Why Donald Trump will be our very worst president, by a very wide margin

Donald Trump will be our very worst president, by a very wide margin, because Donald Trump is the apotheosis of the Tea Party, the culmination of Republican lawlessness—that is to say, an impatience and contempt for “rules” that eventually transforms itself into a delight in their violation—that has been growing stronger and stronger since the days of the Vietnam War.

This fascination with lawlessness first manifested itself against the Nixon administration (not terribly law abiding itself, of course) as a war against “peace”—against Nixon’s announced policy of formal recognition of the communist government in China and “peaceful coexistence” with the Soviet Union. The right wing—whose original node of resistance centered around a Democrat, Sen. Henry Jackson of Washington—was terrified by this loss of certainty, terrified of living in a world where communist rule over a single square inch of the earth’s surface was not regarded as an unacceptable and unforgivable sin against the human spirit if not the Holy Ghost itself.

Nixon’s policy of détente was weakened greatly when he was driven from power as a result of the Watergate scandal. His successor, Jerry Ford, bent under the pressure of the howling right wing and allowed the formation of “Team B”—a collection of hyper-ventilating liars given authority to create their own analysis of the Soviet threat, “proving” that the CIA’s estimates, which consistently overestimated Soviet economic strength, failed to limn the Soviets’ limitless malevolence and power.

Team B’s estimates were consistently over the top, but it gave détente’s critics something to believe in and a club to wave. And in 1980, Reagan’s going-away win over the hapless Jimmy Carter “proved” they were right, because in politics, winning is everything.

But, as it turned out, even winners need to cheat. In his second term, despite his overwhelming win at the polls, Reagan was humiliated both by his failure to win freedom for American hostages of Muslim terrorists in the Middle East and by the refusal of congressional Democrats to fund his covert war in Nicaragua, backing the “freedom-loving” Contras against the despised Sandinistas. Aided by true believers like CIA director Bill Casey and gung-ho Marine Ollie North, Reagan put together a package of secret (and illegal) arms sales to the Iranian government to buy the hostages freedom (never mind the administration’s prohibition against any dealings with terrorists) and also to provide cash to support the Contras (never mind Congress’s prohibition against any funding of the “Freedom Fighters”).

At the time, unabashed Reaganite Andrew Sullivan was shocked at the duplicity and then doubly shocked when he learned that the whole operation delighted fellow right-wing talking head Charles Krauthammer: Way to go, Ronnie! Cheat and lie, lie and cheat! We’re the team that can’t be beat!

The beatdown George Herbert Walker Bush administered to that little shit Michael Dukakis, followed by America’s glorious victory in Iraq (Iraq I, as it turned out, though no one suspected it at the time) reassured conservatives. Those damn hippies, who had turned American upside down back in the Sixties, were never coming back. Civilization was safe.

The election of Bill Clinton in 1992 proved to be stunning, ultimately fatal, shock to the right-wing system, spreading toxins to the extent that the host has now become the disease. The reaction of “conservatives” was hysterical from the very beginning. As recent studies of the Clinton scandals—like Jeffrey Toobin’s A Vast Conspiracy—have demonstrated, Republicans invested an incredible amount of effort to keeping “alive” the investigation of the sad, but ultimately unimportant, matter of Deputy White House Counselor Vince Foster’s suicide. They were sure that there had to be something “juicy” behind the suicide of Hillary Clinton’s mentor/law partner. There had to be! The case, cut and dried to begin with, was investigated five times, thanks to Republican obsessiveness. Ken Starr spent three years “investigating”—that is, prolonging unconscionably—a case that was first resolved, correctly, in 30 days by the U.S. Park Police.

In Congress, Republicans immediately settled on a policy of complete opposition to every initiative proposed by the new administration, health care in particular. As William Kristol “explained,” if the program worked, Americans would bestow their gratitude on the Democratic Party. If it was good for America, then it was bad for the Republican Party, and a real man had the courage to put party above country.

While Kristol, the National Review and the Wall Street Journal pursued the high road, or at least the pathway of polysyllablicism, Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, and, later, the Drudge Report, sank to the depths, a “just putting it out there” sewer of smutty, racist, hate-filled bile that appealed to those “left behind” by the (yes) elitist West Coast/East Coast media, the two rivers of discontent brought together by Newt Gingrich, a born disrupter, fascinated by ways to make end-runs around established political procedures in an age when, it seemed, you didn’t have to play by the rules because, for the first time in anyone’s memory, there was no “danger”. And, since there was no danger, the Republicans found it necessary to invent one.

Republicans were stunned by the loss of their beloved Cold War security blanket—taken from them by Ronald Reagan, of all people—and began to search for a new one. If only Nixon could go to China, only Reagan could go to Moscow, and make peace. But he did. So now the search for a new Cold War, a new “present danger”, began, with Saddam Hussein’s battered, defeated Iraq as the only feasible enemy. With a population of only 31 million, a shattered army, and no nuclear weapons, Iraq did not much resemble the once-massive Soviet bloc, with its thousands of warheads and a population that exceeded that of the U.S., but it would have to do.

