Trump is winning
Story highlights
- Despite missteps, Donald Trump is notching victories for conservative Republicans, Zelizer writes
- The President is dismantling regulations and discrediting much of the government, he writes
Julian Zelizer, a history and public affairs professor at Princeton University and New America fellow, is the author of "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society." He's co-host of the "Politics & Polls" podcast. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own.
(CNN)Even with the strong jobs report and booming stock market, it is easy to look at President Trump and see total chaos.
Many
days Americans wake up to learn about another bizarre tweet. They read
about bitter internal dissension taking place in the White House and the
endless tumult that characterizes the Oval Office. At times, it is
unclear who is even running the show.
The
Russia scandal has consumed much of the first half of his First Hundred
Days -- with the scandal potentially about to get bigger -- while tea
party Republicans are in an uproar about what they see as the "Obamacare
Lite" that he is supporting as a replacement for the Affordable Care
Act following its repeal.
The
backlash against the health care proposal would seem to be the tip of
the iceberg. There is a lot for conservatives to be frustrated about as
they watch this presidency unfold. Yet looked at from a different
perspective, President Trump is actually achieving many of their broader
goals. Though sometimes hidden from view, the President has been taking
a series of actions that will do great damage to the long-term goals of
the Democratic Party.
If one
accepts that Democrats are ultimately more committed to and dependent on
a strong federal government, while Republicans would rather let free
markets do much more of the work, then conservatives have a lot to
celebrate.
The
most dramatic set of advances has come with economic and financial
deregulation. With all the attention centered around banning refugees
and attacking the media, the administration has been issuing executive
orders that weaken measures that have been central to regulating the
economy in recent decades.
He has
ordered federal agencies to revise the Clean Water Rule which has been
central to strengthening federal protections of water. He issued an
executive order on February 24 that establishes Regulatory Reform
Officers within each federal agency whose responsibility is to make
recommendations about which regulations should be eliminated.
Another
executive order established "Core Principles" of financial regulation,
directing the Treasury Secretary to look into the existing financial
regulations to see which should be abolished. For every new regulation
proposed by the executive branch, another order said, two had to be
repealed. In his effort to "deconstruct the administrative state," as
White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon called it, Trump has been
moving forward at a swift pace while most attention has been focused
elsewhere.
President Trump has also
done a great deal to continue delegitimizing the institutions of
government. In the same way that Franklin Roosevelt showed Americans why
the government could be a positive force for good and Ronald Reagan
made a case for markets over government, Trump is making a case that
government can no longer be functional at all. His is the ultimate
product of the era of Watergate. His ongoing attacks on the judiciary
and the federal bureaucracy have fueled among his supporters skepticism
and distrust that the government, and even the democracy, can ever work
well.
He continually raises
questions about whether public officials, such as judges, ever do their
job. The intelligence community has been a perpetual target of
criticism. He has cast doubt on the entire electoral system upon which
our democracy depends.
Although
he has been somewhat easy on Congress thus far, given that the
Republican majority has stood by him, it won't be long until that is his
target. By defying all the conventions of presidential governance and
decorum, he is even undermining public faith in the position that he
himself holds.
Though we don't
know if this is intentional or unintentional, it will be impossible for
many Americans to have the same confidence in the President that they
had in the era of Roosevelt or Eisenhower.
Although
some Republicans are grumbling about the fact that President Trump has
barely made any progress on a legislative agenda and that Washington has
basically been tied up in Twitter knots since his inauguration,
conservatives can probably also see that if the government is doing
nothing, this works in their favor.
Democrats
depend on government, guided by their liberal belief in the role
Washington can play. If Washington is dysfunctional, Republicans
benefit. This was the premise for tea party Republicans to allow a
government shutdown, an effort to prove to Americans that life went on
even if nothing was happening in the nation's capital.
Failing
to staff government bureaucracies and refusing to provide them with the
resources needed also undercuts their ability to be effective. For a recent Atlantic piece about
the State Department, Julie Ioffe spent some time in the State
Department observing how demoralized civil servants are because they
have nothing to do and because most key posts have not even been filled.
Trump is undercutting diplomacy simply by failing to take basic care of
the department responsible for this mission. "I used to love my job.
Now it feels like coming to the hospital to take care of a terminally
ill family member," one worker said.
Even
if things seem to be rough for the Trump administration, and for the
Republican Party more broadly, there is a good reason that many
conservatives are sitting tight as all of this unfolds. The turmoil and
the controversy are not pleasant to watch, and many Republicans are
certainly cringing as they learn of the President's latest actions. But
since the moment of the inauguration, the strength and sanctity of the
federal government has been taking a big hit with Trump in the White
House. And this is much more of a net loss for those on the left than
those on the right.
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