the most revealing thing in the interview may be Mr. Trump’s defense of Bill O’Reilly, accused of sexual predation and abuse of power: “He’s a good person.” This, I’d argue, tells us more about both the man from Mar-a-Lago and the motivations of his base than his ramblings about infrastructure and trade.
.. How much difference has it made, really, that Donald Trump rather than a conventional Republican sits in the White House?
.. the ignominious collapse of the effort to kill Obamacare — owed almost nothing to executive dysfunction. Repeal-and-replace didn’t face-plant because of poor tactics; it failed because Republicans have been lying about health care for eight years. So when the time came to propose something real, all they could offer were various ways to package mass loss of coverage.
.. Tax reform looks like a bust .. because nobody in the G.O.P. ever put in the hard work of figuring out what should change and how to sell those changes.
.. it’s clear that the administration has no actual infrastructure plan, and probably never will.
.. there are some places where Mr. Trump does seem likely to have a big impact — most notably, in crippling environmental policy. But that’s what any Republican would have done
.. Trumpist governance in practice so far is turning out to be just Republican governance with (much) worse management
.. Trumpism has brought is a new sense of empowerment to the ugliest aspects of American politics.
.. one thing the interviewees often say is that Mr. Trump is honest, that he tells it like is, which may seem odd given how much he lies about almost everything, policy and personal. But what they probably mean is that Mr. Trump gives outright, unapologetic voice to racism, sexism, contempt for “losers” and so on
.. Mr. Trump isn’t an honest man or a stand-up guy, but he is, arguably, less hypocritical about the darker motives underlying his worldview than conventional politicians are.
.. they provide a safe space for people who want an affirmation that their uglier impulses are, in fact, justified and perfectly O.K.
..
whether unapologetic ugliness is a winning political strategy.
Donald, This I Will Tell You
And you, Donald, are getting a reputation as a sucker. And worse, a sucker who is a tool of the D.C. establishment.
Your whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open borders and the Obamacare “disaster.”
.. You knew the Republicans were full of hot air. They haven’t had to pass anything in a long time, and they have no aptitude for governing. To paraphrase an old Barney Frank line, asking the Republicans to govern is like asking Frank to judge the Miss America contest — “If your heart’s not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”
.. Instead, you sold the D.O.A. bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill. You were so concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.
.. You were humiliated right out of the chute by the establishment guys who hooked you into their agenda — a massive transfer of wealth to rich people — and drew you away from your own.
You sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make Washington work again. Instead, you got worked over by the Republican leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their bidding.
.. That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.
They’re counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”
You got played.
To Promise Free Things Is to Lie
They attempted to minimize the benefit of lying for politicians. Limited government made lying less worthwhile. Who would believe that a politician would use the government to provide “free” things when the government itself was banned from providing free things?
.. Trump spent most of his adulthood attempting to win friends and admirers in the upper-crust circles of Manhattan; he struggled with the fact that he was treated as a nouveau riche vulgarian. His solution: Embrace the vulgarity, brag about victories he never won, and turn the art of the sell into his persona. For Trump, the greatest sin isn’t lying or cheating: It’s losing. That’s why he spends an inordinate amount of verbiage calling his opponents “losers” or “failing,” as though victory and defeat amount to some sort of moral status.
.. after Mitt Romney’s 2012 defeat, which Republicans attributed not to his overly cerebral civility but to his fundamental decency. The theory became prevalent in conservative circles that Romney had lost not only because he wouldn’t fight hard enough but also because he wouldn’t fight dirty enough. Establishment conservatives conflated civility and decency; anti-establishment conservatives made the same mistake. Instead of stating that a less civil but similarly decent candidate could have won in 2012, anti-establishment conservatives concluded that it would take an uncivil, indecent person to defeat Democrats.
.. But he’d win, don’t you see? And his dishonesty would all be worthwhile, since he’d then pursue policies conservatives would like.
.. Obama remained personally popular for his entire presidency. But his chief achievements are on the verge of destruction because he lied: He told people they could have everything, and then he delivered less than that. He told Americans that they could keep their doctors if they liked them; they couldn’t. He told Americans that they would not see rising premiums; they did. He said that he’d be fiscally responsible, but at the same time, he was blowing out the budget. His lies caught up with him.
.. Down: Americans distrust everyone in politics but simultaneously embrace the lies of their own side, justifying tissue-thin conspiracy theories that put the other side at a disadvantage, breaking down the social fabric and the political discourse until all faith in the system disappears completely.
What So Many People Don’t Get About the U.S. Working Class
What’s driving it is the class culture gap.
One little-known element of that gap is that the white working class (WWC) resents professionals but admires the rich. Class migrants (white-collar professionals born to blue-collar families) report that “professional people were generally suspect” and that managers are college kids “who don’t know shit about how to do anything but are full of ideas about how I have to do my job,”
.. Barbara Ehrenreich recalled in 1990 that her blue-collar dad “could not say the word doctor without the virtual prefix quack. Lawyers were shysters…and professors were without exception phonies.” Annette Lareaufound tremendous resentment against teachers, who were perceived as condescending and unhelpful.
.. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day.
.. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.
.. Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,”
.. “If you have a problem with me, come talk to me. If you have a way you want something done, come talk to me. I don’t like people who play these two-faced games.” Straight talk is seen as requiring manly courage, not being “a total wuss and a wimp,”
.. Trump promises a world free of political correctness and a return to an earlier era, when men were men and women knew their place. It’s comfort food for high-school-educated guys who could have been my father-in-law if they’d been born 30 years earlier. Today they feel like losers — or did until they met Trump.
.. Many still measure masculinity by the size of a paycheck.
.. For many blue-collar men, all they’re asking for is basic human dignity (male varietal). Trump promises to deliver it.
.. The Democrats’ solution? Last week the New York Times published an article advising men with high-school educations to take pink-collar jobs.
.. WWC women voted for Trump over Clinton by a whopping 28-point margin — 62% to 34%. If they’d split 50-50, she would have won.
.. Obama sold Obamacare by pointing out that it delivered health care to 20 million people? Just another program that taxed the middle class to help the poor, said the WWC
.. Means-tested programs that help the poor but exclude the middle may keep costs and tax rates lower, but they are a recipe for class conflict. Example: 28.3% of poor families receive child-care subsidies, which are largely nonexistent for the middle class.
.. they lived a life of rigorous thrift and self-discipline.
.. Vance’s book passes harsh judgment on his hard-living relatives, which is not uncommon among settled families who kept their nose clean through sheer force of will. This is a second source of resentment against the poor.
.. I fully understand why transgender bathrooms are important, but I also understand why progressives’ obsession with prioritizing cultural issues infuriates many Americans whose chief concerns are economic.
.. Massive funding is needed for community college programs linked with local businesses to train workers for well-paying new economy jobs. Clinton mentioned this approach, along with 600,000 other policy suggestions. She did not stress it.
.. Being in the police is one of the few good jobs open to Americans without a college education.
.. although race- and sex-based insults are no longer acceptable in polite society, class-based insults still are.
.. If we don’t take steps to bridge the class culture gap, when Trump proves unable to bring steel back to Youngstown, Ohio, the consequences could turn dangerous.