After one year

 Today, for the first time in our history, the United States has a president who has no understanding of the political and intellectual principles that have always defined our nation and that enabled us to survive the great crises of 1861-5 and 1929-45.  The government that the Framers bequeathed to us demands respect for established procedures and precedents.  As our first presidents repeatedly reminded us, that government depends upon mutual respect--which Lincoln maintained even during the Civil War--and upon a commitment to principles bigger than any of us as individuals.  And from the beginning we have tried, with intermittent success, to rely upon known facts to analyze what threatened our nation and how to meet that threat.  Both Lincoln in 1861-5 and FDR in 1940-45 based the great wars they fought on the need to preserve democracy--Lincoln to defend it against the domestic threat of rebellion and FDR to protect it from lawless regimes abroad.  In both of those cases the enormous physical and material sacrifices the nation made to secure victory reaffirmed faith in our institutions, and after 1945 in particular that victory led to measures that improved the lives of tens of millions of Americans, not least in recognition to the sacrifices they had made.  When William Strauss and Neil Howe wrote The Fourth Turning in the mid-1990s they expected to see a similar drama enacted in the next 20 years or so. That has not happened and it looks to me as if it will not happen.

More than any other man ever elected President, Donald Trump has devoted his life to the pursuit of great wealth, fame, and influence.  The first few decades of his business career revealed him to be a man of very erratic judgment, but he compensated for his failures by creating a robber baron persona with the help of an ever-cooperative media.  He built a internationally well-known brand, and that seems to have allowed him to escape ruin during several bankruptcies because he convinced his creditors that his enterprises would do better if they remained associated with his name.  He had developed the technique that he has relied upon as president: reshaping reality with a steady stream of boasts of his own greatness that kept the myth of Trump the great businessman alive.  He insisted that he could do things that lesser men never could.  In the 2000s, when he had exhausted most of his credit with the financial community, he brilliantly turned to television, where he could play the role of managerial genius in a safe environment.  Full disclosure: I think that I watched the first two seasons of The Apprentice myself.  He never impressed me as a manager at all, but he was evidently an effective  performer.

The Apprentice also flattered Trump's self image of omnipotence and invincibility--the characteristic that now defines his second presidency.  He and his devoted team identify and solve every problem saving the nation, including some that we did not know that we had.  He maintains this image, of course, by creating an alternative reality based upon alternative facts.  Our now-stagnant economy is growing at astonishing rates, our 2.7 percent inflation doesn't exist, we enjoy unprecedented respect around the world, huge investments are flowing into the United States, etc., etc., etc.  At the personal level this technique suggests some emotional desperation, a complete inability to admit failure of any kind.  It must be very exhausting to be Donald Trump, and the strain is showing.  

Trump has always loved publicity, and early in his career as a builder he impersonated a publicist to plant favorable stories about himself in major media outlets.  He still has a symbiotic relationship with the media--including his most bitter enemies within it--as shown by its newest obsession, the gift that keeps on giving, the Epstein files.  Our leading newspapers turn out a steady stream of stories about Trump policies going badly and setbacks in the federal courts, reflecting their unshakable belief that someone so at odds with everything they believe simply cannot succeed.  They are not, however, a real threat to his power.

Tariffs rank with illegal immigration as Trump's highest, most sincere policy priorities.  He sees the federal government as his own corporation and cannot resist taking advantage of the revenue-raising opportunities that tariffs provide.  Tariffs and the threat of tariffs are also helping his minions arrange investment deals, which if they bear fruit will surely benefit some of his political allies.  Trump's crypto sales are a new and unrivaled means of turning his brand into cash.  Yet the tariffs have already had disastrous impact upon some economic groups, led by farmers, and they may have more.  They must contribute to inflation which is a real problem.  While our major institutions have obviously failed to convince one-half of the American people that Trump is irretrievably evil, our voters will never surrender their constitutional right to punish their political leadership for poor economic performance.  That remains the most powerful dynamic in American politics, and November's off-year elections showed that it is alive and well in red states and blue states alike.  Yet a Democratic victory in the House elections eleven months from now will only create more chaos in Washington, and new impeachment resolutions will not do any good.  And if Trump's health failed him, it's hard to believe that J. D. Vance would reverse any of his policies. 

