FIVE POINTS: Rex-N-Effect, Trump Shaker
1. The President had another terrible week. I continue to believe that the Nuestadt analysis of Trump is the correct one: this is a very weak president in danger of complete failed presidency. I've been on this kick for months (as have others), but it needs to be continually stated: there's no magical Trump phenomenon. His professional reputation in Washington is zero. His public prestige continues to be the worst in the polling-age. His skill set seems increasingly incongruent with the job.
These aren't just random attributes. They're the resources that provide the president with leverage in politics. The presidency has few formal tools; presidents rely on the informal tools of political power to convince other political actors that it is in their best interest to do what the president wants. What you see with Trump, increasingly, is that he can't convince anyone to do what he wants. He still has no legislative successes. No one is eager to back him. No one is scared to challenge him.
Of course, the presidency is an incredibly powerful office and even weak presidents can be influential. But if you measure presidential power as the ability to achieve goals relative to other presidents, Trump is in an absolute precarious position, and shows no signs of turning it around. This week was another disaster, both revealing his weakness and furthering it:
His cabinet is in disarray. This is the most devastating news. Trump does not seem to have the loyalty or backing of his inner cabinet. Secretary of State Tillerson's press conference early in the week in which he pledged his support to Trump and half-denied calling him a moron was a classic Neustadt moment of presidential weakness; forcing Tillerson out there to profess Trump's power/skill/greatness, the entire press conference conveyed just the opposite. This was followed up with the story that Tillerson, Secretary of the Treasury Mnuchin, and Secretary of Defense Mattis have a "suicide pact" to prevent Trump from removing any of them. That's a clear sign influence is circumventing the president. And don't forget that there are current two vacancies at the Secretary level---Homeland Security and Health and Human Services---that need to be filled. DISASTER.
He has lost agenda control. It dawned on me this week that the White House has more or less lost control of the policy agenda. They simply can't cut through the news. When was the last time you felt like the president was driving the news cycle in a policy-related way? It feels like the press is increasingly covering the White House as as soap-opera of internal personnel fights and/or scandals. All of the policy action seems to be revolving around Congress. That's highly unusual, especially in a unified government. Part of this speaks to Trump's basic inability to focus on policy; he just doesn't care about the details and therefore doesn't engage in a legislative manner. But it also goes to focus. Most presidents would be spending every day pushing tax reform, event after event and speech after speech. Yes, the hurricanes got in the way. But this wasn't working before that, and it's unlikely to work next week. DISASTER.
More logs for the scandal fire. Secretary Price resigned this week, amid his luxury travel scandal. There were also other new revelations about people all around the president.The identical travel scandal could plausibly engulf at least three other cabinet secretaries, although right now I doubt it's going to bring anyone else down. A brutal story also came out about Jared and Ivanka avoiding criminal fraud charges, perhaps with campaign donation payoffs. And a laundry list of small-time stuff that just becomes noise at this point: Hatch Act violations, misuse of taxpayer funds, associations with increasingly shady white supremacist types. DISASTER.
Hill co-partisans coming at him. As discussed last week, Senator Corker announced he's not running for reelection in 2018, and he wasted no time in becoming highly critical of the administration. Meanwhile, Senator Burr held a joint press conference with Senator Warner to discuss the progress of the Intelligence Committees Russia investigation. It was an odd press conference; it didn't really break any new ground except to remind people that (1) it exists; (2) the president is full of it when he argues Russian interference in the election is Fake News; and (3) there's a lot more investigating to come. DISASTER.
It's very, very difficult to imagine how Trump turns his position around. Plenty of first-year presidents have trouble in DC, but this is a much, much bigger hole and Trump seems totally incapable of learning and/or adapting. The one bright spot for Trump is that Chief of Staff Kelly appears to have gotten a handle on information control at the White House and a reduction in public power fights among White House staff. That's good. But it's not enough. This presidency is continuing to wane in influence, and describing it as anything but a total political legitimacy crisis at this point strikes me as charitable.
2. Liberals are about to get badly rolled on gun control. One of the continual complaints you hear from gun control advocates is that mass shootings happen year after year but Congress repeatedly takes no action to address the problem. It looks like that pattern is going to change in the next week or two. You probably had never heard of a bump stock before this week. Most gun owners had probably never heard of one before this week. But a ban on bump stocks now appears to be gathering strong backing across the political spectrum, including a non-hostile response from the National Rifle Association. This is pretty much the worst outcome for gun control advocates.
