Part V. Political Transformation in the Balance

12. The Future of the Trump Presidency

Two major remaining questions about the Trump presidency are whether it has a future, especially given the Coronavirus’ enormous and unprecedented challenge, and if so what kind? It is possible that the president will lose his reelection bid. In that case, Trump’s reconstructive aspirations that we examined under the rubric of the Politics of American Restoration will die stillborn. Even if Trump wins reelection he likely to still face major opposition. As a result, a major question of a possible second term will be this: in a deeply and highly divided country, how will it be possible for President Trump to develop and sustain a new consensus around the eight policy pillars that have defined his presidential ambitions?

More generally and theoretically, the question arises: how do entrenched narratives change? Political Science and the “literature” provide little guidance. It’s relatively easy enough to point to transformations when a country has suffered catastrophic military, economic, political, or cultural traumas. Yet, it is unclear just how much of an epoch-defining event the pandemic will be for the United States. At this point, the country has been through many months of economic and medical trauma, helped to some degree by pouring enormous government economic and administrative resources, at all levels, to try to mitigate the Coronavirus’ effects. The fact that the country was doing economically well before the virus hit has provided a bit of a cushion.

Trump did have a laundry list of plausible accomplishments to tout as he did during his 2020 State of the Union Address. One need not fully accept all of what he said to allow some substance to his claims. Yet, its fairly obvious that Trump’s reelection will turn on the state of the country and its level of post-pandemic existence, and whether the President’s overall response to the economic downtown, pandemic and racial equality crises are seen in a favorable way.

Trump’s presidency was attempting some rare, substantial changes in arguably good circumstances before the pandemic. He was not a Lincoln facing the end of the Union. He was not an FDR facing economic catastrophe or a brutal World War, one following right after the other. The pandemic has been brutal, but a different kind of crisis than those just mentioned. As a result, Trump’s presidency has entered into unchartered territory. We, analyzing his presidency, must follow.

America’s Political Collision Course

The United States has been on the path to, and has arrived at, a dramatic fork in the road with the arrival of the Trump presidency. Donald Trump’s presidency began and unfolded at the culmination of a long growing political and leadership crisis in the United States. That crisis is not of the type usually associated with that word, like major wars or economic dislocations, although those two have been part of this country’s recent history. The crisis that Trump’s election, and the response to it, has brought into much clearer focus is a surging disconnect between policy promises and performance and between what national leaders say and do and what growing segments of the population think. The pandemic has added its own unique impact to that already present and prevalent crisis as has the traumatic impact of George Floyd’s death during a police stop and the peaceful demonstrations, riots, and assault on public statues of American history that followed.

The Trump presidency has clarified, exacerbated, and reflected these basic disconnections between promises, expectations, and performance. In the eight pillar policy areas and their many associated policies, President Trump literally has taken a rhetorical and policy sledgehammer to the narrative foundations that had been conventional wisdom for the last five decades. His goal is to encourage some alternative views to air and some alternative policies to audition.

Trump did not subscribe to the decades of soothing policy narratives favored by liberal, conservative, Democratic and Republican establishment leadership figures alike. As noted, he did not believe that there were no downsides to unlimited so-called “free trade.” He did not believe that there was no downside to failing to enforce immigration laws already on the books. He did not subscribe to the view that NATO was just fine as it was, still operating on the premises of its founding in 1949, to name just three of many areas in which Trump took exception to the conventional wisdom policy narratives.

As a working shorthand, one can refer as a group to the narratives that have increasingly dominated American public life since Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society, as the establishment policy paradigm. That concept reflects the liberal or progressive idea that more government programs designed to alleviate inequalities or difficulties wherever and however they appear are among the most important functions of government. Democratic and Republican leadership might disagree at the margins, but they have shared, to a large degree, these basic premises.

Over decades, that agreement was instrumental in developing two major contemporaneous political fault lines. These were a loss in confidence in policy promises and performance. Many major policies simply did not work as promised. The other fault line was the loss in confidence in political leaders who, with a few exceptions, recycled their parties’ preferred policy talking points rather than having frank discussions about real policy options and their consequences (see Chapter 3).

A Nation and Its Institutions Take Sides

The direct manifestations of this policy and leadership gap were observable in one other basic contemporary political development, the sorting of the nation’s political parties, individuals, and institutions along political lines. The political parties themselves began a process in which Republicans became more conservative and Democrats more liberal or progressive at the party leadership level. This was mirrored and reflected among ordinary party members.¹ The most obvious manifestation of this development was that on almost every single policy or political survey question asked one could find stark partisan differences.² As one review of a new book³ on polarization points out: “Trump is more a vessel for our division than the cause, and [that is] why his departure will not provide any magical cure.”⁴

At the same time, ordinary Americans increasingly got their news and views from starkly divergent sources that were more in accord with their starting premises or preferences. Major news outlets reflected these developments in their news departments. There had for some time been an undercurrent of partisan preference in the nation’s major news and media outlets. That was essentially because they generally shared the same establishment policy paradigm about the necessity of the development and growth of the politically liberal administrative state.

With the arrival of the Trump presidency, several of the country’s major national newspapers, the Washington Post and New York Times, publicly took the position that given Trump’s unique danger to this country and its democracy, “neutrality” was not a viable option for reporting or commentary. The Washington Post’s new hyperbolic motto, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” would have been more accurate had it reflected the paper’s real publishing premise, “Democracy Dies as a Result of Reporting Neutrality.” They acted on this new anti-Trump principle and many other major news, media, and commentary organizations followed their lead.

However, what really changed in just the last decade was that the traditionally elite news and views organizations no longer sat alone atop the media hierarchy. The development of new social media, major alternative news sources such as Fox, a dramatic expansion of alternative non-traditional establishment news and views websites, and an explosion of bloggers and blogging aggregators all have rendered the traditional establishment policy paradigm monopoly on news and views no longer operative. One analysis pointed to these developments with the term the “era of historic media fragmentation,”⁵ and it is a fitting term.

There is one more aspect of the elemental polarization that has recently emerged during the Trump presidency and thus has not, as yet, received sufficient attention or analysis. The occasion of its emergence into public clarity is a report by the GAO (Government Accountability Office) finding that the president’s delaying of aid to the Ukraine “broke the law,”⁶ as a number of news reports noted.⁷ That finding was immediately pressed into the service of impeaching Trump.⁸ The administration immediately responded that the GAO was mistaken as a matter of law and that the money was delayed for legitimate presidential review, and was released.

Deep in the Washington Post news report covering this event was the following:

Several administrations have been slapped by the GAO, including that of George Bush, Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush. In general, the administrations were cited for freeing funds for spending, making lawsuits unnecessary.

Other reports soon brought to light other instances of the exact same presidential behavior resulting in a low-key GAO response. In one instance, the GAO found that the Bergdahl prisoner swap violated the law.⁹ In another, the GAO report found that “Obama Administration Broke its Own Health Care Rule.”¹⁰ In all these cases, including the Trump Ukrainian case, the violations were contested by the administration involved, explained by other considerations, and were not considered serious enough by the GAO to sue the administrations involved, as they could have done.

In the Trump case, as expected, the GAO Ukrainian report led to a partisan public and political debate. Anti-Trump supporters insisted that the GAO report absolutely validated Trump’s impeachment and removal from office. Another commentary took a contrary position, noting that that the GAO was an arm of Congress, and to that extent was not wholly “independent.” In fact it said¹¹:

GAO acknowledges in a footnote that its opinion was rendered at the request of Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.), who repeatedly prodded GAO staff to say whether they agreed with his claim of a Trump legal violation. But in the body of its opinion, GAO doesn’t say it’s acting to serve one of its legislative bosses but instead claims: “Pursuant to our role under the [Impoundment Control Act], we are issuing this decision.”

That same report noted that the “‘nonpartisan’ GAO’s personnel are represented by the AFL-CIO’s International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers whose PAC in 2016 gave 100% of its donations to Democrats and 0% to Republicans.”

Why do these points matter? The answer is best captured in an analysis by Alan Dershowitz, that is worth quoting at some length¹²:

Whatever one may think about the substantive merits of what President Donald Trump did or did not do with regard to the Ukrainian money—which was eventually sent without strings—he certainly had the authority to delay sending the funds. The GAO was simply wrong in alleging that he violated the law, which includes the Constitution, by doing so.

To be sure, the statute requires notification to Congress, but if such notification significantly delays the president from implementing his foreign policy at a time of his choice, that too would raise serious constitutional issues.

Why then would a nonpartisan agency get it so wrong as a matter of constitutional law. There are two obvious answers: first, in the age of Trump there is no such thing as nonpartisan. The political world is largely divided into people who hate and people who love President Trump. This is as true of long term civil servants as it is of partisan politicians. We have seen this with regard to the FBI, the CIA, the Fed and other government agencies that are supposed to be nonpartisan. There are of course exceptions. But most civil servants share the nationwide trend of picking sides. The GAO does not seem immune to this divisiveness.

We can see this development of picking sides across America’s major cultural, economic, and political institutions. It can be seen in the media, in education, in business, in civic, legal, and myriad professional organizations, and in federal, state, and local government bureaucracies. It would be a mistake to label all of this “picking sides” as directly politically partisan, although much of it is. Some of it can be traced back to the establishment policy paradigm discussed above. That is to say, some anti-Trump views and practices may originally stem not so much from direct political partisanship, but rather strong and fervent disagreement with Trump’s efforts to revise and where necessary discard the establishment policy paradigm framed by the liberal or progressive premises of the last several decades. Admittedly, it is very difficult to find a clear bright line between the two. We can however see this distinction in operation in clearer form in the context of examining the concept of a so-called “national security interagency consensus.” and how that somewhat elastic term was used to argue against the president's policy by a staffer at a Congressional hearing.

The National Security “Interagency Consensus”

Political and social scientists have long been familiar with the concept of “Regulatory Capture,”¹³ the process by which those being regulated become part of their own regulation. This is a term ordinarily applied to the government regulation of non-governmental entities like banks or other businesses. However, there is another variant of that idea that is less often associated with that term. That occurs when supposedly independent non-partisan federal oversight agencies have a strong mission and rationale associated with their name and policy outlook, for example the Environmental Protection Agency or the Department of Education. In those circumstances, generations of its personnel move the agency as far as they can in the direction that they understand as the agency’s mission. Many of the large federal bureaucracies—Health Education and Welfare, Education, Environmental Protection Agency, to name three, are almost synonymous with the Great Society premises of the establishment policy paradigm.

This is a familiar problem for Republican presidents, and Donald Trump is no exception. What Trump’s presidency has added to our understanding is that the establishment policy paradigm is not only an ongoing issue for domestic policy executive agencies, but also for foreign policy. There it is not a case of the Department of Education being skeptical of “school choice,” a liberal-conservative policy debate that is in some respects normalized by being played out recently across different presidencies and major city mayoralties.

Foreign policy obviously has its own ongoing debates. However, in this arena there is more of an expectation of independent minded analysis based on career long familiarity with the area or issues. Senior national security advisors to the president are expected to have views on the many issues that a president faces. North Korean experts are expected to be just that.

