One deal!

Posted Tuesday evening, September 12, 2017.

That independent feeling: “Vice President Mike Pence looks on with President Donald Trump during a meeting with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and other Congressional leaders in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, Sept. 6, 2017, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)”

Oh for Pete’s sake!

President Donald Trump was in the mood to celebrate after cutting a big deal with opposition Democrats.

Joshing with Northeastern officials in the Cabinet Room, Trump hailed New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo as “my governor” and traded banter with Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer, another fellow New Yorker.

“If you just dropped in from outer space, you wouldn’t know what the last eight months have been like,” said Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., recalling the friendly exchanges between Trump and Schumer during the meeting with New York and New Jersey lawmakers.

That would be the same Schumer whom the president had previously slammed as a “clown” and “Cryin’ Chuck.”

And now?

“In some ways it’s almost like they were completing each other’s sentences,” King said.

On display at that chummy scene Thursday was the Trump who’s emerged in full this past week: Trump the independent.

A president who spent months catering to the Republican conservative wing now appears unbound by ideology and untethered by party allegiances.

---from the Associated Press, September 10, 2017, Trump makes nice with Democrats, leaving his party confused.

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Now in the White House, President Trump demonstrated this past week that he still imagines himself a solitary cowboy as he abandoned Republican congressional leaders to forge a short-term fiscal deal with Democrats. Although elected as a Republican last year, Mr. Trump has shown in the nearly eight months in office that he is, in many ways, the first independent to hold the presidency since the advent of the current two-party system around the time of the Civil War.

---from the New York Times, September 9, 2017, Bound to No Party, Trump Upends 150 Years of Two-Party Rule.

He made one deal! One! And he made it out of spite and vanity. That doesn't make him independent. It makes him spiteful and vain. And irresponsible. It just confirms that he is what he's always been. Vain, spiteful, irresponsible and unreliable.

I don't really care that the Republicans can't rely on him. But I'm furious the country can't either. He did one right thing out of spite. He'll do a hundred wrong things for the same reason.

He wanted to stick it to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, whom he blames for his legislative failures because he doesn't understand how his job or theirs work and he's too lazy and stubborn to learn.  He thinks they work for him. He thinks he's their boss. And he wanted to be seen making the deal they couldn't make to shore up his crumbling reputation as a dealmaker. But he's as Republican as they are.

He's as Republican as they come.

He might---might---have wanted to help the people who've been wiped out by Harvey, but vanity surely motivated him there as much or more than compassion. He wants to play the hero president. His supposed newfound independence didn't figure or else he'd have postponed, if not cancelled, his proposed budget cuts for disaster relief, FEMA, and the Coast Guard, especially now that its brand has been improved.

And what's particularly independent about a deal that keeps the government running and the United States from defaulting on its debts for a mere three months? Wasn't all that long ago that this would have been a routine bipartisan sort of deal. There was even a time when there'd have been no need for a deal. There'd have been simple agreement.

"It's that time again. We'd better increase the debt limit. Oh, and Texas is going to need a mintload more money. Let's get that done before lunch."

That there had to be a deal says more about the ideological lunacy of the GOP than about Trump's independence.

I wish he was becoming an independent. I wish he was letting his inner Democrat loose. He supposedly liked working with his new pals Chuck and Nancy and is eager to do it again. One deal isn't anything like proof that's happening or is likely to happen. But never say never, right? He's shown a tendency to tie everything up with his own ego. Self-aggrandizement has mattered to him more than anything except making money. Wouldn't it be wonderful if he can be persuaded that he could be a great president by changing if not himself then course? Wouldn't it wonderful if someone convinced him that he could become one of the greatest Presidents if he'd govern as a liberal or at least as a liberal Republican? Liberal-ish, since there aren't any liberal Republicans anymore?

It would be wonderful. It would also be a miracle.

That kind of change happens only in movies and fairy tales. People don't change. Not like that. They become more themselves. Their good or bad qualities come to the fore. The evidence he has any good qualities, going back forty years, is minimal.

So maybe we should wait before signing a declaration of independence for him until he starts talking thoughtfully and meaningfully like an independent, when he starts questioning his own Right Wing Republicanism, when we hear him say things like:

Maybe we shouldn't turn the environment over to corporate interests for looting and plunder?

Maybe we should forget the six month deadline and just let the Dreamers stay.

Maybe we should treat the brave trans men and women serving in the military and who want to serve as the heroes and patriots they are.

Maybe I was wrong to stir up hatred and fear against immigrants.

Maybe it's wrong to deprive people of their health insurance. Maybe we should get more people insured. Maybe we should get everybody insured, and by insured, I really mean that they're covered not that they're covered for whatever they can afford to pay for.

Maybe the Right Wing Evangelicals need to get over their bigotry and homophobia.

Maybe the rich don't need their taxes cut. Maybe they in fact need them raised.

