The year 2016 was largely consumed by the election from hell, in which voters had to choose between two of the least-liked presidential candidates in U.S. political history: Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Trump lost the popular vote and polls indicate that two-thirds of those who voted for him were actually voting against Clinton.
But that doesn’t matter. He won in the Electoral College, and on Jan. 20, he will be sworn in as the 45th president of the United States.
Upon taking office, Trump will face several challenges. One will be to act presidential. He should ignore the hypocritical antics of those on the left who believed right up to election night that Hillary was going to sweep into office. Their demands for vote recounts, pleas to electors to break their pledges, calls to abolish the Electoral College and accusations of Russian interference aren’t a serious challenge to him, and are more likely to cause people to rally around the president-elect than to undermine his support … if Trump ignores them.
Sending nasty Tweets and dancing in the electoral end-zone isn’t the way to establish a presidential image.
Another challenge for Trump and his supporters will be to come to grips with political reality. Trump didn’t win by an electoral landslide. A landslide would be something like the 1984 vote, when Reagan beat Mondale 525 to 13, or the vote in 1972, when Nixon beat McGovern 520 to 17. Trump won by capturing 40 electoral votes by very narrow margins in traditionally Democrat states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He did this by winning over independents and non-traditional Republican voters, such as the 70 percent of white, non-college educated males who cast their ballots for him.
Nor did the “Trump revolution” extend to Congress. In the House of Representatives, only 8 of the 387 incumbents running for re-election were defeated. And in the Senate, only two incumbents, Kelly Ayotte and Mark Kirk, were defeated. Both are Republicans who will be replaced by liberal Democrats. Thus, the Congress Trump inherits will be largely the same as the last Congress and dominated by traditional Republicans rather than Trumpists.
I am not trying to diminish Trump’s political accomplishment or tarnish his legitimacy as president. He scored a stunning victory that few foresaw by using asymmetrical tactics against a well-funded establishment candidate. His success is likely to change the way political campaigns are conducted for years to come.
But he made many promises to buy votes on his path to victory. Ultimately, he will be judged as president by his ability to deliver on those promises. And that is going to require cooperation from Congress.
The president’s job isn’t to make laws, but to faithfully execute the laws enacted by Congress. President Obama tried to circumvent Congress by issuing executive orders. But such orders are supposed to deal only with how the federal bureaucracy implements the laws made by Congress, and not to alter the intent of those laws. When Obama’s executive orders have been tested in court, the courts have consistently shot them down. Trump can repeal Obama’s executive orders, but he can’t issue new executive orders creating new laws. That is the job of Congress.
The Republican-dominated House and Senate have lengthy lists of legislation they have been unable to enact over the past four years due to President Obama’s veto power. Some are virtually the same as the programs Trump promised his supporters on the campaign trail — such as tax reform, charter schools, repeal of Obamacare, anti-climate change legislation and deregulation. There should be little problem moving ahead on these.
There are other areas of legislation where agreement among Republicans can be reached with a bit of compromising, such as the minimum wage and Social Security and Medicare reform.
But some of Trump’s promises are contrary to strongly held Republican principles. If he tries to cram these through Congress, he’s likely to have a fight on his hands. These include his promise to spend a trillion dollars on infrastructure, such as highways, bridges, ports and airports. (Conservatives don’t believe such spending creates permanent jobs and they’re worried about the growing federal debt.) There’s also his pledge to build a wall along the southern border and impose tariffs on Mexican goods to pay for it. (Conservatives argue there is more cost-effective technology than concrete and barbed wire to achieve the same result, and that a tariff on foreign goods will ultimately be paid by U.S. consumers.) And there’s the creation of a National Deportation Force to remove all illegal immigrants. (Conservatives argue that we need much of this labor and deportation should be limited only to those who have committed felony crimes in the U.S.) There’s Trump’s position on employer-paid free childcare. (This is Ivanka Trump’s promise to working mothers. But conservatives see it as just more bureaucratic mandates placed on business.) Finally, there’s Trump’s opposition to free trade and the outsourcing of work. (Conservatives have long supported free trade agreements as a way of opening up new markets for U.S. companies and creating jobs here.)
Conduct of foreign policy is shared between the president and Senate. But Trump’s positions on foreign policy are not clear, because his statements have been obtuse, muddled or unspoken, as he claims he doesn’t want to tip his hand to our adversaries. We know Trump is a strong supporter of Israel and wants to take the gloves off when dealing with Islamic terrorists; he seems to view China as an enemy and Russia as our potential ally; he isn’t fond of NATO and is even less fond of the United Nations; the use of nuclear weapons doesn’t scare him and he thinks more nations should have nuclear weapons; he wants to build up our military; and he sees cyber warfare as an increasingly important component of our national defense. If there’s a conflict here, it is likely to come between Trump’s personal worldview and that of the Cold War-era Republicans in the Senate.
Trump is clearly anxious to get started in his new job of making America great again. He wants to hit the ground running. But how quickly he can establish the Trump Presidency will depend on how much cooperation he gets from Congress. If he chooses to try to begin by pushing his most controversial policies through Congress while holding traditional Republican policies hostage, he is likely to find himself in a legislative quagmire. Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with such a thing because he had a huge electoral mandate. Donald Trump does not.
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