Banning bump stocks will, at best, have a tiny impact on gun violence. The vast majority of gun deaths aren't from mass shooting or caused by assault weapons. And the vast majority of gun deaths that are from mass shootings or caused by assault weapons don't involve bump stocks. From a policy point of view, it's basically a non-issue. Politically, however, it's going to be a big victory for Republicans and conservatives. Congress will be seen Doing Something. Everyone will vote for it. It will be sold as a common-sense measure, and will allow conservatives to show moderation on gun control without upsetting any conservative voters or gun rights interest groups. It really is the equivalent of doing nothing and getting full credit.
3. Working as a Hill staffer can be grueling, but can also be great. Representative Tim Murphy announced he would resign yesterday, amid several scandals. The most prominent one revolved around an affair and an abortion, but the one that caught the most attention on the Hill regarded some alleged miserable treatment of staff in his personal office. A memo by his chief of staff claimed he was verbally abusive almost constantly, had burned through over 100 staffers in her time in his office, and generally treated the staff very poorly.
I can happily report that this is way outside of the norm on the Hill. Most members are genuinely appreciative of their staff, treat them professionally (or, in some cases, more like friends or family), and wish they could pay them more and give them more time off. There are definitely exceptions. As with any large operation, there are bad bosses and plenty of horror stories to go around. The Murphy revelations are shocking in aggregate, but nothing I haven't heard regularly at the individual-incident level. But while I do think the Hill is a tough place to work, I wouldn't say the boss-employee relation is, on average, any better or worse than in any other field. In fact, if I had to guess I might say it's better.
The reason the Hill can be a grueling place to work is not the boss, but the hours and pay. Most Hill staffers work way more than 40 hours a week, and many of the junior staff make $30-50k salaries. They are all at-will employees with no job protections beyond the anti-discrimination laws, and they are tasked with incredibly large workloads. None of this reflects poorly on their individual employers; every member I've ever discussed the topic with has expressed a wish that they were given more money to pay their staff better and hire more people to reduce the workload. But the realities of our democracy is those are some of the hardest votes for members to take, as constituents hate the idea of Congress spending money on itself.
So why do all these staffers put up with rough working conditions? You will hear a lot of responses to that question, but for me it was pretty simple: working on the Hill is really fun! There's a sense of obvious and concrete purpose to it that doesn't exist in a lot of jobs. There are endless opportunities to make pretty important things happen, even if you are just a young staffer. And even if you just see politics as a big game, it's a really interesting game, one that becomes more interesting as you climb the staff ladder into more senior positions.
4. The latest Democratic leadership fight will likely fizzle, for now. Yesterday, Representative Sanchez (D-CA) remarked that it was time for the current House Democratic leaders to step aside and make way for a new generation. This is a pretty shocking development; Sanchez is part of the elected Democratic leadership and would normally be expected to discredit such a discussion, let alone raise it herself. One important aspect of this is that the current top Democratic leaders---Minority Leader Pelosi, Minority Whip Hoyer, and Assistant Democratic Leader Clyburn---are all in their late 70's and have all been in power for a decade. They have also shown little interest in passing power to younger members of the caucus, or even in grooming a new generation of leaders.
This strategy has been successful in insulating them from credible challenges to their authority. Heather Shuler and Tim Ryan have both made public challenges to the party leadership, but those were (rightly) viewed as protest statements more than credible alternatives. Two of the best-positioned members to lead either a challenge or a negotiated transfer of power, Xavier Beccera (CA) and Chris Van Hollen (MD), left the House for statewide office and the Senate, respectively, perhaps in part out of frustration with the leadership logjam above them. And the existing short bench of potential candidates is not particularly inspiring.
So don't expect anything to come of this, yet. The real test will come a year from now, when the current leadership indicates its post-election plans and, if those plans are to stay, whether a credible challenge emerges within the caucus. It's difficult to see how the current leadership continues on if the Democrats fail to take back the House in 2018, but of course I was saying that after the 2010 election about the same three people. So you may not want to bet against their staying power.
5. I wasn't a huge Tom Petty fan, but I loved his voice. I was not a huge Tom Petty fan. I think the only Heartbreakers albums I own are the first one one and Full Moon Fever. But I do think Petty's voice is one of the greatest in rock and roll history. Not classically great like Freddie Mercury or Jim Morrison. Not hard rocker-great like Robert Plant or Kurt Cobain. Just utterly compelling and perfectly suited to the music he was playing.
Petty wrote some nice melodies, but if you listen to any covers of his songs, they lose a lot. His voice had the ability to turn simple 4-chord songs with pedestrian melodies and lyrics into masterpieces. There's no better example of this than Learning to Fly. Such a wonderful song when sung in the haunting Petty voice. Probably a throwaway filler with almost anyone else singing it.
Godspeed, Tom.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!