By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
Contrary to what many predicted, President Trump’s
end-of-year accomplishment list isn’t that skimpy.
That’s an analytical observation. For many, particularly
liberals and Democrats, Trump’s first year hasn’t been merely bad. It’s a great
evil, a grievous wound to the American body politic.
But even that is a kind of partisan tribute to what’s
been accomplished on his watch: a record number of judicial appointments,
including a Supreme Court justice; the defeat of Islamic State; repeal of the
Obamacare individual mandate; tax reform; and major rollbacks of various
regulations, from arctic drilling to net neutrality.
It hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing. Trump is the most
unpopular first-year president in American history, for reasons far beyond mere
bad press.
Still, among conservatives, the tally of “wins” has
sparked some intramural debates. The most prominent one is how Trump skeptics
and avowed Never Trumpers should respond to those wins. For writers such as the
Washington Post’s Jennifer Rubin and The Atlantic’s David Frum, the only
legitimate response is either to ignore these successes or denigrate them, lest
people lose sight of the threat Trump poses to the country. Others, including
myself, argue instead that one needn’t deny the merits of a policy victory
simply because the president might get credit for it.
This debate skips over the larger question of whether
these victories happened because of Trump or despite him.
On one level, the president always gets the credit — or
blame — for anything that happens on his watch. But Trump poses a challenge to
such superficial scorekeeping. No president in American history has rejected
Harry Truman’s “The buck stops here” motto as vehemently or consistently as
this one. He never accepts responsibility for his own mistakes, never mind
those of his administration or party. When American troops die, the commander
in chief blames “the generals.” When legislation fails, Senate Majority Leader
Mitch McConnell and the “establishment” are at fault.
Trump boosters agree. Conservative writer Roger Simon
argues that all “remaining Never Trumpers” must apologize for being wrong about
the president. He chalks up Trump’s “astoundingly successful” first year to the
fact the president is a “quick study.”
But what evidence is there that Trump has actually
learned the art of presidential management?
Aside from the mandatory flattery required of Republican
elected officials, there’s remarkably little testimony that Trump has involved
himself in the process of governing. Tax reform was carried across the finish
line by the GOP congressional leadership. Net neutrality was repealed by
independent Republicans at the Federal Communications Commission.
Foreign policy is a more mixed bag. If the president
deserves credit for the defeat of Islamic State, it’s because he let “the
generals” do their thing. On the other hand, credit (or blame) for recognizing
Jerusalem as the capital of Israel or pulling out of the Trans-Pacific
Partnership and the Paris accord on climate change certainly goes to him.
In general, it seems to me that Trump’s success (such as
it is) is less attributable to sudden mastery of the issues than to staying out
of the way of rank-and-file Republican policymakers, activists, and
bureaucrats.
For instance, the task of selecting judicial appointees,
starting with Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch, has largely been outsourced
to the Federalist Society. When the president revealed his new
national-security strategy last week, his speech — the usual campaign blather —
had only a passing resemblance to the underlying document. The tax bill is
clearly more in line with House Speaker Paul Ryan’s ideology than candidate
Trump’s supposed populism. As for a counter-example: When Trump was “hands-on”
with Obamacare repeal, he often revealed he didn’t even know what was in the
legislation.
In 2016, some conservatives argued that Republicans
should vote as if we live in a parliamentary democracy, electing a party, not a
person. Trump’s 3,000 political appointees would be better than Hillary
Clinton’s. That argument had its flaws, not least that voters tend not to
compartmentalize that way — which is why the GOP faces a potential bloodbath in
the 2018 midterms.
But there’s merit to it as well. To listen to Trump’s
cheerleaders, the biggest obstacle to conservative victories is the party
establishment, when in reality it looks more like it’s running the show.
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