Unpresidential But Not Unprecedented
Trump represents a unique danger, but he is the fruition of a half century of GOP rhetoric and policy
by John Moretta
This is Part Three of a three-part series on the death of liberalism and the 2016 GOP victory in historical context by professor and author John Moretta, whose book The Hippies is out now with McFarland Press. Part One deals with Nixon and Wallace. Part Two focuses on Reagan and Clinton.
Until this past election, a balanced government was what Americans generally believed was needed. Interventions, yes, if targeted to specific problems and limited in expense. Leaner government, yes, but not if it meant jeopardizing the environment, established entitlements (such as Medicare and Medicaid), or government guarantees of fundamental rights. Until 2016, the American people seemed set on allowing government the flexibility to intervene on behalf of the essentials of the welfare state while stopping short of permitting the government to enlarge the public sphere at the expense of private sector participation and input. From the 1990s onward, the adequacy of the new liberal political economy was strenuously tested, and in the end — 2016 — many concluded that it was not sufficient to deal with the ongoing problems challenging the nation’s ability to survive and prosper.
It’s not Republicanism; it’s Trumpism
Trump voters shouldn’t delude themselves into believing their champion represents a victory for conservatism or any specific political ideology. What they will get for the next four years is Trumpism: a perverse mixture of reactionary (and destructive) Republican Party policies coupled with ego-driven mass rallies. Trump will incite his true believers into hate for whomever or whatever has become his most recent target, while allowing Congressional Republicans to drive the legislative bus as he continues to focus on his businesses.
The next four years could easily degenerate into a quasi-fascist form of Peronism, marked by a cult of personality, empty populist, demagogic rhetoric, distractions, outright distortions of reality, and constant prevarications. Witness Trump’s Thank You Tour. Instead of preparing for the job of president or attending intelligence briefings, Trump held self-congratulatory rallies, where his supporters could come and hear their messiah hurl invective against his opponents and stoke his base with verbal incendiaries: pure Trumpian self-adulation on graphic, distasteful display, with no intention of trying to heal divisions and unite the country, whatever lip service he might pay to coming together.
Trump is personally incapable of expressing even a modicum of contrition and humility, as evidenced by his visit to the CIA headquarters in an attempt to make amends with the intelligence community, which he previously denigrated with all manner of epithets for months. Standing in the building’s hallowed foyer, Trump spent over half of his speech rambling incoherently about himself and how many times he’d appeared on the cover of Time magazine, which he boasted was more than anyone is history. This was a blatant lie; Richard Nixon holds the dubious distinction of appearing 55 times. What the American public witnessed was one of the most shameful and disgraceful displays of hubris and hucksterism from an individual with no sense of decorum, sensibility, or sensitivity.
What has become obvious in the past two months is that the people’s and the nation’s welfare will become an afterthought to the transparent glorification of Trump
Republican complicity
Trump is empowered both by GOP complicity and the support of his embittered, nihilistic followers, the latter of whom display a perverse glee at bringing down the system. With both establishment and (so-called) anti-establishment backing, Trump could conceivably transform the American body politic into a managed democracy, not unlike Putin’s Russia or Viktor Orban’s Hungary. Despite an historic popular-vote deficiency, Trump and his surrogates have spun his Electoral College triumph into a landslide victory, acting as if they have an impressive mandate from the people.
George W. Bush won under similar electoral circumstances in 2000 and proceeded to unleash policies of catastrophic fiscal irresponsibility while fabricating a war that has become, in terms of wide-reaching effects, the single greatest foreign policy debacle in American history and possibly beyond that. Trump can do worse.
Trump swore to the American people that the establishment elite of Wall Street and K Street would have no place in a Trump presidency, that he was going to be the people’s steward and not a Wall Street lackey. He would drain the swamp of such elitist influences and not be like the politicians of either party. He then proceeded to surround himself with the very billionaires he railed against.
Even more alarming, many of his cabinet choices come from the upper echelons of financial and corporate capitalism but have no governing experience whatsoever outside of boardrooms. Some of his appointees are either completely mismatched for the job description (Ben Carson comes to mind) or have spent their private or political careers opposing the policies and programs of the very departments they have been chosen to head: Betsy DeVos for Secretary of Education, Scott Pruitt for the EPA, Rick Perry for the Department of Energy, etc.
Perhaps most egregious and frightening are Trump’s initial choices for Attorney General and National Security Advisor. The former is Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, whose record on civil rights and other social issues is at best questionable, often deplorable, and sometimes downright Jim Crow. General Mike Flynn was confirmed as National Security Advisor despite being a known anti-Muslim, ultra-nationalist militarist and conspiracy-theorist; only a garbled accounting for his contact with Russian officials ultimately scuttled his appointment. Both individuals represent frightening prospects for civil rights, liberties, and national security.
Then there is Steve Bannon, not only a former Goldman Sachs guy, but, more disturbingly, an avowed, proud member of the white nationalist and conspiracy movements (both of which have lots of overlap). While Nixon, Reagan, and the Bushes to different degrees relied on bigotry to fuel their electoral machines, Trump’s candidacy has given that force mainstream power. His appointees come out of the underworld of racist, xenophobic hate groups that righteously proclaim that it is time for white Americans to reclaim “their country.” They’ve found in Trump, the populist demagogue, the “imperfect vessel” for a euphemistically dubbed alt-right revolution.
Indeed, Bannon appears to have both of Trump’s ears when Trump is able to sit still and focus for more than ten minutes on a topic. When he isn’t paying attention, all the better for Bannon, who reportedly wrote himself into heading the National Security Council. Trump’s notoriously minimal attention span, disinterest in reading anything but what people are saying about him, tweeting of incoherent and petulant responses in the early morning hours, and general lack of intellectual curiosity, imagination, and depth make him a conduit for a Republican coup that has been waiting to make good on Republican rhetoric since Nixon.
