No president in recent history has come into the Oval Office with such a mishmash of ideas and opinions than its current occupant. Ideologically, the Trump White House is like an Etch A Sketch. Every morning the president wakes up, shakes it, and draws something. It might be the same sketch as yesterday. Sometimes it’s totally different or impossible to figure out. Nonetheless, he will call a top lieutenant to talk about his drawing, and the entire day will feel like a séance, with officials huddling to divine the mysterious squiggly lines and pretending they represent something meaningful.
Should we care if a president doesn’t really stand for anything with consistency? One who is so easily influenced by whomever he happens to speak to last—a cable show host, a member of Congress he likes, his daughter? A president’s views on public issues are everything. The opinions he expresses inform the actions of his administration, congressional priorities, and most important of all, public support and trust. How can any of us be comfortable with a president having “fake views,” which change by the moment?
This chapter is addressed to Republicans in particular. The GOP purports to be the party of principles, so you should be alarmed that our figurehead’s philosophy is not “stick to ideals”—but to throw them at the wall and “see what sticks.” If his flip-flopping is any indication, he prioritizes convenience, not conviction. Add this to the list of absurdities inside the Trump administration, a list that’s so long it makes the side effects on prescription drug commercials sound appealing by comparison.
In fairness to the president, there’s a lot of bullshit in government. People change direction with the political winds all the time to make sure they’re on the “right side” of an issue. They don’t want to be out of step with the public, or their base, or their party. That’s politics. Sometimes it’s actually admirable when a leader considers new information and adjusts preconceived views. That is not Donald Trump. He changes his views without explanation yet somehow convinces diehard Republicans that he possesses a fixed set of beliefs and an ideology, when he does not. He has fooled them into thinking he is a conservative, when he is not. They expect he will be unfailingly loyal to their causes, when he will not.
Trump defenders are bound to disagree. Some have proclaimed him the greatest president since Reagan, while others striving for the preposterous have called him the best since Lincoln. He encourages the comparison. “Wow, highest Poll Numbers in the history of the Republican Party,” he tweeted in July 2018. “That includes Honest Abe Lincoln and Ronald Reagan. There must be something wrong, please recheck that poll!” This is the same man who proudly declared on the White House lawn, “I am the Chosen One,” gesturing knowingly toward the heavens in front of a gaggle of reporters. He said he was teasing, but he wasn’t. Such is the self-perception of Donald J. Trump.
Supporters cite a host of conservative victories under Trump, from judicial appointments to regulatory changes. Admittedly, on those points they have a case. He has advanced a number of conservative goals in ways thought unimaginable before his election. Consider the Supreme Court, which has a stronger conservative bench, or the burdensome red tape that has been slashed on his watch, to the relief of American businesses. Add to it the changes to our insane tax code, which have put more money in Americans’ pockets.
Alas, these successes often had little to do with the president’s leadership. The credit usually belongs to Republicans in Congress or top aides to the president, who have persuaded him to stick with the program. When he goes wobbly on issues, GOP leaders stage late-night or unplanned interventions, usually by phone.
I remember the morning he woke up and tweeted about the “controversial” vote set to take place in Congress on renewing the National Security Agency’s foreign wiretapping authorities. The president railed against the spy powers. He declared they were used “to so badly surveil and abuse the Trump Campaign.” We were blindsided. Up until that moment, the administration had been enthusiastically supporting the bipartisan legislation. The president’s flippant remarks threw the future of the bill—and crucial national-security tools—into doubt. Livid Republican leaders phoned the White House to explain the legislation. The president clearly didn’t understand, they said. The NSA’s spy tools were used to go after bad guys, not to monitor domestic political campaigns. Internally, there was a full-court press to get Trump to walk back his earlier comments. Two hours later, he did, tweeting favorably about the bilclass="underline" “We need it! Get smart!”
Without these interventions, many times Donald Trump would have wandered into the political wilderness far from the Republican camp. It can take a while to get him to come around, his fear of disappointing “the base” most consistently keeps him in check. In the above case, the president definitely didn’t want the GOP to see him as weak on national security, which is why he reversed himself. This should be only a temporary comfort to worried Republicans. Because the base will not matter to Trump if he is reelected in 2020.
The Grand Old Party
Like the rest of the country, members of the Republican Congress didn’t take Donald Trump seriously at first. But as he gained steam, they went from agitated to petrified. No one was more concerned than House Speaker Paul Ryan. Ryan once pledged to transform the GOP from a party of “opposition” under eight years of President Obama to a party of “proposition,” as he put it, churning out conservative ideas for fixing America. He spent months crafting new policy proposals—from fighting poverty to fixing health care—that he hoped would be embraced by the Republican nominee in 2016. Then Donald Trump showed up.
With the New York businessman on a glide-path to clinching the nomination, the Speaker adjusted course. He was unsure whether the candidate was a real conservative. Would Trump support Republican policies, or sell them all down the river once he was elected? His record showed he was more of a political opportunist than anything. Ryan called a closed-door meeting of his colleagues. They had to box in Donald Trump with their soon-to-be-published GOP agenda. Every elected Republican needed to promote it, he said, which would send a clear message to the candidate: If you win the election, this is the party you will be leading and this is what it stands for. Don’t buck us. As one attendee later retold the story, Ryan looked at his colleagues across the table and said with total assurance: “This is the Trump inoculation plan.”
The “Grand Old Party” got its nickname just after the Civil War, an honorific meant to acknowledge its role in saving the Union and ending slavery. The party was founded on the idea that government’s role in society should be limited and the freedom of the people should be maximized. The federal bureaucracy had responsibility in certain areas, they believed—trade relationships and national defense among them—but most power should devolve to states and the people themselves.
The GOP’s foundations were built on what is known as classical liberalism. Before liberal was a term associated with Democrats, it meant something very different. Classical liberalism developed over hundreds of years. In a nutshell, it posited that people should be allowed to conduct their lives however they wanted, as long as they didn’t violate someone else’s liberty. Government existed for the sole purpose of preserving freedom and protecting people from each other. Anything beyond that was government overreach. It became a central belief of classical liberals that individuals are far better positioned to make their own decisions than government is for them; the more control they have over their lives, the more prosperous their societies will be.