It is within that framework that the impeachment testimony of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman was given.¹⁴ He testified that he thought the president was withholding foreign aid as a quid pro quo for the Ukrainians starting an investigation of corruption that would include Hunter Biden. He acknowledged that he had no first-hand evidence of his assumption, but that it is not the major point here.

In his prepared testimony, Vindman said:

In the Spring of 2019, I became aware of outside influencers promoting a false narrative of Ukraine inconsistent with the consensus views of the interagency. This narrative was harmful to U.S. government policy. While my interagency colleagues and I were becoming increasingly optimistic on Ukraine’s prospects, this alternative narrative undermined U.S. government efforts to expand cooperation with Ukraine.

There are many questions raised by this statement. What exactly is the “interagency consensus?” What was the process by which it was derived? How consensual was it? Were there any dissents? And if so, what were they? The most basic question that must be addressed here is where in the Constitution does it say that the “inner agency” consensus will have any, much less the deciding role, in making American foreign policy?

Lieutenant Colonel Vindman addressed none of these questions. However, what stands out about this statement is that the views of Lt. Colonel Vindman, a national security staffer, and the claimed consensus of presumably others just like him, should take precedence over that of a duly elected president. Lieutenant Colonel Vindman further said:

I was concerned by the call. I did not think it was proper to demand that a foreign government investigate a U.S. citizen, and I was worried about the implications for the U.S. government’s support of Ukraine. I realized that if Ukraine pursued an investigation into the Bidens and Burisma, it would likely be interpreted as a partisan play which would undoubtedly result in Ukraine losing the bipartisan support it has thus far maintained. This would all undermine U.S. national security. Following the call, I again reported my concerns to NSC’s lead counsel.

As is clear from the transcript of the call, the president never “demanded” an investigation. He didn’t demand anything. When Lieutenant Colonel Vindman said “I realized …” what he really meant is that “he thought …” or concluded or summarized what he thought was true. However, he presented no direct independent evidence of this before Congress except to say that was what he thought. His stated worry was that by asking for evidence that something was being done to address the very obvious and widely known corruption issue in Ukraine would “undermine bipartisan support it has thus far maintained.”

This leads directly to two questions. First, did that bipartisan support include acceptance of widespread Ukraine corruption? If not, why would asking to do something about widespread corruption disrupt support for the country? Wouldn’t it increase it?

The issue of inter-agency consensus makes another appearance in a Washington Post article about Trump’s 2019 Syrian withdrawal:

If members of the policy and defense community are experiencing whiplash from President Trump’s latest Syria announcement, it is not because U.S. intentions in Syria have changed. It is because, once again, key decisions—with massive political and security implications in the region—have been announced swiftly, without warning, and in the absence of interagency consensus and planning.

The phrase “absence of interagency consensus and planning” links to an article that carries that accusation, but also notes the following¹⁵:

A senior administration official dismissed that characterization, insisting that senior national security officials were consulted. “That surprises me because this is something that was discussed among senior leadership here, at the State Department and the Pentagon, so I don’t know how anybody could’ve been blindsided,” the official told reporters on a conference call.

Trump himself took note in an interview of just how long, how many years, it took to get his Syrian policies followed. Asked about his Syrian reposition and drawdown the following exchange too place¹⁶:

Q:

Is it a firm decision, sir?

THE PRESIDENT:

It’s always a firm decision. Last time I made a firm decision, but—and I said, “We’ll do it over a period of time.” We’ve been doing this, actually, over a period of time—over a very long period of time.

Another perspective on this debate comes from former Republican Senator Bob Corker, an establishment critic of Trump’s foreign policies who, in speaking about Trump’s tendency to reach out widely for advice, had this to say¹⁷:

“I just have known through my years there that so many people have access to the president,” Corker said, declining to name them. “Typically, you want the people who are giving input to have credentials and have knowledge of the area, but I know that’s not the case necessarily today.”

Translation: Trump asks for advice from many people, some or many of whom may be what Senator Corker believes to be the wrong kind of people.

The National Security Consensus and Trump’s Syria Drawdown

There have been other examples of Trump deciding against an agency or even an interagency consensus, most notable recently in Syria which we noted briefly in Chapter 5. Trump’s 2019 decision was to reposition, not remove,¹⁸ fifty American military advisors from the path of an imminent Turkish incursion into Northern Syria. Again, as in 2018, Trump said he would leave some troops in Syria to protect the oil fields,¹⁹ not necessarily the Kurds.²⁰

In fact, there were two large and different groups of Kurds in Syria. The northern branch (YPP) had Marxist-Leninist origins, substantial ties to the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PPK), and is considered a terrorist group by the Turkish government and the US Department of State. The PKK “has been waging armed struggle against Turkey since 1984 at a cost of tens of thousands of lives.”²¹ More problematic still was that the PPK branch of Kurds, who, while allying themselves with the United States, used that opportunity to gain more territory on the Turkish border. As the New York Times put it²²:

Since 2012, Kurdish forces had harnessed the chaos of the Syrian civil war to carve out an autonomous region along the border with Turkey, free of Syrian government control. They greatly expanded their territory by partnering with American troops to force out Islamic State militants from the area.

This angered and concerned the Turkish government.

Those involved in developing and maintaining the policy that Trump decided against were also visibly upset.²³ Predictions of dire consequences immediately surfaced. Trump was “colluding with” and “selling out to” Turkey.²⁴ The United States, it was said, had “abandoned” our long-term allies, the (PPK) Kurds. They would be “at the mercy of the Turkish government” and slaughtered by Turkish soldiers.²⁵ ISIS would enter the vacuum caused by our withdrawal and in the words of one analyst: “there’s a good chance ISIS could recoup its major losses.”²⁶ Turkey would be emboldened and launch a full scale invasion of Northern Syria.

None of those dire predictions happened. The United States was soon partnering again with those same Kurdish allies against the individual remnants of ISIS.²⁷ They were not “abandoned.” Nor were they slaughtered. Nor did the Turkish government launch a full scale invasion.

The New York Times titled one of its major articles on Trump’s decision²⁸: “In Syria, Trump Distills a Foreign Policy of Impulse, and Faces the Fallout.” Yet oddly, the very first paragraph of that report reads:

No one should have been surprised, and yet it seems that everyone was. President Trump made clear long ago that he wanted to get out of the Middle East, but even some of his own supporters evidently assumed that he would not follow through or that someone would stop him.

How Trump’s decision could be labeled as an impulse when he had “made it clear a long time ago”, and discussed it numerous times on the campaign trail is unclear.²⁹ Presidential positions however deeply thought through or not, that are developed, discussed, and argued over time are more accurately considered policies, not impulses. Indeed, Trump had campaigned on this issue and has already announced his intention to begin withdrawing American troops from Northern Syria in 2018.³⁰ In trying to do so then, he had also invoked some of the same criticisms. As a result, he modified his orders increasing the drawdown period and leaving a 400-person residual force behind,³¹ while still reducing their absolute numbers .

Policy and Political Opposition Within the Trump Administration

Syria was one of a number of policy arenas in which those responsible for and committed to past policy “slow-walked,” tried to ignore or downplay the president’s direct orders.³² The New York Times noted in one of its reports that³³: “The Pentagon had, for nine months, played down that presence, hoping Mr. Trump would not focus on the extent to which the American military was continuing to fight the Islamic State despite his order in December to pull out.”

Another example concerned North Korea. The New York Times reported that when, “Mr. Trump decided to halt military exercises and informed the Pentagon afterward, Defense Department officials quietly continued the exercises but just did not refer to them as exercises.”³⁴

These incidents must have given the president a certain déjà vu feeling. Trump perhaps recalled reports that the head of his national economic council, Gary Cohn, had taken documents off his desk to keep him from signing them.³⁵ Or perhaps they recalled for him the New York Times op-ed by Anonymous,³⁶ who wrote that he or she was dedicated to staying in their White House job and sabotaging the Trump presidency for the good of the country.

Trump Smarts: Dunce, Hedgehog, or Fox?

Seeking advice is one thing; being smart enough to make use of it another. The prevailing wisdom about Trump’s intelligence is that he is, in words attributed to former Secretary of State Tillerson, “a moron.”³⁷ Trump replied to that report³⁸: “I think it’s fake news, but if he did that, I guess we’ll have to compare IQ tests. And I can tell you who is going to win.”

The certainty that Trump is both ignorant³⁹ and stupid⁴⁰ are staples of opposition characterizations. He “doesn’t read”,⁴¹ and as a result likes to have oral intelligence briefings rather than written ones.⁴² Plus, he speaks at a 3rd,⁴³ 4th,⁴⁴ or 6th grade level.⁴⁵ Take your pick, although “Presidential Speeches Were Once College-Level Rhetoric—Now They’re for Sixth-Graders.”⁴⁶ If Trump is ceded to have some modicum of intelligence, it is “a craven sort of cunning,”⁴⁷ or reptilian “Lizard wisdom,”⁴⁸ the kind that doesn’t take any “real” intelligence to have. It’s not worth wasting much time further detailing this serial name calling because it detracts from more interesting questions.

Trump has his own view of his intelligence.⁴⁹ He trolls opposition supporters by saying he is a “stable genius.”⁵⁰ In Trump’s view and words,⁵¹ in response to allegations he is mentally ill:

Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming mental stability and intelligence. … Actually, throughout my life, my two greatest assets have been mental stability and being, like, really smart. Crooked Hillary Clinton also played these cards very hard and, as everyone knows, went down in flames. I went from VERY successful businessman, to top T.V. Star … to President of the United States (on my first try). I think that would qualify as not smart, but genius … and a very stable genius at that!

Trump is certainly not a genius in any conventional understanding of that word, but there is some evidence he has a point. Richard Painter, a vociferous Trump critic, had this to say: “he would not have gotten this far as the first non-politician to be elected president since Dwight Eisenhower—if he were lacking in intelligence.”⁵² Susan Estrich, a longtime Democratic lawyer and operative had this to say⁵³:

I’m sorry, Donald Trump may be many things, but he is not stupid. He is not in over his head; he’s been swimming along just fine. He is shrewd. You don’t get to be president without being shrewd.

Shrewd is, of course a form of being smart. John Kelly, former White House Chief of Staff who thinks the president is⁵⁴

a super smart guy. He’s very strong in terms of trade, taxes, business and he’s a quick study on everything else. He’s a pretty bright guy.

Trump may have his own more narrow element of “genius” (see below), but he is, as noted, no Freud or Einstein. He is however, clearly intelligent and has demonstrated that in a lifetime of business empire building. He has demonstrated it in his showmanship skills. He has displayed it in completely upending and dominating a very experienced field of seventeen Republican presidential candidates and winning the Republican nomination. He then won the general election against a very smart, very experienced, and very well connected Democratic nominee. Unless one seriously thinks that Trump is the political equivalent of Chauncey Gardner and that these accomplishments are the result of his being a moron or ignoramus, it is fair to credit his intelligence.

