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How Trump’s Politics Betrayed Him and All of Us
On June 6, I wrote a post about the dangers of Trump following the Bush political playbook, as he does, and how that could trip him up. The parallels between W. Bush political strategy and Trump’s political strategy are uncanny. Further, the Left reacted to both men in almost the same way. We are still, for all the talk of Hope and Change and Draining the Swamp, in a Bush-Clinton Family political moment with the Republicans and Democrats both running different versions of Bush and Clinton when they aren’t running someone with that name.
In my previous post, I wrote that the danger for Trump would be the mainstream media finding a weakness in his aggressive, fighting tendencies or lack of knowledge about our norms. In his child separation policy, the media found a perfect and telling issue to hammer Trump and force him to fold.
Trump’s misunderstanding here is similar to W. Bush’s mistake in nominating Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court in 2005. Bush lost his base and lost the Democrats provoking a crisis right after his triumphant re-election, that made people question one of Bush’s greatest political assets, his leadership. In Bush’s case because he was not pursuing any kind of Conservative ideology but selling himself, his style, and his transactional ability to get some Conservative agenda items passed, Miers seemed a smart choice for the Supreme Court.
Bush, much as Trump, sold himself as a deal maker and able to work across the aisle to get things done. When he came in the first time he managed to get education reform passed with Edward Kennedy and now, at the start of his second term, it made sense to Bush to get a Supreme Court nomination passed with strong bi-partisan support. Surely, the Conservatives would follow him and back him on this? The people were voting for Bush and his sensibilities not for Conservative ideology, right? Wrong; it turned out. As much as the Republicans were a party of Bush, at the time, they were not going to surrender on this and Bush was forced to back down and name someone of talent and Conservative integrity to the Supreme Court.
Trump is making a similar mistake. Unfamiliar with many of the issues he addresses, he calculates things out politically and how they affect his “brand” as a politician. With the child separation policies, I can see why he thought it might be a winner. Getting tough on the border, enforcing the law and discouraging illegal immigration are all things that he was elected to get done and his child separation policy does all those things.
Americans hate being cold, cruel and unkind. America is a land of political contradictions on all kinds of issues. Americans often become passive militarily and want to withdraw from the world. We hate getting into other people’s business and we rather everyone just left everyone else alone to get on with making money. This was most defiantly true in 2008 for instance. These themes are often a winning political message but the minute, second even, this policy makes America look weak, the American people become bloody-minded warmongers ready to take the fight anywhere and to anyone who thought we were weak. The shock of this shift in public mood has often wrong-footed politicians. When they recognize and understand it, they can lead and guide this switch of opinion to great political success.
As with immigration. Many Americans, enough of them at the very least to elect Trump President, were tired of uncontrolled immigration at the border. They sensed that our leaders and business elites playing “normal” Americans for fools and that our laws were dead letters on the border. When Trump is attacking this, he has a lot of support; when the media elites go against him on these issues, they get little traction. This attitude can only hold as long as Americans perceive themselves as the victim and not as the villain.
Trump, with little ideology to guide him, lacking understanding in the American character and not very experienced at politics (though extremely talented at elections), fell right into a perfect storm of separating children from their families at the border and turning the American people from saps who are being played into the cruel villain. Americans, as Reagan understood best of all, love to play the hero. We hate, hate to be the villain.
This is not a large mistake and can be fixed. Trump, for all his “fighting” ability, seems to be backing down and retreating from his policy quickly. Politically that is good, in the moment, but for the long term it is troubling. The administration had no solid plan for why they had to do this, and so had trouble explaining themselves. Because of that, they could not take advantage of the Leftists overstating their case and calling us Nazi Germany for temporarily separating families. This is the kind of mistake that will often happen to administration with no well-formed ideology and simply doing what the boss wants done.
Third, it shows the administration is not thinking through their policies for what is best for the country and the problem at hand but viewing things through the optics of support on each issue. Trump and his administration could have put together a zero-tolerance policy that was effective, provoked over-the-top leftist outrage, was good for our border policy and was morally and practically defensible. The fact that neither Trump nor any of his team thought this policy through does not speak well of them.
At a basic human level, this policy was going to dramatically impact and harm innocent children and non-violent parents in a very painful way. The Trump administration seems to have given all that little thought. That is not the Conservative way, it is no way to do politics, and it leads to evil results.
Bush made this kind of mistake at the beginning of his second term. While he recovered from the Miers nomination, he was vulnerable to Katrina and the chaos in Iraq. All of this probably helped scuttle his Social Security reform.
