One Nation After Trump by Dionne, Ornstein, and Mann; A Book Report
One Nation After Trump
by D.J. Dionne, Jr., Norman J. Ornstein, and Thomas E. Mann
Book Report by Bobby Everett Smith
Spoiler Alert
December 22, 2017
Setting
The White House, Washington, D.C. and Trump Tower, New York City. This book analyzes the 2016 election for president of the United States—why did Trump win and what America can do about it moving forward?
Characters
Donald J. Trump, president of the United States
Steve Bannon, political activist, and former investment banker, who is executive chairman of Breitbart News. He served as the White House Chief Strategist
Mitch McConnell, Republican leader of the Senate, Majority leader
Paul Ryan, Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Speaker of the House
Sherrod Brown, U.S. Senator, Ohio
Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Senator, New York
Elizabeth Warren, U.S. Senator, Mass.
Executive Summary
The crisis of Trumpism is an opportunity for U. S. citizens to energize their participation in controlling our government and aiming it towards growth, tolerance, and liberty for all.
Donald J. Trump became the 45th president of the United States by capturing most electoral votes in the 2016 election despite a 3 million vote majority of total voters. Trump brought with him an agenda designed to “Make American Great Again,” which sounds pretty good until you look at the details of what that really means.
Along with winning the control of the Executive Branch of Government, Republicans won narrow majorities in the House and Senate giving them control of all branches of government including the ability to install conservative judges in the Supreme Court.
Many people said, “OK, this is America and Trump was duly elected. Let’s give him a chance.” Well we did give him a chance and he turns out to be worse than we expected. He is unqualified to be President of the United States. He is a narcissist, a pathological liar and a believer that the media is the enemy of the American people.
Trump has put in a Cabinet that frequently works counter to the mission of the department.
Major parties are more polarized today than at anytime in the last 75 years. Mitch McConnell stated early in President Obama’s term of office “that the most important thing on the Republican Agenda was for Obama to be a one-term president.” That didn’t happen but not because McConnell failed to try.
Trump showed only contempt for rules and norms related to his conflicts of interest. He took advantage of his position to further the wealth and power of himself and his family.
Trump’s style is to deny facts and assault the media in his effort to suppress dissent and intimidate opponents all the while sowing confusion and chaos wherever he goes.
Trump inspired overlapping streams of discontent: race, immigration, culture, and religion. Followed by voters who were dissatisfied with the economy.
The following four factors dominated thinking amongst those who voted for Trump:
- Racism (White supremacy)
- Immigration reform (keeping Muslims out of the country)
- Religion (White Anglo Saxon Protestants)
- Economic growth and jobs
Other factors that helped Trump included:
- Outspokenness
- Willingness to tell it like it is
- His business experiences
- Not politically correct
- Opposition to abortion
There is no single reason Trump is our president today.
What is the way out of Trumpism?
We need to understand that the government can work in partnership with private markets to achieve economic growth without cutting into the principles of competition and free markets. This brings us to two important needs: responsive government and responsible corporate behavior.
The uniting of Republicans known as Eisenhower Republicans or Center-Republicans with Independents is an important first step in implementing these concepts. Integrating the needs and desires of colored voters with those of white voters is another step. Nurturing the alliance between younger and older voters is too.
Politics should be about solving problems and resolving disputes not about aggravating divisions and hoping that divisions between conflicting groups can be exploited for political gain.
Government job guarantees would begin with a robust rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure. This should be a high national priority.
Government participation in job creation should be linked with training, apprenticeships, and service.
We need to provide protection of government programs such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security from cuts such as those proposed by the Trump administration.
A new patriotism should be built on a capacity for empathy. It should be built on an attempt to understand the situations in which others find themselves, the complexities of their thoughts and feelings. “Make America Empathetic Again” might be a better slogan than Trump’s “Make America Great Again.”
We need new programs to support young people in a one year of national service, paid for by government and corporations. This service could include military, religious missions, community organizations, the Peace Corps, and other forms of philanthropic support.
Exit polls of the 2016 presidential election showed that 61% of voters thought that Trump was unqualified to be president. This shows how deep the revulsion towards Trump and his supporters runs. Republicans have demeaned government service for political gains. “The fight against Trump is ultimately a fight to reclaim the dignity of public life and the honor of democratic politics.”
Rejecting Trumpism means rejecting a rollback of progress towards civil rights for African Americans, women, and Latinos. For LGBTQ and religious minorities. Progress in these areas is still incomplete and we as Americans must continue to stand up against Trump and others who wish to tear down our country’s values.
The Story
Part I: Trump and Trumpism
What Trump’s Election Meant and why he doesn’t own the future
Our political system at present increasingly allows a minority to rule. Trump won the 2016 election by winning the electoral college even while facing a three million vote majority in the popular vote. The House faces Republican domination primarily because of the gerrymandering which takes place throughout the country and the Senate under-represents large states since they only get two votes which is the same number of votes that small states get.
