Any doubts your columnist had that newspapers are the first rough draft of history disappeared as he watched his wife make use of hundreds of American newspaper reports of Winston Churchill’s 1929 and 1931 US lecture tours to enrich her century-later book on the great man. So as a gift to future historians, here is a first draft of the history of Donald’s Trump’s return to power, based on 30 days of his new term – fewer even than FDR’s famous 100 days that attracted so many historians. This is a tale of costs and benefits that have stunned not only America but the world.
Benefits
The economic benefits are clear. Billions saved and to be saved by unleashing Elon Musk and his high-IQ contingent on the misbegotten spending of the Deep State. The border secured, and manacled illegals charged with crimes deported, no longer able to wreak costly havoc in America’s cities. Future cost of defending Ukraine from Vladimir Putin’s revanchist drive to re-establish the Russian Empire to be borne by the European allies.
Trump has awakened the animal spirits that John Maynard Keynes pointed out animate the investor/entrepreneurial class. No longer threatened by a President with regulations at the ready and a lustful eye on their wallets, businesses big and small can see possibilities that did not exist under the Ancient’s Regime. There is a bounce in the step of businessmen as they emerge from their defensive crouches. There is terror in the hearts of regulators as Musk’s reformers, shears at the ready, approach their favourite snippet of red tape, embedded in the record number of pages Biden added to the Federal Register.
Merit, and the efficiency associated with even its imperfect application, has been restored as a criterion for advancement through the educational system and into the job market, and so-called Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) is being scrubbed from corporate, educational and government websites and manifestos. That must be added to the benefit side of any first draft of the history of the early days of Trump’s renewed hold on power.
Unknowables
Whether the new trading order that will emerge from the Trump tariffs will prove costly or beneficial we cannot yet see with sufficient clarity to include even in an early draft of history. Economists cannot predict with reasonable certainty whether the revenues from tariffs will offset any net loss in revenues from the Trump tax cuts, or whether deficits will come down or head up. Or whether the chaos of which Trump is so fond will eventually prompt job-creating innovators, who are uncertainty-averse, to stifle the animal spirits that have them reaching for their checkbooks. Let’s put this in the wait-and-see category.
Early drafts of the first 30 days would be incomplete without two additional considerations. First, a less agitated citizenry has immeasurable value, and America’s seems calmer now that the woke elites are on their back foot. Second, we must reckon the costs associated with the benefits, as fans of the great Franklin Roosevelt often neglect to do.
Costs
We have a President with a tenuous-to-hostile relationship with the truth, who contends that “He who saves the country cannot violate any law”. Who uses the power of his office to avenge himself against an extensive list of enemies who have aggrieved him and “are people we don’t respect.” Who insists the 2020 election was rigged, and who removed security protection from former colleagues who disagree, even though they are under threat from Iran’s assassins. Who is amassing personal and family wealth by techniques that, if not illegal, are at minimum unbecoming. Who launches execrable personal attacks on Ukraine’s president who is resisting an invasion by a Russian dictator intent on re-establishing the Russian Empire. Who can’t get no satisfaction from winning unless he can demean the loser and make certain he or she does not emerge with honor intact.
Add appalling appointments. The man now responsible for the nation’s health believes the polio vaccine killed more people than it saved, that vaccines cause autism, is believed to be about to dismantle the apparatus that stands between a litigious bar from which he profits and vaccine manufacturers, and has campaigned against a measles vaccine, doubly dangerous at a time when measles is making a reappearance in America as vaccination rates decline. Trump’s appointees to run the nation’s justice system are investigating lawyers who prosecuted January 6 rioters, and others who resigned as a matter of principle rather than obey an order to terminate a politically charged investigation on which they were working. The woman now in charge of national intelligence shared Trump’s belief that Putin was provoked into invading Ukraine long before she had access to the intelligence data she now will analyze for him.
Where We Stand
As this hectic month comes to a close, the hyper-active Trump remains a divisive figure. Some 93 per cent of Republicans tell Gallup pollsters they approve the President’s performance. A mere 4 per cent of Democrats register such approval, making the partisan gap the highest recorded by any President. Champagne corks litter the tables and floors of Mar-a-Lago, tissues moist with tears decorate the conference tables wherever Never Trumpers gather, unheeding of the advice of Democratic old-pro James Carville that all they need do is – nothing, while waiting for Trump to over-reach. Tariffs, tax cuts for the rich, and spending cuts to hit the poor are to come. “Just let the ball come to you. We don’t need to be aggressive now.”
Later Drafts Of History
Trump has one advantage. The benefits of what he is doing are now and visible. The costs to the Constitutional order will only be apparent later, whether enough later to make them irreversible we do not know. We can reasonably claim to know that later drafts of history will find Trump to have been a consequential President. It is too soon to judge whether that will be good news or bad.