Trump's ignorance hurts US policy
- By Mitchell Blatt
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E-mail China.org.cn, April 29, 2017
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U.S. President Donald Trump addresses a press conference at the White House in Washington D.C., the United States, on April 12, 2017. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that his administration won't label China as currency manipulator, and complained that the U.S. dollar is too strong. In an interview with Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Trump said "they (China) are not currency manipulators," according to the report. (Xinhua/Yin Bogu) |
"We are led by very, very stupid people."
-- Donald Trump, campaign rally speech
During the past U.S. election, there was much talk by Republicans about the need for an outsider to transform Washington. Among their many primary candidates were three with absolutely no experience in politics - two business executives and one neurosurgeon. Concerns were raised that they didn't have the necessary experience or expertise to manage a complex government and relationships with countries across the world. Yet, those concerns weren't enough to convince the voting public, and a real estate developer won.
Hearing Trump say that experience didn't matter, I thought about his fellow Republican contender Dr. Ben Carson. He's a neurosurgeon who studied medicine for years, attained an M.D. and then honed his skill by doing the same procedures many times. If I had a brain tumor and needed an operation to save my life, would I choose the experienced neurosurgeon or the outsider, the anti-establishmentarian Donald Trump?
It seems obvious you'd want to use the same consideration in choosing a president. For a job as important as protecting the country, dealing with problems of war and peace, nuclear proliferation, and confronting rogue states, not to mention putting into place good domestic policies, why would you give the job to someone who doesn't know anything about policy?
Many voters don't "trust" Washington, so they reflexively dislike any politician, even though different politicians have vastly different viewpoints and qualifications. However, if politicians have earned a bad reputation by not being able to solve every problem perfectly, one reason is because the problems they deal with - trying to give every citizen benefits without costs - are extremely complicated. Now that Trump has become part of the Washington scene, he's found that out for himself.
His first big legislative push - to modify healthcare - failed terribly without even going to a vote after just three weeks. Republicans were so unconfident they could even get it passed by the lower house, where they have a large majority, that they pulled the bill without risking a potentially embarrassing vote.
Trump, in advance of the planned vote, said, "It's an unbelievably complex subject. Nobody knew healthcare could be so complicated."
Nobody, that is, except for anyone who has ever worked on healthcare legislation, practiced it, or read about it.
What else has Trump been surprised to find that is actually more complicated than expected? North Korea, Syria, NATO, trade, currency, interest rates, and the Export-Import Bank, just to name a few he's vacillated about.
After talking with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Trump said: "He then went into the history of China and Korea. ... After listening for 10 minutes, I realized it's not so easy."
At a meeting with NATO allies, Trump, who threatened to withdraw U.S. support, performed a quick U-turn, observing: "I said it was obsolete. It's no longer obsolete." Nothing whatsoever has changed with the structure of NATO since he has been elected.
If all it takes is a 10-minute conversation with a foreign leader to tell Trump more than he ever knew about North Korea, one might wonder why he never had such a discussion with any of his advisors before he decided to run for president. Has he ever read a book? A newspaper?
Yet despite his ignorance he spouted off gibberish claiming to be smart and know "more than the generals" about ISIS and everything under the sun. "I have a good brain," he once claimed.
Of course, anyone listening to him with just a passing knowledge of policy could tell he knew nothing. In one primary debate, he didn't even know what the "nuclear triad" was - the ability of having a nuclear delivery capability by land, air and sea in order to deter a first-strike - and in a general election debate, he suggested his ten-year-old son's use of computers could help him deal with cyber-attacks.
The result of having an ignorant and careless man in office is that U.S. policy is at the mercy of whatever advisors Trump has chosen to surround himself with. On domestic policy, he has chosen to pursue a traditional conservative approach of cutting spending and enriching business interests, in contrast to the "economic nationalist" approach he promised.
Trump's budget director, Mick Mulvaney, a standard conservative, pushed a proposed budget full of cuts, including to agencies that help the "white working class" poor in places like Appalachia that voted for Trump.
On foreign policy, Trump, who advocated isolationism and threatened to pull troops out from much of the world, has adopted a strongly interventionist, somewhat trigger-happy approach, favored by Defense Secretary James Mattis and National Security Advisor Gen. H.R. McMaster. He has thus fired 59 cruise missiles at a Syrian government air base, dropped a huge bomb on Afghanistan, and sent warships to the waters off North Korea.
The generals might be able to restrain him, considering they actually know things about military affairs, but they can't set a coherent grand strategy all by themselves. The administration's muddled approach - saying it had no interest in toppling Syrian leader Assad one day, attacking Assad a few days later, and then putting out contradictory statements over the following days -creates confusion about American intentions and heightens the risks of miscalculation.
Can this situation last four years without a crisis? Hopefully Americans will learn from this that expertise matters in governance. For now, we are being led by very, very stupid people.
Mitchell Blatt is a columnist with China.org.cn. For more information please visit:
http://www.china.org.cn/opinion/MitchellBlatt.htm
Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.
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