Truth and the Rise of Alternative Facts
Immediately on taking office, Trump declared war on the media. His chief strategist, Steve Bannon stated, “the media is the opposition party.”
Trump’s inauguration crowd was about average, but he claimed that it was the biggest of all times. Photographic evidence showed that Trump’s crowds were much smaller than Obama’s crowds. But Trump continued to pursue the thought that his crowds were larger. Evidence did not matter.
This creation of “fake news” became the norm for President Trump’s position. Alternative facts are not facts; they are falsehoods, but not to Trump. When the media issued reports that disagreed with Trump’s view of a situation, it was false. The media was the enemy even though the media had given him most of coverage during the election campaign.
“We cannot ignore the rhetoric employed by the president about what we do,” Jeff Mason said to a dinner meeting of the White House Correspondents’. “We are not fake news. We are not failing news organizations and we are not the enemy of the American people.”
The Disappearing Norms of American Politics
Parties today are becoming increasingly more polarized. In 1994 Newt Gingrich started a battle for control of the House that lasted through his term which ended in 1998 and on through the term of Dennis Hastert, who was Speaker from 1998 through the George W. Bush administration. Hastert bent the existing rules and norms of the House to suit his agenda. This disarray only intensified with the election of President Obama. “the single most important thing we can do,” said Mitch McConnel, Senate Republican leader, said, “is for President Obama to become a one-term president.”
McConnell fractured the norms of the Senate with the misuse of the filibuster. McConnell invoked the nuclear option in confirming Gorsuch to the Supreme Court with a simple majority.
Trump’s Authoritarianism
Even before his election, Trump treated transparency, the rule of law and due process as if they were fundamentals that did not apply to him. He had no appreciation for the integrity of courts or other public bureaucracies.
He showed only contempt for rules and norms related to conflicts of interest. He took advantage of his position to further the wealth and position of himself and his family.
Trump’s style is to deny facts and assault the media in his effort to suppress dissent and intimidate opponents all the while sowing confusion and chaos wherever he goes.
Trump claimed on inauguration that he had almost absolute power to decide what was and was not a conflict of interest. Other officials would have to deal with such issues; he would not.
Trump challenged the credibility and the legitimacy of our entire intelligence community. The turbulence with the intelligence community has been further exaggerated by his firing of Director James Comey of the FBI and Congressional investigations around the collusion of Trump with Russia in the 2016 election.
Trump has taken steps to weaken intelligence agencies and make them dependent on the Executive Branch, a step called the “Deep State.” These steps see current and former intelligence officials colluding with the press to delegitimize the election and undermine Trump’s agenda.
Following belief in the legitimacy of “Deep State” allows Trump and his allies to delegitimize government institutions and stymies their abilities to function effectively. Steve Bannon, Trump’s strategic adviser, calls for deconstruction of the government institutions targeted by Trump and uses the concept to discredit anyone who opposes the president.
Departments who are in many cases outspoken opponents to the central mission of the agency.
Populism and How Trump is the Phony Friend of the Working Class
Trump ran his campaign on the idea that he was the 2016 version of Andrew Jackson, president of the United States in 1830, who ran on the concept of taking government away from the rich and powerful and returning it to the common man. But there was another side to Jackson. He was from Tennessee and an unapologetic slaveholder and a “brutal prosecutor” to Native Americans.
Trump did not follow up on his claim to be a populist as most of his cabinet picks came from the wealthiest of Americans and a coalition of generals and Goldman Sachs bankers.
This initial performance raises the question: Is Trump a friend of the working class or a phony?
Even though Trump could be inconsistent in delivering his message during the campaign, his core message was remarkably consistent:
- Make America great again
- America First
- Defeat radical Islamic Terrorism
- End the scourge of low economic growth
- Too few good jobs
- Sluggish wages
- Punish those who send jobs overseas
- Tax relief for the middle class
After the inauguration, Trump started to eliminate and replace the Health Care law known as Obama Care. Trump lost that battle, but Congress later put in provisions to the Tax Overhaul Bill that accomplished the main mission and reduced or eliminated health care insurance for up to 13 million Americans.
The new Tax code was a further example of Trump’s indifference for the working class. The final version of the plan gives the far biggest benefits to the rich, those like trump.
For Trump, according to the authors, populism is more of a marketing strategy than a set of deeply rooted beliefs. He inspired white supremacists, anti-Semitism, and the modern remnants of the Ku Klux Klan.
Trump inspired overlapping streams of discontent: race, immigration, culture, and religion. Followed by voters who were dissatisfied with the economy.
Motivation of the Trump Voter
So, what did motivate Trump voters?
