By Matthew Continetti
Saturday, February 09, 2019
February 2019 is turning out to be a critical month in
the presidency of Donald Trump. It may be the
critical month. The midterm elections and record-long government shutdown are
behind him. By delivering an optimistic and inspiring State of the Union
address, Trump effectively reset his presidency and framed his opposition as
beyond the American mainstream. But three tests await him: on Congress, on
North Korea, and on China. How he handles these challenges will say a lot about
his chances of reelection.
The president suffered a double blow in recent months.
The loss of the House of Representatives undermined his reputation as Teflon
Don. The significance of increasing the Republican margin in the Senate and
maintaining control of key governorships in Florida, Ohio, and Iowa faded after
Election Day, as Democrats picked up House seat after House seat. The damage
compounded on December 11 when Trump met with Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer in
the Oval Office and preemptively took credit for a government shutdown if
Congress, then under Republican control, didn’t vote for additional wall funds.
When the government shutdown began on December 22, voters knew exactly whom to
hold responsible. Trump’s job disapproval spiked.
I mistakenly thought Trump’s leverage would increase as
the shutdown dragged on. Instead Pelosi held her caucus together, his numbers
continued to fall, and Republican senators began to defect. By the time the FAA
halted flights at three important airports in the Northeast, Trump’s hand had
disappeared. He agreed to reopen the government with no wall money until February
15. Pelosi won this round.
But she also made an error: delaying the State of the
Union until after the government reopened. Maybe it seemed like a clever move
at the time. However, by eventually agreeing to her demand, Trump was allowed
to deliver his annual address after the fallout from the shutdown had
dissipated. Had he given the speech in the midst of furloughs, the content
would have been lost among stories of hard-hit public employees. Pelosi
inadvertently delivered Trump the blank slate on which he could write the next
chapter of his administration.
He made the most of the opportunity. The State of the
Union was Trump at his best: commanding, funny, bold, patriotic, and direct.
His interactions with both the Congress and with the first lady’s invited
guests showcased his talents as a television host. He emphasized his chief
political asset: the remarkable state of the American economy. He noted the
bipartisan achievements of the previous Congress. And he once again put himself
in the center of American politics, where you find support for border security,
reciprocal trade practices, diplomacy over intervention, and restrictions on
late-term abortion.
Critics say the speech was a mish-mash. What they neglect
is that it undertook several projects at once: recapping the accomplishments of
the last two years, humanizing Trump by having him tell the stories of audience
members, reminding us of the best of America, and laying out the themes for the
next two years. This wasn’t just a State of the Union address. It was the
launch of Trump 2020.
Part of any candidate rollout is defining the opposition.
This was a task the president accomplished with his usual aplomb. Where
previous Republican candidates and presidents have avoided the burning mansion
of America’s culture war, Donald Trump rushes in. He is unafraid to hold
positions anathema to media figures but commonsensical to most Americans. He
portrayed the Democrats as radical on illegal immigration, extreme on abortion,
and friendly to socialism. The way the Democrats have been behaving recently,
he made a strong case.
Democrats have been sleepwalking into 2020. They assume
that Trump is done for and whomever they put up will win. They are making a
mistake. “He has a kind of feral genius for manipulating the media
environment,” David Axelrod told the New
Yorker recently. “We know there’s nothing that he wouldn’t do to win, so he
will be working day and night to destroy whoever the nominee is, and he’s got a
great talent for that.” A talent that was subtly but effectively evident the
other night.
Trump has performed well each of the three times he has
addressed joint sessions of Congress. It’s the other 745 days since
inauguration that have sometimes given him trouble. To begin his campaign
successfully, then, he will have to emerge unscathed from three upcoming
negotiations.
The first is with Congress. The conference committee has
one week to reach an agreement that will fund the seven remaining departments,
including Homeland Security. Reporting suggests that conferees are on their way
to funding some sort of additional fencing or barrier. Trump would be wise to
accept whatever they come up with. Another shutdown would be disastrous. If the
president and his team are dissatisfied with the number Congress gives them, he
may attempt to exercise his statutory authority to declare a national emergency
and repurpose funds from the Department of Defense for wall construction.
Substantively, I am against crashing through a legitimacy
barrier that has prevented policy-based emergency declarations. Politically, I
see why this route appeals to Trump. The legal case against it is not so
clear-cut. The ensuing controversy will shore up his base before the election
begins in earnest. Republican grumbling would differentiate him from the party
elite. If the Ninth Circuit enjoins his decision the issue will be live in
2020. Even so, the emergency would set a precedent. Bad karma.
The second test is Trump’s upcoming summit with Kim
Jong-un. Scheduled for the last days in February in Vietnam, the upshot is far
from clear. According to special representative Stephen Biegun, the U.S. offer
remains the same: The complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization
of North Korea will be followed by American sanctions relief and economic
investment. North Korea’s reply? Drop the sanctions and we’ll think about it.
The uncertainty is compounded by Trump’s reliance on
personal diplomacy. We don’t know what the two leaders will say to each other,
nor what Pompeo, Bolton, and Biegun (not to mention Kim’s deputies) will do
behind the scenes. Count me skeptical that a miracle will occur. The best
outcome is therefore the Kissingerian one: keep the process going without any
concessions from either side. The status quo, where North Korea refrains from
launching ICBMs, is preferable both to open war and to a deal that exposes our
allies in East Asia.
Finally, there’s China. U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of
Chinese imports will rise to 25 percent on March 1 unless the two powers reach
an agreement. Steve Mnuchin and Robert Lighthizer are scheduled to visit
Beijing next week for another round of talks. China, which has been hit hard by
the tariffs Trump has already imposed, seems eager to pledge to increase U.S.
imports but reluctant to address the structural issues of intellectual-property
theft, forced technology transfer, and state-owned enterprises. Trump faces
cross-cutting pressures: the stock market and agriculture sector hate the trade
war, while Senate Democrats tell the president not to buckle. Both the American
and Chinese presidents have every incentive to make a deal. But I wouldn’t be
surprised if Tariff Man walks away. Nor would I presume to know what might
happen next.
Trump’s unpredictability has brought him far, but it also
creates an atmosphere of uncertainty and confusion that unsettles markets and
allies and a great number of Americans. His vital political interest is in
maintaining economic expansion and international peace while regaining the
support of independents by normalizing his behavior and portraying his
opponents as Looney Tunes. That would require him to sometimes take yes for an
answer, declare victory, and move on. Which is what I would do in the cases of
Congress and China, while keeping the ball rolling and sanctions tight on North
Korea.
But it’s not like he’s listened to me before.
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