Populist Revolution
The
Unpredictable Presidency of Donald Trump
Donald
Trump's election as the 45th president of the United States was not
the product of his strength, but of Hillary Clinton's weakness. His
victory has plunged the US into a deep crisis -- and nobody knows how
he might govern, perhaps not even Trump himself.
By Gordon Repinski
and Holger Stark
November 11, 2016
09:41 PM
In the moment of his
triumph, when Donald Trump began making his way to the Hilton Hotel
in Manhattan in the early morning hours of Wednesday, the chanting
started -- aggressive and loud, bellowed out by a group of frenzied
men. It spread through the crowd and was aimed at Trump's erstwhile
opponent, Hillary Clinton. "Lock her up! Lock her up!"
Trump, after all,
had promised to do just that -- to throw his political adversary in
prison as soon as he had taken the oath of office on January 20, not
unlike the way Vladimir Putin deals with his enemies in Moscow or
Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Ankara. And thus, the zero hour of the new
American era began just as the campaign had ended: with a threat that
contained little in the way of reconciliation and was reminiscent of
distant dictatorships -- even as Trump later sought to rein in the
chants by speaking of "binding the wounds of division" and
of coming "together as one united people."
His followers saw
his victory as a signal, as the beginning and not as the end. They
bared their teeth and cheered as the Empire State Building radiated
red in the night sky with a gigantic image of their leader projected
onto the facade.
On that evening,
America experienced a revolution. The successful postwar Western
model, rooted in mobility, enlightenment and inclusion has been
convulsed by this angry protest vote. It was a vote of no-confidence
in globalized capitalism, an expression of America's partition into
liberal cities and backward rural areas. With this election, the
country's white majority has sought to affirm and protect its
identity.
The political system
has experienced a delegitimization of democracy that makes it
impossible to simply carry on as before. It is a delegitimization
aimed primarily at the elite, Hillary Clinton first and foremost -- a
woman who represents this system more than any other politician.
This election was
about more than simply a change in government. It completed an
epochal shift. The Trumpian revolution is an overthrow of the
neoliberal conservatism of the Republicans, of the faith in free
trade and of the advantages of a multicultural society. On Tuesday
evening, aggressive nationalism returned to the White House.
The President of the
Defeated
Trump is the
president of the defeated: the white middle- and working classes who
are among the economic losers of globalization -- and among the
cultural losers of the demographic change that is making the US more
diverse. Many of these "forgotten men and women," as Trump
described his supporters on election night, are from the lower middle
classes and are driven by fears of losing their jobs and their places
in society. They rose up with the anger of desperation to take back
their country, which they believe Obama and the country's minorities
had sought to take away from them.
In Trump, they have
found a charismatic and callous leader. He was unable to win the
popular vote, but he won the electoral vote, which is enough. The
voices of his voters have united in a cry for change.
And it is true: Many
in America have the feeling that the system no longer serves the
citizens of the country, instead promoting the interests of a clique
that controls power and prosperity. That is true of politics and even
more so of the economy. Those who have visited the ghost towns of the
Rust Belt in the northeast -- where the death of American industry
can be observed, where Trump's core voters live -- can hardly be
surprised that the people there would ultimately rise up.
What is surprising,
however, is how and when it happened. And that it was a person like
Trump who was able to profit from their deep disappointment -- a
vulgar billionaire who plays people off against each other. Still,
the search for reasons as to why voters backed Trump should not gloss
over the fact that around 60 million Americans elected a racist and a
chauvinist to the White House. He is a man who unabashedly courts
neo-fascist elements. After three brutal TV debates and Trump's
announcement he would prevent Muslims from traveling to the US,
nobody can say they didn't know the kind of person they chose to be
the 45th president of the United States.
Even Trump himself
seemed in disbelief on Thursday as he sat down next to Barack Obama
in the Oval Office. Slightly slumped, he sat next to the president,
his arms resting in his lap as Obama spoke. When it was Trump's turn,
he was no longer full of bravado, indeed, he sounded almost
submissive. "I have great respect" for the president, he
said, adding about the meeting: "As far as I'm concerned, it
could have gone on for a lot longer." Obama had called Trump at
around 3:30 in the morning on election night to invite him to the
White House.
