SUPPORTERS AND CRITICS ASSESS DONALD TRUMP'S RECORD AFTER 1 YEAR IN OFFICE
PREAMBLE to The N.Y. Times January 17, 2018 article, "Vision, Chutzpah and Some Testosterone" containing letters from Trump current and former supporters:
The Times editorial board has been sharply critical of the Trump presidency, on grounds of policy and personal conduct. Not all readers have been persuaded. In the spirit of open debate, and in hopes of helping readers who agree with us better understand the views of those who don’t, we wanted to let Mr. Trump’s supporters make their best case for him as the first year of his presidency approaches its close. We have also published some letters from readers who voted for Mr. Trump but are now disillusioned, and from those reacting to these letters and our decision to provide Trump voters this platform.
Jason Peck of Holtsville, NY offered a concise summary of his views of Trump's accomplishments:
President Trump has exceeded my wildest expectations. Yes, he is embarrassing. Yes, he picks unnecessary fights. But he also pushed tax reform through, has largely defeated ISIS in Iraq, has named a number of solid conservative judges, has prioritized American citizens over illegal immigrants, has gotten us out of several bad international agreements, has removed a number of wasteful regulations, is putting real pressure on North Korea and Iran, has reined in a number of out-of-control agencies, and so on and so on.
Other supporters lauded Trump for the growing economy, the soaring stock market, low unemployment, "undoing President Obama's unconstitutional executive orders."
Among the disillusioned, Sydney Cohan of Westwood, N.J. lamented:
I thought he would change his divisive rhetoric from the campaign trail and never imagined he would divide this country with lies and racism, bigotry and hate. I see a man working to destroy democracy with the help of Vladimir Putin by using disinformation to frustrate and confuse everyone as they weaken America’s standing in the world.
I fear for my children’s future and see a president and his family profiting off the office just as in authoritarian countries, with zero pushback from the Republican Party. Democracy will die if they continue.
Eloquent among Trump opponents, reacting to the letters praising Trump was Peter Boody, of Sag Harbor, NY who writes:
I stop and think about what it is they’re really so happy about: reckless threats and pointless insults passing for diplomacy; a rejection of fact, science and even the notions of decency, humanity and justice; a litany of lies and myths as the foundation of policy; and historic levels of incompetence and self-dealing across the agencies of government from the White House on down.
My take: Trump supporters give him undue credit for a lot of favorable economic/financial outcomes (e.g. stock market, corp. profits, GDP growth, low inflation and unemployment) reflecting previously established trends, attributable not to government policies so much as the natural resiliency of the U.S. economy favored by low oil prices, synchronous global growth, low interest rates and abundant capital. The manifestation of all of these growth-inducing factors either are the result of exogenous events (low oil prices, synchronous global growth) or events predating the Trump administration (low interest rates, abundant capital). As we know, however, Trump will take credit for everything positive, including the absence of commercial air fatalities and the sunrise. What will be interesting is to watch Trump try to explain away the next bear market and economic contraction. (“Fake market”? “Rigged GDP and employment numbers.”?)
Several respondents praised Trump for progress against ISIS, disengaging the U.S. from various international trade and environmental agreements and presumably making progress with North Korea. Such praise is largely unmerited, in my opinion. ISIS has been pushed back primarily by Iraqi troops, equipped and trained by U.S. advisers and supported by U.S. air power largely during the Obama administration. I don't see Trump's policies in the Middle East as anything more than a continuation of the policies of his predecessor -- the U.S. embassy moving to Jerusalem a duly noted exception.
Disengagement from TPP has not been followed by the bilateral agreements Trump promised, leaving the U.S. on the outside looking in in Asia. The future of trade with our two largest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, remains in a state of flux during the renegotiation of NAFTA. There’s no evidence of improvement in the U.S. international balance of trade; the dollar has weakened by about 10% since Trump took office. So much for "Art-of-the-Deal" international trade agreements "Putting America First."
As for North Korea, other than the decision to participate jointly with South Korea in the winter Olympic Games, there has been no reported substantive progress in negotiations toward denuclearizing North Korea, the stated U.S. objective. Meanwhile, during its current charm offensive, the Kim regime continues to develop its nuclear ICBM capabilities reportedly including range enough to reach U.S. cities and a hydrogen bomb many times more powerful than the fission bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Detrimental to U.S. presence abroad, beyond understaffing the State Department, Trump has managed to make himself the object of derision and dislike among most leaders and populations of America’s allies and trading partners.
