We’re About To Become Great Again … Maybe

Printed from: https://newbostonpost.com/2017/01/19/were-about-to-become-great-again-maybe/
Donald J. Trump, Great Again: How to Fix Our Crippled America, New York:  Simon and Schuster Threshold Trade Paperback Editions, 2016 (originally published in 2015 as Crippled America), with a new foreword by President-Elect Donald J. Trump.

 

Donald J. Trump, who is scheduled to take the oath of office as President of the United States on Inauguration Day tomorrow, has pulled off the greatest political upset in American history. The media, the pundits, and pollsters all had this election wrong.  It’s a greater upset than Truman defeating Dewey in 1948, because Trump is more of a maverick outsider.

His campaign issues were developed in the 2015 campaign book, Crippled America, now renamed Great Again and issued in paperback at the end of 2016 with a new forward by the president-elect.  There, he states, “the fact that I have won the election for the President of the United States is not a great surprise to me.  Believe me, I never took this outcome for granted …”  I understand, indeed, that his election was a surprise, not least to his campaign staff.  There was no victory party planned, for example, on election night.  (Contrast the elaborate victory plans of the Clinton campaign, abruptly cancelled when the state-by-state results, and consequent Electoral College defeat, stunned Hillary and her campaign staff, not to mention the nation at large.) The upset was “YUUUGE,” as Trump would say.

Perhaps the only election this can be compared to is the defeat of President John Quincy Adams by General Andrew Jackson in 1828, where an educated Secretary of State from a legendary political family was defeated by a populist, strong-headed rube.  But Andrew Jackson, as a military hero and party man, was a wily politician and courtly figure compared to the often vulgar entrepreneur and reality-TV-star Donald J. Trump.

In pitching his campaign to Midwesterners out of work, to people anxious about Islamist terrorists like ISIS, to nativist sentiment, to those frustrated by the failures of Obamacare, to religious Christians — evangelical and Catholics alike — he forged a winning coalition of people Hillary Clinton called “deplorables.” There is some kind of intuitive political genius at work here.  His use of tweets to convey his views in 140 characters, however unsubtle and without nuance, has transformed politics and the media.  His peevish response to criticism, like when he called a former Miss America who had criticized him too fat, did not sink him.  Even when he was caught in a dated videotape talking about groping women, he managed to survive a scandal that would have sunk anyone else.  There is much to learn from this election.

Well, his campaign book is a good place to see what his positions on the issues are, as well as his persona. Loyalty to family and friends, for instance, is extremely important to him.  When he is criticized, he strikes back.  He values surprise.  We are learning about his unconventional style, starting with his hair.  His outspoken, unfiltered utterances are both novel and occasionally problematic.  (In this regard, he is not unlike the populist Pope Francis’s impromptu press conferences on his trips, however much they differ on matters of tone and substance — for instance, when it comes to immigration — the wall-builder versus the bridge-builder, the meaning of the title pontiff.)

There are chapters on jobs, immigration, and his proposal to build a wall to stop illegal immigration from Mexico; foreign policy and the necessity of destroying ISIS; repealing and replacing Obamacare; the right to bear arms; the crumbling infrastructure; and reforming the tax code. A lot of what he says is common sense, a certain amount is politically incorrect, but, like Trump himself, the book is never boring.

While some of the liberal media and pundits want us to think that Trump is Hitler, I think that’s ridiculous. He isn’t even Mussolini, though, as a celebrity businessman, he perhaps bears comparison to former Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.  Our system is one of checks and balances.  One nice thing about the election is that liberal Democrats have rediscovered the Constitution and the importance of separation of powers.

On President Obama: “I think he has been an awful president.  His inexperience and arrogance have been very costly to this country.  He’s weakened our military, alienated our allies, and emboldened our enemies.  He’s abused his power by taking executive actions that he had no right to take.”

While Obama seemed to relish bypassing Congress in instituting law through executive orders, now the tables are turned, and what came into being by executive decree can be voided by executive decree.

This book reveals, to a great degree, Trump’s game plan.  We live in interesting times.  “Fasten your seatbelts.  It’s going to be a bumpy ride.”   Let’s hope that change, which we need, is for the better.

 

Dwight Duncan is a professor of constitutional law at University of Massachusetts School of Law in Dartmouth, Massachusetts.