America: Where Are You Headed?
I wrote a post yesterday about the troubling direction U.S. politics is going, suggesting that it could get worse. In response, frequent commenter Glenn Doty writes:
We have still moved forward a tremendous amount in the past 8 years, and while Trump is a complete horror show, he still has yet to undo all of the positive steps forward we experienced under Obama. We’re still further along than we were in 2010.
Bush didn’t undo all of the forward progress we experienced under Clinton… and there were some positive steps forward under Reagan and Bush I, while their steps backwards didn’t regress us further back than the late 60’s, early 70’s.
It’s scary because Trump seems to have no idea what he’s doing, and he could do some incredible damage… but as of yet we haven’t yet regressed to the dark ages of the late 00’s, much less times of McCarthyism, Jim Crow, Total War, Laissez faire government, Manifest destiny, Slavery, etc.
You’re 100% correct that there is a hard limit to the damage that the Trump Administration can cause. What concerns me more than what our man-child president can do here and now is the conditions by which he was elected in the first place (and could possibly be re-elected).
As I type these words, tens of millions of people are cheering as their leader provokes nuclear war, supports white supremacy, eviscerates the rights of women and minorities, destroys the environment, removes the most basic social services, tries to cut healthcare for 22 million people, raises the federal debt, and provides enormous tax cuts to billionaires–all in the context of making a total ass of himself on the world stage, literally on a daily basis.
Given that today’s America has an enormous appetite for all this–one that doesn’t seem to be waning, even as the insanity grows louder by the day–I’m deeply concerned about our future.
Craig.
I can offer this to perhaps make you feel better:
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html
While Trump’s brown shirts (ironic, because their uniform usually involves white T-shirts with a red hat) might cheer the cartoonish buffoonery coming out of the White House, most Americans are not along for the ride.
Drilling down in the poll numbers, you see the polls of adults (“A”) having far worse approval than registered voters (“RV”) who show worse approval than likely voters (“LV”). But all polls show poor results for the administration, and there is much easier ground to gain for opposition to the president in recruiting registered voters off the couch or registering and recruiting new voters than there is for the administration to try to find untapped support.
We’ll move forward out of this, and rebuild. Then some idiot left champion will sabotage another election and we’ll lose most of our gains again.
*shrug*
Such is the way we struggle forward.
Yes, his poll numbers are low right this minute. And they’re likely to get worse as his behavior becomes more unhinged; he must have *some* supporters with some moral line in the sand across which they won’t be pushed. Also, job numbers sank last month, and there’s no telling what will happen to the economy. But what happens when he successfully provokes a war? He’s dying to nuke North Korea, and he’s desperate to drive Iran make into nuclear enrichment. That may represent a rallying point.
Gary,
I’m glad to see you are a fellow reader of the RealClear aggregator Service. RealClear presents a wide range of opinions from a comprehensive range of publications. A great time saver.
I think it’s a little early to worry about opinion polls conducted in the first year of new President, especially a President as radically unusual as Trump.
The President has a complex character and perspective. He’s easily misunderstood by those seeking to stereotype his personality, politics or agenda. More importantly, he doesn’t care if he’s misunderstood by the elite.
For years Americans have been calling for a President whose not a professional politician. In Donald Trump they’ve got exactly that.
Like many highly individualistic personalities, the President seems a mass of contradictions. Over time he’s proven resilient to attacks from everyone, including his own party. ( probably because he was never really much of a party adherent).
He’s also impervious to hysterical outrage from his opponents. He uses social media to bypass the once all powerful media and ignores the dictates politically correctness.
He invites controversy which in the past would spell the demise of most politicians and pragmatically pursues his agenda.
His strategy is quite simple. Trump relies on the public to grow weary of the barrage of repetitive hypocritical outrage from his detractors. The general public are becoming immune to “Trump bashing” in the media. He invites excessive outrage and hysterical controversy, knowing when the apocalypse doesn’t occur it’s his detractors who will lose long term credibility.
But mostly he knows time is on his side. Like Brexit in the UK, most Americans no longer care and just accept the President’s withdrawal from things like the Paris Accord.
The President’s actions toward North Korea are an example of his political astuteness.
He’s skewered the left and exposed them as craven appeasers. By ignoring the media and directly attacking the motives of his detractors by means of simple tweets, he effectively gains the support of ordinary American.
He well knows the flaws in polling. He understands what people say in a poll and actually believe are often very different.
His simple message on North Korea is effective. North Korea is clearly a rogue,criminal regime. North Korea always posed a growing threat. Previous administrations wasted $ billion’s on appeasement and ineffective containment.
With Pyongyang close to manufacturing a nuclear weapon with offensive capacity, the US has only two options:
1) Persuade the PRC to pressure Pyongyang into abandoning it’s nuke program.
2) Exercise the US military option.
The US doesn’t need to use nuclear weapon at this stage. The US has the capacity to destroy the North Korean military and eliminate their nuclear arsenal using conventional weapons.
The consequences for Seoul would be heavy and the President wants the world and North Korea to understand President Trump is not going to risk a “limited objective” half-hearted response.
If the President authorizes military action, he expects the military to deploy all the awesome US military capacity with maximum effect. President Trump will justify such devastation as necessary to quickly minimize any damage to the south.
His message is clear and concise.
It’s no use well meaning appeasers, like Craig, ranting the President is “provoking a war” ! What’s the alternative ?
That’s Trump’s strategy in a nut shell. Once all the ranting dies down, people realize his opponents have no answers. By their own actions they look hysterical, impotent, and craven.
(Just like Neville Chamberlain after Munich in 1938)
Either way, the President wins.