The View from Right Field

What Is Donald Trump’s Governing Philosophy? Does He Have One?

It is fascinating, and perhaps sort of funny, to see so many articles trying to come up with an overall policy or logic for Donald Trump’s statements and decisions.  The authors try to fit President Trump’s decisions into some kind of overall theory that explains both the decisions themselves and how they fit together.  It’s normally right-wing or conservative writers who are doing this because they are the ones who like Trump or at least like some of his decisions.  The ones on the left, and maybe some part of the center, dislike Trump so much that they cannot say anything about him other than that he is horrible, stupid, etc..

I say it is fascinating to see these people try to do this because it is so hard to come up with a theory that is able to tie these things together with some kind of consistency.  On the other hand, it’s a little bit funny to see them try to do this because, in addition to being hard, there is always the possibility that President Trump will say or do something the next day that blows their whole theory apart.

How Was Trump Able to Come Back?

In a review of three books¹ on “The great Biden cover-up” in last Saturday’s Financial Times², Lionel Barber notes that missing in three books “is a deeper analysis of why Trump was able to stage of one of the greatest comebacks in US political life.”  Here is my suggestion: In looking back at 2021-24, the one constant was that every time Donald Trump was impeached, sued, indicted, or even convicted, his approval ratings among Republican voters went up. 

In January of 2021, I hoped those who were outraged by what Donald Trump had done would ignore him as he left the presidency and not give him new things he could use as grievances, however appropriate it was to do them, to begin his comeback.  That is not what happened.

Instinct, Not Strategy

Not that we didn’t know this, but Donald Trump has explained how he would be making decisions on tariffs, and probably other things, in the coming weeks:

“Instinctively, more than anything else.  You almost can’t take a pencil to paper, it’s really more of an instinct than anything else.”

That is just not going to work.  Maybe instinct works in real estate deals and in politics, but it doesn’t work in government – and certainly doesn’t work in foreign affairs and international economics. 

It Would Be a “Reverse Nixon”, Not a “Reverse Kissinger” – Though Trump Couldn’t Do It Anyway

In last Saturday’s Financial Times, Edward Luce wrote on Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski.¹  At one point, in comparing the foreign policies they advised on with that of Donald Trump, Mr. Luce said: “Notions of Trump pulling off a ‘reverse Kissinger’ – bringing the Russians into America’s orbit, much as Kissinger exploited the Sino-Soviet split in the other direction – are fanciful.”  I certainly agree with Mr. Luce on the idea of President Trump doing something like that, but I disagree with Mr. Luce both as to what such a maneuver would be called – it would be a “reverse Nixon” – and, perhaps more importantly, whose idea the original policy was.  Certainly, Dr. Kissinger played an important role in the secret diplomacy that was required to accomplish the opening to China, but the credit for the policy and the idea behind it belongs to Richard Nixon.

The problem is that Richard Nixon has been blamed by so many for so much for so long, sometimes fairly (in the case of the Watergate coverup) and other times unfairly (for example, the exposure of Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy), that it has become almost impossible to give credit to Mr. Nixon for anything. 

Donald Trump and the Failure of Policy in Ukraine

As Donald Trump’s presidency continues, I get more and more worried, perhaps especially about foreign policy.  He is bad domestically, but I am hopeful we can overcome the problems he is causing here.  The damage he is causing in foreign affairs seems greater.  I don’t know why he is doing what he is doing, but here are some possibilities:

1. He a zero-sum kind of guy. 
2. He thinks almost everybody has played us for suckers and has taken advantage of us. 
3. He is very thin-skinned, and he thinks people are out to get him.¹  Also, he seems to take it personally when people disagree with him (especially on a deal he wants to get done).
4. I am not sure how much history he knows, but I fear it is not enough.  History does not repeat, but knowledge of history does inform.
5. Government is different than business; making agreements between countries is different than making agreements between companies.  I don’t think President Trump understands this.  He thinks deals are deals.  They aren’t.²

Remembering Paul Ryan’s ‘Charge Up Entitlement Hill’

The following letter appeared in the "Letters to the Editor" section of today's print edition of The Wall Street Journal:

"Gerard Baker’s column  “Capitol Hill’s Republican Sycophant Caucus” (Free Expression, March 11), on elected Republicans who won’t criticize Donald Trump seemingly regardless of what he does, reminded me of a distant memory: Paul Gigot’s 2011 Weekend Interview with then-House Budget Committee chairman, Paul Ryan. When asked about the political risks of trying to deal with the debt and entitlements, Rep. Ryan said: “The way I look at things is if you want to be good at this kind of job, you have to be willing to lose it. … If you don’t believe in your principles, and applying those principles, then what’s the point?”