A more interesting question is what kind of intelligence Trump possesses. He is not an intellectual in the academic understanding of that term. He does not have the deep knowledge of a scholar about many, if not most things. His intelligence is of a different kind; the ability to see the essential nature of the circumstances that confront him or others, and move quickly to act on what he sees. The first is a by-product of intelligence, the second a by-product of his psychology.

This was the case when Trump first ventured into New York and saw the opportunity awaiting someone with the properties of the bankrupt Penn Central railroad yards on the upper west side of New York. It was true of his acquisition of the Commodore Hotel (Grand Hyatt) and the adjacent property. It was true of his decision to utilize bankruptcy to avoid the complete collapse of his business empire. It was the case for his decision to turn to branding real estate as an entrepreneurial vehicle, something that no one had ever thought to do before.

Trump’s genius, if that’s what it is, may be no more mysterious than being able to see the obvious, that is hidden in plain sight, while others are inhibited by their assumptions or lack of courage in seeing things as they are and yet not being able to act on that knowledge, if they do see it. One is reminded of the old saying: “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king”—or perhaps president.

Trump is not perfect. Neither are his abilities. His failure to see or stop himself from getting into his deep economic troubles in the 1990s attests to this fact. So does his inability, to date, to not respond to every provocation of which there are and will continue to be many.

It is true that Mr. Trump did not know much about the details of NATO, but he did know that Americans had been carrying a larger financial burden than their allies had promised, repeatedly, would be the case. He insisted NATO allies live up to their word. He also knew enough to know that NATO had been conceived in the Cold War and the world had changed. NATO therefore needed to think about its purpose. Stated directly, the insights sound commonplace, and they are, except for the fact that few others voiced them, if they saw them, and no establishment leaders were acting on them.

Or consider a domestic policy example. As president elect, Trump knew enough about business to insist that by leaning on the Carrier Corporation to keep jobs in America he was sending a signal about his focus on jobs as president. President Obama visited that exact same company with a very different message.

Obama mocked Trump’s intentions to try to reverse the job losses saying⁵⁵:

When somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s—there’s no answer to it. He just says, “Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.” Well, how—what—how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.

Trump’s intervention saved roughly a thousand of the jobs slated to be sent to Mexico.⁵⁶ In taking a different approach than President Obama, Trump was signaling that he would be a different kind of president. In trying to help these thousand workers and their families and communities, he was also signaling that he was a different kind Republican president. In the past, “certainly for a Republican president-to-be the GOP is the party that is supposed to eschew the kind of government intervention in business decisions that Mr. Trump’s actions represent.”⁵⁷

Trump was also sending a signal to other companies planning on moving out of the country.⁵⁸ Think twice. It won’t be a free move. Trump promised tariffs on manufacturing items coming into the country from corporations that had once had their facilities in the United States but moved abroad for lower costs.

The same dynamic can be seen in Trump’s views on immigration. Trump surprised one interviewer by saying quite directly and publicly that he had not followed immigration issues closely before descending the stairs at Trump Towers to make his candidacy announcement.⁵⁹ He said, “When I made my [announcement] speech at Trump Tower, the June 16 speech … I didn’t know about the Gang of Eight. … I just knew instinctively that our borders are a mess.”

It is that last sentence that is a key to the nature of Trump’s insights. According to one critic, “Donald Trump ran a brilliant Republican primary campaign.”⁶⁰ Yet, it’s wholly unsurprising that Trump could not place the Gang of Eight. Nor is it surprising that he could not expound on the details of American immigration policy. However, he did know one very large thing and was not afraid to say it loudly and publicly—“our borders are a mess.”

Sir Isaiah Berlin distinguished between hedgehogs who view the world through the lens of a single defining idea, and foxes, who draw on a wide variety of experiences,⁶¹ although his essay on Tolstoy suggests a person can be both. Trump appears to be such a hybrid. He is a business and political empire builder who relies on a variety of experiences.

Raising questions is one vital and another unusual aspect of Trump’s presidential leadership style. Trump does not just take in and use various experiences. He asks about them.

Trump: A Man of Many Questions

We noted that Trump reaches out to a large diverse group of people for a sounding on his circumstances and to get advice. At one point, not uncommonly, “At a town hall meeting in Texas, Trump even polled audience members to get their input on the fate of the nation’s undocumented immigrants.”⁶² However, Mr. Trump is more than an empty vessel waiting to be filled with information by others whose views he trusts. One aspect of Mr. Trump’s active intelligence is that he is a president who asks many questions about a lot of things.

An opposition response to that fact would be: of course, he has to, he knows nothing. The opposition take on Trump is that he thinks he knows everything, but knows nothing. The fact that Trump asks lots of questions is inconsistent with that premise.

We have already covered one set of basic Trump questions consisting of various versions of: “Why can’t I?” We noted that he asked Secretary of State Tillerson these questions about immigration policy because he really didn’t have any governmental experience and really didn’t know what specific laws and procedures were on the books. John Kelly’s exit interview covered similar points.⁶³ Kelly said Trump did, however, often express frustration about the limits afforded by the law and frequently asked Kelly, “Why can’t we do it this way?” Kelly explained why.

Trump’s basic questions to his friends, family, and acquaintances about his circumstances are part of a larger more politically consequential set of Trump questions. As one analysis concluded⁶⁴:

No public official in modern times has challenged so many of the broad assumptions of American civic life, undermined so many of the canons of politics, recast so many of the conventions of public behavior. In a mere 18 months—to the consternation of establishment politicians, the news media and many of the special-interest groups that have controlled the conversation of the capital—he has upended the American political system. And while his rivals abhor him and scholars may condemn him, history may well applaud him for raising vital questions about American political culture.

The quote above noting Trump asking big basic questions of the American political system is echoed by those who have talked with him. Henry Kissinger had this to say about Mr. Trump and his questions⁶⁵:

KISSINGER:

I believe he has the possibility of going down in history as a very considerable president … here is a new president who is asking a lot of unfamiliar questions. And because of the combination of the partial [international power] vacuum and the new questions, one could imagine that something remarkable and new emerges out of it. I’m not saying it will. I’m saying it’s an extraordinary opportunity.

DICKERSON:

Do you have a sense of what his emerging foreign policy vision is?

KISSINGER:

I think he operates by a kind of instinct that is a different form of analysis than my more academic one, that he’s raised a number of issues that I think are important, very important and, if they’re addressed properly, could lead to—could create results.

We have already noted Trumps’ seemingly naïve but very important question “What is victory?” as a way of opening up debate on long assumed and rarely discussed questions. Quite obviously that is not the only unquestioned assumption that Trump has raised—on trade, on allies, and on stationing and committing American troops. Indeed one Foreign Affairs analysis has noted, “Trump’s disruptions have forced foreign policy analysts to question first principles for the first time in decades.”⁶⁶ It would seem prudent to reexamine operating assumptions at least every few decades.

With the gradual loss of public confidence in the policies, leadership, institutions, paradigms, and their associated narratives, the country does indeed face large and important questions. It is part of Trump’s “genius” that he recognizes that and acts on the understanding. His questions are not the final word on what questions must be asked and answered. He is however raising new and needed questions for the country to consider along with providing his rough version of some possible answers. That is one reason why his presidency is so consequential and so politically controversial .

Annals of Presumption: Tutoring President Trump

From the start of his presidency, Mr. Trump has literally been viewed as a misfit by the country’s established leadership and their supporters in all areas of American life. He has not said the right things. He has not acted the way he should. He has not thought the right things. He has not limited himself to talking with the right people or taking their correct advice.

One major question that establishment figures faced is: what do you do with such a president? The opposition had one answer: resist! The country’s political establishment had another: reeducate him.

Thanks to a new book by two Washington Post reporters with strong traditional credentials,⁶⁷ we now have a very detailed, behind the scenes, account of a truly extraordinary effort by establishment members of Trump’s senior inner circle to tutor and reeducate him on the correct foreign policy understandings they thought he lacked. As a result of their carefully planned interventions, they thought, Trump would be less of a misfit and more of the kind of president whose actions and thinking they preferred.⁶⁸ They errored badly.

The reeducation effort took place six months into the administration (July 20, 2107) at “The Tank,” one of a series of war rooms where high level strategic and military decisions are debated. The principle leaders of this effort were (then) Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Others included: the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Joseph F. Dunford Jr., newly confirmed Deputy Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Vice President Pence, leaders of the military branches, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon, and other staff.

In the words of Rucker and Leonnig, “Mattis invited Trump to the Tank for what he, Tillerson, and Cohn had carefully organized as a tailored tutorial.” The reporters then write:

What happened inside the Tank that day crystallized the commander in chief’s berating, derisive and dismissive manner, foreshadowing decisions such as the one earlier this month that brought the United States to the brink of war with Iran. The Tank meeting was a turning point in Trump’s presidency.

The two reporters, at least one of whom (Rucker) is no stranger to delivering anti-Trump slants in his writing, write with no apparent inkling as to why Trump had an adverse reaction to the effort to reeducate him. The reporters seem unaware, and do not mention, that the whole premise of the effort was condescending and infantilizing. It was of course not just a “tailored tutorial,” but a remedial tutorial and another effort to “manage” Trump. That became clear to Trump almost immediately and he didn’t like it.

Rucker and Leonnig write, “Trump appeared peeved by the schoolhouse vibe but also was allergic to the dynamic of his advisers talking at him.” Yes, one would.

However, it was more than that. The two reporters write:

Rather than getting him to appreciate America’s traditional role and alliances, Trump began to tune out and eventually push away the experts.

Rucker and Leonnig draw on extensive interviews of some of those who were in the room. However, they don’t always specifically identify which people said what and whether those who did are accurately characterized as principals or staff. As is the case in many examples of this kind of inquiry, one gets many composite characterizations that force readers to rely on characterizations rather than verbatim evidence. For purposes of this section however, I will accept their characterizations of the sentiments they put forward.

What is the implication of Trump being in a room and “talked at” by his senior advisers and lower level staff who bring to their task the assumption, according to the reporters, that it was “their duty was to protect the country by restraining his more dangerous impulses”? Not only is that view smug and presumptuous, it’s not the kind of condescending attitude that would be lost on Trump. He may not be deep, but he is very sensitive to how people treat him and whether they are being respectful. The operating premises and operating attitude behind the “tailored tutorial” with the premise of “protecting the country” from Trump’s “dangerous impulses” and respect are antithetical.

What did the seminar try to teach Trump? Here is a sampling:

Mattis then gave a 20-minute briefing on the power of the NATO alliance to stabilize Europe and keep the United States safe.

Cohn spoke for about 20 minutes about the value of free trade with America’s allies, emphasizing how he saw each trade agreement working together as part of an overall structure to solidify U.S. economic and national security.

When Trump complained about the Iran nuclear agreement, saying “It’s the worst deal in history!” Tillerson interjected. “Well, actually …” “I don’t want to hear it,” Trump said, cutting off the Secretary of State before he could explain some of the benefits of the agreement.

What unites these examples? They are all long held establishment narratives. Trump was very familiar with these arguments. He had been hearing them for years. It was not that he didn’t want to hear what his seminar leaders wanted to say. He had already heard, repeatedly, the very same views and he didn’t agree with them.