Has he said any of this or anything like it like he's meant it? Has he proposed any policies or issued any directives or signed any executive orders that would bring any of it about? What specifically has he said that the majority of Republicans, voters as well as politicians, can't get behind? Aren't already behind? Weren't already behind before he came along to take advantage of their collective desire get their own back from an increasingly liberal society?

Where he has broken with the GOP Congressional establishment, it's been to be more careless, heartless, and destructive than they are. Wanting to start trade wars. Wanting to start real war. Pardoning Arpaio. Defending Nazis. Firing James Comey!

If by independent, you mean prone to going completely off the rails, then, yeah, he's got an independent streak, but I don't think we should encourage it.

What, I ask for the thousandth time, is this desperate need so many political journalists have to see Trump as what he clearly isn't: capable of growth, change, self-correction, and the kind of mental discipline and self-education it would take to make him even a minimally competent president?

I have had a ready answer for that: intellectual and professional laziness.

It's just easier to get along and get ahead in Washington if you can pretend politics don't really matter, which, you'd think would be like living in L.A. And pretending movies don't matter. But people in the business are in general agreement about what movies are for? You got it. making oodles of money. In Washington everybody in the biz is in general agreement about what politics is for. Changing the course of people's lives. But they have differing but passionate opinions about whose lives get changed and how and to what ends. Donald Trump makes it hard---almost impossible---to pretend those differences are minor and it's ok to focus on the general agreement and cover what goes on in the halls of governance as a friendly competition over who gets the nicest offices and the best tables at the best restaurants.

It's just no fun to go to work every day knowing you're in for a fight with someone at some point.

Weren't things better back in the day when Reagan and Tip O'Neill liked each other and could share a laugh and a drink at the end of the day? Which they didn't. Like each other. But it was easier to pretend back then because theywere good at pretending. Trump just isn't in their league when it comes to faking affability. Or competence. Reagan and Tip were very good at their jobs, and part of their being very good was not letting their emotions get the better of them in a fight.

Trump, the case can be made, won the election by letting himself get carried away by his emotions, particularly his anger. He's still at it, and it works for him in that his voters love it and love him for it. They want him throwing temper tantrums on their behalf and don't care that he sabotages himself whenever he does it. But it makes him a bad and destructive president and there's no covering him without reporting on that, and that makes certain journalists uncomfortable, because, like I said, you can't pretend politics didn't matter when the President is a madman intent on changing the course of people's lives by hurting as many of them as he can in as many ways as he can.

And it's even harder when it's clear that the majority of Republicans in Congress are forced by his obviousness and obliviousness to reveal they support him in this destructive political course.

This is why I have mixed feelings about Trump's being removed from office in any other way than by electoral defeat either by the Democratic nominee or by a Republican challenger in the primary. (I favor the former.) Of course he has to go and I'll cheer when he does. He has earned disgrace. But President Pence?

Pence will be as destructive and malicious. He'll probably just as incompetent in his own way. But he'll be much more competent at hiding his emotions and acting as if politics don't matter. He'll square his shoulders and keep them squared---Trump hunches more than Nixon---and he'll smile broadly and when he holds press conferences he'll josh with reporters and call on them amiably, even if they work for outlets he secretly loathes and despises, and the press corps will breathe a collective sigh of relief and say to each other, "Isn't it great to have a real president again?"

Anyway, that's the answer I usually give myself. They want things to get back to normal and normal in their minds is not having to care what the politicians are really up to and being able to report on personality and process without worrying it'll cause fights at the next dinner party.

But I have another answer, which doesn't cancel out the first.

They're scared.

A thoroughly reprehensible human being is President of the United States intent on hurting as many people as he can in as many ways as he can and he has the backing of the Congressional majority and will soon have the backing of the federal courts if he's not stopped and there's no one in a position to stop him right now except himself.

Maybe Robert Mueller will find enough that even Republicans can't look the other way anymore. Maybe the Democrats will win back the majority in 2018' at least in the House. But in the meantime?

Thank God he is incompetent. That's saved us from the worst...so far. But for how much longer can we count on his screwing up resulting in if not positive outcomes than at least not as bad as they could have been? The Republicans have restarted their effort to kill people by taking away their health care. They've voted to let him continue to hide his tax returns. They're bound and determined to cut taxes on the rich to next to nothing even if that means making life harder and meaner and more desperate for the rest of us, especially if it does that. In fact that's part of the point. They're mad at him because he made this one sensible deal to keep the government running and save the city of Houston, but incompetent, unreliable, reckless, and irresponsible as he is, Trump is not going to get in the way of their reaching at least some of these goals...unless..

Unless he pivots!

Unless he reveals himself to be a true independent! Unless this deal is just the beginning of a wholly changed presidency!

Which, of course, it isn't.

It's scary, I know. But those frightened journalists have to face up to it.

The way the rest of us have.

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Lance Mannion on Tuesday, September 12, 2017 in Newshounds, Smoke-filled rooms | Permalink

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