

Nonetheless, Speaker Paul Ryan and his team, which encouraged investigation after investigation of Benghazi (while boasting that it would harm Hillary Clinton’s 2016 election prospects) hasn’t simply forgotten Congress’s investigative role. Republicans have actually catalogued scandals and controversies that Congress could be investigating, if it had the will to do so (which is anticipated if Democrats regain the majority in the House this fall). A partial list from Axios, which obtained a copy of a document prepared by House Republicans:

  • President Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution’s emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization
  • Trump’s dealings with Russia, including the president’s preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin
  • The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels
  • James Comey’s firing
  • Trump’s firing of U.S. attorneys
  • Trump’s proposed transgender ban for the military
  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
  • White House staff’s personal email use
  • Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks
  • Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago
  • Jared Kushner’s ethics law compliance
  • Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors
  • The travel ban
  • Family separation policy
  • Hurricane response in Puerto Rico
  • Election security and hacking attempts
  • White House security clearances

Things aren’t normal in either the executive or legislative branches of government. (I’ll set aside for the moment consideration of the judicial branch, which will be transformed for at least a generation as Brett Kavanaugh takes a seat on the Supreme Court and the U.S. Senate continues to approve ideologues to district and appellate courts nationwide.)

Things aren’t normal because the Republican Party has become an outlier, trashing traditional governing norms whenever it has glimpsed a partisan advantage, while ignoring – and diverting attention from – the resulting harm to the country.

September 9, 2018 update: Barack Obama reentered the political fray on Friday, decrying the course our nation is on, the absence of checks and balances, and the urgency of changing direction.

“This is not normal. These are extraordinary times. And they’re dangerous times.”

Image: Dr. Richard Kimble (Harrison Ford) running for dear life in “The Fugitive.”

 

Democracy, Donald Trump

“Is this the most divided you have ever seen the United States?”

Jamie Dupree, a reporter whose career began during the Reagan administration, reports hearing that question frequently.

His response: “My answer is always – no, this is not the most divided that our country has been, even in my lifetime.”

He points to events of 45 to 50 years ago (1968-1973).

I was a freshman in college in 1968, a year the nation experienced two political assassinations – of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy; the My Lai massacre; and brutal clashes between protesters and the police at the National Democratic Convention in Chicago, which paved the way for the election of Richard Nixon.

The nation was engulfed in the Vietnam War abroad and protests in the streets at home. In 1970, National Guardsmen fired on protesting students at Kent State University, killing four of them. (Dupree’s post features a soundtrack of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young’s “Ohio,” with a photo montage from that year to illustrate the social chaos the country was experiencing.)

We don’t have half a million troops fighting a war in Southeast Asia today with high casualties and a military draft. We don’t have the level of violence in the streets that we had 50 years ago. So Dupree’s conclusion that we are less divided today than we were then is not unreasonable.

Nonetheless, this conclusion leaves something out. Since the late ’60s and early ’70s, our politics has become much more tribal. We are more separate than before in many ways. And in 2016, we elected the first president in my lifetime who, in Jonathan Bernstein’s words, “doesn’t even attempt to be president of the whole nation.” Even Nixon, who kept an enemies list – but kept it private, often spoke to the country as a whole and sought to appeal to – and to represent – both independents and Democrats, not just the Republican base.

Donald Trump began his political ascent as the chief proponent of the birther theory – intending to delegitimize his predecessor in the White House. His political rallies in 2016, and the Republican National Convention that nominated him, featured frenzied chants of “Lock her up!” directed at his Democratic opponent.  So (although for many months following his election, pundits predicted, and often professed to see, a pivot – the turning point where Trump adopted the norms and mores of recent – and distant – presidents) his approach to governing has been of a piece with his campaign. It’s either all-in with Trump; or excluded and excoriated.

The 45th president has, in effect, championed factional government. (Josh Marshall makes this point.) He has done so very deliberately and for all to see.

The phrase, “factional government,” is something we are accustomed to hearing applied to unstable regimes, or where opponents control separate regions – in the Middle East, for instance. When sectarian divisions exist, and there is no shared conception of the national interest, then insular, zero-sum tactics predominate. When one faction gains the upper hand, however precariously, disfavored groups – and a common, overarching public good – suffer.

The concept of factions has a special place in American political thought. James Madison – who feared that democratic society could be ripped apart by factionalism – wrote, in Federalist 10: “By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.”

The stubborn refusal of our president to embrace America whole – all of our citizens; our country’s abiding national interest; what we share in common, not what divides us – sets this era apart from the divisive years that Dupree recalls.

(Post revised July 13, 2018 to introduce Josh Marshall’s reference to factional government.)

(Photo from video montage – CSN&Y’s “Ohio.”)