Interestingly, Rucker and Leonnig do not report anyone acknowledging or accepting even a small portion of any Trump point. For example when Trump complained about NATO being in arrears in its commitments:

The general [Mattis] tried to calmly explain to the president that he was not quite right. The NATO allies didn’t owe the United States back rent, he said. The truth was more complicated. NATO had a nonbinding goal that members should pay at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on their defenses. Only five of the countries currently met that goal, but it wasn’t as if they were shorting the United States on the bill.

Technically, that was accurate. However, there was also truth in the complaint that by repeatedly agreeing to that “goal” and never doing anything about it, American allies were signaling that they intended to remain “free riders,” and the United States was signaling that it would continue to accept that. The ability of countries like Germany to pay more was not an issue. The goals of those NATO allies and their promises for the future, over the years became fig leaves for retaining their advantages. Mattis was well aware of this history and its meaning. Many prior administrations had made the same complaint, behind closed doors and with no results.

More importantly, Rucker and Leonnig did not note a single instance where anyone in that room calmly and respectfully asked Trump to explain and go into his thinking. They simply never thought to ask “what is your thinking about this,” because they reasoned, they were right and Trump was wrong.

Could NATO stabilize Europe and still be improved? How? What about free trade? Could it be reformed? How would that be done, and what would it mean? What would a new Iranian deal look like and how would backing them into a military and economic corner achieve it? These are sample questions that could have been asked of Trump and might have led to some common ground and understanding.

Instead this reeducation debacle began and ended with its organizers’ assumptions and the remedial efforts that flowed from it. As one staff member heavily involved in the planning of the seminar laid out the premises of the planned intervention:

We were starting to get out on the wrong path, and we really needed to have a course correction and needed to educate, to teach, to help him understand the reason and basis for a lot of these things.. We needed to change how he thinks about this, to course correct. Everybody was on board, 100 percent agreed with that sentiment.

Translation: Everybody, 100 percent agreed that Trump had started his presidency by pursing erroneous and wrongheaded policies. These needed to be changed. Trump’s views needed to be corrected. The only way to do so “was to teach him,” to “help him understand” the basis for his errors and to change “how he thinks.”

There is, of course, nothing less likely to change President Trump’s (or any president’s, one would think) mind than a grand reeducation seminar organized by some senior staff, and their aides, who believe the president’s foreign policy thinking to be ill-informed (aka, ignorant, mistaken), and driven by “dangerous impulses.”

In a master understatement Rucker and Leonnig write: “The plan by Mattis, Tillerson, and Cohn to train the president to appreciate the internationalist view had clearly backfired.” The sentiment reflected in that last sentence, and the quote before it, clearly help explain Trump’s angry response. The plan “to train the president” is more appropriate for a dog, or perhaps a parrot; but not for a president whom you hope will listen to what you have to say. Getting the president to “appreciate the internationalist view” was unlikely to happen by lecturing him yet again on views he had already heard many dozens of times. Had they asked the president more seriously about the basis of his thinking that might have started a real and useful dialogue.

This Trump reeducation seminar helps us to understand how difficult it was and will continue to be for him to succeed in his presidential purposes. The majority of the people gathered in that seminar room were smart, accomplished, and had strongly held views. They started from the assumption that they were right and Trump was wrong and proceeded accordingly. Imagine a country in which roughly half the people are exactly like that. Although they are not likely to be as smart and accomplished about the issues as Trump’s educators thought they were, they would almost certainly be as strong in their views that Trump is wrong and they are right.

How then will it be possible, if it is, for Trump to successfully change that kind of country? How will it be possible for him to replace the long term establishment policy paradigm with the Politics of American Restoration? To state the obvious: The road to Restoration begins with reelection.

Restoration’s Second Chance?: Trump’s Possible Reelection

There are many ways to view Trump’s first term. One way is to understand it as a presidency elected as the country faced a profound political and policy fork in the road. As one retiring Republican put it⁶⁹:

There’s a political realignment occurring in our country. The political ground is shifting right under our feet, and nobody knows how this is going to settle. It’s going to affect both parties, and we’ll see how it sorts itself out. It’s going to take a few years.

The domestic realignment noted above coincides with another substantial change, in the international political system. Discussing the rise of nationalism worldwide and the emergence of new powerful, assertive, sometimes even militarily aggressive countries, like Russia, Iran, and China one analysis concluded⁷⁰:

The Cold War could have ended differently; largely, it ended peacefully. What you’re now seeing, in my view, is across the board—not just in the United States, not just with Donald Trump—a coming to an end of that order.

Another lens through which to view Trump’s election is as a political and policy audition. Trump’s 2016 election victory was so narrow that it is impossible to completely rule out the impact of any single factor. Numerous efforts have been made to ascertain whether or not FBI Director Comey’s off-again, on-again public statements about the Hillary Clinton investigation helped Trump or didn’t matter. The same holds for reported Russian spending on FaceBook and its motivation, and a host of other factors that may, or may not have had an impact.

Trump has now been impeached according to the House’s interpretation of the rules governing drawing up Articles of Impeachment. He has been acquitted on both impeachment charges by the Senate based on their governing rules. Trump’s Constitutional legitimacy rests on more solid ground, even if the opposition continues to dispute his political legitimacy. His presidency thus carries with it the weight of core legitimacy, as well as the reality of it. As a result, if he wins reelection he will have another four years, and a more substantial opportunity to turn his first term audition into an historically rare, transformational presidency. That aspiration is unfolding now in the context of a pandemic of, at this point, uncertain consequences.

Trading Places: Narrative Negation and the 2020 Presidential Election

The fast approaching presidential election is already scrambling each candidate’s best laid plans Neither is going be waging the kind of campaign they had planned for against the candidate that they had hoped to run against. Donald Trump was eagerly savoring a campaign against Bernie Sanders, the only Democrat who could make Trump look like a moderate centrist, while he ran on his real, and robust economic record.

The actual Democratic candidate Joe Biden envisioned a “return to normality” campaign. It would emphasize his steady, comparatively low wattage, and reliable political persona. That would present an obvious contrast to his opponent who would be portrayed as “President Bombast,” who has riled America's traditional allies, refused to act as a normal president, and perhaps is incapable of doing so.

The Coronavirus pandemic upended both those narratives. President Trump cannot run on the economy he built. It no longer exists. And however leftward Mr. Biden inches forward, he is no Bernie Sanders. Mr. Biden’s “return to normality” narrative has been compromised by events in which “normality” is in short supply. At some point he will have to convince the public that he is up to the task of leading the country and that he has the requisite amount of energy—both physical and cognitive, for being this country’s chief executive. Trump’s bull in the china shop persona—full steam ahead, explore any avenue, and get things done, is a possible advantage in the midst of this vast, enormously complex unprecedented pandemic challenge to the country, its leadership at all levels and its major institutions and agencies. Yet, there has been an erosion in the level of support in his handling of the pandemic and the demonstrations that followed.

In these new election defining circumstances, the likely campaign narratives are clear. Trump will lean heavily on James Madison who wrote that “energy in the executive” was “the leading character in the definition of good government,” to which Trump will add, especially in times of crisis. A shattered economy? Trump will argue that during his first term his administration built “the greatest economy in the world,” and will then promise, “we’re going to do it again.” He will compare himself, favorably of course, to “Slow Joe,” the aged icon of the Democratic establishment whose level of real time alacrity is likely to be and remain an issue. He will support a number of useful policing practice reforms, while insisting that the country’s basic premises of freedom and opportunity are worth preserving and building upon not “canceling” or tearing it down. Trump sending federal police resources to cities torn by violent demonstrations and spiking crime rates to help local police also sends a clear message of support for public order, as well as a signal of decisive resolve.

Mr. Biden does not have to do much to retain the support of Trump opponents. The question for his campaign is what real case can he make for his election? What will he promise? More solid, low key competence? More and better government programs defined by current progressive Democratic Party positions? A less combative presidential demeanor? The first of these is already being questioned. The second is likely to appeal to those government enthusiasts who have not yet lost their faith in those kinds of promises. And the last may prove preferable in theory, but not in practice given the many pandemic-caused crises that the country faces as the same time.   

Still, Mr. Biden will present Trump as a president who had squandered valuable time responding to the pandemic by picking unnecessary fights with front-line governors desperate to get the resources they needed from an unresponsive administration. He will compare his “bipartisan” proposals to reforming policing practices in the wake of widespread public demonstrations with what he will characterize as Trump’s heavy handed “law and order” response.

No firm prediction of the outcomes of those dueling narratives can be made at this point. Voters may well prefer a president who is seen as willing to go all out to fight for them, their livelihoods, and their country to one who promises a return to presidential decorum. Or, they may prefer a president who promises a return to normality, defined as status quo prior Trump. In the end, the 2020 president election may well come down to a contest between two leadership styles—full speed ahead v. the promise of a retro style of relative presidential public peacefulness.

If Trump is not Reelected: What Then?

If Trump loses the 2020 election, the movement and the views that Trump represents and championed will die stillborn. Most of his executive actions will be rescinded. The pressure to rejoin the “international community” in “climate crisis” actions and to revive the Iranian nuclear agreement will intensify and probably be unavoidable. The new NAFTA treaty (USMCA) will be kept, but the political will to continue holding the Chinese accountable for their trade policies or to get NATO to spend more for their own defense will most likely dissipate. Here and there Trump policies will survive, but they will be dwarfed by the exploding cascade of the reestablishment of an even more progressive establishment policy paradigm. That holds as well for the one accomplishment that will be hard to rescind, but possible to negate—Trump’s record of judicial appointments. Courts can be enlarged.

The above observations presuppose that a Trump reelection loss would be accompanied by a loss of Senate control as well, though that need not necessarily be the case. Still, a reduced Senate majority coupled with a major presidential loss are the ingredients of a long defensive crouch, not a burst of sustainable legislative Trumpism.

More consequential for the longer term would be that Trump’s eight policy pillars and his approach to them would be ended for the most part, and the conventional establishment policy paradigm would be reinstated and extended. This would surely increase the disappointment, frustration, and anger, anxiety, and resentment of Trump supporters at what they lost. It would however turbocharge the opposition, making for a more volatile political climate. In terms of absolute raw political power there would be little Trump supporters could do with the levels of government power back in establishment hands. Nor is there much chance that a new Trump-like figure would rise out of the real Trump’s political ashes.

Trump himself, as this analysis has argued, is truly sui generis, a unique political character and president. Who could possibly take his place? Mitt Romney? Ted Cruz? Jeb Bush? Nikki Haley? Listing the options answers the question. Moreover, after a Trump loss, NeverTrump Republicans and their establishment allies could legitimately argue: been there, done that.

If Trump Wins Reelection: Variations on a Theme

If Trump wins reelection his presidential legitimacy will be bolstered, even if his opponents attempt to diminish it, which they will. It’s his actual reelection, not the popular vote margins that matter. You can’t yield the powers of the presidency, which as both Trump and Obama among others have demonstrated are substantial, without being president.

