Does Trump fancy being President-for-Life?
20th November
New York
In both the UK and America there is a pained and growing awareness that public life has come to be dominated to an unhealthy degree by one subject, to the exclusion of all else. In Britain’s case, the obsession is, of course, Brexit. In the U.S., Donald Trump drowns out all other conversation. The President bestrides his nation’s already narrow world like a colossus.
Resembling what Americans like to call an “overstuffed” cushion, the occupant of the Oval Office never stops talking, never stops tweeting and rarely says anything that either makes sense or conforms to what used to be thought of as the norms of federal, or even Beltway, governance.
It will be interesting to see what his official portrait looks like when he leaves office – assuming, that is, that he doesn’t somehow manage to appoint himself president-for-life. In Washington’s National Portrait Gallery, there are still lines of people each day waiting to view the portrait of Barack Obama by the artist Kehinde Wiley, which was officially unveiled in February. It shows the 44th President sitting on a chair surrounded by lush flowers and vegetation, apparently in reference to the various places around the world that are central to his story, including Hawaii, Indonesia and Kenya.
An equivalent representation of Trump would require a background of casino chips, gold bars and bankruptcy files. Obama may not have been the greatest President of the last hundred years. He failed to live up to his early promise and, having rescued the economy and introduced the Affordable Care Act, he rather rested on his laurels for the next six years. Yet he never embarrassed his country and, in spite of occasional excesses, including his almost pathological use of drone strikes, he was widely regarded around the world as moderate, sensible and … dignified.
Now think of Trump.
This week, the President denounced Admiral William McRaven, the former head of the Navy SEAL-teams that sought and ultimately killed Osama bin Laden, as “a Hillary Clinton fan” whose service to the nation had been partisan and who could not be trusted. McRaven has been hailed as an America hero. When he resigned recently from his retirement job as Chancellor of the University of Texas, he said that the future rested with young men and women who “understand the importance of honesty and integrity, two qualities that will define their legacy in life”.
Not necessarily, according to Trump. This week we discovered that the First Daughter, Ivanka, repeatedly used her private email account to transact official business in her already controversial role as a senior White House adviser. Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump demanded that Mrs Clinton be “locked up” for her use of personal emails while Secretary of State. It was a serious crime, he said, and utterly irresponsible. But when it came to his daughter – whom he has said more than once he would like to have dated – hey, no harm done. She didn’t know, he said, so let’s move on.
Meanwhile, the Deep State is in deep trouble. A newly published study, The Fifth Risk, by the financial and corporate analyst Michael Lewis, reveals that 21 months on from Trump’s inauguration only 361 out of 700 key government positions requiring Senate confirmation have been approved, and no fewer than 152 do not even have a nominee.
At the Department of Agriculture, which in addition to farming is responsible for nutrition, including the provision of food stamps for the poor, there is as yet no Under-Secretary (the equivalent of a Permanent Secretary in the UK), and the list of departmental heads so far appointed includes a former taxi driver, a congressional intern, a country-club cabin attendant and the owner of a scented-candle company.
In Lewis’s view, Trump is attempting to demonstrate that government in America is absurd, and quite possibly unnecessary, by either leaving key positions unfilled or by assigning to them people who are entirely ignorant of how the country is run. It may be a reckless strategy, but if it convinces voters that they don’t need an army of pen-pushers in Washington, it will have served its purpose.
Is Trump then the political equivalent of the Anti-Christ, bent on subverting the system and preparing the way for something entirely different? It is perhaps too early to say for sure, but the signs are not good.
What, though, of the Opposition – the Democrats – who in this month’s mid-term elections won back the House of Representatives and may yet, as a recount in Mississippi grinds on, secure another victory in the Senate? Well, don’t get your hopes up.
The Democrats are united on just one thing, the need to get Donald Trump out of the White House. On this score, they will do everything they can to protect Robert Mueller, the former FBI chief charged with investigating alleged collusion between Trump and the Kremlin. Mueller is skating on thin ice. The President wants him fired and the only ones who stand in his way, other than remaining stalwarts at the Department of Justice, are the Democrats. So, on this at least, they stand as one.
On pretty well everything else, they are divided. Some are barely to the left of the Republicans, even as the latter have lurched sharply to the right. Others are near-as-dammit Socialists, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a politically ambious latino woman from New York City who, at 29, is the youngest member of Congress.
After Ocasio-Cortez, there is a bit of a gap. The Democrats’ Old Guard, led by former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are all in their late seventies. Pelosi herself will enter her 80th year next March. They see the next two years as payback for the humiliations they have endured since Trump came to power, and in some cases for the casual way in which they were treated by Obama in his largely nondescript second term.
Pelosi is determined to regain her “rightful” place as Speaker. She is furious with younger House members who think it’s time for a new generation to take the helm. Such troublemakers are sexist, she says, and don’t know what they’re talking about. She reserves special contempt for other women in the party who haven’t swung in behind her, including the wonderfully named Marcia Fudge, of Ohio. Don’t they realise that she, and she alone, has the authority, experience and legislative skill to take the fight to Trump and save the Republic?
Apparently not. But Pelosi remains a formidable operator and few would bet against her getting her way. Whether she then makes new, liberal legislation her primary goal, or the pursuit and impeachment of the President, remains to be seen. Just don’t be surprised if the Democrats, after years perched uneasily on the higher ground of politics, get down and dirty in the next session of Congress that opens on January 3.