Donkeys and Elephants, and Bears, Oh My!
Trump’s legacy figures as a sort of paradox that the American public have yet to fully unlock. Although eager to re-introduce a more traditionally isolationist foreign policy and reinvigorate civic society through a return to the will of the people, Trump wielded the authoritarian control of the executive branch to achieve this apparently benign and democratic end. What people should ask, now that Trump must apparently against his will leave office, is whether events could have played out any other way.
Consider in passing the following somewhat reductive analogy. If American History were a prolonged game of Monopoly which began on a more or less even playing field but grew lopsided as the game went on, how would it be feasible to reset the board without just tossing it to the ground? Trump, as the 2016 inheritor of the Oval Office, as well as a literal monopoly man and mega-millions realtor, faced off against a corrupt American elite the way landlords do their truant tenants: With notices of eviction, and by cutting deals with new incoming residents (here standing for elected officials, not immigrants).
Conservatives who despise Trump don’t distinguish his use of executive authority from Obama’s, especially since many of Trump’s first executive orders simply reversed ones Obama had first put in place. But the backward shift in course Trump instigated sought to pull America home from overseas entanglement and the global expansion of corporate commerce. Trump preferred the more solid, small town America of yesteryear to the sprawling corporate behemoth that now commands such an unrestrained international influence, since the latter is only nominally headquartered in the U.S.A., while the former resembles the quaint old brick and mortar monopoly board where the Trump real estate empire first established dominance. To this end, Trump sought a re-alignment of international interests, backing away from collaboration with the plastic and electronic goods manufacturing plants of Communist China at the risk of inflaming a trade war and ballooning the national deficit to Olympian heights.
The bad press Trump immediately received as Hitler reincarnate had less to do with his use of executive power, and more with the direction and brazenness with which he wielded it. The previous presidential administrations — extending back more than a century — have only themselves to blame for amassing the great wealth of executive firepower that Trump seized hold of. It has just taken America a while to recognize this fact because we were still too busy swallowing the good P.R..
Previous presidents maintained the old representational government facade to a much greater extent by pussy-footing around their power much more so than Trump has. They also succumbed far more to congressional peer pressure to be the nice-guy congress wanted in the room rather than the disciplinarian it long ago required to promote meaningful constitutional reform and reign in the executive branch toward a more modest position. Behind closed doors, G.W. and Obama did as they pleased, dictating essential items of American foreign policy by the stroke of the pen. But this only became a meme-able moment when Trump first pulled out of the TPP trade agreement with his cocky John hand.
Trump was impolite enough to spit in congress’s eye without prefacing it with a ceremonial song and dance. Despite neoliberal alarm, Trump never broke the law, except in the bedroom, but his unsavory personal background with upscale hookers was a facile re-play of the Monica Lewinsky scandal that Americans are too now jaded to bother with anymore.
Like his reality TV-persona, Trump had no qualms firing people, and even seemed to enjoy it. He made enemies with people in his own party, as well as conservatives like those in the Foreign Service, by subverting their expectation that their career prospects would soon be advanced. The crux of neoliberal resentment is its recoil against Trump’s gleeful career-axing. Dressing up Trump’s modern day business savvy for reducing redundancy as an illegal offense against American Democracy is a childish fantasy that used the Kavanaugh trial and Impeachment proceedings as an elaborate kabuki drama to drive a wedge against Trump’s re-election.
As a mendacious manipulator from a place barely resembling the rest of America, NYC, Trump’s ruthless dude attitude was both his blessing and curse. Congress’s preferred man, the namby-pamby play-alonger type Biden epitomizes, is someone they’d like to wrap around their finger like a teenager might an indulgent parent. In the U.S. Constitutional framework, the president was supposed to only exercise a light touch in congressional affairs. That means all the gripes against Trump are fully legitimate after an old-fashioned fashion, except for the fact that they neglect that the executive branch has become the unwieldy thing it is precisely because congress, like a spoiled child, has encouraged the president to do its bidding over the years.
The 180 pivot by lawmakers eager to show America as an evil fascist enemy of the people is hypocrisy plain and simple. And one can’t help but wonder, under such duress, whether the reduction of presidential power can even be attempted except through an exertion of the same. This is the paradox of the U.S. presidency, which Trump has only lately brought into such stark relief.
Lincoln spoke of taking a vomit-inducing emetic to treat congressional indigestion after ruling out other options, but cautioned against developing a taste for it as part of one’s diet. And parents of toddlers will appreciate the need to swiftly punish misbehavior when it crosses a certain line. But a too recriminative bearing risks inverting the parental dynamic and creating a relationship of fear and secrecy between parent and child.
Lincoln was dealing with a far more civically engaged and responsible citizenry than we are today. Trump’s playing to his base shows us that what southern and middle America really want is a kind of strong man, and they look up to Trump like Hollywood extras do a Marvel superhero. It’s reasonable to point out that Trump indulges his authoritarian-chic far too much on the national stage, and he gets down-voted by more traditional conservatives who can’t stand hero worship, and especially of such a hero.
“Don’t follow leaders, watch the parking meters,” as 2016 poet laureate Bob Dylan said in Subterranean Homesick Blues, his 1965 boomer anthem two generations ago. It still resonates today as sound advice for both regular people and the people’s representatives to heed. Parking meters were Dylan’s whimsical symbol for political campaign corruption. Trump’s allure as a self-financed politician was due his promise to take on the beast. If it ate him instead, who can really blame the guy giving it the old college try.
Of course, if America could grow up, there might be more room for a president who strikes a more Lincoln-like balance between Trumpian bear poking and Biden-esque playing dead. But as things stand, the first rouses the bear’s fury, and the second saves his own skin at the cost of letting the bear have his own way. Both treat America like an animal, not a human being, and avoid the call for more reasoned discourse and thoughtful political engagement among rival congressional peer groups. One through bravado, and the other through cowardice. But rather than cast blame, we should sympathize with both contenders to the throne, because bears don’t talk, and even if they do it’s just to roar.