That said, it does matter what the election means for the distribution of power in Congress. The most dire outcome for a Trump reelection would be the loss of a majority in both Houses of Congress. In that case, Trump’s legislative agenda would essentially be comatose. His Senate judicial strategy would definitely be dead. He would be substantially defenseless against a continuing and heightened onslaught of investigations and lawsuits. They would be fueled by anger that he had somehow escaped electoral rejection. They would also be fueled by the still white-hot rage at his successful presidential accomplishments carried out in his first term, his leadership style in so doing, and ultimately his existence.

That would surely cripple Trump’s second term presidency. It would put his Restoration ambitions on life support. He would still have, and doubtless would make use of, his executive presidential powers. However his accomplishments would be downsized and minimized, and his political troubles and setbacks would be the larger and more frequent narrative.

Keeping control of the Senate would be an essential element of a successful Trump second term. A Republican majority in the Senate after 2020 would look very different than the Republican majority there in 2016. That body is now much more closely aligned with Trump perspectives, and the “moderate” Republican senators up for reelection and somewhat vulnerable in 2020 (Senators Susan Collins of Maine, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Cory Gardner of Colorado, Martha McSally of Arizona, and Thom Tillis of North Carolina) if they won, would be past that kind of heightened reelection danger in seven years after Trump will have left office and could afford to be more supportive majority members.

A Trump aligned Republican Senate would act as a barrier to Democratic efforts to throw policy sand into the gears of Trump’s Restoration presidential ambitions. It would as well forestall, maybe, efforts to mount a second round of Trump impeachment articles.⁷¹ It would also allow Trump to continue his systematic and successful efforts to change the complexion of the federal judiciary and effectively respond to any Supreme Court openings that arise.

A more difficult election likelihood is for Republicans to regain a House majority. Here too, were that to happen, the political stance of the Republicans would also be much more aligned with Trump perspectives than they were in the last Republican controlled House. If that happened, a major legislative immigration bill that closely resembles Trump’s preferences⁷² would be a very distinctive possibility, if not a likelihood. So would another round of tax cuts, geared to the middle and working classes, which Trump promised if he and a Republican Congress are elected.⁷³

The implications of the Congressional election results for a second Trump term then are variable. It is not possible to say more about the future of the Trump presidency at this point without the election results. That leaves one more major theoretical question to again consider: How do entrenched narratives change?

Changing Entrenched Political Paradigms

Truly transformational presidents are rare in American history. George Washington was one because his presidency was the first in post-revolutionary period when the country was a republic, in theory. Then it had no established and accepted operating ground rules to support that form of government in actual fact. Everything that Washington did, or didn’t do was historic and transformational in establishing core foundation ways. Abraham Lincoln is part of the great presidents list because he fought a brutal Civil War to preserve the American union and succeeded. Franklin Delano Roosevelt is so considered because he guided the country though a catastrophic economic Depression and a savage worldwide war against Germany, Japan, and the Axis powers.

What makes these presidents “great” has been, is and will be debated. Some have made the case that Jefferson should be included because of his championing of the “Revolution of 1800” among other conservative political reforms. Others think that Andrew Jackson should be included in that list for restoring the power and the prestige of the presidency after years of decline.⁷⁴ Yet three striking and obvious similarities clearly stand out for all those presidents who are usually considered to belong in this category.

First, each “great,” “transformational” president, after Washington encountered a set of circumstances that called into question the most basic assumptions of the country. Second, these presidents guided the country through a period of great dangers and perilous circumstances. As Crockett puts it about the importance of presidential leadership,⁷⁵ “It is during great crises, that energy in the government is most needed, and the president is best equipped to provide it.” Third, in doing so, they also changed the way in which Americans thought about themselves and their country. Using those three elements as a metric we can say that many presidents may have been successful, but few have been transformational. Among those relatively few presidents considered “transformational,” in the triple sense of that term noted above, all have also been considered “great.”

In the American political circumstances that Trump faces, he more resembles Jefferson and Johnson than Lincoln and Roosevelt. President Trump and the country face no World War. However, he does face immediate catastrophic economic circumstances and increasingly widespread civic unrest and violence in across the country. These are in addition to the long simmering, ongoing and growing political malaise exacerbated by recent national racial and cultural/historical tensions have been decades in the making and reflect a lack of trust and confidence in the paradigms and narratives of establishment leadership and policies.

Trump’s rational for a successful Restoration presidency is that the leadership and policy assumptions of the last four-plus decades have simply not worked as promised. They have, in his view, left many working- and middle-class Americans struggling economically, discouraged by the feeling that their own government doesn’t listen to or care much about them, and worried and discouraged about the direction they see the country going. Those Americans are ready to reform or discard old paradigms and the narratives that support them, and demonstrated that fact in their votes for Trump.

However, many millions of Americans, and the leaders they support are not so inclined. This group is less economically vulnerable. They generally see the government as taking their claims and preferences seriously. They are satisfied for the most part with the perspectives, if not all of the results, of the dominant paradigms and narratives. In short, they do not support Trump’s Restoration ambitions simply because they don’t think very much needs restoring.

How then is it either possible or realistic for Trump to aspire to change the country’s operative leadership and policy paradigms and the narratives that support them?

What Is a Dominant Paradigm?

Answering those questions requires us to first ask: what is a dominant paradigm? Answering that seemingly simple question allows us to understand what exactly, a dominant paradigm or narrative is, how it is sustained, and how and when it can be changed, if it can. It can also give us a model with which compare Trump’s efforts along these lines.

The direct answer to that seemingly first simple question is that a dominant policy paradigm serves as an operating assumption for how the world works for people whose responsibilities include leadership and governance. Consequently, it substantially determines the nature, range, and scope of policies developed in the areas covered by the paradigm and its associated narratives.

That means that in economic and political organizations focused on international policy, the virtues of free trade, for example, will be considered an assumption, a given. Leaders speaking at or attending events associated with those organizations will speak on behalf of those assumptions and urge policies consistent with them. Those speeches will be reported and disseminated and form the basis of public understanding of the issue. Research supporting this position will be reported and highlighted. Professional thinking among economists and political leaders will reflect it.

When those national leaders return home that process will be repeated, National policies that enshrine them will be enacted. These too will be duly reported and praised by news organizations long accustomed to thinking of trade as an unalloyed virtue. Because paradigms need professional legitimacy to become and remain dominant, professional expertise will be tapped to provide it. The power of a dominant paradigm lies in its ability to command almost unquestioned legitimacy among numerous reinforcing institutional centers of power and standing, operating more frequently as assumption than the result of wide ranging analysis.

That trade is beneficial is a real fact and thus its use to buttress the economic paradigm and associated narratives that support it are honest, as far as they go. That however is never far enough to note and analyze its difficulties. It’s only drawback, therefore, and it is a substantial one, is that it is not a wholly accurate accounting of trades’ many consequences, some of which are undesirable.

“Free trade” does have some undesirable consequences. However, since they are rarely mentioned or discussed the experiences of millions of Americans (and others) were simply ignored or bypassed. Wide ranging research including the benefits and disadvantages “free trade” were not generally conducted or given much voice in public discussions. As a result, one major part of the effects of trade are simply lost from public view. In those circumstances how does a fuller, more complete, and more accurate understanding of free trade’s benefits and liabilities get a public hearing?

Paradigm Change Without National Catastrophe: Presidential Megaphones and Determination

One answer to that question is having a president with a very different point of view. When that president has a loud, persistent voice amplified by the importance and connective reach of his office and its stature alternative views can at least be heard. In Trump’s words: “I have the loudspeaker.”⁷⁶

That message is delivered personally and directly to Trump’s multiple millions of supporters and amplified by national media on hair-trigger alert to respond to almost every Trump tweet and pronouncement. As a result, this president’s views are not lost in the hundreds of ordinary speeches and interviews that every modern president makes. The novelty and controversial nature of Trump’s views lift them out of relatively obscurity and operate as a form of ongoing public education.

One unique aspect of the Trump presidency is that this president has not been content to take the lead on one paradigm change issue, but a large number of them. In almost all the areas covered by the term used in this analysis, eight policy pillars, Trump has made his dissents against establishment paradigms and narratives clear. In the areas of economic growth (including jobs and energy development), immigration, trade, and foreign policy, Trump has consistently and forcefully laid out his counter paradigm positions in the face of loud and strenuous opposition.

Opposition to presidential political wishes is nothing new. What is new is that Trump’s loud megaphone has forced those opposed to his counter paradigm and narrative to state their case publicly instead of being stealthy submerged within “conventional wisdom.” As a result, often for the first time, a range of policy paradigms are subject to real public debate.

Is Trump changing many minds? Most likely not. If however, he can change enough minds, he won’t have to change them all. What matters most now is that there are two sides debating. Trump is auditioning a new set of policy paradigms and narratives. He is giving loud voice to them, and in doing so is providing some education to the general public.

He is also educating himself at the same time. When Trump first raised the trade issue many decades ago his almost singular focus was on how badly America’s leaders had failed the country on trade, how bad the trade deals were, and how other countries were taking advantage of the United States. That focus continued on though Trump’s nomination and general election fight and into the first years of his presidency. Thereafter however, a needed subtlety entered Trump’s trade diatribes, free vs fair trade.

The use of the term “fair trade” signaled Trump’s acceptance of a major truth of the dominant “trade is good” paradigm. If handled correctly, trade was beneficial. Yet it also added the important qualifier “fair” that provided a route by which to reconcile the now two competing paradigms and narratives.

Narrative Wars: When Paradigms Collide

President Trump has taken a number of steps to provide the public with examples of Restoration paradigms and their associated narratives, to experience, and for their consideration. Trump’s counter paradigm policies and narratives now have several exemplars in the area of trade, that can serve as case illustrations: the new USMCA (formerly NAFTA) China, South Korea, and Japan trade agreements. There are, of course, expected debates about how much these new agreements really accomplish. However, for each trade agreement, Trump can legitimately claim to have advanced American economic, and in the case of China, strategic interests. These cases in point transform Trump’s Restoration ambitions from solely rhetorical to also directly experiential.

Moreover, trade is just one of the eight pillar areas in which Trump has begun to produce his own policies that are consistent with his Restoration ambitions. In his policies regarding the courts, economic growth and opportunity (including jobs and energy development), de-regulation, health care, immigration, and foreign policy Trump continues to replace the more liberal establishment policy paradigm with his own Restoration policies and narratives.

He has also taken steps, as president, to tilt the playing field in a more positive direction for him. Nearing the end of only his first year in office, the Washington Post reported that Trump has “undone” a substantial number of the establishment policy paradigm’s policies and procedural regulations⁷⁷ in a wide variety of areas.⁷⁸ These very early and preliminary lists (with additional lists within those lists) contain a number that are substantial (e.g, withdrawing from the Trans-Pacific Partnership; reversing an Obama ban on drilling for oil in the Arctic); others that are consequential (e.g., delayed and potentially rolling back automotive fuel efficiency standards); and others that are primarily symbolic (e.g., ending the declaration of June as Pride Month and the practice of recognizing the end of Ramadan with an iftar dinner). That list has only grown since Trump’s first year in office and now includes such major “undoings” as the international climate accords and the Iran nuclear agreement, among many.