Dance with the one that brought you
Despite Donald Trump’s denials, the US intelligence community has confirmed that Russian “president” Vladimir Putin, whom Trump admires for his authoritarian leadership, intervened in our democratic electoral process in order to try to ensure a Trump victory. For Putin, Trump represents the opportunity of a lifetime, a dream that even the most powerful and sinister Soviet leaders could not have imagined during the grimmest hours of the Cold War: the election of an individual utterly lacking in rectitude, intellect, and statecraft to the Presidency of the United States.
The leader of the most powerful democracy in the world can be flattered, browbeaten, and perhaps even blackmailed into capitulation. Most revealing and disquieting is the shameless and disgraceful toadying to Trump among the majority of Republicans, whether those currently in office or private citizens. These are mainly individuals who, as late as October, refused to endorse Trump as the nominee and continued to assail him as unfit for the office. From Mitch McConnell to Mitt Romney to Rick Perry, Ted Cruz, and Paul Ryan (among the chorus of other Republicans singing Trump’s praises), Republicans, who, only a few months ago refused to stand next to him at a rally. Now they’re willing to ally themselves with white nationalism because it empowers their Gingrichian anti-entitlement aims — and political survival.
These Congressional and Senate Republicans still view Trump as a puppet. His lack of experience and general ignorance on issues foreign and domestic allows them to run the government, despite Trump’s public assertions that he is in charge. But as we’ve seen, he’s more interested in preserving his corporate empire than running the country. And so the next few months will see yet another Republican assault on positive government, an aggressive attempt to finish off the last vestiges of the New Deal and Great Society — as well as the liberal and neoliberal policies of the Clinton and Obama years.
If Trump’s early executive orders are any indication, the president appears all too willing to adhere to Republican orthodoxy, despite his promises to be a disruptive force. (His disruption, thus far, extends mainly to nativist and Islamophobic immigration policies, which, to be fair thus far, aren’t much of a stretch for the GOP.)
It is, however, still too early to tell if Trump will break with the Republican agenda and make them regret empowering him. If he does, will his initiatives be perceived by the party to be a challenge to their determination to dismantle what is left of the welfare state?
Previous Republican administrations grudgingly accepted that despite vulnerabilities within certain aspects of the liberal political economy, some programs were sacrosanct: Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, to name the holy trinity, among others. However, that could all change over the course of the next four years. Along with other entitlements, we could witness the resurrection of unrestrained capitalism with all of its excesses, abuses, and the transfer of political power to a corporate and financial plutocracy. It would be a story all too similar to what occurred during the 1920s.
The conned are the last to figure it out
The Republicans are disingenuous and hypocritical in their call for national unity and Democratic cooperation as they seek to normalize and legitimize Trump’s election and vindicate their eight years of obstructionist governance. Their audacity is appalling after witnessing their outright hateful and bigoted attempts to destroy the Obama presidency, which current Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell announced was his party’s raison d’etre from the moment President Obama took the oath of office. Now to call upon both Democrats and Americans to come together is beyond brazen; it is outright reprehensible, especially when it’s the Republican objective to destroy positive government and inflict on millions of already marginalized citizens even more years of despair, poverty, and alienation that will only serve to enrich the already rich elite.
But Americans too often get what they ask for. They have a hard time learning from history: just for starters, the striking inequalities of the 1920s, the lessons of long years of war in Vietnam, or the financial crisis of 2008. It seems Americans have an inherent, collective antipathy toward knowledge, intellectual curiosity, and imagination.
And, appropriately, the US just elected an individual who personifies those characteristics writ large.
Raw ego and proud illiteracy prevailed. A learning-allergic authoritarian with child-like impulses and tantrums who fires off rhetorical potshots in the dead hours of the late night. And, because that train is never late under an authoritarian leader, those who embrace the pursuit of knowledge and education are disdained and accused of being elitists, not only out of touch with the reality of the hard-scrabble life the majority of Americans live, but outright enemies of the people. It’s a classic feint because it’s easy to point to people who write and read for a living and demonize them.
But if Trump’s voters haven’t figured it out yet, neither Trump nor the Republicans have their best interests at heart, no matter how many dog whistles they blow about brown people, the liberal elite, or Islam.
The election was the classic case of citizens voting against their own material interests and security because it conflicted with their own incongruous worldview informed in most cases by fear, prejudice, resentment, and an unwillingness to embrace deeper and broader perspectives.
As Trump and his Republican allies begin to dismantle the government programs upon which most of Trump’s supporters depend or provoke a trade war with China, it will be the archetypal Walmart customers who suddenly discover empty shelves and empty bank accounts as their cost of living increases and job prospects continue to falter. The economic elite, of course, will continue to prosper — even in bad times, having money is best way to ensure you make more money as people around you grow desperate.
What the electorate is about to experience is not the resurrection of the American Dream as promised by Trump in his inaugural address but rather the end of the liberalism that had provided those shortsighted Americans the guarantees — such as healthcare and retirement insurance — that protected them for over 70 years from the vagaries of unfettered capitalism and a self-serving plutocracy. The Democrats, for their part, never did enough to fight for those things either over the past three decades.
And as a result, the deprivations and degradations that Trump and the Republicans will bring to this country will also fall devastatingly on those who supported them in this last election — and those voters will not like what happens next.
John Moretta is based in Houston. He is a professor of history at Houston Community College and University of Houston’s Honors College. His books include The Hippies: A 1960s History, William Penn and the Quaker Legacy, and William Pitt: Texas Lawyer, Southern Statesman, 1825–1888.
