Trump's Administration: Built on Vindictiveness and Greed

Our country has seen many kinds of presidents.  Some were very good, like Lincoln and Washington.  Some are regarded quite badly, such as Andrew Jackson and George W. Bush.  Some have been plagued with scandals, like Clinton.  Some have even been virtually forgotten about because they accomplished so little of note during their tenure.  Never have we had one like Trump.

Many are rightfully drawing parallels to Nixon, who has long been considered the most corrupt president we have ever had, from the fact that Trump’s slogans are ripped right from Nixon, to the fact that Trump has arguably committed multiple acts of obstruction of justice in an attempt to stop the Russia scandal, which is the exact charge that brought down Nixon.  But Trump’s words, actions, and policies go far beyond anything Nixon did.  Nixon was a notorious liar, but Trump lives for mendacity.  Nixon was arrogant and self-centered, but Trump is consumed by his narcissism.  Nixon was obsessed with what others thought of him, but Trump cannot live without adulation.  Nixon had a superiority complex, but Trump believes himself infallible.

I could continue listing the differences between them, but my point is made.  For all the disturbing parallels between them, Trump makes Nixon look like a saint.  There are two key differences between them.  The first is the most obvious: intellect.  Nixon, for all his faults, was a very intelligent man.  He just made a series of colossally stupid mistakes because of his rampant paranoia.  Trump, on the other hand, is not particularly bright.  He is of average intelligence, but only because he lets his own arrogance get in the way.  This is due to the second key difference between the two men: the foundation of their administrations.  Both were built largely on greed, but Trump’s was built on a circuitous and disastrous combination of greed, vindictiveness, and hatred, and it started with the way he rain his campaign.

Nearly all campaigns are built on some degree of discrediting one’s opponent, particularly when running against an incumbent or someone very close to the incumbent.  It is a natural, albeit somewhat regrettable, part of politics.  But Trump took this to an entirely unprecedented level.  Trump’s sole interest, his only goal, is to repudiate every single action taken by Obama and the Democrats over the last eight years.  His supporters are enthralled by this, but most of the country is rightfully appalled by it.  The problem is that you cannot make every single action you take a nullification of your predecessor’s policies, and there are two very simple reasons why.

The first is the most obvious, and that is that pure repudiation shows a limit to one’s ability to think critically, originally, or imaginatively.  This is particularly true of Trump and much of the GOP, especially in light of the fact that, while they complain about Obama’s policies, they offer few, if any, solutions of their own.  A perfect example is Obamacare, which the Republicans have spent the last seven years vilifying at every opportunity.  The law does have flaws, to be sure, but most of them are due to greedy insurance companies intentionally misapplying the law or to Red states refusing to fully adhere to the law.  Regardless, the GOP has repeatedly attacked Obamacare and voted more than 50 times to repeal all or part of it before finally succeeding under Trump.  The problem is that they had no solution until recently, and the bill they finally passed last month is worse in every way because they only cared about destroying the parts of Obamacare they didn’t like.  The result of their inability to think critically about how to actually fix our healthcare system will be that 23 million people lose their insurance off the bat and that millions more will be priced out due to skyrocketing premiums, employers getting waivers from States, or having a pre-existing condition (I myself fall into the latter category because I have two diagnosed mental illnesses for which I take medication and because I have asthma, all of which are considered pre-existing conditions).   In short, their frenzy to axe Obamacare prevented them from discussing real, plausible solutions to healthcare, and people will pay with their lives.

The second reason you cannot focus purely on repudiation is no less disturbing or dangerous.  Having such a single-minded focus will do nothing but drive the partisanship that is already dividing us even further.  For most of our history, partisanship has ruled our government.  It is an unfortunate but inevitable side effect of being a Democratic Republic.  But there are times when that partisanship boils over, preventing any real change or growth from happening.  We are in one of those times now simply because our president and the Republican Party have made their stand on repudiation of everything Democratic.  For all of Obama’s presidency, they refused to work with him, crucifying him for every syllable uttered and even the most meaningless actions (my personal favorite was the Grey Poupon complaint).  Many of them, such as John Boehner and Mitch McConnell quite literally ran their campaigns by promising to oppose Obama and the Democrats, regardless of the costs.  Now that they have control of the entire government, they are working on destroying everything we have accomplished in the last eight years simply because they don’t agree with it.  As a result of their narrow focus, they are driving Democrats and liberals even further to the left in their attempts to oppose them, which will in turn only drive Republicans and conservatives further to the right.  The divide will continue expanding until either things boil over or people start focusing on the whole picture instead of a partisan view of it.

This is unfortunately what is driving Trump now, and it will almost certainly continue for as long as he is in office.  He has shown that he will slam anything he disagrees with or doesn’t like in the strongest terms possible.  But he does so in ways that are often vulgar, offensive, and filled with lies and baseless accusations (such as his 3am Twitter rampages).  He is opposed to essentially everything Obama did, yet he has no real basis for having such a position, especially since Obama is generally considered one of our better presidents (the most recent ranking put him at #12).  He is now slamming Democrats as “obstructionists” simply because they refuse to work with him, despite the fact that they do so only because they see how damaging the legislation he is working to pass will be.  His opposition to Democrats has grown to the point that he refuses to listen to them, culminating in his administration issuing orders to refuse requests for information from Democrats.

A country cannot be run in such a way.  We cannot have a functioning republic if our leaders insist on nothing but repudiation of predecessors.  There is a great deal of irony here, of course.  Obama blamed a great deal of the country’s problems on Bush, and while there was truth to most of it, some things were just an excuse.  Moreover, whoever is president after Trump will have to focus on repudiation initially simply to clean up his damage, both domestically and abroad.  Finally, the so-called Never-Trumpers (by which I mean those who oppose Trump regardless of the cost, not those who are simply opposed to most of his policies (such as myself)) grew out of opposition to those who hated Obama for no sound reason.

(There are two alternate theories that both describe this perfectly.  The first is Horseshoe Politics, which essentially states that the further to one side of the political spectrum you go, the more it resembles the other side, much like the shape of a horseshoe.  A pertinent example are the clashes between white supremacists and AntiFa.  The second theory is one we see frequently in films, TV shows, and novels, which is that we tend to create our own enemies by deriding those we disagree with.  This happens frequently with tyrants and dictators; eventually, the people they oppress will rise up and depose them.  Either way, we tend to become what we hate and create our own opposition.)

Simply put, we need real leadership, now more than ever.  No one that cares only about negating everything his predecessor did or crucifying anyone who disagrees with him is a true leader because this shows an inherent inability to lead.  In order to be a leader, one must be able to actually lead people forward, not backward into a quagmire we’ve spent eight years in.  Yes, leadership does often involve fixing problems created by a predecessor, but it is also about innovation, about new ideas and new paths.  Rehashing the same things over and over again isn’t leadership; it is ignorance and cowardice.

The bottom line is that we cannot allow ourselves or our leaders to be blinded by obsession with rebuttal.  We are always free to disagree on things, which is one of the benefits to a free society.  But when we let that disagreement control us, we lose everything because we cannot see the big picture.  That is precisely what makes Trump so dangerous.  His greed and narcissism are problematic in their own terrible ways, but his vindictiveness and insistence on contradiction make him blind to what this country truly needs to be great.