Anyone who paid even glancing attention to the 2016 campaign already understood Donald Trump to be undisciplined, easily provoked and self-absorbed to the point of narcissism.
.. Peeved over reports about inauguration crowd size, Trump ordered up new photographs of the event.
.. falsely blamed the media (“among the most dishonest human beings on Earth”) for inventing his feud with the intelligence community; complained about coverage of his inauguration crowds (“We caught them, and we caught them in a beauty. And I think they’re going to pay a big price”). And, oh yes, lamented that the United States did not “keep the oil” in Iraq even as he dangerously observed, “Maybe you’ll have another chance.”
.. it means that no one, neither American citizens nor foreign leaders, can believe the president of the United States when he makes an assertion.
.. You will notice that my lament about the week is largely devoid of ideological content.
Trump and academia actually have a lot in common
such a “storm of outraged ego” is an increasingly common phenomenon among students who, having been taught to regard themselves as peers of their teachers, “take correction as an insult.” Nichols relates this to myriad intellectual viruses thriving in academia. Carried by undereducated graduates, these viruses infect the nation’s civic culture.
.. “College, in an earlier time,” Nichols writes, “was supposed to be an uncomfortable experience because growth is always a challenge,” replacing youthful simplicities with adult complexities. Today, college involves the “pampering of students as customers,”
.. “Rather than disabuse students of their intellectual solipsism,” Nichols writes, “the modern university reinforces it,” producing students given to “taking offense at everything while believing anything.”
.. Much attention has been given to the non-college-educated voters who rallied to President Trump. Insufficient attention is given to the role of the college miseducated. They, too, are complicit in our current condition because they emerged from their expensive “college experiences” neither disposed nor able to conduct civil, informed arguments.
.. Soon, presidential enablers, when challenged about their employer’s promiscuous use of “alternative facts,” will routinely use last week’s “justification” of the illegal voting factoid: It is the president’s “long-standing belief,” so there.
In his intellectual solipsism, he, too, takes correction as an insult. He resembles many of his cultured despisers in the academy more than he or they realize.
The Politics of Cowardice
Consider the tenor of Trump’s first week in office. It’s all about threat perception. He has made moves to build a wall against the Mexican threat, to build barriers against the Muslim threat, to end a trade deal with Asia to fight the foreign economic threat, to build black site torture chambers against the terrorist threat.
Trump is on his political honeymoon, which should be a moment of joy and promise. But he seems to suffer from an angry form of anhedonia, the inability to experience happiness. Instead of savoring the moment, he’s spent the week in a series of nasty squabbles about his ratings and crowd sizes.
If Reagan’s dominant emotional note was optimism, Trump’s is fear. If Reagan’s optimism was expansive, Trump’s fear propels him to close in: Pull in from Asian entanglements through rejection of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Pull in from European entanglements by disparaging NATO. It’s not a cowering, timid fear; it’s more a dark, resentful porcupine fear.
.. Trump has changed the way the Republican Party sees the world. Republicans used to have a basic faith in the dynamism and openness of the free market. Now the party fears openness and competition.
.. In the summer of 2015, according to a Pew Research Center poll, Republicans said free trade deals had been good for the country by 51 to 39 percent. By the summer of 2016, Republicans said those deals had been bad for America by 61 percent to 32 percent.
Trump’s flashy executive actions could run aground
The White House failed to consult with many of the agencies and lawmakers who will be critical for their success.
President Donald Trump’s team made little effort to consult with federal agency lawyers or lawmakers as they churned out executive actions this week, stoking fears the White House is creating the appearance of real momentum with flawed orders that might be unworkable, unenforceable or even illegal.
The White House didn’t ask State Department experts to review Trump’s memorandum on the Keystone XL pipeline, even though the company that wants to build the pipeline is suing the U.S. for $15 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter.
Defense Secretary James Mattis and CIA Director Mike Pompeo were “blindsided” by a draft order that would require agencies to reconsider using interrogation techniques that are currently banned as torture, according to sources with knowledge of their thinking... Just a small circle of officials at the Department of Health and Human Services knew about the executive action starting to unwind Obamacare, and only less than two hours before it was released. Key members of Congress weren’t consulted either, according to several members... For example, there are legal questions on how the country can force companies building pipelines to use materials manufactured domestically, which might not be available or which could violate trade treaty obligations... Trump, less than a week into his presidency, is continuing the improvisational style he used to run his company, his campaign and his transition. He’s relying on a small circle of trusted advisers to act decisively. And he’s emphasizing the theatrics of autographing official-looking leather-bound documents in the Oval Office... There’s also an irony in Trump flexing his executive power so fully because the approach goes against what Trump and Republican members of Congress have said about executive actions in the past.For example, in 2012, Barack Obama’s increased interest in using executive orders developed a critic: a certain Manhattan billionaire. “Why is Barack Obama constantly issuing orders that are major grabs of authority?” Trump asked on Twitter... Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, now a lobbyist, said he continues to have deep reservations about any aggressive use of executive action, whether it comes from a Republican or Democrat.
“You don’t want to have an imperial president,” Lott said. “It’s just not the best way to govern. These things need to be figured out by Congress. We have allowed the presidency to become too powerful.”
.. Experts warned that the quick moves could hurt Trump down the line and cause him to eventually slow down.