There is a tendency to greet the cynical view of the prospects for Donald Trump’s presidency with the comment, “well, nobody thought he would get elected either”. It is not new information that unlikely things sometimes happen. Trump might turn out to be a great president. In four years, we might all be looking back at millions of new, high-paying, union jobs, better and cheaper health care for more people, peace in the Middle East, and our inner cities, and a world that fears and respects America.
Maybe, at that point, Ivanka will run and succeed his father. It’s unlikely so… it could happen.
I personally think it is far more likely that the Trump presidency will end in chaos and disgrace and the Democrats will recover and run a competitive candidate in 2020.
Here’s why.
Firstly, Donald Trump is so ideologically incoherent and random that he may end up having more conflicts with the Republicans in Congress than with the Democrats. Trump appears to be a pragmatist with populist attitudes on many issues, while people like Paul Ryan and Mike Pence are hard-core ideologues who wish to ram their programs through regardless of the consequences. They are hoping to use Trump, the way Cheney and Rumsfeld used George Bush Jr. But Trump really believes in his own genius and he is unpredictable. He is also a spendthrift by nature, with delusions of his own competence. If he really wants a big building program funded by the government, to create some of those high-paying jobs he promised, he may have a fight on his hands.
Are these people clever enough to do what most governments do when they over-promise? Come up with a plausible counterfeit that costs a lot less, accomplishes nothing, but let’s you claim that you kept your promise?
I would expect that Trump’s first Supreme Court appointee may be a conventional conservative preferred by the Republican establishment, because he promised he would, and because he will be replacing Scalia. Will the next appointee after that be as conventional? One of Trump’s closest advisers is his daughter, Ivanka, who appears to have differing views on women’s issues and who may well have an influence on the selection of any possible candidate who might upset Roe vs. Wade (which a second appointee could do) and who might set back women’s rights significantly, like equal pay for equal work, and family leave. She is also someone who may be more conscious of the impact on the historical record if her father’s administration turns out to be the one that makes a mess of Roe vs. Wade. (I say “makes a mess of” rather than “ends”, because if the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade, it does not assert a new law: that will be up to the states, and each state will craft their own response. )
The biggest potential boondoggle is health care. Trump has made a very, very large point of repealing Obama care, and the hyenas in Congress will gladly proceed to divest 20 million people of their health care insurance. But will the sane Republican establishment go along? If they simply repeal Obamacare, they may end up with a very, very large pool of incensed voters in the next election. (It is clear that many people who voted for Trump don’t believe he’s really going to take away their health care.) More likely, Republicans in Congress will try to draft something that actually resembles Obamacare, and then maneuver to do something, anything that looks like repeal, so they can claim to have kept their campaign promise (a promise many of their voters probably wish they would forget).
This is not a foolish idea. After Obamacare was passed, both parties became aware of adjustments that were needed to make the program work properly– not unusual for large pieces of legislation. But the Republicans– hoping to make it fail– refused to allow any of these changes to be made. Now they have a chance, and then claim that they invented the program and take credit for it. The irony is that they did invent the program, as a wholly inadequate and disappointing substitute for a single-payer, universal health-care system. Obama adopted it thinking some Republicans would support their own idea making it “bipartisan”.
In some election down the road, they will claim that the Democrats will harm the program and only they can be trusted to preserve it: that will complete this cycle of political evolution.
Paul Ryan and his acolytes– who really believe this man is smart because he talks in complete sentences– really want to get rid of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security entirely. Because America is such a great country that it alone among the developed nations can’t afford such lavish social spending. But Trump wants to be popular, maybe even as the man who saved Medicare. And he doesn’t care about debt– it was never a major theme of his campaign.
Here’s another thing: it is clear that many of his cabinet picks and advisers really have no idea of what a conflict of interest is, or don’t really care. The courts are not controlled by either the Executive or Legislative branches of government. There will be lawsuits and hearings and investigations and I’m not sure Trump’s appointees in general are smart enough to know when not to give in to temptation.
These are not team-players. Many of Trump’s appointees will be delighted to see other appointees fail and lose influence. They might even help.
[whohit]The Trump Dump[/whohit]