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Title: The Crisis Mounts Author: Ron Tabor Date: March 29, 2017 Language: en Topics: United States of America, Donald Trump, The Utopian, crisis Source: Retrieved on 11th August 2021 from http://utopianmag.com/archives/tag-The%20Utopian%20Vol.%2016.4%20-%202017/the-crisis-mounts/ Notes: Published in The Utopian Vol. 16.4.
The recent failure of President Donald Trump and his Republican allies
to “repeal and replace” Obamacare (or even to put their hastily-produced
“replace” proposal to a vote) reveals the depth and extent of the
political crisis that is engulfing the Trump administration, the
Republican Party, and the US ruling elite as a whole. It also suggests
that the crisis is likely to escalate.
Up until the last couple of weeks, the crisis centered on three issues:
associates have had with the Russian government and oligarchy, and
particularly whether they colluded with Russian intelligence agencies to
influence the presidential election to facilitate Trump’s victory.
him to evade prosecution under the US constitution’s “emoluments
clause,” which prohibits presidents from receiving gifts from
representatives of foreign governments and citizens of foreign
countries.
might prevent him from functioning effectively as the chief executive of
the United States, head of the Republican Party, and leader of the “Free
World.”
In the somewhat more than two months that have passed since Trump’s
inauguration (and even before the healthcare meltdown), it was obvious
that these issues were not going to go away any time soon. In fact, they
have become more salient and, from the point of view of Trump, his
allies, and his supporters, more dangerous.
The ties between the Russians and the Trump campaign have already led to
the resignation of Trump’s national security advisor, Michael Flynn, and
the recusal of Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from the Justice
Department’s investigation of the issue, both steps resulting from Flynn
and Sessions lying about their past contacts with representatives and
agents of the Russian government. In addition, committees of both the
House of Representatives and the Senate are carrying on investigations
into the issue, while the FBI and other agencies of the “intelligence
community” are engaging in their own probes. To add to all this, there
is increasing support among both the voting public and prominent
political figures for the appointment of a non -partisan commission led
by an independent prosecutor to carry out a thorough and unbiased
investigation, lest the Republicans utilize their power in Congress to
prevent the unearthing of information likely to embarrass the
administration and the Republican Party as a whole.
The intelligence agencies seem convinced that the Russia government did
intervene in the US electoral process (among other things, by hacking
the computers of the Democratic National Committee) to help Trump, who,
perhaps tactlessly, made clear both during the campaign and after that
he greatly admires Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and wishes to reduce
on-going tensions between Russia and the United States. I see no reason
to doubt the agencies’ conclusion. It has also been established that
members of Trump’s family, campaign staff, business associates,
supporters, and even Trump himself had periodic contact with
representatives and/or agents of the Russian government during the
campaign. The crucial question is whether there was actual collusion
between the Trump camp and the Russians. Unfortunately, collusion
(“conspiracy”) is very difficult to prove, especially since the Russian
agents, many of whom came up through the Russian intelligence apparatus
and were thus aware that their conversations were likely to be recorded,
were probably smart enough not to say anything explicit to the Trump
people. To put this more colloquially, investigators need to come up
with a “smoking gun,” and it is not yet clear whether this is possible.
At the very least, then, the issue will continue to be in the news for
some time, and if anything, to increase in prominence. Already,
California Democratic congressman Adam Schiff has indicated that the
House Intelligence Committee, of which he is a ranking member, has come
up with evidence that he described as “more than circumstantial.”
More recently, the Republican chairman of the committee, Devin Nunes,
met privately (and secretly) with White House staff members, supposedly
to review evidence in the case, before he shared this with other members
of the committee. It now appears that this was part of a clumsy plot
orchestrated by members of Trump’s staff, including Steve Bannon, to add
credence to Trump’s already debunked claim that the Obama administration
illegally subjected his transition team to surveillance. This bizarre
episode has led to calls for Nunes to recuse himself from the
investigation on the grounds that his participation in the Trump
transition team and his recent actions suggest that he is not interested
in pursuing a bi-partisan investigation but is instead acting as an
agent of the administration. Because of the uproar over this, the House
committee’s investigation has been essentially shut down, and the Senate
committee is taking the lead. Even more intriguing, Michael Flynn has
offered to testify if he is offered immunity from prosecution. (Innocent
people do not usually ask for immunity.) For now, Senate investigators
have put him on hold.
