If the past six months is any guide, then most politicians, corporate executives and foreign leaders have little to fear from Donald Trump. He has turned out to be a wildly ineffective manager, deal maker and communicator, and with turnover in his administration expected to be high over the coming months (Sean Spicer is just the beginning), the president (shudder) will find it even more difficult to project an image of competence and efficiency.
Are you surprised?
You shouldn't be. Despite running, and being perceived, as the great business executive who would bring a corporate approach to the sprawling wildness of government, Donald Trump has turned out to be a terrible administrator. Yes, he does tweet on a regular basis and I'm sure his fans find it reassuring that the country is deporting millions of undocumented people, undermining environmental laws and generally blaming the free press for his troubles, but this is no way to get any of the big things we need accomplished in a timely manner.
Even if the health care bill comes back from the dead this week, I really can't see enough GOP support for a measure that has a 32-million-people-losing-insurance-price-tag on it passing, although I have underestimates the cruelty and blind ignorance of the Republican Party before.
The bigger problem is that Donald Trump doesn't know how to sell policy or to focus his administration's message on passing a solid piece of legislation. Of course, it's very difficult to sell a law that you probably haven't read and even if you did you don't really understand it, which likely describes Trump's role in this process. Add in the fact that it contradicts his campaign promise that he would get a bill that covers everybody cheaply and get it fast.
Strike three, no?
But the real issue is that not a lot of stakeholders in Washington or otherwise actually fear Donald Trump, and with good reason. He was leading from the rear on health care, entering the fray only in the last couple of days when it was clear that most Americans hated the new law and many GOP Senators could not bring themselves to vote for it. He has removed the United States from any meaningful leadership position on climate, and by extension, jobs, by taking us out of the Paris Climate Accords. He nixed the Pacific Trade Agreement and his threats to Mexico and Canada about renegotiating NAFTA are meeting the reality that those other countries actually have national interests of their own that Trump cannot just dismiss.
And, you know, there is the very sensitive issue of the fact that Donald Trump did not receive a majority of popular votes in the 2016 election. If most people don't vote for you, it's difficult to rally the will of the American people around your agenda when your agenda is basically...Donald Trump and his interests. The investigation into potential, OK, nonexistent voter fraud in the election has led to a severe backlash from Republican and Democratic state officials who are rightly balking at handing over voter rolls and Social Security numbers to Trump's crack(pot) investigator who believes that voter fraud is rampant.
In fact, the only fear I have this week is that Trump or one of his minions will fire Robert Mueller because he's edging a bit closer to saying that the president has to turn over his tax returns which, I am convinced, is the real motivating factor behind Trump trying to forestall the Russia investigation. I'm sure he's been told that if the Benghazi investigation can lead to the discovery of Hillary Clinton's home email server, then there's no reason why Mueller can't go a little far afield of Russia and focus on Trump's financial dealings.
Now the president is also talking about issuing pardons to those people who are under investigation, and is even asking if he can pardon himself.
Does Trump understand that in order to receive a pardon, the person must admit to having committed a crime (see #10)? My sense is that he doesn't. And I really can't see Trump admitting to obstruction of justice or any other high crime or misdemeanor. What he really wants is to end the investigations, but pardons won't do that. This is going to get as ugly as most other issues have since January 20.
In the meantime, we have a blustery executive with no real policy knowledge and even less intellectual discipline trying to tell all of the Republicans in Congress that he'll crack the whip if they don't vote for bills he wants. This is folly. I'm more than happy to have the country do nothing than to do something awful in the name of party discipline.
And I think that's exactly what will happen. What a waste.
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