Trump established himself right away in the campaign as the candidate who can cure the discontent of the unhappy voters of the day.
Race
Trump focused on the white voter, playing on racial prejudice. Of white working-class voters who believed that the American way of life needed to be defended from foreign citizens. Almost all of these voted for Trump.
Immigration
Only 27% of voters were in favor of deportation of illegal immigrants, almost all of them voted for Trump.
Fear of terrorism was another emotion favored by Trump voters. He vowed to end the success of ISIS and to protect America in so doing.
Culture and Religion
Trump was also successful in winning the votes of white evangelical Christians. He did this despite ways he broke values of the white evangelical Christians as for example the way he treated women.
Economics
Trump promised higher economic growth which would lead to less unemployment, more jobs and better wages. He appealed to the coal industry whose marketplace was on the wane. Coal is coming back he said, never mind the damage that using coal does to the environment.
Trump also won in rural areas where technology or globalization had impacted jobs. Counties with the most routine jobs like manufacturing, sales, clerical, the types of jobs that can be eliminated by sending them overseas or substituting the use of Artificial Intelligence to replace them. These types of voters went for Trump.
Other factors that helped Trump included:
- Outspokenness
- Willingness to tell it like it is
- His business experiences
- Not politically correct
- Opposition to abortion
There is no single reason Trump is our president today.
Part II: The Way Forward
Building a New Economy
A growing economy is the foundation of a better lifestyle for Americans. The New Deal and the New Society were formed by Democratic majorities who instilled in America more government involvement in our lives than we had grown to live with in the past.
Corporations grew in our country with the understanding that the purpose of the corporation was to make a profit which they share with their stockholders and employees. Since the 70’s corporations were viewed as owing something to their communities as well. They were dependent on the community for such things as infrastructure and marketplaces. Without roads, bridges, rail lines and the like, corporations could not distribute their products to their customers and without communities whose members made a decent living, there were not substantial markets for the products.
We need to understand that the government can work in partnership with private markets to achieve economic growth without cutting into the principles of competition and free markets that are predominant in our thinking about the role of government.
This brings us to two important needs: responsive government and responsible corporate behavior. Our authors of this book organize people’s needs in a concept called the Charter for American Working Families supplemented by A GI Bill for American Workers and a Contract for American Social Responsibility.
These concepts provide protection for workers and a robust job training and education program. The uniting of Republicans known as Eisenhower Republicans or Center-Republicans with Independents is an important first step in implementing these concepts. Integrating the needs and desires of colored voters with those of white voters is another step. The other alliance that must be nurtured is that between younger and older voters.
“Progressivism without a robust economic agenda will be neither attractive nor credible for a large section of our population.
Given that we agree on the need for robust economic growth, what are the basics of a decent life for American citizens in the twenty first century?
- Jobs with decent incomes
- Health care coverage across the board for all people living in America
- Education for parents and their children
- Housing in thriving neighborhoods
- Low crime rates
- Fair and efficient law enforcement
- Freedom from discrimination in race, gender, sexual orientation, and religion
- Access to treatment for addiction and mental health issues
- An ability to build up savings
- Retirement security
This might just be a wish list for a comfortable life but that’s the point. We want Americans to have a comfortable life and to achieve this we need a cooperation between government, corporate, and community politics. Politics should be about solving problems and resolving disputes not about aggravating divisions and hoping that divisions between conflicting groups can be exploited for immediate political gain.
Government job guarantees would begin with a robust rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure. This should be a high national priority.
Government participation in job creation should be linked with training, apprenticeships, and service.
We need protection of government programs such as food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security from cuts such as those proposed by the Trump administration.
Sherrod Brown, U.S. Senator from Ohio, has put forth a “Plan for Restoring the Value of Work in America”. This plan requires a minimum wage of $15 per hour guaranteed sick leave, stronger rules on overtime pay and the ability to obtain fair and just collective bargaining.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, New York, has introduced the “American Opportunity Agenda” featuring paid family leave, affordable child care and equal pay for equal work.
Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced legislation for what she calls the “gig” economy. This covers the gap between traditional workers and independent contractors. Under Warren’s plan, gig workers would have the opportunity to participate in the Social Security program, paying into it and benefitting from it when they become eligible.
Economic growth is essential to providing these common needs for all Americans.
A New Patriotism
In the Trump era, Nationalism has become the new definition for patriotism or dedication to country. Yet nationalism is most often associated with Nazism and fascism. Nationalism is inseparable from the desire for power.
Trump has been challenged for the use of his term “America first” primarily because of its association with isolationism. This implies that nations can go it alone in the world, that we stand for nothing besides our own self-interest and that we should give no thought to how the rest of the world thinks or lives.
Trump represents the “diplomacy of narcissism which is just as unhealthy for nations as it is for individuals.”