Trump’s mistake is more severe. He messed up one of the most basic of American political truths. Americans sympathize and often reward a politician for being too compassionate on an issue and then getting tough. It is a story that Americans love to tell themselves embodied in the old saying, “Never start a fight but always finish one.” Americans don’t like a tough policy that is implemented in the wrong way. If we are tough we have to get it right because we love the powerful to get their comeuppance.
If Trump starts out too tough and has to back off, he looks weak — and weakness for Trump is political death. To be tough, one has to be competent and the Trump administration has been anything but competent on this issue. Trump is now in a dangerous political moment. If he continues to appear weak, his administration is doomed. But if he stays tough and wrong, he will be destroyed.
It will be interesting to see how he handles this test … and we aren’t even at his first midterm yet.
Published in Immigration
Now that Trump has walked back this policy there may be a way for Repubs to salvage some credibility on this issue. Anyone who has watched a few episodes of the TV show COPS has seen heart-rending scenes of screaming, terrified 2 or 3 year olds watching their parents being bundled off for a forgotten warrant at a traffic stop or some similar situation. I recall writing my state legislator about this policy about 12 years ago. Since these kids enjoyed white privilege or were at least native born the left wrote them off.
Why not broaden the focus on this issue in a way to show the media’s hypocrisy. Why not give local law enforcement the option of issuing temporary ankle bracelets or some other similar way of ensuring compliance while giving parents of very young children a chance to take their kids to grandma’s? Illegal aliens shouldn’t have a monopoly on our compassion.
It’s unfortunate that this may (will?) be seen as contesting the merits of the O/P, but, since I’ve engaged with Brian throughout, I hope that’s dispensed with. I’m fully cognizant of hijacking the discussion, but still need to express my disappointment that the PTB apparently feel that this question is best left unaddressed considering the rather extreme circumstances of the promotion. We pays our money so we should (occasionally) gets some answers. This goes to the integrity of the site, and it’s justifiably troubling to have the decision as “above” the membership. Let’s hear chapter and verse, as is deserved.
So there!
I don’t care about their supposed “asylum.” Fix their own country first. If someone were actively chasing them down to kill them, that’s one thing, and we should encourage them to leave their home and go to Germany. Or wherever. But honestly, there is no reason for asylum except that they want Uncle Sugar Daddy to give them free stuff. Which you and I pay for.
This is an important point. Obama on issues like this was always going to get an enormous benefit the doubt. A Republican any Republican but especially Trump gets no benefit of doubt at all. Another reminder for us is that the mainstream press still has power if you give them opening. Not as much power as they once had but they still have power.
I understand where you are coming from here. But since in this case the Powers that Be showed such wonderful taste and good sense in promoting my post I have no standing to complain. However as soon as they don’t promote me I will also rage against the faceless, tasteless tyranny of the Editors that promote with no explanation! Here I make my stand.
I disagree with this view morally, I think they would love to “fix” their own country if they could. I am not sure how many of them would get to Germany and I am not sure we would appreciate Germany sending North Africans to us either. Also I am sure most immigrants, illegal or legal, whatever their status will be happy to work for what they get. Also politically this view is a loser. So there is really nothing for it. I understand needing to control our border, it is vital to any nation to be able to do that, but I do not share your sentiments at all.
As we’ve seen recently, predicting that something is political a loser has been lacking in the accuracy department.
As for morality, I didn’t make their country a mess, if indeed it is, but the people most able to fix the mess are the people living there.
I have no problem with anyone coming here, so long as they are peaceful, but we would first need to end our socialist policies where I have to pay for them. They have no right to my money, and I don’t care what names you call me, but I will never agree that I am bound to pay for them to live off of my earnings.
Did I call you a name?
My understanding has always been that the PTB always have the editorial discretion to promote a post they think is thoughtful and well-written (as this one is) regardless of how many likes it has on the member feed. The likes are one mechanism for getting the editors’ attention, but not the only one, and not a prerequisite for promotion.
No, that wasn’t directed at anyone in particular, but the potential for others to do so. I’m sorry if that sounded like a personal comment.
Music to my ears, sir. Music
No problem when re-read my comments I could not see how I ever called you a name or gave you an insult. I understand now. We disagree on the politics of this one issue but I never wanted to attack your over all character. I am glad we are good.
This post, like the previous post with the same assumptions, makes no sense to me. I don’t know where to start. The first one wasn’t worth commenting upon. And neither is this one, but since it was promoted to the main feed, I will at least give you my general thoughts.
There is no similarity between the Trump Presidency and the Bush II (or I) Presidency. I find the concept ludicrous. They both ran under the same party banner and both were elected President. That’s about as far as the commonality goes. Their supporters are very different and both Presidents have very different goals, as well as different types of support. Importantly, the electorate is in a very different mindset. An analogy would be airline passengers pre-911 and post-911 when confronted with a hijacker with a boxcutter.
