But Mr. Trump is president of the United States, and if prudent, disciplined leadership was ever required, it is now. Rhetorically stomping his feet, as he did on Tuesday, is not just irresponsible; it is dangerous. He is no longer a businessman trying to browbeat someone into a deal. He commands the most powerful nuclear and conventional arsenal in the world, and any miscalculation could be catastrophic.
.. This is a president with no prior government or military experience who has shown no clear grasp of complex strategic issues.
.. his inflammatory words were entirely improvised and took his closest associates by surprise. Intentionally or not, they echoed President Harry Truman’s 1945 pledgeto inflict a “rain of ruin from the air” if Japan did not surrender after the first atomic bomb was dropped at Hiroshima, which made them seem even more ominous.
It is hard to believe that they would condone Mr. Trump’s risky approach, and on Wednesday, the damage control began.
- While Mr. Mattis reinforced his boss’s belligerent tone and expressed confidence that North Korea would “lose any arms race or conflict it initiates,” he more prudently focused on the North’s concrete “actions” rather than on vague threats and voiced support for a diplomatic solution.
- Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he saw no reason to believe that war was imminent.
- Meanwhile, some White House aides reportedly urged reporters not to read too much into the president’s remarks.
.. Since Truman, presidents have largely avoided the kind of militaristic threats issued by Mr. Trump because they feared such language could escalate a crisis.
.. Mr. Trump has again made himself the focus of attention, when it should be Kim Jong-un, the ruthless North Korean leader, and his accelerating nuclear
.. Engaging in a war of words with North Korea only makes it harder for both sides to de-escalate.
Justice Gorsuch Delivers
“One of my proudest moments was when I looked at Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill this Supreme Court vacancy,’ ” Mr. McConnell told a political gathering in Kentucky last summer.
With this audacious pledge — made only hours after news of Justice Antonin Scalia’s death on Feb. 13, 2016, reached the public — Mr. McConnell demolished longstanding Senate tradition and denied a vote to one of the most well-qualified nominees ever
.. Justice Gorsuch, who was confirmed less than three months ago, has already staked his claim as one of the most conservative members of the court.
.. Chief Justice John Roberts Jr., a staunch conservative in his own right, often seeks out points of compromise among the justices. On June 26, the court’s last opinion day, Justice Gorsuch appeared to be having none of it.
.. The conservative majority will grow even stronger if more justices retire during Mr. Trump’s term, a very good possibility. At that point, the president and Senate Republicans — who destroyed the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees in order to confirm Justice Gorsuch — will be able to put anyone they like on the court... Mr. Trump will be out of power by 2025 at the latest. But thanks to Mr. McConnell, Justice Gorsuch, and whoever else might join him in the next couple of years, will entrench a solid conservative majority on the court for far longer.
All the President’s Generals
So has the ideological revolution in U.S. foreign policy been canceled? In one sense, yes: If you were expecting Trump to actually govern as a paleoconservative, to eschew the use of force absent some immediate threat to the American homeland, to pull U.S. troops out of all their far-flung bases and leave entangling alliances behind, then the strikes against Bashar al-Assad are the latest evidence that you got played.
Most recent presidencies have been distinguished by tugs of war between different groups of foreign policy hands —
- neoconservatives and
- Kissingerians and
- Jacksonians
under Republicans,
- liberal interventionists and
- liberal realists and the
- antiwar left
under Democrats.
.. Rex Tillerson may have a realist streak and Nikki Haley a moralistic style, but neither one has been part of these debates before. Mike Pence has nothing like the experience of a Dick Cheney or a Joe Biden. If Bannon’s vision is getting sidelined, it’s not like Jared Kushner is ready with a deeply thought-out alternative.
.. What Trump has instead are generals — James Mattis and H. R. McMaster and the other military men in his cabinet, plus, of course, the actual professional military itself. And it’s this team of generals, not any of the usual foreign policy schools, that seems increasingly likely to steer his statecraft going forward.
.. The professional military always influences U.S. foreign policy, and military minds are hardly monolithic in their views. (Just ask Gen. Michael Flynn.) But for American policy to be effectively military-directed, as opposed to just military-influenced, would be a new thing in recent U.S. history, with strong implications for how the weakening Pax Americana gets defended in the age of Trump.
.. a military-directed foreign policy promises to be more stability-oriented than other approaches to international affairs. It would be less prone to grand ideological ambitions than either liberal hawkishness or neoconservatism — less inclined to imagine the U.S. as an agent of democratic revolution or a humanitarian avenging angel. But it would also be skeptical of the shifts in our strategic posture and retreats from existing commitments that realists and anti-interventionists sometimes entertain.
.. had the U.S. military been running George W. Bush’s White House, it’s unlikely that we would have attempted to plant democracy in Iraq. Had it been running the Obama administration, it’s unlikely that we would have abandoned Hosni Mubarak or sought a region-reshaping détente with Tehran.
.. the Trump White House’s re-emphasis on longstanding military relationships (with the Sunni Arab states, especially), its quieter line on human rights and its backpedaling from promised big-deal shifts in our posture toward Russia and China all fit with what you might expect from a brass-led presidency.
.. even as it prizes stability, the military has a strong bias toward, well, military solutions whenever crises or challenges emerge. These solutions are not usually huge invasions or expensive nation-building exercises. But they treat bombs and missiles and drone strikes and (in limited, extractable numbers) boots on the ground as first-resort tools of statecraft.
.. Overall, the armed forces’ worldview — a status-quo bias plus doses of hard power
.. the president’s inability to back down from a big fight meets the military’s willingness to start a lot of small ones lies the great peril of his presidency: not deliberate warmongering, but an accidental escalation that his generals encourage, and that the ultimate decider has no idea how to stop.
Tactical Nuclear Option Inside Reconciliation
With dynamic scoring, the Trump tax cuts would sail right through.
.. hats off to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for doing some swamp-draining when he exercised the “nuclear option” to overturn the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. McConnell busted an old 19th century rule, which was never in the Constitution
.. hats off to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for doing some swamp-draining when he exercised the “nuclear option” to overturn the filibuster for Supreme Court justices. McConnell busted an old 19th century rule, which was never in the Constitution
.. the scorekeepers are happy with tax hikes, allegedly to balance the budget. But tax hikes depress economic growth, which reduces GDP. And with a smaller income base, actual revenues decline, simply because most everybody is worse off.
.. only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment.”
.. only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment.”
.. only full employment can balance the budget, and tax reduction can pave the way to that employment.”
.. The CBO estimates real economic growth over the next ten years will continue to stagnate at a 1.8 percent annual pace.
.. How about a 3 percent growth rate over the next ten years? It’s still below America’s long-run average. But if you slash tax rates, particularly on large and small business, it is reasonable to assume more investment, new companies, profits, productivity, wages, and job creation
.. an economy growing at 3.1 percent per year would generate $4.5 trillion more revenues than an economy growing at 1.8 percent. $4.5 trillion.
..if Mike Enzi, chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, decides to use dynamic scoring, the Trump tax-cut proposals would sail through.