Now, a man is set to
take on the country's highest office who directed his entire campaign
against the establishment and who presented himself as an outsider
until the very end. "Drain the swamp" was one of his
maxims, a reference to Washington, DC. How much of this populist
campaign will he attempt to transform into reality in the coming
months. What will his presidency look like?
"Presidencies
are like a gas tank," says Jeffrey Lord. "You start full,
but then it lowers. Trump has to start implementing his plans
immediately, just like Ronald Reagan did in 1981."
Lord served as
associate political director in the Reagan White House and is among
Trump's earliest supporters. At a recent appearance in Pennsylvania,
Trump even called his friend Lord up on stage and they chatted
extensively once the event had ended. Lord believes that Trump could
ultimately end up on Reagan's level, a man who was initially an
outsider and vociferously reviled but who today is counted by many as
among the best presidents in recent US history.
The greatest
challenge facing Trump is that of shifting from campaign-style attack
mode to the day-to-day business of running the government, says Dan
McAdams, a professor of psychology at Northwestern University in
Illinois. McAdams specializes in analyzing presidents and in the
spring, he spent three months taking a close look at Trump's psyche.
He believes Trump is highly unstable and considers him to be a
neurotic narcissist. "It's the hunt that I believe I love,"
Trump once said. And that is how he ran his campaign -- politics as a
hunting expedition, chasing down adversaries like Jeb Bush and Marco
Rubio and, later, Hillary Clinton. And Trump got them all. The
question is whether someone like him can suddenly stop hunting and
start governing.
A Political
Counter-Revolution
Lord believes that
Trump has changed. "He has become more mature and has learned.
He has understood that he is leading a movement of millions of people
who support him passionately. He won't disappoint them." But
that could be easier said than done. The expectations of his
followers are immense. The eight liberal years under President Obama
have changed the country and Trump supporters want more than simply a
change in direction. They are seeking a political counter-revolution.
Mike Pence, Trump's
designated vice president who hails from the party's evangelical
wing, has already said he wants to see a tightening of abortion
regulations. Arch-conservatives see the more than 40-year-old right
to abortion as a betrayal of Creation, and Trump promised to abolish
that right along with one of the central achievements of the Obama
presidency: that of making healthcare available to all.
But what kind of a
president will Donald Trump really be? In the past, he has also
voiced approval of more liberal abortion laws and he once demanded
health insurance for all Americans himself. Over the years, he has
held all manner of contradictory opinions on many different political
issues, sometimes at the same time.
Those who think they
know what Donald Trump will do as president are likely overestimating
their own intelligence. Trump will be the most unpredictable
president that America has ever had. That holds true of his
thin-skinned personality just as it does for his political positions.
Anything, really anything, is possible. And that is the most
disturbing thing.
The American Hugo
Chávez?
It is possible that
Trump will turn out to be the US version of the late Venezuelan
President Hugo Chávez -- that he will appease and divert Americans
while at the same time dramatically eroding the country's
institutions and politicizing the judiciary, the CIA and the FBI. And
that he, as he indicated he would, will allow for the return of
torture. And that he will build the promised wall on the border to
Mexico, impede people from Muslim countries from coming to the US,
turn up the volume on bigotry and use the presidency to personally
enrich himself. It could mean the end of NATO -- but it could also be
that his bromance with Putin will cool and turn hostile.
It is equally
possible, though, that Trump will turn over the governing of the
country to experienced Republican politicians and will preside over
proceedings as a kind of CEO. It is possible that he will build his
wall as a sop to his supporters but will quickly realize that his
announced intention to deport 11 million illegal immigrants makes no
economic sense. It is possible that he will service the yearnings for
a resurgent white identity primarily with rhetoric, that he will seek
to stimulate the economy with billions in investments and that his
foreign policy will simply be a continuation of the American
withdrawal that began under Obama.