The drumbeats began. A new danger, and a new challenge, for America! A new crusade, and even a better one, because America now was fighting, not just against communism, but for freedom! Most unfortunately, the Clinton Administration, following the neo-liberal tradition of conceding 95% of any foreign policy argument to the Republicans from the get-go, stumbled over itself to comply with the new paradigm, casting the U.S. as the “indispensable nation”, empowered by its wealth and virtue to wage a never-ending fight for truth, justice, and the American Way all over the globe!

Well, who doesn’t want to be Superman? In many ways, the new paradigm was simply the old Cold War mentality reborn and given a new justification. We wouldn’t be overthrowing democracies to replace them with autocracies as we did in the fifties! We’d be overthrowing autocracies to replace them with democracies! Hillary Clinton in particular drank deeply from the cup of “virtuous” regime change, which has become one of her deepest passions.

The more the Clinton Administration moved to the right, the more the Republicans were pushed to the right. We can’t let those damn Democrats outflank us on this! In their frustration, in their sense, and fear, that they might never win another presidential election, the Republicans explicitly transformed themselves into a war party. Whatever Clinton proposed was limp-wristed weakness, because the Democrats were a party of limp-wristed sissies—“San Francisco Democrats”, in Jeanne Kirkpatrick’s memorable sneer. Real men don’t impose “sanctions”! Real men wage war! Republicans began to dream obsessively of the “freedom” that only war can bring. Peace is so confining! People seek their own comfort rather than listen to the call of “duty”—that “duty” being to do whatever it is Republicans want them to do! Like, you know, voting Republican!

Republicans failed to entirely bend the nation’s legal system to its will with Bill Clinton’s impeachment, but they succeeded when the U.S. Supreme Court slam-dunked George W. Bush’s election over Al Gore in 2000. While Bush almost surely would have prevailed over Gore in any event—Republicans controlled the state government in Florida and both the House and Senate in Washington, ensuring that any and all controversies would be decided in their favor—a 5-4 Supreme Court majority refused to take any chances with letting the constitutional process run its course and simply declared Bush the winner.¹

For his first nine months in office, Bush was scarcely more than Clinton without a penis, but 9/11 jump-started the virus of irresponsibility once more. Bush instantly grasped the attack as the perfect excuse for invading Iraq and disposing of Saddam Hussein once and for all, leaving the U.S. free to convert his country into a new ally that would be the site of “Pentagon Middle East”, the $600 million U.S. “embassy” (actually a complex of 27 buildings), the largest embassy in the world, which would serve as the nerve center of what would surely be a decades-long but ultimately triumphant (and richly profitable) effort to transform some 100 million Muslims into docile instruments of American will and, not so incidentally, elect Republicans.

Since Saddam had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks (as opposed to Saudi Arabia), it took a good deal of lying to make the case to the American people that the invasion was “necessary”. But the Bush Administration was up to the challenge. The greater the cause, the greater the number of lies that could, and should, be told in its defense.²

The fires of Republican irresponsibility blazed forth in their 2004 national convention, when the Republican delegates hooted themselves silly in their ridicule of John Kerry’s war record, passing out Purple Heart band-aids to express their contempt for a man who volunteered for combat duty in Vietnam while George Bush had carefully avoided active duty of any sort by joining the National Guard and then bagged the last few years of his commitment entirely once it was clear that, come what may, he would never be sent to Vietnam.

Two years later, the hollowness of the Bush Administration’s claims of “Mission Accomplished” were manifest. Iraq II had proved to be a staggering disaster, one that implicated virtually the entire Washington establishment, which is the reason why it took a total wacko outsider like Donald Trump to actually state the truth, that the invasion was based not on faulty intel but rather conscious deceit. President Obama, on the other hand, split the difference when he ran for the presidency in 2008, saying he would end “a war” without explicitly faulting those who had consciously lied the country into disaster.

Obama consciously chose the high road—in large part because he did not want to offend the Washington “establishment” that was deeply complicit in, and deeply compromised by, the war—but Republicans consciously did not reciprocate, treating his ascension with the same horror with which they treated Clinton’s. Bill Clinton took office in a time of great peace and security, while Obama took over at a time of great turmoil—the greatest since World War II. But that made no difference to the Republicans. They were committed to a policy of absolute destruction, happily seeking to wreck not merely the presidency but the entire U.S. government itself.

What Newt began, and the Tea Party furthered, Donald completed. While Gingrich relied on Limbaugh’s “just putting it out there” mendacity, Trump extended it. The birther “controversy”? It worked, didn’t it? Ramping up hatred of foreigners? Same thing. Politics is all about winning, and whatever works is its own justification. As president-elect, Trump lies so constantly and so broadly—claiming, for example, that he “really” won the popular vote—that is considered almost unseemly to correct him. “Of course he’s lying. He always lies. What’s your point?”

