FIVE POINTS: Your Redneck Past
Short and sweet this week, I'm on vacation.
1. The President's skill set (or lack thereof) is partially driving the recess agenda. Two weeks ago, in my first newsletter, I noted that we were entering the first August recess of the Trump presidency, which would be longest stretch the administration had gone without Congress in town or in the news. The White House would be in the spotlight, creating both a danger and an opportunity. So far, it appears that the danger has outpaced the opportunity: the President got in a nuclear saber-rattling pissing match with Kim Jong-un last week, there was the debacle in Charlottesville this week, and along the way we've had new Mueller revelations, virtually unprecedented public fights with co-partisan Senators, CEOs abandoning a much-touted White House advisory board that the President subsequently disbanded, and plenty of palace intrigue in the West Wing.
Plenty has been written all of this. I'll add two quick points. First, one of the hallmarks of the presidency is that events can, and often will, overtake the best laid plans and agendas. Bill Clinton didn't want to be dealing with Bosnia or the Lewinsky scandal, Bush 43 didn't expect to deal with 9/11 or Katrina, and the Trump admin certainly would probably have preferred North Korea not test missiles and the KKK not march on Charlottesville. But that's the presidency: in many instances, you are going to have to be reactive. Anyone who blames Trump for the existence of these two stories is just being silly. Trump's problem is that he doesn't seem to have the ability to quietly close off a story and get back to controlling the agenda. Both North Korea and Charlottesville could have been handled in calm, sane, non-offensive-to-anyone manners, and they would have been---from a White House focus perspective---24 hour stories. Instead, Trump found ways to perpetuate the stories, even after he had lost control of the politics of them. That's just pure political incompetence.
But it really speaks to the second point I want to make: Trump really doesn't have the skill set to get back to the agenda everyone---even his allies---want him to be on. Republicans would love it if the administration would take on any number of issues over the recess---tax reform, appropriations, the debt limit, infrastructure, even health care---but Trump has very little personal ability to talk policy in public and has so far proven more or less worthless in moving forward a legislative agenda. Maybe it's infrastructure week, maybe it's energy week, maybe it's tax credit week or saving baby seal week. But none of those administration pushes are going to mean much if the president himself can't engage on it at more than a one-off soundbyte level. So I don't think there's a real urgency in the White House to get off these stories that are largely self-inflicted wounds and get back to a coordinate legislative push, because there's nothing really there to get back to.
What Trump is good at---and yes, the man does have a skill set---is getting attention for himself, creating largrer-than-life spectacles, and personalizing confrontations. This can be useful when carefully managed, but when you try to fight every battle this way, you end up playing on a lot of battlefields where you simply don't have the high ground or heavy artillery. It's the old everything-looks-like-a-nail-if-you-only-have-a-hammer problem. Trump can't get out of his own way on North Korea or Charlottesville, because he tries to fit every issue into a WWF-style model of political confrontation. That happens to work decently well in the presidential primary structure. It works a lot less well when the agenda is wide open, it's partially but not totally chosen by you, and there are things you do and don't want to talk about.
2. Social Media is Breaking Down Politics-Free Zones. Whenever I go on vacation and leave DC, I remember that the penetration of political news is very different out in the rest of the country. I vividly remember going to New Jersey over Columbus Day Weekend a few years ago, when the Speakership was hanging in the balance, and no one cared. No one. And it was refreshing. Since then, I've always tried to enjoy my vacations specifically as conduits to clearing my head of politics.
What I'm noticing this week in North Carolina is that the overwhelming onslaught of social media is keeping everyone at least kinda in touch with politics these days. There's a lot of political science writing about how the proliferation of media choices has allowed news junkies to become uber-knowledgeable and those who have no interest in politics to completely avoid it, by watching Food Network or whatever.
But I'm seeing a general penetration of top-level news through social media---Facebook updates from your friends, for example---that makes it harder and harder to totally get away from politics, even for people who are only casually aware of it. Perhaps this is a Trump effect, perhaps it is a smartphone effect, perhaps it is a social media effect. Anyway, here are some beautiful sky shots I've taken along the intercoastal waterway and the Cape Fear River Basin in North Carolina.
3. Party Purges Have Never Been Particularly Successful. President Trump today more or less declared war on a sitting Republican Senator, endorsing a specific primary challenger against Arizona Republican Jeff Flake. It's impossible to say what will come of this---anything from Flake winning easy reelection to a Democrat ending up with the seat in 2019 is possible---but the historical truth is that presidential interventions to purge their own party have never gone well. The most famous example, of course, is FDRs 1938 attempt to purge conservative southern Democrats who wouldn't get on board with the New Deal. It was an absolute failure; only one of the targeted House members lost their election.
