Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Heads he wins; tails, you lose


I want to take what Maggie Haberman said on CNN:

“The president has one speed,” she said. “The speed is: Don’t take blame, take credit where you can, all moments are about him.”

“He has one style of doing things, and it’s clear whatever the circumstances are, it is not going to not going to change,” she said. “That tweet is a classic example of him doing something, where he knows a lot of people are going to spend lots time trying to figure out whether he meant to tweet something about himself and describing himself as the captain on ‘Mutiny on the Bounty.’ But actually, it’s treating it all like a game, and people are dying and millions don’t have jobs. It is a huge, huge problem in the country.”

And connect to her tweets, above.  Because the two together illustrate what has become a point so obvious reporters are even using it to question Trump to his face:  what does he think government is?

The answer is:  a power base.

Trump doesn't understand power.  He's never had to.  He was a millionaire when he was four years old (literally; his father set up a fund in his infant son's name as a tax dodge).  Trump has always had money (and squandered it), but he's never had power, except to screw people over (and that's not the power he imagines it to be).  The illustration of the experiences with clubhouse politicians says it all. Those politicians accrued power, much the way LBJ did in the Senate and later in the Presidency.  They had power because they knew how to grant favors, curry favor, and offer and receive benefits.  They didn't have power because they were politicians; they acquired power by working their way up through politics.

You can denounce that all you want.  Mitch McConnell is, IMHO, a fine example of the corruption of that kind of system of power.  LBJ, also IMHO, is a fine example of how to use that system for the benefit of the citizenry.

Trump is neither McConnell nor LBJ.  Trump is a buffoon who thinks once he has the office, the trappings, the position, he has the power.  A President is very powerful, even if he doesn't know how to wield that power the moment he takes office (LBJ did; so did FDR; just by way of example.  JFK had to learn.)  But how powerful are you if a Representative shouts out "YOU LIE!" in your first SOTU?  What Southern Democrat, opposed body and soul to civil and voting rights, would have ever dared say that to LBJ, in public or private?

Power doesn't come solely with the office.

But Trump thinks it does, and worse, thinks the power accrues to his interests (he's a narcissist, how else does he think about the world?).  Trump thinks he won the election, game over, now he collects his chits.  When that doesn't work, he throws a fit, or screams to a roomful of fanatical supporters, and he feels better, he feels powerful.  Now he's backed into insisting he is in charge even as the crew locks him in his quarters and refuses his orders.  Now he insists he alone has the responsibility, when what he means he has the authority, and the governors will get the blame (which is how he thinks of responsibility).  Now he's looking under his desk for that baseball bat, beceause he thinks that will make him strong.  What he reveals is his absolute (there is an absolute here!) weakness, his absolute lack of authority.  Neal Katyal neatly outlined the problem with Trump's statements, without taking them as a sign the republic is doomed to dictatorship:

“First, and most important, such ridiculous assertions of power are distracting sideshows that inhibit true federal solutions in a time of extreme peril,” he wrote. The federal government should be working with states to partner and help the states instead of trying to fight with them during a pandemic.

“Second, because Mr. Trump is so flat out wrong about his powers, his comments also undermine decision-making in states,” he continued. “The decision each state makes to reopen its economy will be just about the most fraught decision each political leader will make in that person’s lifetime.” Indeed, governors hold the lives of their citizens in their hands and if they open prematurely and people die, they will be blamed.

“Third, Mr. Trump’s claims reveal a selective impotence about his powers,” he continued, recalling that over a week ago Trump was saying he couldn’t help the states because of the Constitution. Son-in-law Jared Kushner was shredded for the idea that federal surpluses supplies weren’t for the states it was for the federal government.

“Fourth, it’s hard to find something more un-American than Mr. Trump’s statement — and the idea that lawyers at the revered Department of Justice and the White House, as well as members of the president’s political party, have mostly stood silently by (and sometimes enabled) such legal views should give every American pause,” he said.
The inherent powers of the office of President keeps too many in government silent now.  But Trump is, as Katyal states, impotent, and not just selectively.  His power is not just a "bully pulpit," but an exercise of governance and administration that exhibits knowledge of what can be done and how it can be done.  Trump blurts out one day he can do nothing for the states, another day that he won't do anything because the problems are their fault, not his responsibility; and yet another day, that he has absolute power to do as he sees fit, a power which apparently (he thinks) reaches down to individuals and whether or not they will restore the economy for what he thinks will be his benefit.

I think Ms. Haberman is right about Trump's "Mutiny on the Bounty" tweet.  Trump doesn't really care what you think about what he says.  He just wants to be sure you're talking about him saying it.  When he isn't worried about having power, he's just worried about being noticed.  Two sides of the same sociopathic coin.

Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)