Monday, April 9, 2018

What Comes Next Is Worse

Donald Trump has been president for 63 weeks.  He has been every bit as volatile and boorish as any reasonable person would have expected.  He is an embarrassment every time he appears on the world stage.  His cabinet has been beset with high turnover and a constant hum of scandal.  His policies are very unpopular and he has not demonstrated one ounce of growth into the job.

He also tamed almost all opposition to his policies within the Republican party. The Never Trump crowd gets a lot of cable news air time but they have had no effect on his agenda and they have not dented his polling among Republicans.  Establishment Republicans got their tax reform and a whole host of pesky regulations repealed.  The economic news has been somewhere between mediocre and promising, with unemployment falling slightly and the stock market doing well, at least until more recently. The Islamic State has lost most of its remaining territory and the United States has not been the victim of a major foreign terrorist attack.  

Donald Trump has assembled enough talking points to convince himself that he has the hang of being president.  He has begun to isolate any members of his inner circle who don't completely fall in line with agenda, (Rex Tillerson, David Shulkin and General McMaster.  He now has a cabinet made primarily of a fever-dream mix of sychophants and opportunists. 

Political epochs are divided by election results or massive world events, like the start of a war or the breakout of a plague. Donald Trump's presidency is about to enter its second phase.  The division may end up looking like it was caused by external events, but I suspect the real cause is this: Donald Trump thinks he's doing a good job as president and almost no one that he listens to will tell him otherwise.  I don't know exactly what this second phase will mean with any specificity, but we are about to find out just how bad of an idea it is to have an incompetent president with full-blown narcissism. 

I. Mueller.
I started writing this post yesterday.  I did not expect the Mueller investigation to get top billing. But today the home and office of Donald Trump's lawyer were raided under a search warrant looking into allegations of, among other things, bank fraud and violations of campaign finance laws. Donald Trump responded by holding a press gaggle in which he described the search as a "break-in" and the investigation as a "disgrace."  He is almost certainly contemplating firing Bob Mueller and I'm not sure who will be there to talk him out of it.

In light of today's events, I can't really handicap where the Mueller probe will go.  Yesterday I was going to write that it seems unlikely to me that Mueller will indict the president.  I still think the more likely outcome is a scathing report that points to obstruction of justice but that leaves it up to congress and the possibility of impeachment. But this search is a big deal and it may mean that Mueller has reason to believe the president and his lawyer committed crimes together.  If that's so, the rest of 2018 will be messy indeed.


II. Enter Bolton.
Six days ago, Donald Trump said “As far as Syria is concerned, our primary mission in terms of that was getting rid of ISIS.  We’ve completed that task and we’ll be making a decision very quickly, in coordination with others in the area, as to what we will do.” Then yesterday we got pretty firm evidence that Syria committed another chemical weapons attack against rebels.  And Today John Bolton reported for duty as National Security Adviser.

Bolton's hiring is the most significant personnel change of the Trump administration.  The one redeeming quality of candidate Donald Trump was that he pretended to have opposed the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and as president he has repeatedly cited it as the cause of many of our problems in the region. (He's not wrong about that, although he's dishonest about having opposed the idea at the time.) Bolton was the most hawkish member of the circle that lead us into that blunder.  Bolton was considered for several important jobs during the transition but was passed over for all of them.  

But Bolton is a cheeky fucker.  For the past 15 months, he has stayed in contact with President Trump and he never misses an opportunity to stroke his ego. When Trump finally tired of McMaster's security briefings being too detailed, Bolton was in line for the job.  And now he has it.  So I don't think this pullout from Syria is going to happen.  The chemical attack raises the possibility of an immediate military response by the United States. Whatever options are being weighed, Bolton will be there arguing for the worst option.  You can bank on it.

III. The Road to 2020.
The one thing about politics that  Trump enjoys and excels at is running for president. He loves the adulation of the crowds and he's good at   He will run if there is breath in his lungs. These will be the main arguments of his campaign:

1. I made the country safer.
2. I made the country richer.
3. The Democrats will make you less safe.

Each point needs to be upheld by a handful of talking points.  On national security Trump will cite the decimation of ISIS. But he needs another national security win to make this happen.  I think his best chance of a political win here is to strike some kind of phony denuclearization deal with North Korea. Such a deal would involve North Korea pretending to dismantle their nuclear weapons program in exchange for the United States scaling back our military support of South Korea.  

That sounds radical but Trump has good reasons to make such a deal.  It's not like he gives a shit about the people of South Korea.  And he can "negotiate" a loose time frame for the reduction of North Korea's nuclear infrastructure.  As long as they're not actively testing missiles, Trump can claim a win.  (Bolton and other hard liners will not like this plan. If they out maneuver him, then Trump will have to do something bold with Iran.  I'm sure that will go well.

The economic argument will be based on whatever metrics he finds favorable.  He's a macro economics illiterate, so it really won't matter if those statistics are relevant.  He will be able to string together an argument that his tax cuts averted a disaster or something.  Latelly Trump has begun to get more serious about his stupid trade policies, which could do real damage to the American economy.  That will make things harder for him, but he is too stupid to realize this is true.

As for scaring the public aboIut the Democrats, that will come down to some combination of saying that they are weak on terrorism or soft on the borders.  And there is some political risk for Democrats on that last point.  It is very likely that the race for the Democratic nomination will feature one or more candidates who call for abolishing ICE and who will say unreasonable things about the border patrol in order to win that nomination. They will come back to haunt the candidate in the general election.

I will close with three semi long-term predictions.
1. Donald Trump will be a significant underdog to win the 2020 election.
2. Donald Trump will put up a good fight in that election and there will be one or more points during the election that a win by the incumbet will seem like a real possibility.
3. At some point in the next 30 months, we will have answer to the experiment in hiring a feckless, reckless imbecile as president.  


1 comment:

  1. Let me help you out.Everytime Trump appears on the world stage,the world knows the USA is in charge. And the Mueller probe is going no where.It is all about di sf traction.Will not work Obama,Clintons,And possibly Bush will be in jail with many other dems repubs.

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