Pretending that there’s some usable correlation here is tantamount to comparing the arc of WWII with aspects of the Civil War. They were both wars, and things went badly for the allies and the Yanks at times, and mistakes were made.
It’s meaningless drivel, and I’m disappointed in Ricochet.
This is all true and as it should be. My point, and that of the person who raised it initially, is the exceptional nature of this promotion. When it quickly disappeared from the member feed with one like, I originally thought the author had withdrawn it, only to find it here. I’ll shut up now.
Well that is disappointing. Since you seem to not grasp the main point of either post let me try and help you make sense of it and then perhaps you can at least hate it for the right reasons.
Not really on the margins their coalitions were different but the core of support of both men over lapped highly. If you removed all Bush voters from the Trump coalition Hillary wins in a 50 state romp. That does not mean the margin differences weren’t important they were and are, but the differences were in terms of real numbers small. But I never made this point in either post. The only part of either man’s coalition I brought up was how both Trump and Bush made Evangelical key to their victory but by appealing to them in very different ways.
Something that we agree on which why the Bush appeal to Evangelicals was different than Trumps however the strategy, I need to appeal to Evangelicals as a key voting block, was the same for both men.
Except you didn’t address any of the points I made in either post. Bush and Trump use the same political strategy, their enemies react to the strategy in the exact same way and the shared strategy of both men have the same vulnerabilities, though the personal traits they are selling are different so the tactics of implementing their strategy are different. As will their vulnerabilities Trump would never be undone by an old DUI charge. Bush would not be vulnerable to charges of being cruel at the border.
Your criticisms make no sense to me really it would be like me saying,
“The tank commander drew the enemy tanks too far into his center allowing him to surround the enemy on the flanks completing an encirclement. He essentially used Hannibal’s strategy at Cannae!”
Then you say, “Fool Hannibal men’s had swords and you describe a tank battle. Idiot their strategy could not be the same!”
“On June 6, I wrote a post about the dangers of Trump following the Bush political playbook, as he does, and how that could trip him up. The parallels between W. Bush political strategy and Trump’s political strategy are uncanny. Further, the Left reacted to both men in almost the same way. We are still, for all the talk of Hope and Change and Draining the Swamp, in a Bush-Clinton Family political moment with the Republicans and Democrats both running different versions of Bush and Clinton when they aren’t running someone with that name.”
I fail to see how they are using the same political playbook. It’s a ludicrous assertion.
The left will react to any Republican the same way. We saw it with Romney, and even with McCain. This is because they are essentially using the same playbook- see Alinsky, but in short, demonize the enemy.
Bush was very much a part of an existing network and establishment. Trump is not.
The differences are massive. Immigration, foreign military intervention, trade, and more. These men should be in two different political parties, and they are, we are just using the same term.
The main ingredient and influencer in politics, above everything, is the media canal that decides what’s important and what isn’t. The two men have completely opposite approaches to dealing with that element.
If you take ANY segment of Trump’s voters away, Hillary wins in a landslide ( and vice versa) so the speculation is not informative.
I’m also saying that “Bush voters” have changed quite significantly after 8 years of his Presidency and another 8 under Obama. I know I see politics through a very different lense than I did in 2004. I was also educated by the Mc Cain and Romney candidacies. And I most certainly am not alone. Bush would never be elected today. In fact his brother could not gain the GOP nomination with all the family contacts and a 150 million dollar war-chest. He was laughed offstage – and he was supposed to be the smarter, more accomplished one.
The background is radically different as well. I can’t understand how someone can ignore the political environment we are in now vs. then.
I can’t see it either.
Remember when Ted Cruz spoke with W. Bush about his candidacy, hoping for support and told him he wanted to work against the establishment? W replied, “Ted, I AM the establishment.”
Not if you read my post. Which you seem to have not read.
You can’t demonize everyone in the same way. The defense and counter attacks matter. The left has different responses but anyway that has nothing to do with my post. I think the advantages of the Bush and Trump strategies is how it trolls the left into flying into such over the top rage. This is strength but it carries some dangers with it too, because it energizes bad elements of the Left and gives them some legitimacy in their own party that we don’t need. But again every strategy has trade offs built into it, pointing those trade offs out does not mean I think the strategy is bad.
Of course that is why I thought you were foolish to claim that Trump won with different voters. He didn’t really.
Of course that is why Trump implements his strategy in a different way and motivates people in a different way than Bush people change but the strategy he is using is exactly the strategy that Bush use don’t sell programs, policy or ideology sell the man and his style.
Bush and Trump the men are radically different from each other. I think that is obvious to everyone.