Monday, January 01, 2018

Trump the bold Disrupter?

Digby Parton called this piece by Michael Grunwald "he best 'Trump's first year' analysis I've yet read": Michael Grunwald, Donald Trump Is a Consequential President. Just Not in the Ways You Think. Politico 12/30/2017.

He makes this point about whether Trump is "normal." The Democrats in 2017 generally stressed how abnormal Trump's Presidency is. And it's not hard to find points in favor of that argument: the blustering nationalism, the reckless tweeting, the blantant authortarian actions and threats, the narcissistic bombast, his obvious contempt for members of the female gender, his crass mixing of the Presidency and his family business.

But Grunwald also makes a reasonable observation here:
The most consequential aspect of President Trump — like the most consequential aspect of Candidate Trump — has been his relentless shattering of norms: norms of honesty, decency, diversity, strategy, diplomacy and democracy, norms of what presidents are supposed to say and do when the world is and isn’t watching. As I keep arguing in these periodic Trump reviews, it’s a mistake to describe his all-caps rage-tweeting or his endorsement of an accused child molester or his threats to wipe out “Little Rocket Man” as unpresidential, because he’s the president. He’s by definition presidential. The norms he’s shattered are by definition no longer norms. His erratic behavior isn’t normal, but it’s inevitably becoming normalized, a predictably unpredictable feature of our political landscape. It’s how we live now, checking our phones in the morning to get a read on the president’s mood. The American economy is still strong, and he hasn’t started any new wars, so pundits have focused a lot of their hand-wringing on the effect his norm-shattering will have on future leaders, who will be able to cite the Trump precedent if they want to hide their tax returns or use their office to promote their businesses or fire FBI directors who investigate them. But Trump still has three years left in his term. And the norms he’s shattered can’t constrain his behavior now that he’s shattered them. [my emphasis]
To recognize Trump's antics and misconduct as a "new normal" is not the same as endorsing them.

Grunwald adds this accurate observation:
... after campaigning as an anti-establishment populist, Trump has mostly governed as a partisan corporatist, earning loyalty points from congressional Republicans by stocking his administration with movement conservatives and embracing their unpopular agenda, ditching his promises to protect Medicaid and close tax loopholes for hedge funds while consistently siding with business owners and investors over workers and consumers. Congressional Republicans, even those who once called him unfit to serve, have mostly ignored his antics and even his sporadic attacks on them, kissing his ring in public even as they roll their eyes in private. They’d prefer their tax cuts without the white nationalist retweets, but it’s a package deal.
As he puts it later in the long article, "The point is that the crazy stuff Trump does is not a distraction from the important stuff Trump does. It’s important when the president does crazy stuff."

In a similar vein, David Shribman writes in President without precedent Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 01/01/2018:
An Inaugural Address that was at once a statement of triumph and a manifesto of change. A Supreme Court nomination fight that altered the Senate’s customs and transformed its rules. Repeated efforts to overturn Obamacare. Heightened tensions with North Korea — and with the mainstream media. A final push for a tax overhaul. Ferocious opposition, and ferocious devotion. ...

He has changed how presidents behave. He has changed how presidents talk. He has changed how presidents communicate. He has changed how presidents deal with Congress. He has changed how presidents approach the press. He has changed how presidents regard international trade. He has changed how prsidents deal with foreign countries. He has changed how presidents interact with scientists. He has changed how presidents treat the agencies and departments of their own government.

As Disrupter in Chief, Mr. Trump is arguably more in tune with the national zeitgeist than was former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton who, though she would have been the first female president, would have comported herself more like previous modern presidents, from FDR to Dwight Eisenhower to Barack Obama, than has Mr. Trump, for whom there seems no antecedent, although John Tyler, Andrew Jackson and Andrew Johnson might be the closest approximations.
Is this analysis, criticism, or praise? For Trump's fans, Trump being a "disrupter" is a good thing. He's shaking things up, challenging the Establishment, yadda, yadda, and - most importantly - doing it in the pursuit of goals that free-market zealots, white supremacists and corporate tax-cutters and deregulators can enthusiastically support.

Also, a special moment of garment-rending for Shribman's choice of Presidential comparisons: Jackson, Tyler and Andrew Johnson?!?

As Grunwald accurately notes, "Republicans have made it pretty clear that they don’t plan to stand up to Trump." And he reminds us of various ways in which the Republican Party has long been practicing a radical approach to politics while the Democrats take a conservative approach to preserving political norms even when it works to their disadvantage:
In 2016, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, which was perhaps the most effective shattering of Washington norms—first by helping elect Trump, by giving skeptical conservatives a pressing reason to vote for him, and later by enabling Trump to fill the vacancy with Justice Gorsuch, who will keep pulling American jurisprudence to the right long after Trump has left office.

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