We simply don't
know.
The only thing we
know -- from his statements, his campaign and his personality -- is
that he will be a president unlike any that has come before.
Part
2: A Danger to Democracy?
November 11, 2016
09:41 PM
That is another
reason why Trump's opponents have found it so difficult to find the
correct response to him. Should they give him "the chance to
lead," as Hillary Clinton suggested in her almost uncannily
magnanimous concession speech delivered the day after the election?
Or would doing so be akin to normalizing a presidency that is
anything but normal and which many see as a danger to American
democracy?
It is certain that
Trump's approaching Supreme Court appointment will have far-reaching
consequences. The post of the late Justice Antonin Scalia has been
vacant for months, with the Senate declining to even hold hearings
for Barack Obama's compromise candidate Merrick Garland. Leading
Republicans like Ted Cruz are demanding that Trump appoint an
archconservative candidate to ensure that gun laws remain permissive
and that the right to same-sex marriage, established just
a-year-and-a-half ago, be overturned. In contrast to Cruz, Trump is
not an archconservative, but he is flexible enough to service the
extreme right wing of his movement.
But will Trump
really launch trade wars with China and Mexico? That seems doubtful
because it would be bad for business. There is much to indicate that
Trump's economic policy will be a kind of ersatz foreign policy, with
a president who sees international diplomacy as being not unlike the
negotiations surrounding a construction contract. Beyond that, it
remains unclear what the new president's foreign policy will look
like. From the very beginning, Trump presented himself as a candidate
who had a national focus and he has shown no interest thus far in
consensus-based international alliances. He sees NATO primarily as a
financial drain and as an alliance from which America's tight-fisted
European allies profit. His advisors had to work long and hard to
prevent him from flirting with leaving NATO during the campaign.
There is likewise
still no convincing explanation for Trump and his team's strange
closeness to Moscow. On Thursday, Russia's deputy foreign minister,
Sergei Ryabkov, announced that the Russians had maintained contact to
Trump's people. Not all, he said, "but quite a few have been
staying in touch with Russian representatives." Nobody in
Washington is willing to predict just how the remote bromance between
Trump and Russian President Putin might affect relations between the
two countries. Nor is anyone venturing a guess as to what strategy
Trump might employ in the fight against Islamic State. As such,
Trump's foreign policy ambitions remain a great unknown.
Among the decisive
questions facing his tenure will be whether Trump can break the power
of multinational corporations, as he promised to do in the campaign.
And what his relationship to free trade will be. On the campaign
trail, he promised that within 48 hours of entering the White House,
he would force Ford to bring its factories back to the US. He also
wants to force Apple to cease producing the iPhone in Shenzhen, China
and bring production to America. And he wants to renegotiate the
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in addition to blocking
ratification of TPP and TTIP, trade agreements with Pacific Rim
countries and with Europe, respectively. He has indicated he will use
protectionism to warm the hearts of his unsettled followers.
Dazed Washington
Trump knows that a
significant measure of his success will be whether he is able to
create jobs -- and he is likely to present an investment program for
the country's aging infrastructure. Because he is certainly right
about one thing: America is a dilapidated country where wealth is
private but the potholes belong to everyone. When it comes to the
daily needs of Americans, the state has failed.
An infrastructure
project would create jobs and stimulate the economy in the spirit of
Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal. With such a show of strength, Trump
could appease those who have been forced to stand aside helplessly in
recent years as jobs have migrated abroad to places like China,
Malaysia and Mexico.
But it would also
stand in direct contradiction to Republican dogma, which has long
been intent on shrinking the state. Indeed, Trump will likely face
significant opposition from within his own party should he seek to
transgress GOP gospel. And would the Republicans also oppose him if
he were to use the office of president to threaten the guarantees
inherent in the constitution?
