Something has gone missing from American politics. Since the beginning of the new administration in January, public debate focused on general ideas has largely disappeared. Yes, President Trump has a few issues he consistently supports, such as limitations on immigration and lower taxes; and yes, some members of Congress remain strongly wedded to a general theoretical position, which they sometimes promote at the tail end of news shows. But the existence of an integrated set of ideas stemming from a single principle, what some used to call “ideology,” is absent. In its place is the daily run of news stories and commentary focused on assessment of the president’s personality and character, on charges of misdeeds and scandals, on personnel battles and rumored changes of White House staff, and on temporary reactions to decisions that change with each particular policy. There is no public discussion about these matters that fixes a framework of debate, no connective tissue of thought that links what happens on one day to the next.
The mass media lead the way. Coverage concentrates on breaking stories and revelations that are fueled by inveterate ideological motives one day and aberrant tweets the next, but the content of the accounts has nothing to do with any ongoing theoretical conflict. Everything is an alleged report of one kind or another, meant to stir a sense of drama that will portend ill or good for the fate of the administration. A brief initial period of partial thematic orientation linked to Steve Bannon faded as he slowly saw his influence dwindle and his position finally terminated. There remains a new intellectual journal out there, founded to promote Trump’s revolution, but American Greatness has little to no guiding influence over administration policy debate. This is a presidency that has a few choice policy positions but no sustained ideological direction.
President Trump’s turn in early September on the debt ceiling, in which he joined with newfound Democratic congressional chums Chuck and Nancy is just one more instance of the same thing. Moving beyond the partisan boundaries to which he had previously adhered, the president perhaps opened a broader field on which to maneuver. For weeks, he had been attacking Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, signaling (or venting) that he had had enough with the dabbling of Republicans, who could not, with a razor-thin Senate margin, hold together to repeal Obamacare. This shift leaves the administration with even less connection to an imputed ideological consistency, though more terrain conceivably on which to seek deals and bargains. The president can try, if a few Democrats soften toward him, to put together new coalitions, though those espousing one principle or another may well ask to what end.
It was not so long ago that President Obama could be counted on to offer yet another iteration of his arc of history speeches, capped with a soliloquy on “who we are.” His arguments would restate and promote evolving progressive positions. A set of principles was usually at or near the center of these events. The president’s efforts were in turn invariably met by responses from those representing different branches of conservatism. Commentators, too, would play their part, rallying to one side or another by supplying whatever sophisticated arguments they could summon. Everything in the ongoing splits between progressives and conservatives could be fit within a framework of ideas, and even where there were pleas for compromise and deviations from expected positions they would need to be explained against the prevailing ideological backdrop.
Commentators today are mostly struggling, finding themselves outside their comfort zone of writing about the realm of ideas. They have no choice, they say, but to try to figure out psychological motives and discern moral dispositions, topics on which they have little expertise. An analysis of political thought is secondary, if it counts at all. Some have concluded that it is government by sheer impulse, and even when the president has on one issue swung over to their side there are more grounds for suspicion than trust. Others have come to the view that the president has no clue what he is doing, pure and simple. As difficult as it is to fathom, America’s position can be one thing one day, something entirely different the next. Those on the other hand who continue to search for a guiding logic to the president’s positions, even if not one grounded in firm ideology, are split in their conclusions. Some see beneath the to-and-fro a malevolent inclination to further far-right populist instincts. Others insist we are watching a masterful strategist, a genius of popular communication, bidding to shake things up and open up politics to a new set of relations beyond the old ideological rigidity.
What does one say in the face of this novel and unsettling situation? For the moment, it is next to impossible to divert one’s eyes from the main show. The president’s large or, as Vice President Pence likes to say, “broad-shouldered” persona forces itself willy-nilly on everyone and everything. Might he ever become, as Jimmy Carter did on so many days, irrelevant and uninteresting? In today’s world, especially with the colorless figures leading the House and Senate, it is difficult to imagine that this is possible. Most are accordingly unable to turn their gaze elsewhere, and they focus the greater part of their attention on the president. All this is understandable, though perhaps not very helpful.
To readjust to the climate and circumstance in which we currently live is the challenge political commentators face. If Donald Trump is not going anywhere soon, meaning that he is unlikely to be pushed out of office, it is fair to ask those in the commenting business, in particular those on the conservative side, to begin to make their own pivots. It may be, as so many say again and again, that there is not a good match between the president and the office to which he has been elected. While there is no harm in repeating and elaborating on this point as occasion suggests, it is important also to consider the gains that have been made.
In response to progressive thinkers who have no interest except full-scale opposition and who want to bully those to their right into virtue-signaling by repeating, daily, the president’s deficiencies, it is time politely to decline the offer. Conservatives who do not, as some few of them do, wish to lionize everything Donald Trump does can say that they have expressed their reservations and will speak again on their own schedule. Meanwhile, they can look for possible benefits. Donald Trump is not Hillary Clinton, and beneath the mayhem on display at the top there has been a fairly strong attempt within some of the cabinet departments to undo large parts of the obtrusive state that has been strangling business and crushing parts of civil society. And maybe, just maybe, the overly rigid ideological disposition that captivated so many in the past will finally be relaxed. Even if we are not sure of the direction, altering the style of politics may in the end produce some good. There will in any case always be time to revisit this approach.
James W. Ceaser is professor of politics at the University of Virginia and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution.
