Amid the miasma of manufactured controversies, lurid distractions and conspiracy theories, Trump’s presidency is, as Mark Twain is supposed to have said of Wagner’s music, “better than it sounds.”
By Rich Lowry
Politico
The president of the United States wakes up some mornings seemingly determined to convince as many people as possible that he’s unsuited to high office. Fortunately for him, he has a Twitter account allowing him to act on this impulse immediately and without any filter.
On Wednesday [last week], Trump retweeted three videos from an apparatchik of an extremist party in Britain purporting to show acts of violence by Muslims. One of them is reportedly a fake—it’s not clear the perpetrator is a Muslim.
He followed up with a tweet calling for the firing of “Morning Joe” host Joe Scarborough on the basis of a noxious conspiracy theory. (A woman with a heart condition died in Scarborough’s district office when he was a congressman. Ever since, a kooky fringe has accused him of murder.)
It’s difficult to exaggerate how mind-blowing these tweets are.
If a friend on Facebook shared the fake Muslim video, you’d hesitate to credit any of his opinions going forward, let alone bestow on him the biggest megaphone on Planet Earth. If a candidate for town council called for an investigation of Scarborough for allegedly murdering one of his interns, you’d doubt his fitness to decide whether to approve a zoning permit for an Applebee’s, let alone to wield the world’s most fearsome nuclear arsenal.
Yet Trump’s presidency operates on a largely separate track than his Twitter feed and his other off-script interjections and pronouncements. His domestic policy is so conventional that it could have been cooked up by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell—and, in fact, it was. He’s pursued a largely status quo foreign policy, except more cautious than Barack Obama’s and, especially, George W. Bush’s.
Amid the miasma of manufactured controversies, lurid distractions and conspiracy theories, Trump’s presidency is, as Mark Twain is supposed to have said of Wagner’s music, “better than it sounds.”
A common criticism of Trump is that, via his attacks on offending journalistic outlets and jurists, he’s endangering the Constitution. He’s certainly violating norms, worth preserving in their own right, of how a president should conduct himself and speak. But if you got news only of Trump’s official acts and knew nothing of his ongoing commentary, you’d think a rigorously rules-bound president occupied the White House.
The defining feature of Neil Gorsuch and Trump’s other judicial nominees is a firm commitment to interpreting the Constitution and the laws as written. Trump has rolled back Obama administrative actions on immigration (DACA), the environment (the Clean Power Plan) and health care (the so-called CSR payments) that at best pushed the envelope of executive authority and at worst were frankly unconstitutional. Just this week, Trump won a court fight confirming that, no matter what his critics might hope, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is indeed an executive agency whose director is to be appointed by the president in the event of a vacancy.
It is difficult to see how Ted Cruz would have governed any differently on any of these issues. Unlike Cruz, Trump is an accidental constitutionalist. Trump’s social conservative base demands originalist judges, and his alliance with the Federalist Society produces them. Meanwhile, Trump’s deregulatory reflex and desire to reverse Obama’s legacy mean he’s clawing back his predecessor’s overreach.
On the legislative front, even as Trump outdoes himself with outlandish tweets, he is getting closer to his first major victory, in pursuit of a stereotypical Republican policy goal. If there is a safe assumption to make about any GOP president, it is that he will seek deficit-financed tax cuts. Trump is reliably conforming to the pattern.
In the real world, the economy is growing at a nice clip, and the stock market is humming along, showing no signs that it believes that the republic is about to be destroyed by a Mad King.
None of this is to suggest that Trump’s governing and his tweets are entirely distinguishable. Some of the tweets have had consequences and, if nothing else, they are a dismaying window into his state of mind. . . .
But the tweets don’t constitute the sum total of the administration. It’s possible that Trump sees Twitter—and his other provocations—as a way to stir the pot, entertain himself, stoke his base, flog his enemies, and vent his frustrations separate and distinct from decisions of government, undertaken under the influence of, by and large, impressive, well-meaning advisers.
Trump’s presidency is much better than his Twitter feed. Although he stands ready and willing to convince you otherwise, 280 characters at a time.
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