The question of Trump’s continued ties to his business interests has
dropped out of the spotlight recently, but it may increase in prominence
if the Russian issue and other controversies gain momentum. (Along with
the questions about his other business interests, Trump recently raised
membership dues for his Mar-a-Lago club, in effect, selling access.) It
is worth remembering, in this context, that Chicago mobster Al Capone
was eventually tried and convicted, not for the bootlegging, murders,
beatings, the bribing of cops, judges, and politicians, the intimidation
of witnesses and jury-tampering, and the other outrages he committed,
but for “tax evasion.” If the demand for Trump’s removal from office
ever reaches an intense enough level but no “smoking gun” re the
Russians is ever found, the “emoluments clause” of the constitution may
well come in handy.
While the question of Trump’s potential conflicts of interest has
receded from view, the issue of Trump’s mental state has not. I have few
doubts that Trump is a reasonably intelligent man (how else could he
have survived in the dog-eat-dog business world as long as he has, even
if he did have to declare bankruptcy six times?), but it should be
blazingly obvious by now that his psychological issues are serious, so
much so that they have greatly hampered his effectiveness, even from the
standpoint of his own interests. This was revealed in the aftermath of
the inauguration, when he would not let go of his contention that the
crowd at his inauguraion was much larger than the ones at the two
inaugurations of Barack Obama, even after published photographs of the
three inaugurations graphically proved that he was wrong. A deft
politician (and a man with all of his faculties intact) would have
immediately “pivoted away” from the issue, realizing that making his
case was a lost cause, but, no, Trump doubled down on it, and kept it up
for days. The same thing happened when he insisted that the reason
Hillary Clinton won nearly three million more popular votes than he did
was because “millions” of undocumented people illegally voted for her.
Like the inauguration crowds, this is a checkable fact, and without
bothering to verify whether his claim was true before he spoke, Trump
just shot his mouth off and wouldn’t let go. Trump responded similarly
with his charge that President Obama ordered Trump Tower to be
wiretapped and maintained it even after it had been officially refuted.
All of this might help him with his hardcore base, but in the eyes of
everybody else, it makes him look like a liar, a lunatic or both. (While
I believe Trump is a pathological liar, I suspect that, in many of these
instances, he really is delusional: he just can’t believe that he isn’t
as popular as Obama, won fewer popular votes than Hillary Clinton, and
isn’t one the greatest politicians of all time, right up there with
Vladimir Putin.)
This is not the behavior of a clever political operator, one who thinks
ahead, calculates his moves, puts the various pieces of his plan in
place, lines up his allies, etc. Rather, these seem to be the actions of
a man who can’t control himself. It appears increasingly clear that
Donald Trump, the president of the United States, cannot control when
and how he reacts, what he says and how he says it, such control being
the quintessential trait of a successful political person. Instead,
Trump just lashes out, defensively and thoughtlessly. This, apparently,
served him well as a child and throughout his business career, and he
had enough money and clout in the arenas in which he was engaged so that
his reflexive bullying, blustering, lying, and threatening worked. (It
also got him elected president.) But he is now engaging in a much bigger
arena, and he is facing players who have a lot more knowledge, a lot
more experience, and a lot more guile than he has.
Beyond his poor impulse control, Donald Trump is someone who cannot
understand how he is perceived by others and thus cannot calculate how
his actions will be received. He is, quite apparently, self-centered and
self-involved in the extreme. Everything anyone says or does is
immediately and uncontrollably perceived only in terms of himself. One
aspect of this narcissism is a refusal to take any responsibility for
his actions. When things go wrong, it is never his fault; it’s always
someone else’s. Trump, the would-be strong-man, sees himself as a
victim. Yet another side of Trump’s obsessive self-involvement is what
appears to be a complete lack of empathy, let alone, compassion, for
anyone else. The things he said during the election campaign, his
attacks on and slanders against entire ethnic and religious groups, his
revolting and gratuitous insults of women, his cruel mocking of people
with disabilities, along with his lies/delusions suggest that Trump is,
or is very close to being, a sociopath, someone without a conscience.
This impression is reinforced by the fact that, while these actions may
have helped him during the election campaign, they have shown themselves
to be serious liabilities since he’s been in office.
After his inauguration, Trump’s chief strategic task was, while holding
on to his base, to win over the “center,” that is, those who voted for
him largely as a protest against Hillary Clinton, those who voted
half-heartedly for Clinton, and those who did not vote at all. Instead,
virtually all his actions have worked to alienate these people, indeed,
to frighten them out of their wits, so much so that Trump’s approval
ratings, most recently at 36%, are the lowest of any incoming president
since modern polling began. They also led to the emergence a militant
“resistance” movement, involving vast numbers of people mobilizing to
oppose his policies. (A clever feint to the center, around the theme of
“I want to be the president of all the people,” might have avoided
this.) It’s as if Donald Trump has reversed Teddy Roosevelt’s adage:
“Speak softly and carry a big stick.” Instead, Trump speaks loudly
(yells, in fact) and carries what appears to be an ever-smaller stick.
