Trump One Year In

While I missed the official one year anniversary, I would like to submit my views on where we are after one year of President Game Show Host. Of course trying to predict Trump and what our politics will look like in January of 2021 is going to be pretty hard. Especially for someone like me who really didn't think he'd win the GOP nomination. But at the same time we're over 25% through the first (and hopefully only) term and I think some pretty major trends have already emerged.

A little over a year ago when we were looking down the barrel of a Trump Administration economist and old school blogger Brad DeLong wrote a nice post predicting what might happen that's really stuck with me. DeLong suggest four possible outcomes for the Trump Era. He opens with Trump as Reagan, that is a president presiding over a bunch of different factions, who believed a bunch of contradictory things, and who did a bunch of contradictory things (some good, some bad) and it will not be clear what was important for a while:

People with Trump's baton will try to implement everything he said on the campaign trail. Some will succeed. Most will fail. Policy will be random. Which random part? We don't know. Will he protect and expand Social Security and Medicare? Is he going to deport 5 million people in the next two years and build a wall? Is he going to make Mexico pay for it? Is he going to somehow "renegotiate" NAFTA? Is he going to somehow reach into the WTO and try to kick China out of it? Is he going to impose tariffs? Is he going to promote a substantial fiscal stimulus? Is he going to make America great again?

I think it's fair to say that one year in, Trump is no Reagan, so we can discard that one.

Delong then offers three other possibilities:

...Trump will be like Arnold Schwarzenegger when he was governor of California--an office he won in a "discontent with normal politics" election. Arnold had substantial personality similarities with Trump: the word in Sacramento was that no woman should ever get into an elevator alone with Arnold Schwarzenegger.

As California governor he tried to make Hollywood-style deals and failed comprehensively. The state government went on autopilot. He hung out in his smoking tent with his cigars. It was eight years of missed opportunities to address the challenges facing California.

The third possibility is Berlusconi. An awful lot of public money going astray and into the pockets of the kleptocrat and his friends. An awful lot of random policy decisions, with occasional bursts of technocracy as something leads the leader of the bunga-bunga movement to think that this is an issue area where, you know, somebody with real expertise should be handling the situation. This kind of bunga-bunga governance is definitely a possibility. Italy lost a decade of economic growth, I think, because of Berlusconi.
...
The fourth possibility is one that I do not want to put on the table but that I have to put on the table: Mussolini. 

These three possibilities are what I want to talk about because as I see it we are probably some where between "The Governator" and Berlusconi.

Personally I think the "Mussolini Possibility", while might have made sense as a tail risk back a year ago is obviously now wrong. Trump isn't a powerful president who might be able to storm into Congress and have everyone arrested Charles I style. After all he had trouble getting the military to follow through with his stupid "Transgender Ban" which is now tied up in the Federal Courts.

Even the strongest case that he is an authoritarian posed to seize power, one rooted in the whole Russia-Mueller thing is pretty weak evidence. The timeline here is important: basically Trump got worried the FBI director was asking too many questions so fired him, this resulted in a political crisis where his own Attorney General recused himself from decision making, and the number two man at the DOJ appointed a respected special prosecutor to investigate things. This prosecutor, Robert Mueller, is already indicting close Trump allies for serious federal crimes and God know what else he and his team have discovered.

This isn't a nascent dictator, it's a desperate president in a weak position.

And that in my opinion is the key to understand the Trump Era one year in. Political scientist Matt Glassman wrote the full "Trump as weak president" argument up in an excellent long form piece for Vox this year and I think he's spot on. Glassman is basing his argument on the works of political scientist Richard Neustadt's classic studies of the presidency that argue it's statutory a pretty weak office (it is compared to say Britain's Prime Minister) and thus presidents who want to be effective have to find ways to "bargain" with say Congress or bureaucracies or whoever through the careful use of political skill.

Trump is not good at these sorts of thing, thus he hasn't had a good first year.

Or as Glassman puts it:

Trump has had a disastrous first year. His professional reputation is awful. Major figures from his own party routinely criticize his impulsive rhetoric and chaotic management, belittle his intelligence, mock his political ideas, and bemoan his lack of policy knowledge. The White House issues talking points, and high-ranking Republicans simply ignore them. Multiple Republican-led congressional committees are investigating his administration on topics ranging from ethics violations to foreign electoral collusion.

Similarly, the president’s public prestige, measured by approval ratings, is among the worst in the polling age. He entered office with record-low approval, 45 percent, and it has steadily declined into the 30s. No other president has had an approval lower than 49 percent in December of his first year; the average is 63 percent. Such numbers sap Trump’s power to leverage popularity into persuasion. They also depress party loyalists concerned about 2018 and embolden potential primary challengers for 2020.

I think this is exactly right.

In other words the Trump's first term represents an already profound missed opportunity, it usually is the most productive year an administration in terms of legislation after all. Trump has succeeded in rolling back environmental, labor, and consumer protections yes. As well a nominate a lot of conservative judges to the federal bench that have been confirmed by the Senate. But that's normal for Republican presidents. Meanwhile many of his top White House staff, Cabinet Members, and agency heads are have had to resign and/or were fired due to scandals, White House failures, or losing Game Of Thrones style power struggles.

To put it bluntly this is a failing, unpopular, weak presidency, which makes it look something like options two or three above, and that's the key part.

To be sure Democrats or other anti-Trump folks shouldn't be gleeful about this, because there are real dangers here. Glassman pointed out these dangers in the end of his piece this way, "A president unable to effectively govern the bureaucracy or lead American foreign policy poses a distinctly nonpartisan problem for the nation." In other words Trump might try to do even stupider stuff than he's tried so far to compensate for his weakness. Like starting a trade war that will damage the economy or creating a crisis with North Korea that could result in nuclear war. These are risks that seem very real with Trump, although who knows if they will happen. 

Which isn't to say he's having no impact. I think he is changing American politics, but will leave writing about that for another day.

But one year in what I see is a weak president, exhausted by the job, and becoming reactive to events, even if he does this by screaming on Twitter. This is bad, and while it's not clear what the next three years hold, this is where I think we are at.