November 18, 2016
THE BIG IDEA: The metaphor of the moment is that Donald Trump is the dog that caught up with the car. Multiple members of his own transition team have used this analogy when explaining their scramble to catch up. The truth is that almost no one on his own team thought he could win. They planned, or didn’t plan, accordingly.
A more apt reference, especially after Trump’s inauguration, might be the Pottery Barn Rule. Colin Powell popularized this doctrine in the foreign policy context. The then-secretary of state warned George W. Bush about the consequences of invading Iraq: "You are going to be the proud owner of 25 million people. You will own all their hopes, aspirations, and problems. You'll own it all." As Bob Woodward recounted in a 2004 book, “Privately, Powell and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage called this the Pottery Barn rule: You break it, you own it.”
-- Trump and the congressional Republicans who have chosen to make their bed with him are responsible for what happens from now on. There is now no one to blame if they can't pass budgets, avoid shutdowns, deal with sequestration, replace Obamacare, destroy ISIS or reverse the continuing loss of manufacturing jobs. If climate change gets worse, it’s on them. If Syria continues its downward spiral, it’s on them. If more countries acquire nuclear weapons, it’s on them. It may be totally unfair, but that’s the way our system works.
-- Republicans are about to have unified control of government for the first time since 2006, which was three years before the birth of the tea party movement. The GOP has changed dramatically during the intervening decade, lurching rightward from being for smaller government toward being anti-government. Then the party’s rank-and-file nominated someone for president who is simultaneously promising the biggest tax cuts ever, a massive increase in defense spending and steadfast opposition to any entitlement reform.
The last time Republicans had unified control of the government, the American people were so happy with how it went that they made San Francisco liberal Nancy Pelosi the Speaker of the House and a community activist turned law professor named Barack Hussein Obama the first black president. Both developments were unthinkable to many at this juncture in 2004. Trump’s rise is, at least to some degree, a belated over-correction to the overreach of Pelosi, Obama and Harry Reid during their two years with super-majorities.
-- The GOP now has a lot on its plate for the first 100 days. Many Republicans in the Capitol are talking about trying to use reconciliation to repeal Obamacare in January. Trump has suggested his top priority will be an infrastructure spending package.
Trump’s appointees need to get confirmed. Attorney General-designee Jeff Sessions, whose nomination to a federal judgeship was blocked in the 1980s by a bipartisan group of senators because of alleged racist comments he had made as U.S. attorney, will not be able to coast through the Judiciary Committee, despite the fact he is a member. (In fact, that actually hurts his prospects – because he cannot vote for himself.)
Much more importantly, because it will shape the country for a generation, the president-elect must quickly decide on a Supreme Court pick. A bunch of the names on his list of 21 could face heavy resistance.
Yesterday Trump made his first stamp on Congress as House Republicans bowed to his wishes and announced plans to extend government funding through March, despite warnings from top GOP senators that such a short-term spending strategy will wreak havoc on the first several months of his presidency. In addition to the big-ticket items, Trump will now need to negotiate a bill to fund the government. This could wind up wasting a lot of time and blunting any early momentum he might get.
-- Will deficits matter to this unified Republican government? The GOP has a long history of only caring about the national debt during election years and when they are out of power. Fiscal discipline has tended to go out the window when they’re the ones who get to write the checks.
Ronald “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter,” Dick Cheney reportedly said in 2002 as he pushed for a second round of Bush tax cuts at the same time that the government was ramping up expenditures for the war on terror, homeland security and Iraq.
When Reagan took office, the size of the national debt was $1.1 trillion. When he left, it was $2.9 trillion. The debt increased by more than $5 trillion during Bush 43’s presidency.
-- Nothing in Trump’s business record, which includes six bankruptcies, suggests he will be a deficit hawk. If Trump was still a Democrat, which he was the last time Republicans ran Washington, many GOP lawmakers would loudly worry about this. But we’re already seeing some of the likeliest conservative dissidents fall in line.
-- The influence and intellectual integrity of conservative outside groups will be tested as never before in the coming months, from the Koch political network to Heritage Action and the Club for Growth. The GOP relentlessly attacked Obama’s “stimulus” in 2009, turning it into a dirty word, but it looks like the party is about to get behind the same sort of massive infrastructure spending. There is also a push by Republican members in the House to bring back earmarks, though it has been put off for now.
-- Besides winning, what are Trump’s core convictions? Every leak out of Trump Tower only bolsters the narrative that Trump lacks a cohesive worldview or a coherent ideology. As Herbert Hoover once said of FDR, Trump is a chameleon in plaid. He ran against Common Core; now he’s considering two Common Core cheerleaders for Education secretary. He ran against interventionism, but now he’s mulling John Bolton for State. He spent months lacing into Mitt Romney as the symbol of a broken GOP; now his team is floating that the 2012 nominee could be asked to run Foggy Bottom. Trump promised to drain the swamp; now he’s relying on swamp creatures to show him how.
-- Last night Trump announced retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn as his White House national security adviser, elevating his controversial surrogate with a record of incendiary statements about Muslims to one of the most powerful positions in the government. (Philip Rucker, Karen DeYoung and David Nakamura)
Greg Miller turns a quick profile: “As a decorated military intelligence officer and former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Flynn has deep experience to draw upon in the role. But Flynn has also shown an erratic streak since leaving government that is likely to make his elevation disconcerting even to the flag officers and senior intelligence officials who once considered him a peer. Flynn stunned former colleagues when he traveled to Moscow last year to appear alongside Vladimir Putin at a lavish gala for the Kremlin-run propaganda channel RT. … He was forced out of his job as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 over concerns about his leadership style. ... A longtime Democrat and native of Rhode Island who grew up in a military family, Flynn has articulated an increasingly dark vision of the direction of the United States, [warning] that it is failing to adequately address the threat posed by what he calls a ‘diseased component’ of Islam. His behavior has drawn ire of former colleagues and superiors, including retired Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who formerly tapped Flynn as his top intelligence officer."
-- Flynn's son, who works as the "chief of staff" for his consulting business, regularly shares conspiracy theories, expletive-filled posts and racially insensitive sentiments on social media. “[The younger] Flynn frequently shares unfounded conspiracy theories, like ones claiming Hillary Clinton and President Obama would be tried for treason if Trump is elected," per CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott. "He also posted an unfounded story claiming hackers would release a video of Bill Clinton raping a teenage girl. Flynn tweeted multiple times unfounded claims about Sen. Marco Rubio's ‘coke house, gayish dance troupe, and foam parties.’ On Twitter, the younger Flynn frequently re-tweets Paul Watson, editor for the conspiracy website InfoWars, sometimes using the hashtag ‘#infowars’ himself.”
-- Clarence Thomas, speaking at a Federalist Society dinner last night, called on fellow conservatives to re-dedicate themselves “to the unfinished business for which Justice Scalia gave his last full measure of devotion.” From the AP: “Thomas told 1,700 people at a dinner in honor of Scalia that the Supreme Court has too often granted rights to people that are not found in the Constitution. He cited the decision in 2015 that made same-sex marriage legal across the country.” Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., speaking earlier in the day, listed issues that concern him and said he’s guided by the question: “What would Scalia do?”
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