Trump's rise is more of a symptom than a cause of our national calamity.  The degradation of our public life, the irresponsibility of our media,  the decline of our educational system, and above all the decades-long assault upon authority of all kinds have combined to make him possible.  Lincoln and FDR led the nation through great crises by mobilizing it to solve enormous problems: disunion and slavery in Lincoln's case, and economic crisis and world war in Roosevelt's.  Our leadership has repeatedly failed to rally the nation to solve our own economic and political problems, and Trump now denies that any economic problems exist.  He has risen to the presidency twice because he knew how to take advantages of our society's weaknesses.  We do not know how, and when, they will be overcome.  It is probably too late for another Lincoln or FDR to reverse these trends, even if one were on the horizon.  The  heroic period in US history that began with FDR and lasted through Reagan is definitely over--but it still belongs to our heritage, and always will.

What has happened to journalism. . .and academia. . .and Hollywood

 I am vacationing, but a substack I get pointed me to this remarkable article about changes in the job market in journalism.  I had already witnessed the parallel changes in academia--where they have also extended to the highest levels.  I would not be pointing you to this article were it not so well-documented.  I'll be back with something of my own next week.

Europe and the United States in Times of Crisis

 Sometime during the 2000s--I think it was around 2005, but it could have been a little later--I was invited to give a talk at a conference in Berlin.  (I have forgotten the details.)  The Bush Administration was already turning away from the legacy of the New Deal, and I already doubted that Democrats would be able to reverse that trend.  I gave a talk reflecting some of themes of my article on the great Atlantic crises of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, which I am linking here.  It focuses on the interplay of political developments in the United States on the one hand, and Britain, France, and Germany on the other.  In the crisis of the late eighteenth century, the United States invented modern democracy, while Britain emerged with an even stronger aristocracy and France and other continental states mixed monarchy with bureaucracy.  In the crisis of 1854-71 (approximate), the victory of the North in the Civil War not only preserved democracy in the United States--the goal Lincoln defined throughout the Civil War--but gave democrats in Europe a tremendous boost, creating governments incorporating universal male suffrage (or something fairly close to it) in Britain, France, and Germany.  The 1929-45 crisis of the twentieth century continued that process an created an alliance of democratic nations based on the rights of labor and welfare states.  By the time I gave my talk in Berlin, the United States was clearly moving in a very different direction at home, and I urged my European audience to make sure that their nations preserved the democratic welfare states that had grown up in the last half century or so, no matter what happened across the Atlantic.

Late last week the Trump Administration issued its first National Security Strategy.  These documents can be very important.  In 2002 the Bush Administration issued one announcing that the US government would wage preventive war against any hostile state threatening to acquire nuclear weapons.   That strategy was implemented in Iraq--where it turned out that the nuclear threat no longer existed--and the Bush Administration had hoped to implement it against Iran and North Korea as well. This year the Trump Administration, working with Israel, did execute it against Iran.  There are many interesting aspects to the new Trump Administration strategy.  A key section on the Balance of Power is equivocal and somewhat self-contradictory, pledging on the one hand to "prevent the global, and in some cases even regional, domination of others," while adding, "The outsized influence of larger, richer, and stronger nations is a timeless truth of international relations."  The section on the Western Hemisphere defines a "'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine"--"We will deny non-Hemispheric competitors the ability to position forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control strategically vital assets, in our Hemisphere"--which adds nothing new to traditional policy, and it says nothing, mercifully, about the President's stated desire to make Canada the 51st state, and doesn't refer to the "Gulf of America" or to possible regime change in Venezuela.  It reaffirms a US military commitment to Taiwan.  The most striking portion of the strategy document discusses the subject of my Berlin talk: the political relationship of the United States and Europe.

