Trump Won't Be a Broker on Guns Even After Parkland Shootings
(Bloomberg View) -- Seriously? After 13 months of seeing what Donald Trump is like in office, there are still folks who fantasize that he can be an independent policy broker, with (as conservative Douglas Heye puts it) a "unique opportunity" to "bridge the divide" on guns.
Hogwash.
To begin with, Trump can't act as an independent dealmaker on guns or anything else because he's not independent at all: Whether he likes it or not, and even whether he has noticed it, he has hitched himself to conservative Republican positions in virtually all policy areas, in large part through the personnel choices he's made. Whatever Trump was when he began his campaign, he's now a creature of the Republican Party, and it would take real work by him to separate himself from it.
The second reason the president is quite poorly positioned to cut deals on anything is that he's simply not willing to do the necessary work. Cutting deals requires more knowledge of issues than Trump will bother to learn. And it's not just the details. Ronald Reagan regularly botched the specifics on various policies, but he was more than adequately familiar with the broad outlines, and he had well-developed and deeply held positions on a wide range of issues. Trump hasn't demonstrated any such expertise. On guns, he has learned a few talking points -- mostly odes to the Second Amendment -- but that's about it.
Why can't he just delegate the way Reagan did? It turns out the president isn't that good at delegating to those who do know the details. Because he's impulsive and says what's on his mind, his staff regularly runs the risk of being contradicted by the boss, making it difficult to negotiate in his name.
For those in Washington outside the White House and the administration, it means it's useless to rely on the word of even the staffers they might otherwise trust because there's no way to know what the man in the Oval Office will do. House Republicans, for example, remember how Trump called their health-care bill "mean" after fully supporting it and throwing a Rose Garden celebration when it passed. Democrats, meanwhile, remain livid that Trump misstated his own position and theirs on the Dreamers, the migrants who came to the U.S. as children.
In other words, what scholar Richard Neustadt referred to as a president's "professional reputation" is important -- those who have to deal with the chief executive come to a shared understanding of how he operates. In the case of Trump, his professional reputation is that he is easily manipulated, unreliable and unprepared. That's not a president who can construct deals.
The last 24 hours has demonstrated that pretty clearly. Trump did a pretty good job of hosting a White House forum on school shootings, but since then he has focused on the bizarre idea of arming teachers and janitors. And even when he does talk about more realistic options, as MSNBC's Sam Stein reports, no one really knows what he thinks he's talking about.
All that said, he is the president, and if he cares to fight for something he'll have some influence. Presidents have advantages in setting priorities on policies, and many Republicans are still afraid to cross a Republican president.
But we should put to rest the myth that Trump was an independent businessman who could come into office and make deals.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg View columnist. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.
It's true that when conservatives disagree, Trump is capable of influencing which faction he winds up with, although even there it seems fairly random. For example, choosing Mick Mulvaney for the Office of Management and Budget may well have aligned Trump with a Republican faction more comfortable with deep cuts to domestic programs, rather than a faction that would prefer modest cuts. But it's unclear which approach Trump would support, or even if he realized that's what he was doing.
Yes, he had a note card reminding him to show empathy. So what? Everything politicians do in public is scripted in some way, and some are more skilled (or naturally talented) at showing certain emotions than are others. If he needs note cards for it, better that he should use note cards and get it right than to get it wrong.
To contact the author of this story: Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net.
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Katy Roberts at kroberts29@bloomberg.net.
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