Our president has descended to the level of ridiculing
Senator Bob Corker for his five-foot-seven height. [1]
You might think he is demeaning the presidency with behavior like this. Or you
might, along with some of his advisers, be concerned that he is “further
fracturing his relationship with congressional Republicans just a week before a
vote critical to his tax cutting plan.” But if you think he is behaving
stupidly, you ought to reconsider your position.
“Stupid” is a word that gets thrown around too much. We
often use it for things that aren’t stupid exactly, but are things we disagree
with, or even things we don’t understand. So we often say that a political
figure has said something “stupid” as a way of strongly registering our
disapproval. And we might say that a politician is going about the business of improving
the economy in a “stupid” manner, although, unknown to us, his aim is not to
improve the economy at all.
But how could making fun of Senator Corker’s height not be a
stupid thing for President Trump to do? Even if he is not worried about
demeaning the office he holds, he does need Congress to enact any legislation
he desires, and it doesn’t seem wise to alienate its members in an ongoing
argument that loses substance as it progresses.
This is confusing only so long as we think that Donald Trump
has any objective in mind beyond being the president. But he does not.
Ideologically and philosophically he is an empty suit. When he considers what
ideas to adopt, he considers only two things: what will benefit him personally,
and what will get him elected.
Thus, even though he was notably vocal about repealing the
Affordable Care Act, he came up with nothing substantial himself in the way of
a replacement. Congress, having gotten used to major initiatives of that kind
coming from the White House, proved to have atrophied initiative muscles, and
was unable to come up with a replacement that wasn’t palpably worse.
Substance, of course, isn’t Mr. Trump’s bailiwick. He is a
salesman. He is very, very good at it. He is a serial philanderer who sold
himself as the Evangelical candidate. He is a one-percenter, calling for “supply-side”
tax cuts, who sold himself as a champion of the working class. He is a draft
evader who sold himself as a patriot who would “make America great again.” And
like all good salesmen, he knows that, above all, he has to sell himself.
He sells himself largely by knowing what will attract
attention to himself. Allowing himself to be a curiosity, he manipulated the news
media into giving him a good deal of free advertising during the primaries. He
did this because he knows what attracts media attention. It is not a set of great
ideas that attracts that attention, but those things that will enhance ratings
and advertising revenue. A detailed and scholarly analysis on how to improve
the economy or improve foreign relations won’t do that. Calling your political
opponents names like “Crooked Hillary,” “Pocahontas,” “Crazy Bernie,” “Little
Marco,” “Lyin’ Ted,” “Low Energy Jeb,” or “or Cryin’ Chuck” will do that. [2]
In behaving this way, he shocks the pundits, but only confirms
what most Americans, with no small justification, already think about the
political class. The pundits are outraged, but that very outrage garners media
attention. Meanwhile he gives voice to the frustrations deeply held by a large segment
of the populace.
There are risks to this strategy, of course. One thinks
that, at some point, he will have to deliver with some substantial
improvements. But he doesn’t seem overly concerned about that. During the
campaign he said that his health plan would cover everyone. “I am going to take
care of everybody,” he said. “I don’t care if it costs me votes or not.
Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of
now.” [3]
Not only that, but he said that “the government’s gonna pay for it.” But once
he was president he got behind GOP plans that would have resulted in millions
fewer being covered. [4]
He apparently felt that he would later be able to sell himself around the
inconsistency. Perhaps he was right. He is a genius at media manipulation.
There are areas, however, where his aptitude will be of
little use. He is trying the same strategy in his dealings with North Korea,
even going so far as to deride Kim Jong Un with the epithet “Rocket Man” on the
floor of the United Nations. [5]
But the North Korean dictator’s position of power doesn’t depend on the
American electorate, and a miscalculation here could have consequences more
dire than lost votes.
If Secretary of State Rex Tillerson really called Trump a “moron,”
[6]
he was mistaken. Mr. Trump’s political opponents should not make the same
error, or they are likely to see the same electoral results in 2020.