Going Down

It turns out bad policy is also bad politics

Photo by Ussama Azam on Unsplash

Next Wednesday marks Day 100 of the Trump sequel, and I intend to acknowledge the date by doing nothing. The 100-day mark is an arbitrary measure that occupies the minds of many a political journalist because of the romantic history of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s first term, which opened with an unprecedented burst of legislative energy as the new government redefined the boundaries of federal power in response to the crisis of the Great Depression. It was an exceptional time that set an unreasonable standard for future administrations to follow.

The second Trump administration opened with the intention to undo the work unleashed by FDR’s creative energy through a self-described shock and awe campaign of destruction designed to paralyze the government, replace experts with loyalists, and centralize power in the hands of one man.

As far as the destructive elements of the effort are concerned, Trump and Elon Musk executed the playbook flawlessly. This shouldn’t be surprising, in part because it is easy to tear things down when you are willing to disregard legal and normative boundaries, in part because Donald Trump’s contribution to society has long been his exceptional ability to destroy whatever is in his path. It’s his superpower.

But we’re starting to see how all that chaos has consequences. By moving quickly to unleash his destructive powers everywhere and all at once, Trump precipitated a public reaction that is predictably strong and negative. Had he moved gradually over several years to undermine the government rather than rapidly over several weeks, it’s possible that fewer people would have noticed and some of those who noticed might not have reacted with alarm. A milder reaction would have given him more room to operate, with the possibility that by the time a critical mass of people recognized what was happening it would have been very late in the game.

Similarly, had some of the internal guardrails we saw in the first Trump presidency remained in place in the form of aides who could neutralize Trump’s ignorant ideas and misguided impulses, we would not be living through the seat-of-your-pants governance that is bringing us catastrophically stupid economic policy, foreign policy, defense policy, public health policy—essentially every policy imaginable. All this is being noticed and the negative public reactions to it are starting to register in polls of Trump’s performance.

This reaction is deeply consequential to Trump’s desire to establish himself as a strongman, because he has failed to neutralize public opinion or secure public support on fundamental economic and security matters before going for it all. The result is a robust and growing resistance that’s rapidly weakening his political position.

The notion that Trump is successfully implementing his autocratic blueprint (which I hear expressed quite frequently) appears to be based on how successfully he has torn apart public life and established his dominance over institutions that were predisposed to offer little or no resistance. That’s the destructive part he’s so good at. But then what?

Something has to fill the many voids he is creating, and so far that something is economic anxiety, higher prices, civil rights abuses, the return of measles, and daily reminders that this administration is incapable of governing.

The cumulative result is that the Trump sequel is losing public support faster than any administration in modern history, and this is revealing the would-be strongman to be weak, inept, and incompetent.

How bad is Trump’s loss of support? Just take a look.