A lot can change in 14 years. If only we had more Republicans in Congress, and the party, who still believed that."

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NOTE: This is slightly edited from I submitted, but I have no objection.

A Few Random Thoughts on Donald Trump – And Others

• Perhaps the thing that most explains the difference between how Donald Trump views the world, the economy, etc., and how I view them, is that President Trump thinks of pretty much everything as a zero sum game.  In every deal, maybe even in every interaction, there is a winner and a loser; and the amount the winner gains is pretty much equal to what the other side loses.  I don’t believe that.  President Trump does.
• If you are in a fight, it’s nice to have friends.  The United States no longer has as many friends it can count on in a fight – because if they can’t count on us, we can’t count on them.  We used to have lots of those kinds of friends, and we were safer because of it.  Now we don’t, so in order to have even close to the same level of safety, we are going to have to spend more money on defense, and we still may not be as safe.
• To the extent Americans, and some of our leaders, think (and have thought) we have been getting taken advantage of because we were spending a lot of money on defense, which allowed other countries to not spend their fair share on defense, some part of the blame for that rests on those other countries and their leaders for not spending on their own defense.  Here’s looking, for example, at you, Angela Merkel.¹  Even Barack Obama, the U.S. president that Chancellor Merkel liked the most, thought allies were free-riding on America and American defense expenditures.  Germany was happy to rely on America for defense and not spend much itself.  That has not worked out well for either of us.
  Germany was also willing to rely on Vladimir Putin not being Vladimir Putin.  That has not worked out well, either.
• Tariffs are a bad idea.  But then so are other trade barriers.  If we would all get rid of trade barriers, we would all be richer.  Unfortunately, American leaders have not believed in getting rid of trade barriers, i.e., free trade, for a long time.  It is a bipartisan problem.  But President Trump is making it worse.  Wars are bad; so are trade wars.
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  ¹ There are lots of others, too.

Does Donald Trump Have to Be So Obnoxious and Such a Bully?

I wonder what the reaction would be to what Donald Trump is doing if he were not so obnoxious and such a bully.  Is he antagonizing people, at home and abroad, by the way he is saying things more than the policies themselves would upset people?  At times, it seems, at least to me, that President Trump’s way of talking and acting unnecessarily irritates people and makes some of his policies seem worse than they are. 

It’s sort of the opposite of Barack Obama: some of his policies were worse than his way of talking about them.¹  On the other hand, maybe President Trump’s way of talking appeals to some of his supporters.  Certainly, President Obama’s way of talking appealed to many of his supporters.  In any case, President Trump is not going to change.  He is what he is.

Trump Is an Embarrassment on Ukraine – And Potentially Dangerous Beyond That

I don’t know what Donald Trump is doing with respect to Ukraine.  This afternoon, in the United Nations General Assembly, the United States voted with Russia, Belarus, North Korea, and Nicaragua against a resolution condemning Moscow's invasion of Ukraine and supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity.

Then, this evening, the United States sided with Russia to get the United Nations Security Council to pass a resolution that called for an end to the war in Ukraine but without any criticism of Russia for starting the war.

Is Trump Trying To Do a “Reverse Nixon” With Putin?

In trying to explain why Donald Trump is sudden ripping on Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and siding with Vladimir Putin and Russia, some people are asking whether President Trump and his people might be trying to do a “reverse Nixon”, i.e., trying to separate Russia and China, though in this case befriending Russia, as opposed to China as Richard Nixon did.

The Wall Street Journal‘s chief foreign correspondent, Yaroslav Trofimov, does an excellent job here of explaining why the two situations, Russia and Ukraine today as opposed to the Soviet Union and China back then, are very different.  There is no need for me to repeat what he says, though I do note there is another article, also in yesterday’s Journal, that talks about the increasing number of joint military exercises between Russia and China.  Which is different than the late 1960s/early 1970s, when the only joint military exercise the Soviets and the Chinese held was a border war between each other in 1969.