The darkest week of the year was perhaps the maddest week of Trump’s presidency. It’s easy, among the resignations, the shutdowns, the withdrawals, and the pronouncements on both nuclear options and nuclear weapons swirling into a vortex at the midpoint of Trump’s first term, to panic or despair.
While we are also tempted to break the proverbial glass and fire off our emergency flares, one consideration is compelling us to keep our powder dry: We’re not sure President Trump’s chaotic methods are significantly worse than what we got from the status quo of the bipartisan elite.
Trump’s actions and the other news are legitimate causes for concern. His promise of a government shutdown at Christmas, and his taking credit for it from the Oval Office, do not comprise moves of shrewd or prudent political chess. Further, we’re not sure what victory looks like in this fight: What sort of border wall could be built for $5 billion?
On the other hand, we don’t exactly have a good prescription for how to handle potential government shutdowns. Sen. Mitch McConnell’s, R-Ky., practice since the 2014 election has been to cave on every demand — even taxpayer funding of Planned Parenthood — lest Republicans get blamed for a government shutdown. The result has been that Democrats get everything they want, and they have an incentive to bring about more potential shutdowns.
If this is the status quo, can we say with certainty that Trump’s cowboy approach to shutdowns is worse? Consider that question, along with the fact that Republicans seemingly paid no political price at all in 2014 after shutting down the government and bringing it to the precipice of a debt-ceiling emergency in late 2013.
Trump’s lobbying for the legislative nuclear option also appears rash. The filibuster, on net, probably helps conservatives. In the long run, a Senate more capable of passing laws implies a government more likely to expand in size and power. Particularly, abolition of the filibuster now seems to have very limited upside, considering that Democrats will control the House in two weeks, already blocking the GOP’s ability to pass conservative legislation.
Then again, here we have to question the status quo. Democrats have managed to pass their New Deal, their Great Society, and their Obamacare, while Republicans have been foiled from rolling back or reforming the many resulting and unaffordable entitlement programs. As Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, pointed out to us in an editorial board interview earlier this year, the Democrats are likely to invoke the “nuclear option” once they get control of the Senate. So why not do it now?
Most worrisome to Washingtonians — including us — have been Trump’s actions regarding war and defense. Pulling all troops from Syria right away, without much deliberation, while thousands of Islamic State forces remain, appears rash. And it appears to have triggered the resignation of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, perhaps the most revered man in the Trump administration. Trump has similarly hinted he wants a quick pullout from Afghanistan.
The loss of Mattis and the precipitous withdrawals have provoked mass consternation among the foreign policy establishment. Then again, that might not be a bad thing. Over the past two decades, the bipartisan foreign policy establishment has gotten us into two imprudent wars, two unwinnable nation-building morasses, and countless other shooting fights. Meanwhile, its blindness to reality has allowed Russia to expand its footprint. In short, Trump’s actions don’t fill us with confidence, but something radically different from the status quo might not be that bad.
We are, at the end of the day, conservatives. We think rash and dramatic disruptions to a complex system are likely to produce net negative results, and so Trump’s behavior worries us.
But when we think back on the performance of the establishment of both parties over the past 20 years, we wonder whether there’s much worth conserving.