In the days
following the election, a dazed Washington sought to convince itself
that things won't get that bad. Government institutions, people
insisted, would limit what the president would be able to do. But
Trump is being presented with an unusually favorable opportunity: Not
only does the GOP control both houses of Congress, but once Trump has
made his appointment, the Supreme Court will likely be conservative
as well. The fact that the Republicans don't have a two-thirds
majority in the Senate is the only thing preventing Trump from
pushing through constitutional amendments as well. All of that means
that Trump will have significant latitude for at least the first two
years of his term.
Furthermore, Obama
demonstrated just how efficiently a president can circumvent Congress
by way of executive orders -- and Trump wouldn't even need the
support of his own party to issue them. He could theoretically use
the strategy to sidestep all those lawmakers who harbor grave doubts
about the constitutionality of mass deportations of foreigners and of
banning Muslims from entering the country. Trump can lure his party
to his side with appointments and by including them in the
decision-making process -- he knows that he will need them.
Birth of a Populist
Movement
Speaker of the House
Paul Ryan -- a man who spent months waffling back and forth between
rejecting Trump and capitulating to him -- is likely to play a key
role. It is still unclear what his relationship to the new president
will ultimately look like.
The Republicans of
the future, believes Trump's friend Jeffrey Lord, could be the party
of the white working class, grassroots conservatives, libertarians
and populists while following hardline positions on free trade and
immigration. That would mark the end of Abraham Lincoln's Grand Old
Party, but it would be a political apparatus to Trump's liking. It
would mark the end of traditional conservatism and the birth of a new
populist movement.
Trump's entire life
has been defined by not adapting to his surroundings, but by adapting
his surroundings to himself. He is surrounded by advisors who pursue
a similar agenda, led by his campaign manager Stephen Bannon, who
used to lead the right-wing populist website Breitbart News.
In the White House,
Trump could surround himself with a mixture of experienced political
professionals and outsiders, who represent a new beginning. Those in
the running for cabinet positions include: Senator Jeff Sessions, who
is among Trump's closest advisors; New Jersey Governor Chris
Christie; and the chairman of the Republican National Committee
Reince Priebus. Mike Flynn, former director of the military
intelligence service DIA, is under consideration for defense
secretary or national security advisor.
Trump is also likely
to include businessmen in his cabinet, people similar to himself.
Forrest Lucas, head of Lucas Oil, could become secretary of the
interior while Steven Mnuchin, an investment banker with Goldman
Sachs, has been mentioned as a candidate for treasury secretary. For
secretary of state, the archconservative former Speaker of the House
Newt Gingrich is in the running as is Senator Bob Corker. And
right-wing journalist Stephen Bannon is actually under consideration
for White House chief of staff.
"Trump has
always surrounded himself with people who reinforce his worldview,"
says Tony Schwartz, who ghost wrote Trump's book "The Art of the
Deal." And he has also understood the message sent by the voters
in this election: People are extremely forgiving of newcomers as long
as they aren't part of the establishment.
Hillary Clinton
embodied that establishment. That was well known and choosing her as
the party's candidate -- capitulating to the Clinton clan -- will go
down in history as the Democrats' fatal error.
The Clinton's power
within the party led to possible candidates like Senator Elizabeth
Warren refraining from running in the first place. It is said in
Washington that Vice President Joe Biden elected not to run because
it was clear early on that the Hillary Clinton network was too
strong. Many believe that Trump wouldn't have had a chance against
Biden -- and the socialist Bernie Sanders may have done better as
well.
Her lack of a
connection with the electorate should have been clear to Clinton
when, for example, she made a campaign visit to Flint, Michigan, a
state she would go on to lose. The largely poor, largely black city
was once a symbol of America's industrial strength and was home to
the auto industry. Now, places like Flint stand as symbols of
political failure: When the municipal government privatized the water
supply in 2014, residents suddenly couldn't even rely on clean water.
The city is decaying.