Donald Trump is a populist only when catering to the extreme right with shiny objects in the “social values” spectrum with little economic impact (e.g. railing against kneeling at a football game, “protecting religious freedom” by allowing discrimination against LGBTQs, restricting abortions, praising state laws dictating transgender usage of bathrooms, normalizing white-supremacist views, restricting immigration from non-European countries Trump describes as “shitholes” or sources of terrorists, opposing restrictions on gun ownership even as the death toll from mass shootings climbs, penalizing sanctuary cities, overriding state legalization of marijuana). Ironically, for the party of “minimal government,” all of the Trump administration’s social values policies entail significant intrusion by big government in private affairs. Whether these are constructive policies, or not, depends on one's political leanings. With Trump's approval ratings sagging to between 35-40 percent of the electorate (although around 75 percent of Republicans), the weight of public opinion seems opposed to Trump's social-values policies and opinions.
When it comes to pocketbook issues, Trump totally abandons populism in favor of plutocracy, unabashedly favoring his own financial interests and those of his wealthy cronies and donors (e.g. the tax bill, especially favorable to real-estate owners and high-income taxpayers; reduction of taxes and regulations to increase corporate profits flowing to top management and wealthy shareholders; big increases in defense spending for the benefit of donors in defense industries). His middle-class supporters fail to see the overriding reality of Trump’s economic agenda as unfailingly favorable to the interests of corporations and the very wealthy, to the detriment of the working classes who elected him: U.S. jobs continue to flow overseas (embarrassingly so in the case of Carrier) or succumb to automation, inequality of wealth/income will be exacerbated by so-called “tax reform,” health insurance rates continue to climb thanks to Trump’s sabotage of Obamacare, the relaxation of regulations boosts corporate profits to the detriment of the environment and worker safety, agency budget reductions cut large holes in the safety net, and ongoing deficits add to the national debt to be unfairly passed on to younger generations, to name a few examples.
Importantly, Trump supporters also fail to connect the dots between policies favoring the rich and financial/economic meltdowns, as witnessed in 2008/9. In the intervening 37 years since Reagan sold the American electorate on the enduring chimera of tax cuts for the rich as the essential tonic for economic growth and increased employment, the economic outcome has been as follows: the rich get stupendously richer, the poor remain desperately poor and the middle-class marks time. That geometry has inevitable consequences, culminating in financial panic and severe recession, if not depression:
As the rich scoop-up virtually all the fruits of economic growth, they flood lending institutions and financial markets with surplus capital, thereby fueling bubbles in housing, stocks and bonds (which drives down interest rates).
Faced with stagnant incomes, the middle class fills the gap between rising aspirations for consumption and flat incomes with debt, obligingly supplied by the rich, awash in surplus cash. Most of that debt is in the form of low-interest-rate mortgages, much of it at adjustable interest rates, thereby pumping up the housing bubble and giving homeowners a false sense of financial wellbeing, causing them to overextend themselves. When interest rates eventually rise to more normal levels, borrowers suddenly find they can no longer carry the burden of excessive debt and begin to default massively, causing the whole house of cards to collapse.
Unfortunately, Trump supporters, seduced by Trump’s espousal of their social agenda, remain oblivious to his machinations in economic policies, and so support Trump's policies detrimental to their interests. For example, several letters to the editor lauded elimination of regulations and passage of the tax cut as Trump accomplishments, little realizing their detrimental effects on their personal health, safety and long-term financial wellbeing. This misdirection is a tribute to the effectiveness of the Trump/Republican messaging system.
There’s another crash coming. One can only hope that it comes when Republicans are in charge of the legislative and executive branches of government so there can be no doubt where the blame lies, as was the case after the elections of 1928, followed by the Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, and 2004, followed by the Crash of 2008 and the Great Recession. It would be unfortunate if the crash came after Democrats win control of either or both houses of Congress in 2018 or the presidency and control of Congress in 2020, as seems likely. Democrats would then remain vulnerable to the Republican messaging machine falsely attributing to them calamities Republicans themselves inflicted on the nation. Obama caught a fair amount of such unwarranted criticism, assuming the presidency only 4 months after the Bush financial/economic meltdown beginning in September 2008. Regrettably, despite the dire consequences of two glaring examples of Republican mismanagement exacerbating gross inequality and imprudent lending/borrowing, the American electorate fails to remember the past and, consequently, is condemned to repeat it. Unless. . . (To be continued.)