This week hasn’t been one for the history books. A hotly anticipated
call between President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart,
Vladimir Putin, failed to usher in any kind of concrete plan for peace
in Ukraine; a limited ceasefire on infrastructure was immediately
undermined by, well, attacks on infrastructure. The Israel–Gaza
ceasefire collapsed, apparently with the consent of the U.S.; Benjamin
Netanyahu declared that any further ceasefire negotiations would occur
“under fire,” not an encouraging prospect. The U.S. lobbed a bunch of
ordnance at the Houthis in Yemen, at great cost, and made nasty sounds
in the direction of Iran. At home, the Fed cut its forecast for economic
growth in the next quarter. (Some cold comfort: anemic growth would
offset the possible inflationary effects of the Trump tariffs.)
Meanwhile, a host of court injunctions threaten executive actions taken
in Trump’s energetic first 60 days; even if not upheld, they blunt the
administration’s momentum.
It’s one week; it could just be a blip. A worried mind, though,
might see the variety of ills that could befall the administration’s
program. If the American people had wanted more reckless, expensive, and
warlike foreign policy, they could have voted for the Democrats;
fighting Iran on behalf of the Israelis or single-handedly clearing the
Red Sea on behalf of the Europeans, Saudis, and Chinese seem to be
orthogonal to this administration’s stated purposes. Nor has the rollout
of tariffs been entirely happy. While the country has seen a bipartisan movement toward
greater trade protectionism and industrial policy, the real and
perceived caprices of the tariff implementation—and, more importantly,
the failure of the administration to articulate a single, coherent
message about what the tariffs are actually supposed to do—have burned
much of this natural goodwill. Would the markets still be spiraling if
punitive tariffs and protective tariffs had been clearly delineated, and
the latter introduced on a longer, more predictable timescale? I
somehow doubt it. While DOGE’s much-trumpeted reorganization of the
executive has a broad appeal for now, is mere war on the administrative
state without substantive policy goals in mind a political winner
outside the rarefied parlors of the Federalist Society? Unclear; I would
bet that people don’t care that much about government efficiency unless
the government is visibly pursuing things they want done. Nor is wading
into campus culture war an obvious winner. The unhappy state of Capitol Hill is unlikely to bring any succor.
The tenuous Republican majorities in each chamber are split between the
unprincipled, business-as-usual types who will happily pass continuing
resolutions until the country is bankrupted and the wild-eyed fantasists
who think cutting Medicaid is politically viable. (It’s not.)
It is doubtful that Trump’s better instincts are going to be fed by
this brigade of cretins and time-servers. For better or worse, the White
House will be generating the political program for the foreseeable
future, particularly if the midterms go sideways in that old, familiar
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While there are factions in the Republican coalition who would be
happy to see the administration get bogged down in its more novel
aspects and slip into the dogmata of yesteryear—neoconservatism, reform
conservatism, neo-Reaganism, whatever—nobody actually voted for that.
And such a trajectory would have unhappy parallels. As this columnist wrote on
November 6, “The annals of Trump’s first term suggest that the incoming
administration will show an ample talent for damaging itself; further,
the conventional wisdom holds that the economy is due for a correction
sometime in the next four years. I do not think it is too soon to say
that, come 2028, the de-Harrised Democrats will be in the catbird seat.”
(Of course, as of press time, it is far from clear that the Democrats
have learned their lessons, but one of the morals of the post-Bush GOP
is that, eventually, the major political parties will do what it takes
to win elections.)
Of course, we are still in the early days of the administration.
There are reasons to be hopeful on some fronts—in particular, I still
believe the conditions of the Ukraine war favor a ceasefire sooner
rather than later—but if things begin to hiccup and cough, it is likely
to be in a way that looks very familiar to the news-watchers of the week
of March 16. |
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