In astonishing words, the strategy document flatly rejects key policies and beliefs of all the major contemporary European governments and calls explicitly for their replacement by Europe's new rightwing parties.  This begins with a discussion of Europe, the US, and the Russia-Ukraine War.  While declaring a goal of enabling Ukraine's "survival as a viable state," it also rejects allowing Ukraine in NATO and blames the Europeans for the continuation of the war within a most original analysis of where Europe is and where it is going.  (Since I last posted two weeks ago the Trump Administration has backed away from its pro-Russian demands upon Ukraine, but we cannot predict what will come next.)

"Continental Europe has been losing share of global GDP—down from 25 percent in 1990 to 14 percent today—partly owing to national and transnational regulations that undermine creativity and industriousness.

"But this economic decline is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure. The larger issues facing Europe include activities of the European Union and other transnational bodies that undermine political liberty and sovereignty, migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife, censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, cratering birthrates, and loss of national identities and self-confidence.

"Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less. As such, it is far from obvious whether certain European countries will have economies and militaries strong enough to remain reliable allies. Many of these nations are currently doubling down on their present path. We want Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation.

"This lack of self-confidence is most evident in Europe’s relationship with Russia. European allies enjoy a significant hard power advantage over Russia by almost every measure, save nuclear weapons. As a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine, European relations with Russia are now deeply attenuated, and many Europeans regard Russia as an existential threat. Managing European relations with Russia will require significant U.S. diplomatic engagement, both to reestablish conditions of strategic stability across the Eurasian landmass, and to mitigate the risk of conflict between Russia and European states."

The document rejects "writing off" Europe in favor of changing the direction of European politics so as to prevent "certain NATO members" from becoming "majority non-European" within decades. It specifically recommends "cultivating resistance to Europe's current trajectory within European nations."  This can mean only one thing: promoting the advent to power of the new right in Europe, including Nigel Farage's Reform Party in Britain, Marine Le Pen's National Rally Party in France, and the Alternative for Germany led by Alice Weidel.  In previous eras the US government resisted the advent to power of Communist parties in states like Italy and France, but never before has it endorsed the victory of opposition parties.  And the question, it must be said, is whether the Trump Administration might be on the side of history in setting this goal.  The latest opinion poll in Britain shows the Reform Party with 31 percent support, compared to 20 percent for the Conservatives, 14 percent for the governing Labour Party, 18 percent for the Green Party and 11 percent for the Liberal Democrats.  In France Jordan Bardella (who has replaced the convicted Le Pen) and the National Rally Party show 36 percent support, more than the next two more traditional candidates combined (Emile Macron cannot run again.)  In Germany the latest poll shows the Alternative for Germany with 26 percent support compared to 25 percent for the Christian Democratic Union and 36 percent total for three left wing parties, the Socialists, Greens, and Left Party.  (All polls listed in Wikipedia.) The traditional German parties in particular have been pulling together to try to keep the AfD (its German acronym) out of power, drawing public criticism from Vice President Vance early this year.  The National Security Strategy effectively endorses those parties as candidates for national leadership in our oldest allies.  The prospects of Farage and the Alternative for Germany still look pretty bleak to me, but the National Rally is solidly established as the second leading party in France and the Macron government has become very unpopular.  

This could turn out to be parallel to the last two great Atlantic crises, when Europe did follow the US lead.  The Trump Administration is leading a revolt against our bureaucratic state, based upon impartial principles, to create a non-regulatory government dedicated to helping enterprises of all kinds thrive in return for their financial support. Bureaucracy is indeed stronger in continental Europe, at least, than it has been in the United States, and it is drawing the same kind of resentment. That was what led to Brexit just a few months before the first election of Donald Trump.  

I learned many decades ago to distinguish a nation's government from its people, as the diplomatic documents of the early and mid-20th century invariably did.  The Trump Administration--the government of the United States today--has already lost popularity among the American people and they may well repudiate it in 2024 and 2026, but not before it has made drastic changes in our government's relationship to our society and to its foreign policy abroad.  It has officially embarked upon a completely new course in Europe.  I hope that European governments will rise to the occasion as most of them failed to do 90 years ago.