Part
3: The American Clash of Cultures
November 11, 2016
09:41 PM
Clinton wanted to
show solidarity with the people of Flint, but when she visited a
black church congregation in the northern part of the city, when her
fleet of a dozen dark-colored sedans drove up, it felt more like an
invasion. Many people in Flint still feel that they were merely being
used as a backdrop for Clinton's campaign and that the visit had very
little to do with their own concerns. The pastor of the church speaks
of the cross-armed resistance that confronted Clinton. The people, he
says, no longer believe that anyone can really do anything for them
anymore.
In recent elections,
the Democrats managed to win states like Michigan and Pennsylvania,
with the Rust Belt emerging as an important source of support for
Obama. This time around, though, they went to Trump.
Indeed, Trump didn't
just win the election, Clinton lost it. Low voter turnout led to her
defeat in some states. But the Democrats must also take a close look
at why a large number of Americans who voted for Barack Obama four
years ago decided to support Trump this time around.
Trump now finds
himself the leader of a deeply divided country that is experiencing a
clash of cultures: white America against diversity; urban against
rural; modernity against anti-modernity. The America of tomorrow will
include a growing number of blacks and Hispanics: Trump's victory was
the last major rearguard battle of the whites.
American society
will only slowly recover from the shock of this "American
tragedy," as the New Yorker has branded it. And it's not yet
clear if the country might be facing an even deeper crisis of
democracy.
'We Were Wrong'
Donald Trump has
made a new political culture acceptable and it is one that will be
copied by future candidates, says John Hudak of the Brookings
Institution. "They have seen that it pays to say unacceptable
things." The challenge facing the political system in the coming
years is that of making compromise possible again, he says. The
entire world is watching with bated breath to see how a cosmopolitan
society will react to having elected the leader of a nationalist,
populist movement to its highest position of power.
"We thought
that the great majority of Americans valued democratic norms and the
rule of law," economist and New York Times columnist Paul
Krugman wrote this week. "It turns out that we were wrong."
On the day after the election, Krugman tweeted in horror that it
wasn't just the "immense damage Trump will surely do. There's
also a vast disillusionment that as of now I think of as the end of
the romantic vision of America (which I still love)."
Not much is left of
the American optimism that always defined this proud nation. Trump
has transformed this powerful, divided country to a greater degree
than even his most bitter opponents thought possible. He has
introduced a level of crudity and callousness that had seemed
impossible in the otherwise so polite American society. "Once
you inject hyper-anger into civil society, it is almost impossible to
undo," wrote Republican pollster Frank Luntz in a Tuesday New
York Times op-ed.
In a furious essay
written on election night, David Remnick, the editor-in-chief of the
New Yorker, wrote, "this is surely the way fascism can begin."
The future he described in the piece was dark. "We will be asked
to count on the stability of American institutions, the tendency of
even the most radical politicians to rein themselves in when admitted
to office
. There is no reason to believe this palaver."
Heidi Beirich of the
Southern Poverty Law Center, which keeps close tabs on right-wing
extremism, says that until Trump's candidacy, "there had been a
democratic consensus to steer clear of white racists. But this stigma
doesn't exist anymore. Trump is the fulfillment of many hopes of the
radical right."
The campaign may now
have come to an end, but the clash of cultures that Trump is leading
will occupy America for quite some time to come. The country needs
nothing so much as a therapist, but that is not a role that the new
president is equipped to play. Seldom has a presidency begun with
such a weight on its shoulders as that of Donald Trump.
Shortly before the
election, four out of 10 Trump supporters said in a survey that they
were not prepared to accept the election results in the event of a
defeat. A country whose people are no longer willing to accept the
outcome of free and fair elections is a country in decline. A country
where women can no longer decide if they want to give birth to a
child, where there are no equal rights for homosexuals and whose
president has announced his intention to ban the entry of Muslims is
no longer open.
Psychologist McAdams
believes that Trump will be unable to develop any kind of sensitivity
for the concerns of his opponents because he grew up in an artificial
world. McAdams' hope is not based on the future president's policies,
but on his psyche: "People who have very strong narcissistic
agendas like Trump can be very charismatic," he says, "But
sooner or later people get tired and lose interest in them."
Sooner. Or later.
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