Candidates in general and Trump in particular say an awful lot, and a lot of it is awful. But Trump has also hinted at some excellent policies.
Of course, once elected, no candidate can do all he says. Some such failures will come from his having made promises he had no intention of keeping. Others may be caused by constitutional curbs on executive power.
But every president will put into effect some of his proposed policies. While it’s too early to tell which ones Trump will realise, it’s still possible to assess those he has mentioned.
Such assessment should be dispassionate and rational. Otherwise one risks sounding as ignorant as Max Hastings did in his anti-Trump rant: “America’s Founding Fathers would be appalled by the hijacking of the democratic system they crafted so carefully”.
But the Founders didn’t ‘craft’ a democracy. They created a republic, and it’s unfortunate that people who pontificate on politics don’t know the difference.
The Founders themselves did. In 1806 John Adams wrote in disgust: “I once thought our Constitution was a quasi or mixed government, but they had made it… a democracy.”
And Thomas Jefferson added that “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one per cent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”
But back to Trump now. How would we mark his proposed policies if he were a pupil?
Protectionism. Trump wants high tariffs on trade with Mexico and China. He thinks that’ll save American jobs – but it won’t. Such measures will protect underperforming industries and punish successful ones (along with consumers): E
Trade. In the same vein, Trump wants to repeal some trade treaties, such as NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Bad idea: F
Corporate taxes and red tape. “70 per cent of regulations can go,” says Trump, and he also proposes more than halving company taxes. These are proven measures to energise the economy: A
Terrorism. Trump wants to “bomb the hell out of ISIS”, “put more boots on the ground” and “bring back a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding”. Right spirit, but one detects little subtlety in Trump’s thinking on such subjects: B-
Personal taxes. Trumps is in favour of vast simplification and overall reduction. Brilliant: A+
Rebuilding infrastructure. A good idea in itself, but Trump wants to solve unemployment thereby. That sounds like FDR’s New Deal, with its TVA and other megalomaniac socialist projects. Rotten idea: E-
Energy and climate. Trump wants to increase the production of hydrocarbons and put an end to all those New Age ideas. He also refers to global warming as “a hoax” and “weather”. Right on all counts: A
Gun laws. Gun ownership “should be legal in all 50 states,” says Trump, who sees no connection between murder rate and availability of firearms. All good: A+
Islam. Trump pledges to impose “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. He’d “strongly consider” closing the more radical mosques. Good luck to him, but the idea is solid: A
Immigration. Trump favours kicking out 11 million illegal immigrants and building a wall all along the Mexican border. The first is good in principle but hard to carry out. The second is silly, and I hope he didn’t mean it: C
Cleaning up Washington. Five-year ban on ex-officials becoming lobbyists, reducing the size of the state and “the corrupting influence of special interests”, a hiring freeze on government jobs. Excellent: A+
Collective security. The combined GDP of other NATO members is greater than America’s, and yet their total defence budgets are less than half of America’s. Trump is right to demand a drastic change.
But this technicality can be sorted out once the underlying principles are agreed upon. Chief among these is that Western countries should present a solid defensive bloc wherein an attack on one is an attack on all. Trump makes little effort to conceal his contempt for this principle and has made nasty-sounding isolationist noises.
He seems to think that collective security undermines American national interests, but he’s wrong. Practically from the day she was born, America has been pursuing an ever-accelerating imperial policy driven by messianic self-perception. Abandoning the policy would mean abandoning the self-perception, which might be advisable in theory but would be catastrophic in practice.
Isolationism, while always mooted, has never made serious headway in the US and never will. Nor, the national psyche apart, is it in the country’s geopolitical and economic interests: F-
Russia. I wrote about this yesterday, but repetition is the mother of all learning, as they used to say (repetitio mater studiorum est).
This is potentially the most disastrous misconception Trump has. He favours peace with Putin, which is good, provided it means neither surrender nor betrayal of all America’s allies nor a cynical ploy to divide the world into inviolable spheres of influence.
I’m afraid Trump’s views fail to satisfy those provisions. In part that’s attributable to his business background, and here I disagree with those who believe that running a company prepares a man for running a country.
Business is immeasurably simpler than politics. Nowadays it’s also amoral: a modern businessman, especially a wheeler-dealer like Trump, will do anything for a profit, as long as it isn’t illegal – or even then, if he can get away with it.
However, though a statesman can’t always act on his principles, he must have them – and they must be correct. Trump clearly doesn’t understand the evil nature of Putin’s Russia, nor sees it as an imminent danger to world peace.
If history teaches anything at all, it’s that appeasing an evil regime means emboldening it (Munich). And even an agreement on spheres of influence can only be short-lived (Nazi-Soviet Pact). America and NATO must close ranks and present a strong, united front to the KGB junta striving to destroy the West as a moral and political entity.
Trump doesn’t seem to realise any of this, and one can only hope that his advisors will talk sense into him before a calamity occurs: F-
Britain. Trump seems to see Britain as a more promising European outpost than the EU. There are also rumours that he’s considering Nigel Farage for a ministerial post. I’m not sure a non-citizen can serve in that capacity, but it’s the thought that counts. The best for the last: A+
A mixed bag, really, and I’ll leave my American friends to calculate the GPA. Donny is clearly a promising pupil, but there are some worrying, and potentially catastrophic, lacunae in his education.