The Trump Matrix
The first axis, the X-axis, represents possibilities for Trumpist policy, the second, the Y-axis, scenarios for Trump’s approach to governance.
.. some of his cabinet picks are a little more ideologically unknowable (like Steven Mnuchin at Treasury), and his inner circle remains highly unconventional. Stephen K. Bannon is intent on remaking the G.O.P. along nationalist lines, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump seem eager for their paterfamilias to negotiate with Democrats, Peter Navarro is girding for a trade war with China. And Trump’s foreign policy choices — especially Rex Tillerson at State — seem closer to full-Trumpist realpolitik than to Reaganism-as-usual.
.. On the governance axis, the president-elect’s strong-arming of the private sector, his media-bashing tweets, and his feud with the intelligence community all hint at an authoritarian timeline ahead. Likewise, other fact patterns — that Congressional Republicans are mostly supine, that the stock market has surged — suggest that Trump could be authoritarian, corrupt and politically effective.
But anyone who fears incompetence more than tyranny has plenty of evidence as well. Trump’s tweets might be a sign, not of an incipient autocrat, but of an unstable narcissist who will undermine himself at every step.
.. But you could also imagine an authoritarian-orthodox conservative combination, in which Congressional Republicans accept the most imperial of presidencies because it’s granting them tax rates and entitlement reforms they have long desired.
Or you could imagine a totally incompetent populism, in which Trump flies around the country holding rallies while absolutely nothing in Washington gets done … or a totally incompetent populism that ultimately empowers conventional conservatism, because Trump decides that governing isn’t worth it and just lets Paul Ryan run the country.