The Reagan Echo: Donald Trump

In my forthcoming study of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, tentatively titled The Disciple and The Alchemist, I wrote about Reagan that,

He was a transcendent optimist – a spokesman-as-leader – who employed alchemy and soaring rhetoric to obviate contradictions.  He stood, as appropriate at any given time, near either Democratic or Republican mirrors to reflect and project his appeal through a libertarian prism, matching the prevailing mood of the electorate.  From the threat of communism, to fatigue of government intervention, to the embrace of an evil enemy, he knew how to change the angle of the camera and strike an appealing pose for his audience.

As I observe the improbable candidacy of Donald Trump for president today, I cannot help but hear echoes of Reagan’s appeal and alchemic modality.  And, the electorate seems to be just as depressed (or angry) today as it was in the latter stages of the Carter presidency.

            The comparisons are eerie.  While Reagan espoused the “Gospel of Prosperity,” Trump promotes what David Brooks of The New York Times has labeled a “Gospel of Success.”  Meanwhile, Obama speaks of self-restraint and sacrifice the same way Carter spewed jeremiads of sacrifice-based redemption.  Like Reagan, Trump also believes in American exceptionalism based on overt power, projected for the benefit of Americans first.  Notwithstanding missteps, like Vietnam before Reagan, and Iraq/Afghanistan before Trump, for Trump Americans remain the chosen people in a chosen land, the new Israel.  Meanwhile, Obama, like Carter, tries to re-identify America as a force for moral good, waging humanitarian wars (Libya) and preferring cooperation to competition.  I can’t remember ever hearing Trump (or Reagan) utter the word ‘cooperation’.  Reagan’s Hollywood-styled past and Trump’s New York/Atlantic City slick-shtick (and multiple marriages) also place them in stark contrast to the Obama/Carter image of up-from-nothing populist purity.  Furthermore, I can easily see Trump reeling in the Religious Right the same way Reagan did with his “I know you can’t endorse me … but I can endorse you”; especially with either Palin or Huckabee at the bottom half of the ticket.

            Trump has also taken a page out of Reagan’s early campaign playbook in his attempt to de-legitimize the President.  Reagan questioned Carter’s strength, patriotism, and decisiveness, while Trump has pounded the birther issue with the conviction of a Klansman.  Trump will easily get the angry white vote, and if he can co-opt the Religious Right (now Christian nationalists) with whitebread exceptionalism, he’s halfway there.  Trump’s next target will be to add the other half – fiscal conservatives – to his electoral coalition.  He’ll question Obama’s fiscal toughness in the face of huge deficits and the recent S&P outlook downgrade on US securities.  Trumps own fiscal follies will no doubt be recast as the scars of experience in a Hobbesian world.  He will ask the Reagan question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” and will couple it with “Who would you rather have at the negotiating table, a nice guy, or a winner?”  He might even say to Obama: “You’re fired!”

            Reagan’s appeal resided in its simplicity; he pulled on American’s sense of patriotism and desire to “stand tall” again.  He re-imagined America’s special destiny as a “shining city on a hill.”  In a complex world full of nuance and strange alliances – one that calls for an Obamaesque mind and demeanor – Americans may decide they’d just like to feel good again.  They may prefer illusion to reality.  If they do, Trump’s orangish hair (like Reagan’s) won’t matter.  Some say Trump’s anger will do him in; this may prove to be wishful thinking by Obama supporters.  After all, aren’t we all angry?  Trump should summon his inner Reagan, and Obama better not make the same mistake Carter’s advisors did when they hoped they’d face Reagan on election day.

Obama’s Doctrine of Ambiguity

As one who studies US foreign policy, I am not a fan of presidential doctrines that are generally crafted by the press out of a line or two of a president’s speech.  The Monroe Doctrine may have actually been the only true doctrine, defined by its namesake, and even it proved susceptible to gross misinterpretation and expansive misapplication.  Moreover, in an age of complexity, doctrines, or grand strategies, seem less appealing or relevant than the flexibility ambiguity allows, which is clearly why President Obama favored ambiguity in his recent address on Libya.  We live in an age of supervention, where seemingly disconnected and anachronistic events have effects, which is an inexorable reality of complexity.  The larger problem however, is not about US foreign policy and its strategic design in a complex world; it is about American identity; it is about how we Americans view our role at home and in the world.

            Obama’s address about the US/NATO intervention in Libya (March 28, 2011) left those wanting to define the Obama Doctrine dissatisfied; there was (purposefully, no doubt) nowhere to hang one’s doctrinal hat.  Ben Smith of Politico probably summed this best when he wrote, “The doctrine is there is no doctrine.”  And while others like Mark Halperin of TIME lauded Obama’s address as “strong” even he underscored the ambiguity by suggesting, “George W. Bush could have delivered every sentence.”  When Obama and W sound the same on foreign policy, the case for ambiguity is unambiguous.  However, as attractive as the flexibility ambiguity provides is, we must also look at the sustainability of an open-ended policy of either adventurism (W) or interventionism (Obama).

            The US has now witnessed two expensive effects of having an unassailable lead as the predominant military in the world: natural competitors find other ways to compete, and allies become dependent on US military power.  China has chosen to compete with the US by investing in their economy and protecting their currency (virtually all their military is deployed in-country to protect the authoritarian government).  Other non-state actors, like al-Qaeda, compete with asymmetric terror strategies that are difficult if not impossible to assail with a behemoth (US) military.  Meanwhile, as we have seen with Libya, US allies and their collective security system, NATO, are unable to provide the command and control platform to launch or sustain an intervention.  Therefore, the US, in its superpower/super-cop role, is caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place; it must continue to fund its super-military for the benefit of friends, while its natural competitors gain in power through other means.  The result, unfortunately, is now and will continue to be the decline – perhaps even accelerated decline – of US power and well-being. 

            Obama could have at least started to halt this unsustainable trajectory of superdom, but he chose ambiguity.  He has missed an opportunity to recast US identity.  In so doing, he has (perhaps unwittingly) elongated the deleterious effects of Eisenhower’s warning about a military industrial complex, and reduced our capacity to invest in better long-term bets like education, alternative energy, and economic innovation.  Lest we forget, we have enormous financial deficits.  The US will likely be better-loved by both allies and competitors for Obama’s post-W retooling of exceptionalism and lofty aims, but such love is an unsustainable luxury.  As Americans we must demand a refocusing on our own strength, resiliency, and well-being.  We can afford neither adventurism nor interventionism.  Prevailing on the “shores of Tripoli” may feel good today, but also puts our future at open-ended risk.