The anti-Trump take on his many initiatives is that they are primarily “anti-Obama.” More accurately they are anti-Obama establishment policy paradigm initiatives. Trump’s initiatives allow him to implement policies consistent with his own Restoration ambitions. You can’t become an energy exporting powerhouse if you are barred from utilizing the shale drilling revolution. Removing policies and administrative procedures from a paradigm helps a president trying to substantially modify or replace old paradigms to showcase the new proposed paradigm exemplars with less competition.

Successful paradigmatic change elements reinforce each other. Successfully encouraging domestic shale oil production brings with it more energy jobs, helps the economy grow, helps trade balances, and makes the country less dependent on oil from elsewhere, which itself has national security and strategic benefits. The utility of Trump’s counternarrative exemplars are not only to be found in their role as examples, but in their ability to generate actual public and political experiences that can then be taken into account.

Political War, Attrition, and the Death of Dominant Paradigms

After almost half the country, a large percentage of the country’s establishment political leadership and their allies across many powerful institutions support the liberal establishment policy paradigm. As a result, they support neither the president or his Restoration ambitions. What then?

Trump’s efforts at paradigmatic narrative replacement relies on top down, bottom up, and expansion outward strategies. The top down element is obviously Trump’s attention, commanding presence, and clear leadership spearheading that fight. The bottom up element revolves around giving the public the opportunity to experience the virtues that Trump sees in the results of changing paradigms. And the building outward element rests on what is the second major Trump life motto beside Never Give Up: Never Stop, full speed ahead whenever possible.

Put in diagrammatic form, Trump’s paradigmatic narrative replacement strategy would look like this: Establish accomplishment baseline  Initiate and sustain leadership opportunities  Build on success  hoped for outcome: cascading leadership accomplishments.

Keep in mind that in his business career Trump was a successful empire builder. That is a very unique kind of entrepreneur. He shows every sign of attempting to reprise that same role as president.

So, if you successfully complete trade deals with China and North America, try to leverage it to gain traction with North Korea⁷⁹ and also immediately begin publicly prepping for hard trade negotiations with the EU. In the president’s words: “with the European Union—and, frankly, I’ll be honest, I wanted to wait until I finished China before I went to work on, respectfully, Europe.” Trump is more likely to move on to the next challenge than to savor the last.

If lower courts reject your travel restrictions on potential immigrants from some countries deemed dangerous, appeal. And when the Supreme Court rules in your favor, prepare to add more counties to that list.⁸⁰ Or in Trump’s words in response to a question during a Davos Meeting Q & A⁸¹:

I didn’t lose the travel ban. The travel ban was lost in the lower courts and won in the Supreme Court, two years ago. No, we are—we’re adding a couple of countries to it. We have to be safe.

And, if you believe that the United States had the “world’s greatest economy,” and know that it has been crippled by a world-wide pandemic, what do you do? You pledge to rebuild and do it again; “so I say I built the greatest economy—with all of the people that helped me and all of the people in this country, we built the greatest economy the world has ever seen. And we’re going to do it again.”⁸²

Trump’s Efforts at Narrative Change: Progress?

There is one more element that is relevant to Trump’s effort to develop an alternative Restoration paradigm. That is the slow belated recognition that he may have a legitimate point in some of his complaints, even by supporters of the very paradigms that he is trying to replace. Again, using trade as an example, recently two well-credentialed academics wrote in a major establishment journal about “free trade⁸³:”

Those of us who have not only analyzed globalization and the liberal order but also celebrated them share some responsibility for the rise of populism. We did not pay enough attention as capitalism hijacked globalization. Economic elites designed international institutions to serve their own interests and to create firmer links between themselves and governments. Ordinary people were left out. The time has come to acknowledge this reality and push for policies that can save the liberal order before it is too late.

This is not the battle cry of someone vying for public office on a “populist” platform. It is part of a worried sober analysis by two mainstream, respected academics writing in Foreign Affairs, that most establishment-centered of major foreign policy journals.

Jared Bernstein, a top Obama economics advisor, wrote a New York Times op-ed entitled “The Era of Free Trade Might Be Over. That’s a Good Thing.”⁸⁴ More recently Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen, in comments at the British Academy in London, speaking of globalization and technology and trade said that,⁸⁵ “Both of these things have been quite harmful to a very large share of the population.” She continued, “Trade can be good, and it has been good. … But there are losers, and it’s challenging to design interventions that would help the losers.”

And finally, at the 2020 Davos meeting press conference, Trump brought up his long-running dispute with the WTO about who was and who was not considered a “developing country” entitled to special treatment. Trump then invited the Director General of the World Trade Organization Roberto Azevêdo to speak, and he said⁸⁶:

And I think it’s fair to say that we have been saying, for quite some time, that if the multilateral system, if the WTO is to deliver and perform its role in today’s global economy, it has to be updated. It has to be changed. It has to be reformed.

Trump’s effort to change the international trade paradigm had clearly found an ally in the very organization he was trying to change.

Paradigm Change: By Degree?

Therein lies an important point. In non-catastrophic circumstances, and short of using lethal force, paradigmatic and narrative change occurs by degree. That is why several recent solutions offered to the country’s contentious political debates are not very likely. One solution can be summarily dismissed for the very reason that the author uses to describe it. It appeared in the Washington Post⁸⁷:

So how do we get the minority of haters to stop hating, if we ever want to get out of this quagmire and move forward as a country? It turns out that as ridiculously naive as it may sound Americans’ support for political violence goes down when they are exposed to messages calling for peace.

At the other extreme is secession. In a provocative book that doesn’t recommend it, the author writes that he sees “us on a train, bound for a break up.”⁸⁸ And furthermore:

In all the ways that matter, save for the naked force of the law, we are already divided into two nations. The contempt for opponents, the Twitter mobs, online shaming and no-platforming, the growing tolerance of violence—it all suggests we’d be happier in separate countries.

How that would actually work in practice? What would happen to Trump supporters, and everyone else if Blue States seceded, and vice versa, is very unclear. Would the secession be state by state, county by county, city by city, neighborhood by neighborhood, or person by person? The many difficulties are clear.

Still another idea suggests the conflict will be resolved by an as yet unknown and unlikely innovation. Henry Olsen writes⁸⁹:

American politics is currently akin to trench warfare with both sides exerting enormous amounts of energy, treasure, and manpower to gain very little ground. Victory will not come to the party who continues the old tactics in the vain hope of new results. Breaking through the trenches will ultimately require something entirely new that reshapes the battlefield itself. And that requires winning large majorities among people who don’t fit neatly into either party’s base.

Who those people are and on what basis they might form a new operating majority or plurality is totally unclear and not easily envisioned. Mr. Olsen does not enlighten us on this basic question.

We are therefore still left with an unresolved earlier question. Will it be possible or realistic for Trump to aspire to change the country’s major domestic and foreign policy paradigms and the narratives that support them, and if so how? In the above analysis, we have already given a provisional affirmative answer to the first question. It can be done, and Trump is assembling the basis for possibly doing so. But what of the “how question”?

A number of observers have summoned up the metaphor of a civil war to describe the country’s circumstances and there is some truth in that. The country’s level of elemental polarization is deep and wide. A relentless opposition war is being waged and defended against in every nook and cranny of the American political system and in the experience of ordinary Americans’ daily lives.

The battles are being fought out within the confines of the country’s legitimate and legal institutions, sometimes by finessing real constitutional guardrails.⁹⁰ Peter Baker captures the brutal nature of the Senate impeachment trial⁹¹: “With Mr. Trump’s fate on the line, the trial, unfolding with just a few months before he faces re-election, has come to encapsulate the pitched three-year struggle that has consumed Washington since he took office, determined to disrupt the existing order, at times in ways that crossed longstanding lines.”

In this civil warlike battle no lethal force is being used. There are no prisoner of war camps and no savage bombings or invasions. Moreover, a majority of the country are non-combatants. They have political views but are not ready to make their or the country’s final stand for them. The country seems for all its conflict, diversity, and polarization more akin to a fractured mosaic than involved in a real civil war.

Yet, it is real war in many respects. It is being fought out hourly every day in biased news reports and their rebuttals, within institutions and recently again, as it was at the start of the Trump’s presidency, in the streets. It is fought out in vicious and sometimes vile unsubstantiated accusations against the president and his family. It was, is and most likely will be again fought out in hostile interviews, in books and articles based primarily on leaks of dubiously sourced conversations or snippets of conversations whose accuracy is suspect. It was and will be again fought out in conversations across dinner tables, at offices, on billboard ads, at the theater, in the nation’s educational system at all levels from kindergarten through professional credentialing schools, in public demonstrations, and in a variety of policy, political, and personal lawsuits against Trump, his supporters, and his families. This war is a form of civil war, but it also parallels World War II in its expansiveness, and resembles aspects of trench warfare during the First World War in its inch-by-inch battles to inflict as much harm to Trump and his presidency possible.

Sometimes ordinary all-out war can be clarifying. Edward Littwak’s iconic article,⁹² “Give War a Chance,” captures this important possible essence:

An unpleasant truth often overlooked is that although war is a great evil, it does have a great virtue: it can resolve political conflicts and lead to peace. This can happen when all belligerents become exhausted or when one wins decisively.

Neither President Trump or his opposition seems likely to become exhausted, exit the battlefield and give up on their preferred paradigms and narratives. Nor does a sweeping decisive political victory seem in sight where the successful Trump or opposition politically “occupy” the other’s territory. It is at any rate, not clear how that could happen in our federal system of political and geographical checks and balances. As noted above, Trump may win reelection or not, but a veto proof majority in Congress by either Trump supporters or detractors, no matter which party wins the presidency, seems unlikely in 2020.

After November’s election, there will be no surrender ceremonies on Pennsylvania Avenue, Main Street, Austin, or San Francisco. What then? Most likely there will be a continued War of Political Attrition until one paradigm and its associated narratives gains traction and possible supremacy, or until a quasi-truce emerges because the competing narratives have found an accommodation much like Trump’s “free trade” vs “fair trade” dichotomy seems to have sparked some common ground. It is very possible that these two developments could happened in tandem.

American Restoration Amidst a War of Relentless Opposition: The Personal Psychological Challenge to Trump

Donald Trump’s first term in office has been an enormous test of his presidency and himself. He has had to learn how to be president. He has had to assemble a working staff that he is comfortable with and vice versa. He has had to address the issue of his support in the Republican party. He has had to deal with a ferocious anti-Trump opposition. He has had to deal with a two year long Special Council investigation, being impeached and acquitted, an unprecedented number of Congressional investigations along with a virtual blizzard of political and personal lawsuits. He has had to respond to an unprecedented worldwide pandemic, and while that national trauma was unfolding numerous demonstrations across the country protesting claimed institutional police and American racism, which has led to widespread assaults on public monuments and widespread mass demonstrations, a number of which have become violent. He has, at very same time all of these elements were playing out, had to lead, govern, and protect the country, while trying to advance his own presidential goals.