Another strategic task, if Trump really wanted to get something done
while in office, was to make nice to the various individuals and groups
who make up the institutions of the American government. Instead, Trump
ridiculed and insulted the intelligence establishment, the top brass of
the military, the federal bureaucracy, the entire judiciary branch, and
the governors of many states, attacking their competence and impugning
their integrity. This is not the way to “win friends and influence
people” (or, for that matter, to carry out an authoritarian coup, if
that indeed was Trump’s intention, which I doubt).
It would give me considerable pleasure to go on in this vein, since it
pertains to a truly putrid human being, but I believe the point is
clear. Because of his psychological characteristics, in somewhat over
two months in office, President Donald Trump has continually shot
himself in the foot.
It is in the context of these aspects of the Trump-ian crisis that the
Republicans’ recent healthcare catastrophe occurred. The debacle shows
all the signs of Trump’s deficits. During the election campaign, Trump
vowed to “repeal and replace” the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise
known as Obamacare. Of course, it was easy to come up with this as a
campaign slogan, but much more difficult to actually carry it out. Ever
since it was presented to Congress, the Republicans have been denouncing
the ACA. In fact, as we all know, the act, both in its conception and in
its implementation, has had a lot of problems. But in the years since it
was passed and despite the ruckus they raised, the Republicans never
managed to come up with their own alternative. Now, here they are, in
control of both houses of congress and with their man in the White
House. According to their own promises, it was their job to come up with
a healthcare plan that was better than Obamacare, and they couldn’t do
it. Their proposal, the American Health Care Act, was a disaster, both
in terms of its content and in terms of its political fall-out. Without
going into the details, it is enough to know: (1) the plan would have
involved a huge tax break for rich people; (2) it would have raised the
healthcare costs of many middle-aged lower-income Americans; (3)
according to the neutral Congressional Budget Office (CBO), it would
likely have resulted in 24 million people losing their health insurance;
and (4) also according to the CBO, it would have saved the government a
lot less than the Republicans initially claimed. Meanwhile, on the
political side, it pleased nobody, panicked huge numbers of voters (many
of whom showed up, irate, at “town halls” called by Republican
congresspersons) and could not generate enough support in Congress even
to have it put to a vote in the Republican-dominated House of
Representatives. Most tellingly, it revealed stark fissures in the
Republican Party. The right-wing Freedom Caucus in the House refused to
support it because it was too much like Obamacare, another
“entitlement,” which they abhor, while more moderate Republicans,
especially those from swing states, opposed it because it would have
cost millions of people, including many of their constituents, their
healthcare. Typical for this administration, the plan was poorly
conceived, hastily prepared (Trump discovered that healthcare was “more
complicated” than he had thought), and insufficiently vetted, even among
Republican members of Congress. To make matters worse for Trump and the
rest of the Republicans, the ACA, for all its faults, has managed to
convince the vast majority of Americans, including Republican voters,
that affordable healthcare is a right. Most of those who supported
“repeal and replace” wanted the Republicans to come up with something
better than Obamacare, not something worse.
Beyond all this, the healthcare screw-up revealed that Trump’s
much-vaunted deal-making skills were not up to the job. (What happened
to “The Closer,” “The Art of the Deal,” the “Only I Can Fix It”?) Even
Trump’s bullying, his threats that he would mobilize his supporters to
deny Republican opponents of the plan their seats in Congress, didn’t
work. And since intimidation seems to be one the very few arrows in
Trump’s quiver, it, along with the gaping splits in the Republican
Party, calls into question the ability of the administration to pursue
the rest of its reactionary agenda. This, plus the fact that Trump’s
voting bloc appears to be eroding — in a recent poll, a whopping 60% of
those questioned consider Donald Trump to be dishonest — gives a hint of
what may happen down the road.
The entire situation raises several broader questions: (1) Does the
Republican Party have the ability to govern? Can it lead, rather than
just oppose? (2) If it can’t lead, does it have a future? (3) How will
the current situation be resolved?
In the 2016 primary season, Donald Trump stole enough of the Republican
base to win the nomination. Despite their initial opposition to and
distrust of Trump (who, for many years, was a supporter of the
Democratic Party and whose views were not consistent with Republican
positions), the Republican Establishment, out of a combination of
desperation and opportunism, abandoned the few principles it had and
embraced Donald Trump as their candidate. It was a deal with the devil.
