Nine months into his first term, President Trump is perfecting a style of leadership commensurate with his campaign promise to disrupt business as usual in Washington. Call it governing by cattle prod.
.. In the face of his own unhappiness, the president is trying to raise the pain level wherever he can.
.. He cares about ratings, praise and success. Absent demonstrable achievements, he reverts to what worked during the campaign, which is to depend on his own instincts and to touch the hot buttons that roused his voters in 2016. As president, he has never tried seriously to reach beyond that base.
.. Trump has managed to turn an issue that once was about police violence in minority communities into a cultural battle about patriotism, the flag and pride in the military. His critics are now on the defensive.
.. There’s little doubt that part of the president’s motivation is to undo what former president Barack Obama did. He campaigned against Obamacare, although his prescriptions for what should replace it lacked consistency or, for that matter, clear alternatives
.. he has decided to force Congress to act on whether to fund the insurance subsidies that help lower-income Americans purchase health insurance. That’s another way he’s trying to bring the Democrats to the table,
.. Trump is trying to ratchet up attention to those problems but by threatening to walk away from the nuclear agreement has created a rift with U.S. partners
.. Foreign policy experts worry that by opening up a new confrontation with Iran, the administration may be stretching its capacity to handle both matters with the patience, skill and delicacy they require.
.. The president has proved himself capable and willing to start controversies and policy confrontations. That’s what being a disrupter is all about. But there is more to the presidency than initiating conflict, and on that measure, Trump has much to prove.
The secret to Germany’s happiness and success: Its values are the opposite of Silicon Valley’s
a magnetic 38-year-old named Christian Lindner, has openly expressed a desire to shake things up. In an August interview with the Economist, in which he called Germany’s economy “a prosperity hallucination,” Lindner also explained that in his country, “entrepreneurship has long been undervalued … and societies that are prepared to be more daring and have efficient capital markets have overtaken us on this.”
.. The vast majority of Germans don’t want it. For progressive and even centrist Germans, the startup-style definition of Erfolg (or “success”) is utterly incompatible with their values—which do not center on individual wealth, recognition, or even careers.
.. Germany’s cultural mores—which include a vehement defense of the country’s robust social safety net, largely credited for the relatively quick recovery from last decade’s recession—mean it is largely inoculated from the bootstrap fever that has long gripped the US.
.. In an off-script response to a heckler during a speech about startup culture’s positive attitude toward failure, Lindner memorably decried the fact that “people would rather go into public service than start something themselves.” He explained that, “when you’re successful, you end up in the sights of the social-democratic redistribution apparatus, and when you fail you’re sure to be the subject of mockery and derision.”
Lindner was correct on one point: Many Germans would rather go into public service than start a business themselves. But his theory about their motivation is all wrong. Lindner’s country-people simply don’t have the same enchantment with self-made financial success that he does.
.. Thanks in part to a general leftward tilt on economic issues after the student revolutions of 1968, most of them view the collective good, and the comparatively high taxation that accompanies it not as a sacrifice, but as a fundamental component of civilized society.
.. They are largely content with their take-home salaries, but not out of altruism. Rather, they view the role of wealth acquisition and consumerism in a fundamentally different way.
.. To Germans, caution and frugality are signifiers of great moral character. Sure, they favor high-quality consumer goods—but they deliberate on what to buy for years, and expect their possessions to last for decades
.. Moreover, for Germans, a good work-life balance does not involve unlimited massages and free meals on the corporate campus to encourage 90-hour weeks. Germans not only work 35 hours a week on average—they’re the kind of people who might decide to commute by swimming, simply because it brings them joy.
.. And a German wouldn’t be caught tot pounding down a bar or a glass of Soylent to replace a meal
.. just as Christian Lindner is obsessed with making money and driving sports cars, so have Germans been obsessed with making fun of Christian Lindner because they find his thirst for financial success so gauche.
Kristof: Trump’s Successes, But Cycle Turning
President Trump has now been in the White House for six months, and Democrats are fairly gleeful in noting that he is: a) deeply unpopular; b) mired in scandals; and c) bereft of any legislative victories. That’s all true, but also I think too glib. Trump has been quite successful, in my view, in two areas:
- appointing conservatives to federal courts, most notably Justice Gorsuch to the Supreme Court; and in
- changing the regulatory landscape by removing environmental safety standards.
.. Since the 1970s we’ve seen a long-term trend toward cutting taxes and social services, and there have been a series of grim consequences: rising inequality, stagnant high school graduation rates, rising incarceration rates, rising narcotics use, stagnant earnings for the bottom half of Americans, and so on. So many national problems seem to have their roots in a cycle that started then, but I wonder if the cycle is turning.
- The failure of Trumpcare is a case where a program for the poor, Medicaid, won a political battle, and
- Kansas has shown that at some point voters prefer to raise taxes than see service cuts. More broadly,
- even conservative states like Texas have reversed themselves on mass incarceration, and high school graduation rates are again going up.
Could we be turning a corner?
.. For me, the most chilling aspect of President Trump’s interview with The Times on Wednesday was his insistence on reserving the right to fire Bob Mueller. That would be ten times bigger than firing Jim Comey, and the fact that Trump even brings it up makes me think that he fears Mueller is getting close to something the president wants hidden.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde are on their way to the White House
Trump’s personnel choices seem designed to either reward personal loyalty or embody a certain perception of competence — the competence of generals who know how to give orders and of billionaires who know how to make money.
.. Failed politicians, in this view, need to be schooled. Never mind that the habits of command are not immediately transferrable to some of the main tasks in a democracy — persuasion, compromise and public policy innovation.
.. Failed politicians, in this view, need to be schooled. Never mind that the habits of command are not immediately transferrable to some of the main tasks in a democracy — persuasion, compromise and public policy innovation.
.. Apart from a few vivid campaign promises on immigration and infrastructure — which have also been renegotiated since the election — Trump has radical freedom of action. He owes no one, holds no definite ideology and will be forgiven even the worst heresies by his supporters
.. His large tax cuts and commitment to a balanced budget may force nondefense discretionary spending — only about 16 percent of the budget — to be a repeated blood donor, until it is pasty white and weak.
.. But who can possibly predict what will be in President Trump’s budget address to Congress in February? Who can know what Trump does not yet know himself? In the period between now and then, the identity of a presidential administration will be determined, in many areas from scratch.
.. He seems caught in a cycle: a few days on message, then a conspiratorial or bullying statement or tweet, then a scramble by Republicans to solicit intervention from “the family,” who give the president-elect the political equivalent of lithium and get him back on message before the next manic stage.