My previous post was an emotional tirade in behalf of Kamala Harris and in opposition to the Other One. It is fair to say that too often we see and hear jeremiads against politicians that are little more than pure spleen, with almost no substance to back them up. We’ve grown used to people on the Right slamming liberals with claims that we will destroy the country, and then, when pressed for details, crickets.
So allow me a little space here for a few details.
What do I have against DJT?
Aside from his demeanor, which is that of an aging frat boy who never learned that No means No, he comes from a career of shysterism quite common in American culture. We usually don’t elect them to higher office. He has built his brand on braggadocio. He’s a clown, really, performing for the media, acting like he has the inside scoop on anything Wall Street, and that he has made a vast fortune based on his business acumen.
It is easy to show that this is all glitz and no substance. He started his working life with a $400 million dollar loan from his parents (what passes for a self-made man among the moneyed class) and proceeded to dodge bankruptcy for the next four decades. I remember the carnival-esque reporting on his first major fall in the 80s in which he was treated to a monthly stipend equal to the annual salary of many upper middle class people. Heaven forbid he have to move into a two bedroom walk-up of no more than 800 square feet. Too many of us laughed at the clear evidence that the rich receive different treatment.
He has left behind a trail of unpaid debt, shafted businesses, law suits, and defaults. This is a matter of public record. How anyone can look at that and see a successful businessman, I do not know. Unless you count gaming the system a measure of success. Perhaps. I think a lot of his “aura” has to do with how much he has gotten away with. Americans enjoy a clever and successful bandit story. We are sneakily taken with a rogue who makes off with the jewels while leaving the authorities baffled. And as long as he’s not stealing from us, then it’s just a story.
Mistaking the narrative coolness of that story for actual competence is a problem we have because we are a culture immersed in narratives, especially anti-authoritarian narratives. We don’t really want to live without reliable authority, but such stories appeal to the rebel in our national mythos. Add to that a celebrity status with a television show…
The problems begin when we mistake celebrity appeal with actual ability. We do that here. Popularity overwhelms realistic assessment. We complain about the party apparatus that vets candidates before we get to vote for them, but frankly it has served us better than not by keeping the utterly incompetent yet inexplicably popular away from real power.
Reagan is an example of when this system fails. He was not just problematic for the nation, he damaged California as a governor. Among other things, he wrecked one of the best higher education systems in the country. His public health policies pumped adrenaline into the homeless problem. (You thought I was going to go after his economics, didn’t you? Well, how is the destruction of public health not an economic issue?) He was a B-picture actor who became clay in the hands of Movement Conservatives.
Now, it is reasonable to say that in higher office, the public face of the person holding said office is important. One of the things a governor or a president must bring to the job is Presence. That’s why speeches are important, that’s why delivery is necessary. Especially the president, who must be, internationally, the Face of America. Obama was exemplary at this. Everything about him resonated with gravitas, competence, the best qualities of the American persona. Reagan, for all his faults, did bring that to the job. Sometimes, depending on all other circumstances, that may be enough, at least for short periods.
But it’s not everything, not by a long shot.
So what did Trump bring? Celebrity status, certainly, but what kind?
Back when George W. Bush was running, I heard many people decide he was their guy, not for any policy position he might have held, but because “I feel like I could have a beer with him.” I understand, he seemed approachable, he seemed down to earth, he came across as one of them. They did not feel diminished by him, intellectually at least. And he didn’t act like someone who came from a dynasty. The problem was, people on average couldn’t do that job. It requires more, and frankly if that’s your metric then you have to ask how you might come across to other heads of state.
Not well. By the end of his administration, Bush was being publicly dissed by other national leaders. especially in Europe. They did not take him seriously. Nothing overt, but you could see it if you paid attention. He did not receive the deference of his predecessors. Partly, this was due to the shadow cabinet his vice president ran. No one knew for a time who was running things here. Cheney undermined Bush’s credibility. It seemed obvious that in his second term, Bush realized this and made moves to reassert his own authority, but too late, and the mess he created in Iraq and Afghanistan was of such magnitude that we’re still suffering from it today.
Obama restored that international credibility. Like it or not, he revived respect globally.