Everyone needs to stand up for himself but where patriotism is concerned, citizens love their country as they love no other. The United States exists in a world of 200 countries and 7 billion people. Does our country not stand for something more than our own existence? Can we survive and prosper if we are only for ourselves?
A new patriotism begins with a defense of our own values and a renewal of alliances with other democratic nations. We have every right to defend ourselves but a sharp decline of America’s influence under Trump has diminished our position amongst other world nations.
We need to mount a vigorous defense against racism and religious prejudice. It means identifying with those who have embraced the American dream. It means battling deportations that break up families.
This new patriotism should be built on a capacity for empathy. It should be built on an attempt to understand the situations that others find themselves in, the complexities of their thoughts and feelings. “Make America Empathetic Again” might be a better slogan than Trump’s “Make America Great Again”.
The New Civil Society
Under the umbrella of The Corporation for National and Community Service, new programs to support young people in their participation for one year of national service, paid for by government and corporations who benefit. This service could include military, religious missions, community organizations, the Peace Corps, and other forms of philanthropic support.
Community colleges train students in technical skills which make them more attractive to the community, helping them find jobs for example that replace jobs lost in the coal mining industry.
PICO National Networks is one example of a federation of state and local groups that organize religious congregations to drive change in their neighborhoods.
A similar organization, Industrial Areas Foundation (IAF) is engaged in work to reduce gun violence by mobilizing people to pressure state and local officials and firearms company officials into adopting safer standards for the manufacturing and sale of guns.
Community work can make its best contribution by building bridges across partisan divides as citizens come together to solve shared problems and rebuild their neighborhoods. By reviving a sense of shared identity based on mutual interests, communities can begin to counteract the mistrust and sense of hopelessness that helped fuel Trump’s rise.
A New Democracy
Our new democracy requires that more citizens get involved. Structural reforms can make our systems work better in the following areas:
- Changes to voting practices
- Campaign financing
- The Right to Vote
- Early voting
- Universal voter registration
- Moving election day to the weekends
- Harness digital technology to implement voter turnout
- Elimination of the electoral college by constitutional amendment
- Control of gerrymandering
- Protecting civil service
- Repeal of Citizens United
The rise of Trump underscores the need for a new era of democratic reform. These changes will require persistence, patience, creativity and determined political engagement.
Our Nation After Trump
Americans started right away after the inauguration to challenge Trump and his agenda. At the Women’s March of January 21, 2017, 700,000 people, mostly women, showed up in Washington, D.C. to protest Trump’s actions towards women prior to his election. Women knew their rights and they vowed not to see them denied.
These sentiments were echoed in towns and cities across America. It is estimated that 3 to 4.5 million people protested across the United States that day. These protests were followed by protests at nation’s airports over trump’s travel bans for certain mostly Muslim countries.
On April 15, protesters across the nation called on Trump to release his tax returns, which he has not done as we approach the end of 2017.
The demonstrations had an effect. The first effort by the Trump allies to repeal and replace Obamacare was rebuffed. Protesters continued to inform Republican leaders that they would not stand for the Trump agenda items.
Citizens were hungry to find ways to help their cause, asking questions like “what do I bring to the table? How can I help? What are my unique skills and strengths?
An outfit called Daily Action started a campaign using phone calls every day to counter Trump. Some of Trump’s nominees for cabinet positions were forced to withdraw their names from consideration because of these calls.
The Republican leadership has maintained its close relationship with Trump. Only the risk of losing their seats in Congress in a general election will cause them to change their minds.
Democratic victories in off-election years indicate the Republicans may be headed for trying elections in 2018 with the House and the Senate in possible for contention of change in leadership. To defeat Trumpism, Democrats must gain the support of Independents and moderate Republicans who are willing to suspend their Trump loyalties.
Exit polls of the 2016 presidential election showed that 61% of voters thought that Trump was unqualified to be president. This shows how deep the revulsion towards Trump and his supporters runs. Republicans have demeaned government service for political gains. “The fight against Trump is ultimately a fight to reclaim the dignity of public life and the honor of democratic politics.”
Rejecting Trumpism means rejecting a rollback of progress towards civil rights for African Americans, for women, and Latinos. For LGBTQ and religious minorities. Progress in these areas is still incomplete and we as Americans must continue to stand up against Trump and others who wish to tear down our country’s values.
It is our shared commitment to republican institutions and democratic values that makes us one nation.
Rating—two stars out of four
Two stars out of four. This book is full of good content which is biased towards an anti-trump philosophy. If you agree with this anti-Trump philosophy, you will like the book, otherwise you may find it tedious and somewhat confrontational. I recommend it for the actions it advocates to keep us from going backwards not forwards. This is a summary. For more details, read the book, One Nation After Trump.
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