This is not to lament Mr. Trump’s circumstances. It is simply to acknowledge them. All of these circumstances test Trump politically but also in a directly personal way even more.

Trump faced several basic questions in his first years in office. First, would he be able to sufficiently, and even successfully, master the enormous powers and responsibilities of the modern presidency? Trump hinted at this key question several times. He was surprised, he said at, “the size, the magnitude of everything.”⁹³ Yet, it’s not only the government’s magnitude and its consequences that are sobering. Recall that when asked how he has changed since taking office, the former businessman who, as a candidate, touted his ability to cut deals said:

The magnitude of everything is so big, and also the decisions are so big. You know, you’re talking about life and death. You’re not talking about “you’re going to make a good deal.”

It was not only the scale and consequences of government that surprised Trump. It is also about the inherent paradox of successful presidential leadership. You often have to stumble, even fail in order to succeed. As Trump put it: “You make wrong calls, But they have to be wrong so that they don’t have huge impact and they have to be wrong so that you can adjust.”⁹⁴

By any reasonable assessment Trump began his presidency facing a steep learning curve. It was steeper than any other modern president’s because he had spent his adult life immersed in building, losing, and regaining a vast business empire. Trump is smart, cognitively nimble, and determined to succeed. Yet bringing those traits to the modern presidency do little more than give him the possibility of success or avoiding outright failure.

One of the great unacknowledged ironies of the Trump presidency is the core integrity that Mr. Trump brings to one part of his leadership role—expressing and acting on his views. There is the matter of his “truthful hyperbole,” rhetorical imprecision, casual acquaintance with policy details, or nuance. These do accurately describe elements of Trump’s leadership style. However, as noted in Chapter 9, Trump does not hide what he thinks, or what he would like to, will do, or does. There is a basic core personal integrity in that approach to his presidency.

Mr. Trump is serially accused of being willing to do anything to get reelected including putting his own reelection before the country’s national interests according to John Bolton.⁹⁵

Mr. Bolton and others who make the same claims do not explain the paradoxical fact that Mr. Trump insists on pursuing policies that will cause his election a great deal of difficulty because he believes they are correct right policies to pursue. Case in point, the Administration has asked the Supreme court, again, during this election season to negate “Obamacare.”⁹⁶

The administration’s continued support for toppling the ACA is a political gamble as jobless claims stabilize around a historic high of about 20 million because of the pandemic. Democrats, including presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, are seeking to portray President Trump as endangering health coverage at a time when more than 150,000 deaths have been attributed to the coronavirus.

It would certainly have been more prudent to decouple the Administration from the group of seventeen states seeking to overturn that legislation, but Trump had the courage and the integrity to following through on what he thought was right. This is not an observation on the merits of that position, only on what Trump’s choice suggests about the anything for reelection claim.

Every new role brings with it “can I successfully do this?” questions, and the Trump presidency is no exception. Yet Trump’s reelection challanges raises more than the ordinary questions of can he succeed. He faces larger, more fundamental political and reelection questions.

Two are: Is it possible to be seen as having relatively successfully addressed the ordinary presidential vicissitudes of leading and governing this divided country while trying to bring it back from the ravages of the Coronavirus pandemic⁹⁷ and the claimed anti-police and American institutionalized racism and civil unrest that has convulsed the country? Second, is it possible to garner support for substantially modifying the country’s domestic and international policy narratives and basic understandings while the country is going through this deeply unsettling and difficult period? To simply state both of these enormous hurdles to Trump’s reelection so directly is to underscore their monumental nature.

Only once before in his life, when his business empire tottered on the brink of insolvency, has Trump ever faced such a potentially large gap between his circumstances and real questions about his capacity to surmount them. He has arrived the abyss again, this time its political. These enormous political reelection questions raise profound personal questions for President Trump. Among them are:

Does he have the inner psychological resources and political insight to avoid electoral failure?

Does he have the inner psychological resources to absorb all the emotional and political punishment that will substantially define his circumstances even if he is reelected, and to forge on, if he is not?

We have dealt with these questions in one form or another over the course of this book’s analysis. If there is one thing about which one can be relatively certain about this president and his presidency, and their real psychology, it is this: Trump is a man of extraordinarily strong convictions and courage in seeing them through. He is a man of remarkable determination and resilience in the face of adversity. In his presidency, the last large act of his life, he is absolutely serious about putting into place the Politics of American Restoration. And, win or loose, he never gives up.

Wining reelection, and then successfully realizing his Restoration ambitions will be equivalent to scaling Mt. Annapurna. It will take skill, experience, determination, courage, resilience, luck, and a dedicated competence and effective group of support allies. Many imagine the climb. Few attempt it. Fewer succeed.

The risk are high, the chances of success low, but it would be unwise to place a large bet against President Trump.

Notes

1.

Doug Sosik. 2014. “Blue Crush: How the Left Took Over the Democratic Party,” Politico, July 24; see also Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin. 2019. “Trump’s Takeover of the Republican Party Is Almost Complete,” New York Times, April 3.

2.

Jeffrey Jones. 2020. “Trump Third Year Sets New Standard for Party Polarization,” Gallup, January 21.

3.

Ezra Klein. 2020. Why We’re Polarized. New York: Simon & Schuster.

4.

Norm Ornstein. 2020. “Why America’s Political Divisions Will Only Get Worse,” New York Times, January 28.

5.

Peter Hamby. 2018. “‘That Is What Power Looks Like’: As Trump Prepares for 2020, Democrats Are Losing the Only Fight That Matters,” Vanity Fair, May 26.

6.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/710/703909.pdf.

7.

Jeff Stein and Ellen Nakashima. 2020. “White House hold on Ukraine Aid Violated Federal Law, Congressional Watchdog Says,” Washington Post, January 16; see also Jeremy Herb. 2020. “Government Watchdog Concludes Trump Administration Broke Law by Withholding Ukraine Aid,” CNN, January 16.

8.

Chris Walker. 2020. “Pelosi: GAO Report Showing Trump Broke The Law Reinforces Need For Witnesses At Senate Impeachment Trial,” The Hill, January 16.

9.

https://www.gao.gov/assets/670/665390.pdf; see also Jeffrey Sparshott. 2014. “Bergdahl Swap Violated Law, GAO Says,” Wall Street Journal, August 21.

10.

Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar. 2016. “Obama Administration Broke Its Own Health Care Rule, GAO Says,” Associated Press, September 30.

11.

James Freeman. 2020. “What Did GAO Staff Know and When Did They Know It?” Wall Street Journal, January 17.

12.

Alan M. Dershowitz. 2020. “Trump Had Right to Withhold Ukraine Funds: GAO Is Wrong,” Gatestone Institute, January 17, emphasis added.

13.

Daniel Carpenter and David A. Ross. 2013. Preventing Regulatory Capture: Special interest Influence and How to Limit It. New York: Cambridge University Press.

14.

Alexander S. Vindman. 2019. “Opening Statement of Lieutenant Colonel Alexander S. Vindman Before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform,” October 29, emphasis added.

15.

Wesley Morgan. 2019. “‘POTUS Went Rogue’: Trump’s Syria Move Blindsides National Security Leaders,” Politico, October 7.

16.

Donald J. Trump. 2019. “Remarks by President Trump in Briefing with Military Leaders,” The Cabinet Room, October 7, emphasis added.

17.

Josh Dawsey. 2019. “Unswayed by Top Advisers, Trump Doubles Down on Decision to Withdraw Troops,” Washington Post, October 13.

18.

Paul D. Shinkman. 2019. “Trump Administration Appears to Reverse Syria Decision Following Backlash,” US News & World Report, October 7.

19.

One recent incident between Russian and US forces suggests this was a prudent consideration. See Ben Wolfgang. 2020. “Standoff: U.S. Troops Block Russian Forces from Capturing Syrian Oil Field,” Washington Times, January 21.

20.

Alex Johnson, Saphora Smith, and Shannon Pettypiece. 2019. “Trump Says He May Leave Some U.S. Forces in Syria to Protect Oil, But Not Kurds,” NBC, October 21.

21.

Michael Doran and Michael A. Reynolds. 2019. “Turkey Has Legitimate Grievances Against the U.S.,” Wall Street Journal, October 8.

22.

Annie Karni, Lara Jakes, and Patrick Kingsley. 2019. “Turkey Agrees to Pause Fighting, But Not to Withdraw Forces from Northern Syria,” New York Times, October 17.

23.

Morgan L. Kaplan. 2019. “Trump’s Syria Announcement Is a Change of Speed—Not a Change of Direction,” Washington Post, October 9.

24.

William Saletan. 2019. “Guess Who Else Trump Is Colluding With,” Slate, October 8.

25.

Jen Kirby. 2019. “What Really Happened in Syria Over the Past 24 hours, Explained,” Vox, October 23; see also Aaron Blake. 2019. “Trump’s Former ISIS Envoy Offers Scathing Critique of His Syria Decision—And Entire Management Style,” Washington Post, October 7.

26.

Alex Ward. 2019. “Trump Just Reversed His Decision to Pull all US Troops Out of Syria,” Vox, February 22.

27.

Eric Schmitt. 2019. “U.S. Resumes Large-Scale Operations Against ISIS in Northern Syria,” New York Times, November 25.

28.

Peter Baker and Lara Jakes. 2019. “In Syria, Trump Distills a Foreign Policy of Impulse, and Faces the Fallout,” New York Times, October 10, emphasis added.

29.

Catherine Lacy. 2019. “Behind Trump’s Syria Pullout Lies a Campaign Pledge,” Wall Street Journal, October 8.

30.

Mark Lander, Helene Cooper, and Eric Schmitt. 2018. “Trump to Withdraw U.S. Forces from Syria, Declaring ‘We Have Won Against ISIS’,” New York Times, December 19.

31.

Mark Lander and Helene Cooper. 2019. “In Latest Shift, Trump Agrees to Leave 400 Troops in Syria,” New York Times, February 22.

32.

Ben Wolfgang. 2019. “Military Slow-Walk or ‘Deep State’ Defiance?: Trump Sees Direct Orders Modified,” Washington Times, December 1.

33.

Eric Schmitt and Helene Cooper. 2019. “Hundreds of U.S. Troops Leaving, and Also Arriving in, Syria,” New York Times, October 30.

34.

Mark Lander and Helene Cooper. 2019. “In Latest Shift, Trump Agrees to Leave 400 Troops in Syria,” New York Times, February 22.

35.

Shawn Donnan. 2018. “Cohn Lifted Papers Off Trump’s Desk to Stop Nafta Exit, Book Says,” Bloomberg, September 4.

36.

Anonymous. 2018. “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” New York Times, September 5.

37.

Carol E. Lee, Kristen Welker, Stephanie Ruhle, and Dafna Linzer. 2017. “Tillerson’s Fury at Trump Required an Intervention From Pence,” NBC News, October 4.

38.

Trump quoted in Randall Lane. 2017. “Inside Trump’s Head: An Exclusive Interview with the President, and the Single Theory That Explains Everything,” Forbes, October 10.

39.