Trump destroyed nearly all of it. Again, if you paid attention, you could see it. By his second year, no one trusted him. But worse than that, from the start of his campaign it was evident he was not even appealing to the average American, but to the schoolyard bully and the intolerant brute among us. The surprise was that so many of us contained that stunted child and got off on the tasteless jokes and the mockery of the disabled.
Nearly everything he did diminished the prestige of the presidency, from serving McDonald’s to an internationally acclaimed sports team to his wife’s destruction of the Kennedy rose garden to his praise for authoritarian leaders. The word salad that served as public addresses got worse the longer he was in office. His callous treatment of service people who contradicted him, the intemperate asides about veterans, and the fact that he kept changing his military advisors based on their lack of sycophancy demonstrated a lack of understanding about the nature of the office.
His base loved all this. I can only speculate why.
But that’s image. What about policy?
The trade war he started, with China specifically, cost us over 1800 manufacturing plants by 2018. Nearly 300,000 manufacturing jobs lost. One of the “unintended consequences” of this was a huge impact on farmers because China shifted its soy imports from the U.S. to Russia, which has now entailed closer ties between Moscow and Beijing at a time when we need China to stop supporting Russia over Ukraine. This was a knee-jerk policy decision that seemed “popular” with a public that had been primed for it over China’s intellectual property thefts and their purchase of American debt over the years.
But this also created the supply-chain situation that crippled our response to COVID-19 and exacerbated inflation after the pandemic. American companies reduced stocks on many things hoping for tariff rollbacks, which did not come. (And yes, Biden kept most of those tariffs—the economy had adjusted and the whipsaw of sudden rollbacks would destabilize markets that had finally found some equilibrium. Complex, certainly, but that’s just the point.)
In the meantime, he signed into law a massive tax cut for the top. Between its signing and the pandemic, the economy slowed by two-thirds. Unemployment, which had been dropping steadily under Obama, at about .75% annually, dropped more slowly, to .25% annually. The Dow had been gaining at an average of 16% annually before the tax bill. Afterward, it gained only 5 or 6% annually. Everything slowed. That slowing probably would have resulted in recession just before or just after election anyway, but the pandemic kicked it into overdrive.
As to that pandemic. Obama left behind a fairly robust pandemic response team. Trump’s budget cuts disemboweled it, along with funding for basic research. His chaotic incomprehension and apparent inability to let someone else be the smartest one in the room contributed directly to a tragic response. He has no understanding of science, he distrusts anyone who knows more than he does (this is evident from the pattern of firings almost from the beginning of his administration; firings of people many of whom he then did not replace, leaving important posts vacant), and from the beginning he was part of the conservative movement to reduce the size of the federal government. His response was textbook incompetence that put too many people in their graves.
His open and unapologetic embrace of dictators extended beyond fannish adoration and slipped into security breaches. The debacle of our Afghanistan withdrawal was engineered entirely by his people, though Biden got blamed. But that aside, he invited Taliban leaders to the White House in 2019. Why is this bad? Because he did not invite the legitimate Afghani government to the same meeting, which signaled his abandonment of them. Spin it as you wish, there is no seeing the Taliban as ethical or moral partners on any basis. Multiple messages can be seen from this, including an embrace of authoritarianism, a disregard for women’s rights, the dismissal of previous policy from 2003 on, and a blatant attempt at some kind of showmanship.
His stacking of the Supreme Court. Now, I do not believe Trump himself has the intellectual savvy to understand what he did. He was advised. Likely those like the Heritage Foundation who drafted Project 2025 picked those candidates and we have gotten so used to just rubberstamping nominees that the evident disqualifications not to mention the slick prevarications allowed three demagogues to pass right through. This has resulted in a stunning reversal of what we usually consider settled law, which all three declared they would respect. We were set up and Trump played his part. Emphasis on played.
The only people who made out well were those who always do well under Republican administrations. The ones who got the tax breaks. And to make it clear, the middle class got a tax increase thanks to the tariffs.
You may question Biden’s policies all you want. We are on the path to a historic recovery and perhaps a sea change in national character long overdue. I’m just telling you here some of the specifics on which I base my assessment of DJT. Rather than just run about panicking that he’s terrible and leave it at that, I thought I’d share a bit of why.
I know that there are people who will look at the above and wonder what my problem is. Well, back at you, folks.