It's not surprising these attempts fail. Most Members of Congress have bases of support that are local, and often they run ahead of the President or their party in their districts or states. Now it's possible the nationalization of congressional elections have made Members more vulnerable to these sorts of purges from party leaders or the president, but I wouldn't bet on it. Especially when the entire GOP delegation in the Senate is going to oppose you; not only will they almost always close ranks, but Flake is extremely popular as a person. Don't look for anyone to jump on Trump's bandwagon on this one.
The dumb thing here is that, once again, this seems mostly personal for Trump, rather than strategic. Arizona is a terrible spot for the GOP to divide themselves and/or elect a radical; it's a potential pickup seat for the Democrats if a poor non-Flake GOP candidate gets the nomination. Also, if Trump simply wanted to flex his muscle a bit electorally, he could have just endorsed Moore in Alabama, who would have immediately had a great showing and reflected well on the president. (Instead, he backed Strange, who may yet pull it out in the runoff, but finished second in the primary earlier this week.) What this sums to is, as usual, a president who is behaving impulsively rather than strategically, and sacrificing long-term power for short-term dopamine ego drips. I'd say the end result is he'll look impotent, but that's a year down the road; for now he just gets to eat the fruit of pissing off his entire Senate caucus.
4. This week has been a Neustadtian disaster for Trump. I've been beating this drum for months now (as have many others), but it's simply true: Trump is an incredibly weak President (measured as his ability to achieve goals relative to other Presidents) and shows no signs of being able to turn that around, or even get how presidential power politics work.
This week's data points are twofold: first, a laundry-list of CEOs resigned from Trump's Manufacturing Council, after which Trump threatened them as replaceable before changing his mind and just abolishing the Council completely. The key here is to forget about the council: substantively, it's meaningless. It never even met. What it is, however, is a series of signals. When formed, it was a signal that many business leaders backed Trump or at least were willing to work with him. When they left, it was signal they no longer backed him.
That he couldn't prevent the latter was a signal he has no juice with these people, and when he threatened them as replaceable it was a signal he didn't understand that the Council itself was just a set of elite endorsements, and that the damage was already done. As Jonathan Bernstein wrote up, the President relies on hundreds of people to back him when he's being attacked, support him when he's pushing an agenda, and definitely at least to shut up and stay out of it when they can't say/do anything nice. The inability to Trump to do this is a sign of both his terrible professional reputation, and a harbinger of his inability to get people he needs to go along with him to actually do so when it matters. DISASTER.
The second data point is the unbelievable number of Republican officeholders who are not just opposing him on Charlottesville, but outright being mean about it. The list includes: many if not most GOP Senators, the heads of all(!) of the branches of the military, and all the usual never-Trump suspects. It's being reported that major cable networks---including FOX---were unable to book any GOP Members to defend Trump. Even the mayor of Phoneix got in on the fun and tried to uninvite Trump from a rally there next week. A POTUS without high-level surrogates is in huge trouble with the votes, and obviously is in huge trouble with the would-be surrogates. They aren't afraid of him, they won't defend him, and they certainly aren't going to go out of their way for him when he needs it. And the president always needs it. The office just doesn't have enough power without them. DISASTER.
Trump in turn got in a fight with Senator Flake (see above) and Senator Graham, among others. This will compound the problem immensely. One big issue that will come home to roost soon is future promises. Trump seems so willing to turn on a dime against people, and so vindictive in his willingness to immediately abandon people, that I see no reason any individual Member of Congress would trust him to keep his end of a bargain. This is an acute problem for a president, however, because much of his bargaining is based on goodies that are inherently future considerations: helping you down the road on a bill, or with an appointment for a constituent, or a campaign appearance in your district. Would you help this president now in exchange for that sort of future consideration? Neither would I, and neither will they. DISASTER.
5. Rock and Roll Taxonomy is Fun. Via the incredible Tom Pepinsky, comes this masterpiece:
I'm something of a soft touch when it comes to Venn diagrams, but this is just solid gold.
Three comments: first, the New York Dolls are straight glam as far as I'm concerned. Here's how I think about this: one of the essences of 70s glam, is the fabulous costumes. But the purpose of dressing up in heels then was to shock. Think Bowie. There were 80s hair bands that dressed up like that---just take the cover of Look What the Cat Dragged In---but here's the key: Poison was dressing up like that in service of landing chicks. The New York Dolls were just being fabulous. Totally different aesthetic.
Second, Whitesnake isn't glam as far as I'm concerned. The definition of Butt Rock is pretty varied, but my inclination is to put them in straight Hair. David Coverdale probably deserves a few more words, but suffice it to say that I'm still pissed enough about Coverdale-Page to dispense with proprieties.
Finally, the oversight of Guns N' Roses is almost inexcusable here. Pretty clearly Butt-Hair-Glam in my book, although their virtuosity makes it tough to group them with the other artists currently in that space.
If anyone has a band that can replace the null set in the total overlap spot, please let Tom and I know.
See you next time (probably end of next week). Thanks for reading!