The Republicans hoped to get the tax cuts, the cuts in environmental and
health and safety regulations, a seat on the Supreme Court and some
other things they’ve always wanted, while hindering Trump from pursuing
those aspects of his program they oppose and doing too much damage to
the country’s foreign relations. On the other side, the Democratic
Establishment was also asleep at the wheel, acceding to the nomination
of an unappealing candidate who carried a lot of political baggage and
who could not come up with even one inspiring reason why people should
vote for her. Running a poor campaign — among other things, she took for
granted the white working class voters in the swing states (she didn’t
visit Wisconsin even once) — Hillary Clinton allowed Trump to sneak by
her and win a majority of votes in the Electoral College. The result of
the arrogance and laziness of the political elite(s) of both parties was
the victory of an outsider — a rogue member of the ruling class, a
political novice, an ignoramus, a boor, a letch, and a likely psychopath
– to occupy the most powerful political office in the country and, in
fact, in the world.
At this point, it appears that Trump and his Republican allies will next
attempt to work out a deal on tax reform. This issue is likely to be
even more contentious than healthcare. Leaving aside the distance
between the Republicans and the Democrats, the Republicans are divided
into opposing groupings. Trump wants to cut both corporate and personal
income taxes, especially for individuals in the top brackets. But he has
also insisted that he will not cut “entitlements,” that is, Social
Security and Medicare, which has long been part of the Republican
program. This, plus a large military build-up and an ambitious
infrastructure program, will lead to an explosion of the government’s
budget deficit and long-term indebtedness, which is anathema to the
“Freedom Caucus.” Another bone of contention will be Trump’s proposed
tax on imports, which will elicit vehement opposition from large sectors
of the business elite (including executives of Walmart, by some measures
the largest corporation in the country) and congressional Republicans.
In this context, it is important to note that in the fight over
healthcare, Trump’s attempts to bully the Republican opponents of his
plan backfired. They stood up to him and the world didn’t come to an
end. These people now realize that Trump is increasingly vulnerable and
his threats increasingly hollow. Most people, even Republicans, do not
like being bullied. If Trump’s base continues to erode, however slowly,
will the Republican knives, along with those of the Democrats, start to
come out?
In the meantime, Trump continues on his campaign to undo the
achievements of the Obama administration, most recently, those designed
to combat climate change. But, for all his hot air, Trump will not bring
back coal or even seriously slow the death of the industry. More than
environmental regulations, coal has been dealt a mortal blow by economic
forces, particularly by the fact that natural gas is cheaper, more
efficient, and cleaner. Moreover, renewable energy, particularly solar
and wind power, is now a big business, with its own growing and
increasingly powerful constituencies (among them, investors,
entrepreneurs, workers, consumers, and ranchers leasing their land for
wind farms), including in many of the states (such as Texas and Iowa)
that went for Trump in the election. Even now, many state governments
are investigating their legal strategies to fight Trump’s anti-climate
initiatives, and they and many cities around the country are moving
ahead with their own programs to combat global warming. At the same
time, while US automakers might appreciate not having to meet the
stringent regulations on efficiency and emissions that were mandated by
the Obama administration, how will they react when foreign auto
companies, particularly those of Japan and South Korea, continue to move
ahead in these areas? A considerable majority of people in the United
States, including Republicans, now believe that human-induced climate
change is a serious problem. Is it likely that they will continue to buy
US cars if the competition is offering considerably cleaner and more
fuel-efficient vehicles at competitive prices? More broadly, China is
already the global leader in the development and production of renewable
energy, the energy of the future. Trump’s actions will only increase its
advantage and cede American political leadership on this crucial issue.
To top all this off, the administration is in deep disarray. Trump’s
cabinet and advisors are divided into several mutually hostile factions
(among them, members of the Republican Establishment, supporters of the
Koch Brothers, white nationalists, and a group known as the
“Democrats”). For its part, the White House staff is in a state of
virtually complete demoralization, terrified of the boss’s wrath and
paranoid about being blamed for leaks and administration setbacks. This
does not sound like a winning team. At the moment, Trump has only two
things going for him. One is the fact that, at least so far, his core
supporters have remained loyal him, enough to intimidate many Republican
congresspersons (who loathe him) from publicly opposing him. However, as
I mentioned, the Trump base is showing signs of fraying at the edges,
and already, as the vote on Trump’s healthcare proposal demonstrated,
some Republicans may be finding their courage.
The other asset Trump has is the economy, which continues to chug along
at a reasonable rate. But how long will this last? While a short-term
upswing is possible, I see little sign that a Reagan-style boom, such as
we saw in the 1980s, is in the cards, even if Trump does manage to get
his entire program passed, which, at this point, seems extremely
doubtful. So, what happens when it becomes apparent that Trump cannot
deliver on his campaign promises? While much of Trump’s base will
undoubtedly whine and blame Washington/the Establishment for not letting
their leader carry out his program, will all of them be so dull as to
not realize that they’ve been conned? (Of course, with human beings,
anything is possible.) In any case, it will be interesting to see how it
all works out.