Trump has established an administration of establishment playas, extremists, party loyalists, and generals, with the expectation that they will fight it out amongst themselves, leaving him with the last word. He loves the sense of power he obtains by behaving in contradictory ways. Did he really mean that? He couldn’t have meant that, could he? It must be a bargaining chip, an opening salvo, don’t you think?

But no one really knows what to think. If Trump lets the Republican Party find its own level, he’ll cuts taxes on the rich (a given, really), increase spending on defense (almost as likely), and begin harassment of Iran along lines laid down by Israel. All the military muscle flexing Trump is bound to engage in requires an enemy, after all, and the only engagable enemy is Iran.

Trump’s trillion-dollar infrastructure plan is likely a gone goose. It’s too Democratic, and he’ll already be busting the budget, hugely, with the tax cuts and defense spending increases the Republican Party has loved since 1980. As for immigration, there will likely be a lot of tough talk, and some sort of tough action, but, shockingly, there aren’t a lot of illegals coming into the U.S. from Mexico, which is what Trump likes to huff and puff about.

Well, that’s the optimistic take, the “Trump sells out to Goldman-Sachs” take. But suppose Trump’s actions in the Middle East stimulate home-grown terrorist outbreaks in the U.S. of the kind that occurred in Santa Barbara and Orlando? Suppose such attacks occur in New York—the Trump Tower, in particular—or Washington, DC?

Then it’s likely that illegal immigrants will suffer grievously, and a brutal anti-Muslim persecution will begin. Trump administration outsiders like Giuliani, Christie, and Gingrich, aka “the squeezed lemons”, will sense one more opportunity for greatness—or at least another interview—and begin baying for blood. Since the actual terrorists will almost certainly be dead, the search for scapegoats will begin. Since they killed our innocents, we have to kill theirs!

This is how Trump thinks—he has returned to this “theme” repeatedly. Back in November, the New York Times interviewed Trump and, on the basis of what the Times thought Trump said, claimed he had changed his mind on waterboarding, which he had enthusiastically endorsed during the campaign. In fact, as Fred Kaplan points out, Trump proclaimed himself “shocked” when Mattis told him that waterboarding wasn’t helpful for obtaining intelligence, but didn’t change his mind about the desirability of employing waterboarding or other forms of torture.

He didn’t, because Trump wasn’t interested in “intelligence” (he never is). He was (and is) interested in revenge. As Trump told the Times, “Look we have people that are chopping off heads and drowning people in steel cages and we’re not allowed to waterboard. But I’ll tell you what, I was impressed by that answer. It certainly does not—it’s not going to make the kind of difference that maybe a lot of people think. If it’s so important to the American people, I would go for it. I would be guided by that.”

What is “it” in the next to last sentence? It is the torture of the innocent. Yes, thousands of ISIS soldiers have died in combat, thanks to U.S.-supported forces in the Middle East. But Trump, even if he knew that—and he surely would deny that he did know that, if asked—doesn’t care. If “they” cut off people’s heads and drown them in steel cages, well, we’re going to do something worse than that! There’s simply no reason to believe that Trump won’t do something just because it’s something no morally conscientious human being would do.

What Trump would “really” like to do is win a war, in some unspecified manner, a la General Patton, and erect a monument to himself in Washington, DC that would be the tallest structure in the city. Congress isn’t going to let anyone build something in DC that’s taller than the Capitol, so that won’t happen, but otherwise, the possibilities almost endless, and almost endlessly grim. I greatly fear that U.S. institutions—the rule of law in particular—will suffer significant and permanent damage over the next four years.

We have been drifting towards a “plebiscitary democracy” for decades. Congress has become increasingly a forum for posturing rather than decision-making. Congress wants the president (or the courts) to make all the tough decisions. George Bush famously appointed himself the “decider”, bringing down his whole party when it turned out that his decisions sucked.

President Obama largely continued Bush’s tradition, particularly in foreign affairs, where his policies scarcely differed from those of Bush’s second term—the “Condoleezza Rice” Bush. The Democratic Party suffered historic losses during Obama’s two terms, for many reasons, but surely one reason was Obama’s neglect of the party. Only the presidency mattered to him.

By his own appetite for “executive” (and, often, unreviewable) action, Obama has set the stage for major outrages by his successor. Obama endured greater harassment from Congress, almost all of it unmerited, than any president since Andrew Johnson, but that does not excuse his own elitist fondness for rewriting the laws on the basis of “science” (in the case of his numerous arbitrary actions to “save” the environment, which is significantly less in need of saving than he prefers to think), nor for his vindictive persecution of those who embarrass him.

The Obama Administration’s abuse of the notorious “Espionage Act”, passed during the anti-German hysteria that reigned once the U.S. entered World War I, has set a precedent that Donald Trump is all too likely to follow.³ Here’s hoping that Trump will be better than Obama, and that’s a lot to hope. He is a man driven by the pursuit of power for its own sake, a man incapable of regarding any opposition as legitimate, and his experience has taught him that the way to gain power is to break the rules.