You Campaign in Poetry and You Govern in Prose

The problem for Trump is going to be the reality of reality.

Trump taught the world an important concept which is only slowly being understood: the reality of belief.   It won't be enough.

This blog has examined the extraordinary success Trump had flummoxing the established agents of expertise by sharing ideas with blunt popular appeal.  Trump connected on that level.

Trump voters believe it

Trump totally won the message war.  Trump convinced his voters to believe what "seems true" to them.  Trump's people ignore the opinions of academic experts, the professional classes, and mainstream news people.   They don't have credibility in the face of Trump messages--and those of his media allies--that seem reasonable and believable to a significant number of people. 

A poll this week showed that 46% of Trump voters still  believe Hillary Clinton was involved in ownership of a pedophilia ring hidden the basement of a pizza parlor, even after a Trump supporter was arrested for entering the supposed location and shooting it up.  The same poll showed 60% of Trump voters are convinced that "millions" of people voted illegally for Hillary Clinton and that half think "it is probably true" that Obama was born in Kenya.   NY Daily News Poll taken Dec 17-21.

Believing is seeing.

Democrats are trying to decide now what makes most sense: intractable opposition, with the intent of denying Trump legislative or policy victories which will "normalize" him--the GOP tactic against Obama, which had extraordinary political success.  By forcing Obama to rely only on Democratic votes Republicans delivered a one-two punch: they forced him to be partisan rather than a unifier and they enabled the personal delegitimization of Obama with birtherism and the Obama-the-secret-Muslim meme.

The alternative Democratic strategy is to work with Trump on infrastructure spending but otherwise to make certain that the "Pottery Barn Rule" is in effect.  If he breaks it, it is his.   If Trump changes things and it works out badly, blame Trump.   Trump's cabinet picks suggest--but it is still unclear--that his policy will be to shake things up:

   

    Repeal Obamacare and leave an unresolved replacement because there is no path to replacement that has support.

    Begin financial reform of Social Security and Medicare by cutting benefits per Paul Ryan plan.

    Enforce more vigorously immigration rules and step up visibility of deportations and the actual number of them.

    Establish a more bellicose foreign policy with China and the Muslim countries of the Middle East and a more cordial one with Russia.  

    Cut taxes in a way acceptable to Republicans, i.e. reductions on the job creators.

    Significant reductions of regulations on banking and on fossil fuel extraction and use, while reducing environmental regulations, fuel economy standards, etc.

    Reduce US Justice Department involvement in enforcement of voting rights and civil rights issues.

    Renegotiate trade agreements and put tariffs on imported goods to protect some American jobs.

AARP is gearing up for a fight

Each of these will be controversial, although in fact they will have strong support from some visible domestic groups.   Coal and petroleum companies will be thrilled.   Banks will find it easier to loan and will have lower reserve requirements.  Auto union leaders will be happy that fuel economy standards are relaxed and Detroit will be able to produce bigger higher-margin cars. 

There will be huge institutional and political resistance to change.   Each of the programs in place that Trump will shake up are there because they successfully pushed through the gauntlet of legislation.   They have intrenched supporters, in the public and in the establishment that Trump overwhelmed.   Lindsey Graham and John McCain still think Russia is an enemy.  The public still distrusts banks.  Women still use contraception.  Blacks and Hispanics are still energized.  Consumers like buying cheap stuff.  Seniors like their Medicare and Social Security.

The owners of the oxen being gored will not be silent.  They will shout foul.  (Some of those will be among the scorned groups and Trump will be helped when Black Lives Matter members complain.  Trump voters expect them to be unhappy.  That was the point.)   But when Walmart raises prices and when pipelines break and when American troops are sent into fights that appear avoidable and when Hispanic children go into foster care and when Social Security checks are cut there will be an outcry from Trump's own people.

Democrats will call it a broken promise and proof that it was all a con.  Trump promised win, win, win and for the core Trump voters these wins would come at the expense of others.   Trump changes in taxes and Medicare and Social Security will hit American blue collar voters.   The white working poor is a net beneficiary of the safety net of New Deal and Great Society legislation.  They don't believe it.  They think it helps people poorer than themselves and they resent it.   If cuts come they will notice, and if Democrats are smart they will make certain they know who bears responsibility:  Trump.

Afterglow is setting in

Meanwhile, Obama as a lame duck, is already getting more and more popular.   He wasn't so bad after all, people are already thinking.  The things good about Obama--his calm, his dignity--will look better and better.   Obama is already far more popular than Trump.  The stink of making what Hillary Clinton called the "Hard Choices" of governance and the inevitable messiness of facts on the ground and explaining them in mere prose will keep switching from Obama fully over to Trump.


It is already a Trump-flavored White House, with Trump commenting on last minute Obama policies, promising immediate changes to ones he dislikes.  Trump is cherry picking, claiming responsibility for a recent rise in the stock market.   Soon it will own it all, good and bad.    

The weakness inside Trump's method of promising is that his promises cannot possibly be kept.   He promised jobs, lower taxes, more spending, a balanced budget, respect from foreigners, a safe America, trade deals great for us, and winning and winning.   Soon he will have to deal with reality.

Trump won with "the people's truth", the truth of what felt right to people, not the truth as understood by supposed experts of the kind I saw at Harvard's institutes of Asian, European, and Middle East Studies..  The foundation of popular belief that prevailed in the 2016 election was built around denial of some of the hard-learned understandings gained by experts.   

Harvard Asia Expertise:  They know they lost

Was the public right to fire the experts?  Time will tell, but there is a reason why complicated things in this world are handled by experts, not bystanders, and this is true for surgeries, carburetor repairs, appellate brief preparation, oil drilling, corporate tax filing, computer coding and perhaps also for diplomacy, statecraft, the deployment of militaries, and the movement of legislation. 

At Harvard early this month I watched up close those experts in policy and statecraft and governance as they recognized that all of their care, thoughtfulness, expertise, and nuance had been determined to be worthless by the voters.  They personally were rejected and so was their approach of thoughtful expertise.  The wisdom of people who knew and read carefully in Korean, Mandarin and Cantonese Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and English, and who had studied the field for decades after receiving their PhDs was rejected.  It was replaced by voters who thought it just made sense that our China policy was stupid and that America should just show them who is boss, and it was about time we show some all-American strength, not nuance.  

Stock Market under Obama. 

Obama's record on the economy was objectively a very good one even though a great many people agreed with Trump that it was terrible.  Housing prices rebounded, unemployment is below 5%, and the stock market has nearly tripled in eight years.   People in the investment business live and die by real numbers and actual performance.   There are some arenas in which belief is grounded by data rather than the reverse.

Soon it will be Trump's economy, Trump's job numbers, Trump's foreign policy.   Trump will face the reality of reality, not the reality of "what voters believe in their hearts".   Campaigning is about messaging.  Governing is about messaging and dealing with hard choices and the results of them that come in a form that cannot be ignored.