A new style of governance | News, Sports, Jobs

Kimball Shinkoskey

Cross of the woods

Donald Trump’s style of government is seductive and exciting to MAGA supporters precisely because it is so outrageous and new. No president has ever governed this way before. Trump doesn’t debate, he belittles. Trump doesn’t plan, he reacts. Trump doesn’t concede, he denies.

The former president is unreliable, he is unpredictable. He does not work in tandem, he works alone. The presumptive nominee does not know the written Constitution, the checks and balances, or the legislative process. Trump’s right hand is the law. Power is concentrated in himself, not in the people or their representatives. Trump’s legislative process consists of getting out of bed, deciding what he is going to impose on the people today, and playing a round of golf while barking out tweets and executive orders. The Republican Party’s standard-bearer never has to be right, he just has to be forceful.

This is the style of government of a rapacious autocracy. It is something very different from the America of the last 250 years, and that is why it fascinates so many people. However, during the 750 years of Anglo-Saxon civilization in England before 1776, this style of government was very popular and was known as monarchy.

This scenario was followed by characters like the capricious King John at the beginning of the monarchy in the British Isles, and later by characters like Henry VIII who took not only many wives, but also the Pope and everyone else who came along. The British monarchs ran the country like a private family where the citizens of the nation were treated like children.

It is this new form of reality that amuses Americans so much. Trump is the anti-American, the anti-tradition, the anti-history, the anti-science, the anti-gravity. For generations, Americans have been moving away from the stable reality of their ancestors and their system of family and local representative government. Trump wants to challenge, reverse or minimize this history.

Before Trump and before MAGA America, change was very slow. Change had to follow rules. For example, “Obamacare” was first proposed some 60 years earlier, under the Truman administration, just after World War II. Every Democratic president since Truman has tried to implement some form of national health care program and failed because the time was not yet right. In a democracy, the majority of the people must buy into any new policy and be willing to pay for it.

We have been moving away from the slowness of our ancestors to do things since our soldiers came home from Europe with all the laurels after World War II. Remember when Obama got impatient with Congress’s slowness to implement immigration reform? He adopted the motto “We can’t wait” and ended up implementing DACA immigration reform himself. Trump has simply taken that impatience a step further. Trump’s motto is “I can’t wait.” There’s no “we” in that at all.

Trump has said he would end the war in Gaza on D-Day. He would deal with Putin and derail the war in Ukraine. Trump could change Europe in the blink of an eye, as he says. But at what cost? Trump could concede ground not only in Ukraine, but also in Poland, the Baltics, and the Balkans. After all, one king must respect another king’s need for land, resources, and compliant citizens to play with in his own sphere of influence. Trump could also simply cede Taiwan to Xi Jinping. What does Taiwan mean to him?

The future looks exciting for those who support Trump. However, Republicans who want America to move forward on a path of justice, equality and domestic tranquility might want to choose another party to align themselves with.