By Charles C. W. Cooke
Wednesday, September 18, 2024
At this stage in the proceedings, it feels almost
churlish to write earnestly about the public-policy implications of the coming
presidential election. In Kamala Harris, we have a candidate who will commit to
nothing lest she is subjected to a follow-up question; in Donald Trump, we have
a candidate so determined to discharge his every thought that there is no time
left for his auditors to speak. As an old-fashioned “issues” voter, I am not
sure which is more annoying: that Kamala Harris answers every inquiry by
talking distractedly about the sanctity of middle-class grass, or that Donald
Trump promulgates novel positions with the fecundity of a sunfish.
Irrespective, the spectacle is an unedifying one.
Some cynics argue that none of this matters. We have two
teams in America, they observe, and what counts is which one you’re on.
Politics, they insist, is painted in broader strokes than a crisp manifesto can
allow. One party is For; the other is Against; the details that result from
this dichotomy will be worked out in the wash.
At the risk of naivety, I must dissent from this conceit.
All things being equal, Kamala Harris’s reticence may help her win the White
House. Likewise Trump’s pandering. But it will not help either of them enact an
agenda — which, lest we forget, is the purpose of securing power in the first
instance. We are thoroughly modern, I’m quite sure, but there is still no
alternative to a clear and deliberate agenda.
Alas, neither clarity nor deliberation is on display this
time around. Last week, in the course of a truly pathetic interview with ABC
Philadelphia, Kamala Harris proved unable to even hint at how she would go
about fulfilling her routine promise to “lower prices.” “I grew up in a
community of hard-working people,” Harris said, “you know, construction workers
and nurses and teachers, and I try to explain to some people who may not have
had the same experience — you know, a lot of people will relate to this.”
Exactly to what those people were supposed to “relate” was never
explained — even in outline. Nor will it be. Harris believes that she is
winning, and she is aware that talking in public is the intervention most
likely to change that fact. From now until November 5, she will let us eat joy.
Donald Trump is going for the opposite approach.
Yesterday, Trump promised
that, if he were to be chosen as president once again, Americans would not only
end up paying “no tax on tips,” “no tax on overtime,” and “no tax on Social
Security benefits,” but that he would help repeal one of the biggest
achievements of his first term, the cap on the state-and-local-tax (SALT)
deduction within the income-tax code. Why? Because Trump thinks that these
declarations will be popular among the groups he needs to win — and hasn’t
considered them beyond that. Nevada has a large number of tip-reliant service
workers; Trump wants to win Nevada; therefore . . . Social Security recipients
vote in higher numbers than any other group; Trump wants them to vote for him
rather than for his opponent; therefore . . . Trump is speaking in New York
tonight; New Yorkers want their SALT-subsidy back; therefore . . . Regrettably,
there is nothing more to any of it than that. It’s Oprah Winfreyism, writ
large.
This matters. His personal conduct notwithstanding,
Donald Trump’s last presidency contained a great deal for conservatives to
cheer. The 2017 tax-reform bill that Trump signed was well-crafted; the
deregulation agenda to which he acquiesced was welcome; the federal judges he
nominated were (mostly) terrific; and, having corrected the GOP’s course on
immigration, his administration did some solid work in limiting the influx at
the southern border. By the time he left office, Trump’s critics had been proven
correct about his character but wrong about the likely policy consequences of
his victory. As president, Trump did not abandon conservatism wholesale, or
vanquish those whom he’d defeated; rather, he relied heavily upon the years of
hard work that had preceded him. From the Federalist Society to Paul Ryan to
the American Federation for Children, Trump took good advice and adopted solid
ideas. In so doing, he inherited an orderly, disciplined, thoughtful agenda
whose intricacies had been developed and defended over time.
This time around, there will be no such bequest to enjoy.
Indeed, if Trump wins, he will be presented with the near-impossible challenge
of pulling his many random utterings into one place and attempting to make them
cohere. When he does, he will soon discover there is a good reason that no
serious tax proposal tries to exclude fatally gameable categories such as
“tips” or “overtime,” just as there is a good reason that conservative
legislators have not focused on exempting Social Security benefits or on restoring
the SALT deduction, and that reason is that, even if those changes were
practically possible, they would be arbitrary, contradictory, and an impediment
to superior reforms. If, in 124 days’ time, Trump finds himself back in the
White House, the scattershot approach to policy that he has taken throughout
this capricious campaign will guarantee that the first question he will find
himself asking his office wall is, “Okay, I’m here — now what on earth am
I supposed to do next?”
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