Daniel W. Drezner. 2017. “Why Did Trump Flip-Flop on Afghanistan? It’s the Policy Ignorance, Stupid,’ Washington Post, August 22.

40.

Max Boot. 2017. “Is Donald Trump a Moron? Duh,” USA TODAY, October 4.

41.

Katie Rogers. 2018. “Trump’s Book Club: A President Who Doesn’t Read Promotes the Books That Promote Him,” New York Times, November 30.

42.

Carol D. Leonnig, Shane Harris, and Greg Jaffe. 2018. “Breaking with Tradition, Trump Skips President’s Written Intelligence Report and Relies on Oral Briefings,” Washington Post, February 9.

43.

Jack Schaffer. 2018. “Drowning in News? Learn to Swim,” Politico, March 12.

44.

Cody Cain. 2018. “It Takes a Village Idiot: Thanks to Donald Trump, the President May Be Chosen by a Fourth-Grade Mentality If We Elect a Presidential Candidate Who Speaks and Thinks on a Fourth-Grade Level, What Does That Say About Us?” Salon, October 30.

45.

Justin Moyer. 2016. “Trump’s Grammar in Speeches ‘Just Below 6th Grade Level,’ Study Finds,” Washington Post, March 18.

46.

Derek Thompson. 2014. “Presidential Speeches Were Once College-Level Rhetoric—Now They’re for Sixth-Graders,” The Atlantic, October 14.

47.

Kathleen Parker. 2017. “How Can You Still Doubt Trump’s Intelligence?” Washington Post, June 23.

48.

David Brooks. 2018. “Donald Trump’s Lizard Wisdom,” New York Times, May 10.

49.

Meghan Keneally. 2018. “President Trump Has Called Himself Smart Six Times Before,” Washington Post, January 9.

50.

David Nakamura. 2016. “Trump Boasts That He’s ‘Like, Really Smart’ and a ‘Very Stable Genius’ Amid Questions Over His Mental Fitness,” Washington Post, January 6.

51.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/949616329463615489?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E949616329463615489&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.washingtonpost.com%2Fnews%2Fpost-politics%2Fwp%2F2018%2F01%2F06%2Ftrump-boasts-that-hes-like-really-smart-and-a-very-stable-genius-amid-questions-over-his-mental-fitness%2F.

52.

Richard W. Painter. 2016. “It Is Possible for Trump to Be a Good President,” New York Times, November 9.

53.

Susan Estrich. 2018. “Donald Trump Numbers Not as Bad as Some Believe,” Boston Herald, November 17.

54.

Kelly quoted in Richard Gonzales and John Burnett. 2018. “John Kelly: Despite ‘Times of Great Frustration,’ No Regrets Taking White House Job,” NPR, May 10.

55.

Gwen Ifill. 2016. “Questions for President Obama: A Town Hall Special,” NPR, June 1.

56.

James Hill. 2016. “The Story Behind Donald Trump’s Deal with Carrier to Keep 1,000 Jobs in the US,” ABC News, November 30.

57.

Gerald F. Seib. 2017. “Donald Trump Explains Why He Twists Businesses’ Arms,” Wall Street Journal, January 16.

58.

Seib 2017.

59.

Richard Greene. 2017. “Is Donald Trump Mentally Ill? 3 Professors of Psychiatry Ask President Obama to Conduct ‘A Full Medical and Neuropsychiatric Evaluation’,” Huffington Post, December 18, emphasis added.

60.

Chris Cillizza. 2016. “Trump Is Running the Same Campaign That Won Him the GOP Nomination. There’s a Big Problem with That,” Washington Post, June 12.

61.

Isaiah Berlin. 1953. The Hedgehog and the Fox: An Essay on Tolstoy’s View of History. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

62.

Jenna Johnson, Robert Costa, and Philip Rucker. 2016. “How Trump Got from Point A to Point A on Immigration,” Washington Post, September 1.

63.

Michael Berke. 2018. “5 Revelations from John Kelly’s Los Angeles Times Exit Interview,” The Hill, December 30.

64.

David M. Shribman. 2017. “Trump Mixes Up the Parties, Raises Questions,” Post-Gazette, June 18.

65.

Kissinger quoted in Transcript. 2016. “Face the Nation,” CBS, December 18, emphasis added.

66.

Daniel W. Drezner, Ronald R. Krebs, and Randall Schweller. 2020. “The End of Grand Strategy America Must Think Small,” Foreign Affairs, May/June.

67.

Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. 2020. “‘You’re a Bunch of Dopes and Babies’: Inside Trump’s Stunning Tirade Against Generals,” Washington Post, January 17; Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig. 2020. A Very Stable Genius: Donald J. Trump’s Testing of America. New York: Penguin Press. The analysis and the quotes used in this section are drawn from these two sources (emphasis added unless otherwise noted).

68.

Rucker and Leonnig 2020.

69.

Dent quoted in Janet Hook and Siobhan Hughes. 2017. “Republican Retirement Gives House Democrats Another Target,” Wall Street Journal, September 8.

70.

Susan Glasser. 2018. “Just How Dangerous Is Donald Trump?” Politico, April 16, emphasis added.

71.

Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney. 2019. “House Counsel Suggests Trump Could Be Impeached Again,” Politico, December 23; see also Paul Waldman. 2019. “Could Democrats Impeach Trump Twice? They Might Have To,” Washington Post, December 24. The idea is not as far-fetched as it sounds, especially if Trump wins reelection. Recently, having been tried and acquitted of two dubious Articles of Impeachment, Fred Hyatt the director of the Washington Post’s editorial page, who previously proposed an update of four new possible impeachment articles, recently updated to six his examples of what he says are Trump’s behavior that deserves impeachment consideration. These include: the accusation that “the president refused to acknowledge the danger [of the Coronavirus] because he did not want the stock market to tank”; that he abused law enforcement powers by exercising them to remove the U.S. attorneys of D.C. and the Southern District of New York, “who had been insufficiently attentive to his whims”; that he abused foreign policy power because one of his fired advisors claimed that Trump had told Xi Jinping that he was fine with concentration camps for Muslim Uyghurs. The reason according to this advisor is that Trump wanted China to buy farm products; and Trump’s raising the concern of fraud when states send millions of mail ballots [not Absentee ballots]. As is typically the case in these kinds of claims of egregious criminal and Constitutional Trump presidential behavior, certain strategies are clear: never explore the full range of evidence and analysis relevant to the accusations; never analyze real policy debates as anything more than a claim that there is a gold standard that Trump fails to measure up to; rely on anonymous sources; rely on sources that have an obvious and public grudge against the president; rely on highly partisan sources like Nancy Pelosi to buttress your claims; use high biased tendentious phrasing like “who had been insufficiently attentive to his whims” to insure like-minded readers get the point; and never ever assume better than the worst, most venal self-interested motivations on Mr. Trump’s part. Almost four years into the Trump presidency, it is still surprising, and lamentable, to read such obvious and blatant diatribes by the editorial page director of what was once a major and fair-minded national newspaper. See Fred Hyatt. 2020. “Trump’s articles of impeachment—updated,” Washington Post, June 28; Fred Hyatt. 2020. “In just one month, Trump commits a whole new set of potentially impeachable offenses,” Washington Post, July 26.

72.

Donald J. Trump. 2019. “Remarks by President Trump on Modernizing Our Immigration System for a Stronger America,” The White House, May 16.

73.

Andrew Restuccia. 2020. “Trump Doubles Down on Threats to Impose Tariffs on European Cars,” Wall Street Journal, January 21.

74.

Mark Landy and Sidney M. Milkis. 2000. Presidential Greatness. Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.

75.

David Crockett. 2002. The Opposition Presidency. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Press, p. 45.

76.

Trump quoted in Joshua Green. 2016. “How to Get Trump Elected When He’s Wrecking Everything You Built,” Bloomberg, May 26.

77.

Juliet Ellperint and Damian Paletta. 2017. “Trump Administration Cancels Hundreds of Obama-Era Regulations,” Washington Post, July 20.

78.

Phillip Bump. 2017. “What Trump Has Undone,” Washington Post, December 15.

79.

Gerard Baker, Carole E. Lee, and Michael C. Bender, 2017. “Trump Says He Offered China Better Trade Terms in Exchange for Help on North Korea,” Wall Street Journal, April 12.

80.

Cf. “Mr. Trump Confirmed That He Is Planning to Add Additional Nations to an Updated Version of His Travel Ban That the Administration Is Expected to Release Later This Month.” See Andrew Restuccia. 2020. “Trump Doubles Down on Threats to Impose Tariffs on European Cars,” Wall Street Journal, January 21; see also Brett Samuels. 2020. “Trump Confirms Plans to Expand Travel Ban,” The Hill, January 21.

81.

Donald J. Trump. 2020. “Remarks by President Trump in Press Conference: Davos, Switzerland,” January 22.

82.

Donald J. Trump. 2020. “Remarks by President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Members of the Coronavirus Task Force in Press Briefing,” The Rose Garden, April 27.

83.

Jeff D. Colgan and Robert O. Keohane. 2017. “The Liberal Order Is Rigged,” Foreign Affairs, April 17, emphasis added.

84.

Jared Bernstein. 2016. “The Era of Free Trade Might Be Over: That’s a Good Thing,” New York Times, March 14.

85.

Yellen quoted in Paul Hannon and David Harrison. 2017. “Yellen: Globalization, Technological Change Have Been Harmful to Many,” Wall Street Journal, June 27.

86.

Trump 2020.

87.

Amanda Ripley. 2019. “Americans Are at Each Other’s Throats. Here’s One Way Out,” Washington Post, December 20, emphasis added.

88.

2020. F. Buckley. 2020.American Succession.New York: Encounter Books.

89.

Henry Olsen. 2018. “Blue Wave, Red Tide, or Something in Between?” American Greatness, October 16, emphasis added.

90.

Ken Dilanian. 2020. “Two of 4 Warrants Letting FBI Spy on Ex-Trump Aide Carter Page Were Not Valid, Says DOJ,” NBC News, January 23.

91.

Peter Baker. 2020. “Trump Team, Opening Defense, Accuses Democrats of Plot to Subvert Election,” New York Times, January, 25.

92.

Edward N. Littwak. 1977. “Give War a Chance,” Foreign Affairs, July/August.

93.

Trump quoted in Factor O’Reilly. 2017. “Exclusive Interview with President Trump, Part 3,” Fox News, March 20.

94.

Trump quoted in Shane Savitsky. 2017. “What Trump Didn’t Say,” Axios, January 18.

95.

Cf., “There really isn't any guiding principle—that I was able to discern other than—what's good for Donald Trump’s reelection.” See ABC. 2020. “TRANSCRIPT: John Bolton interview with ABC News' Martha Raddatz,” June 21.

96.

Stephanie Armour. 2020. “Trump Administration Asks Supreme Court to Invalidate Affordable Care Act,” Wall Street Journal, June 26.

97.

Kevin Liptak, Zachary Cohen, and Nicole Gaouuette. 2020. “Coronavirus Will Test the Trump Administration’s Ability to Handle a Crisis,” CNN, January 28.