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Trump and Twitter: Message to Washington — Let It Be!
Count me as a dissenter on the biggest question facing Washington: Should Donald Trump be allowed (whatever that means) to keep his Twitter account? With one voice, Washington shouts, “No. No. No.” I reply, “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
I spent seven years in the Reagan Administration. My assignments ranged from management review of the government, to urban and international economic policy, to speechwriter for the vice president and then for the president. Unlike any role outside of the White House, my every day as a presidential speechwriter was dominated by one question: How do we keep control of the Washington agenda?
People talk about the power of the presidency… the Bully Pulpit and all that. But those of us in speechwriting (and other communications roles) could never afford to forget that, with the exception of the occasional fleeting moment, we started each day on the defense – and our job was always, always to turn the situation around, putting the president back in charge of the capital’s conversation.
For then as now every day started with the before-dawn arrival on doorsteps and desks of the two most powerful anti-administration voices in town — not the Democrats in Congress, but the New York Times and the Washington Post. Those papers set the day’s agenda for the big television morning shows (at the time just CBS, NBC, and ABC), more often than not attacking the president’s decisions and purposes and, unless countered, for the rest of the news day.
Generally the first effective White House response would be the press secretary’s late morning briefing. “Effective” meant strong enough from a high enough source that journalists felt compelled to acknowledge and quote. Direct presidential comment might come via answering a question on the way to or from an event or in a speech. But while speeches often proved by far the most effective tools for stopping, redirecting, or reversing media tides, the speechwriting process with all its clearances and tied as it was to an established schedule usually required a day or two to work its magic. In other words, the White House could always count on being hours or days behind the message curve.
With his Twitter feed, Donald Trump has changed all that.
This Friday provided a perfect example. In terms of front page column inches, The Times’ biggest story was that four cabinet secretaries designate had given confirmation-hearing answers that seemed to put daylight between them and their boss-to-be, or as the headline said, “Latest to Disagree With Trump: His Nominees.” The Times was making yet another effort in the ongoing campaign to delegitimize and cripple the President-elect before he enters office.
In an earlier era this headline would have dominated “Morning Joe” and all the other shows unanswered. Not now. At 6:49 am, Trump tweeted, “All of my Cabinet nominees are looking good and doing a great job. I want them to be themselves and express their own thought, not mine!” The shows had to carry it, so by the time Washington turned to its papers and turned on its TVs, he had already diminished the “new administration at war with itself” line and introduced a substitute: “self-confident leader encourages healthy debate among advisors.”
Yes, Donald Trump may have his Twitter missteps. At times he may prove too quick on the draw, as arguably he was in responding to Congressman John Lewis’ reprehensible statement that the constitutionally elected President-elect of the United States will not be a “legitimate” president. The civil rights movement of which the congressman was so noble a leader prevailed by affirming the Constitution and the rule of law. That was the whole point of Dr. King’s strategy of non-violence. Now Congressman Lewis appears to be against both.
But as for Mr. Trump, missteps will be the price that the current minute-by-minute news cycle exacts if the incoming President is to keep control of the Washington agenda. The pace of undermining reports will be too fast for all the careful vetting that was once the rule, particularly when much of the major media and elements in the opposition party are pedal to the metal and in overdrive to neuter the Trump presidency before it starts.
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I vote yes! Anyway Trump can get his message out works for me. I know the MSM won’t help him.
Let me say something I have said repeatedly over the last couple of weeks:
People are upset with Donald Trump because the say he breaks all the rules.
The truth is that he rewrote the rules and didn’t ask permission. And that’s what make them angry.
So far, Trump seems to be able to keep the media either off-guard or distracted with his tweets. As long as he can do that it helps level the playing field with a press that has suddenly remembered its adversarial role. If we had a main stream press that was also honest and unbiased, I would be more concerned than I am. But things being what they are, I’m fine with the tweets.
Whenever someone in a gunfight is laying there , shot and bleeding and they demand you drop your weapon, the best response is to :
a: Apologize and hand them your weapon.
b: Do a Clint Eastwood and ask them how many shots they think you have fired.
I vote for b:.
Was being the most important word in that sentence.
Substantively, I think of something that Mike Duncan said about ancient warfare. Always choose your terrain. The enemy will try to goad you into fighting on terrain that benefits them but that’s a bad call. Wait it out until you can choose the terrain.
Trump makes his own terrain with these tweets and that’s incredibly valuable.
Twitter is the perfect battleground for P-Elect Trump- I vote he keep it like it is!
What a lot of mature sophisticates miss is that, like it or not, we are still in the schoolyard and the left are bullies. They might like to role-model for decorum, but it falls on deaf ears and they just get egged, or bloodied.
If you don’t respond forcefully the kids (the public) think you are somehow guilty of the charge. It’s not even accurate to say they “think”, its more like a psychological imprint. No defense is interpreted as guilt, not as maturity or admirable leadership.
The response doesn’t even have to be witty or even relevant, you just have to stand up for yourself and refuse to take abuse or be lied about.
We all would like a world that isn’t like this, but until it manifests, it’s better to throw it right back.
I would like to see his tweets with bitly’s pointing to substantial position papers outlining how the new administration is intending to implement good policy.
Just controlling the conversation in Washington seems to me to be a too limited goal.
