‘Don’t Believe Him’

Ezra Klein in an audio essay/transcribed column at The New York Times:

That is the tension at the heart of Trump’s whole strategy: Trump is acting like a king because he is too weak to govern like a president. He is trying to substitute perception for reality. He is hoping that perception then becomes reality. That can only happen if we believe him. [...]

What Trump wants you to see in all this activity is command. What is really in all this activity is chaos. They do not have some secret reservoir of focus and attention the rest of us do not. They have convinced themselves that speed and force is a strategy unto itself — that it is, in a sense, a replacement for a real strategy. Don’t believe them.

It is easy and quick, often instantaneous, to destroy things. It is hard and slow work to build new things, and often even harder and slower work to improve existing ones.

I had a conversation a couple months ago with someone who knows how the federal government works about as well as anyone alive. I asked him what would worry him most if he saw Trump doing it. What he told me is that he would worry most if Trump went slowly. If he began his term by doing things that made him more popular and made his opposition weaker and more confused. If he tried to build strength for the midterms while slowly expanding his powers and chipping away at the deep state where it was weakest.

That’s the optimistic take — Trump and his new administration are trying to manically (or is it maniacally?) punch their way to a first-round knockout. They’re utterly unprepared for a 15-round grueling slog. The pessimistic take is that the first-round knockout might happen.

The ultimate power in America isn’t our political or legal systems. It’s our culture. Our collective attitudes. We, collectively, are quite obviously very bad at history, because we, collectively, clearly forgot how chaotic a Trump presidency is after just four years, and we forgot how much we dislike chaotic leadership. But we know what we don’t like and we’re vocal about it. He’s not doing anything to increase his slim margin of popularity, and is already doing a lot of things to lose it. He was never once popular during his first term — not at the start, not in the middle, and definitely not at the end. Right now is the most popular he’s ever been, with a net approval of around zero. That’s the high water mark for Trump — just ever so barely popular enough to win an election.

★ Monday, 3 February 2025