There never has been nor will there ever will be such an effective man against the lying partisan manipulative slime in the media. Tweet on wild man, tweet on.
Policy nerds and economists would love policy papers but doing that prevents Trump from controlling the narrative. This gives the news the ability to say, “Notable economists including a Nobel peace prize winner are concerned about Trump’s economic policy.” The media can’t corrupt a tweet, they have to report in full.
If Twitter had been around when Reagan was President he would have made use of it. He was a master at going over the heads of the media and getting his message directly to voters. People may long for his gentle repartee with Sam Donaldson (“Well…there you go again.”), but today’s media seems to deserve the Twitter smackdowns and outright castigation that Trump offers.
It seems to me that those who hate his tweeting most are journalists, left-wing journalists. He sends them scurrying, rather than them making him sweat. I bet the reporters were gnawing the corners off of their I-phone cases when Trump walked out of his own press conference, to leave them to be lectured to by his corporate attorney, only to return after a while… And still refuse to play their game. I like.
There is plenty of crap out there where there is little need for any preliminaries prior to implementation, just get busy undoing those things that are hurting Americans. Tweets are good, they keep these pundits busy spinning their wheels.
Why not? I think slow jamming* the news kind of shredded the last bit of presidential dignity.
* I have no idea what that phrase means. Based on the context I think it’s something cool people do. Or something cool, people do to be cool.
To save words (important in a tweet, not so much on Ricochet) these can simply be referred to as the hate media.
I love his tweets, so long as he doesn’t crash the market or start a war by mistake.
You are spot on, Mr. Judge. With the election of 2016, there is confirmation that the control of “the agenda” has largely passed to those elected (and their appointees) who are alert and ‘on offense’. But, it’s not just Trump who is on offense. Perhaps this will force the media back into reporting facts on their front pages, and their opinions back onto their editorial pages. I know it isn’t quite that simple, but if you look at the ‘tweeting’ going on by many in politics now, and especially those around the President-elect, it is clear that the information revolution permitting a bypassing of the main media is at an advanced state.
Trolling the media is clearly a great deal of fun.
Trump’s tweets are cover fire, absorbing everyone’s attention while his cabinet quietly flanks everyone and cripples the EPA, opens up school choice, privatizes health care….
I so agree. and hope all around him continue as well. I watched Sean Spicer hit back in seconds last night…this would have been a 2-3 day narrative.
I have believed since the Indiana primary, which is when I started supporting Trump, that there would be plenty of wince worthy moments… expressions tweeted prematurely. But I also believed that his instant, sometimes gruff, responses were often his most effective method of dealing with so many things said and promulgated by the media that just were not true. Reading this OP from @clarkjudge really reaffirms that belief. Thanks Mr. Judge and my vote is Yes–keep being who you are President Trump. So far, so good.
It’s interesting how people are so ready to announce that racist pig moron Lewis was some kind of hero more than fifty years ago. They say the same of the racist thugs Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton. Doesn’t make that true either.
The How is quite important. E.g. ACA. I’m the first to say it is bad, very bad. But single payer is not the solution and there are lots of undoing complications. Not addressing the problems does not make them go away.
Also, apart from the technical difficulties, there should be a strategy for making the changes stick. That is probably requiring some bi-partisan support.
Anything that upsets the MSM and D.C. Leftists (but I repeat myself) so delightfully much can’t be all bad.
I like that also, but we are part of a small minority who care. Most people I know are bored stiff by deep discussions of policy, and would never read it in any case. They just want “their guy” to stand up and make noise in favor of their issue, and will give more credit for the attack, than the policy. Being too detailed weakens ones’ position, it doesn’t strengthen it except with us wonks, and we are a small minority.
Not worried here because I see very capable individuals being appointed to address these issues, but they are, I think, people with little tolerance for others pet projects and pet peeves. On ACA, there are a few things that need to be accommodated in some form (for those people essentially uninsurable because of pre-existing conditions is an example) but there are so many more things that need to be thrown away (employer and individual mandates and dictates to competing insurance providers regarding what must be included in any insurance package are examples) and don’t need such detailed technical analyses because they’re anti-competitive and unAmerican in that they remove individual choice in healthcare decisions. One thing immigration reform will get rid of is the idea that one here illegally has a healthcare right.
I assume you mean you are part of a small minority who care about the perceived need for profound policy position analyses and not who simply care about the issues. That small minority exists as small because most here think that ‘big’ government doesn’t really solve problems but does very well at complicating them. An approach that actually creates space for problems to be solved is to simplify not complicate. The space here for federal government is small. That is where most of us think we should go.
True, those of us who want small government are a really small minority, but in large part is also extends to caring about issues at all, most I know don’t. They may have one issue they care about, but of the people I know they just want the Federal government to butt out of their lives.
You mistake the “need” for your “want.” There is no need to do anything but deregulate insurance by a thousand times.
The cost of medicine is mostly driven by FDA regulations and insurance regulations. The final big contributor is tort law. Absent those mostly onerous burdens to the industry, health insurance would be quite cheap.
I am whole heartedly in favor of getting rid of the ACA in whole, immediately, without replacement. Then we can discuss tort reform and dismantling much, if not all, of the FDA.
I have been saying for 25 years, if we didn’t have an Al Sharpton, Tom Wolfe would have invented him.
Or, as John Russell said, “How do you plan to get down that hill?”