by When Barack Obama became President, Republicans in Congress pledged to oppose him tooth and nail. That was a bad idea. It implied that they were hoping the President would fail. This implies one of two things: either they wished ill for the country, or they were completely convinced that Obama was wrong and they were right on every important issue. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we can assume hubris rather than dislike of country (or worse). But hubris brings with it its own set of issues as anyone who has read Greek Mythology can attest. If Obama had achieved success, the Republicans would have looked very, very bad, particularly after 8 years of GW Bush. It could have set back the Republican Party for a generation. Fortunately for Republicans, Obama has come across as inept. The best defense his supporters can conjure up is, in fact, the fact that Republicans didn’t cooperate with him. But even without the help of Congress, there were many things a President can accomplish. As head of the Executive Branch, Obama could have reduced unnecessary spending, graft and corruption, to name initiatives that are always popular and which have been ignored by American Presidents during my lifetime. Even many of the worst run third world countries have managed to produce a leader who does tries that approach for a few years.
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When Barack Obama became President, Republicans in Congress pledged to oppose him tooth and nail. That was a bad idea. It implied that they were hoping the President would fail. This implies one of two things: either they wished ill for the country, or they were completely convinced that Obama was wrong and they were right on every important issue. Giving them the benefit of the doubt, we can assume hubris rather than dislike of country (or worse).
But hubris brings with it its own set of issues as anyone who has read Greek Mythology can attest. If Obama had achieved success, the Republicans would have looked very, very bad, particularly after 8 years of GW Bush. It could have set back the Republican Party for a generation.
Fortunately for Republicans, Obama has come across as inept. The best defense his supporters can conjure up is, in fact, the fact that Republicans didn’t cooperate with him. But even without the help of Congress, there were many things a President can accomplish. As head of the Executive Branch, Obama could have reduced unnecessary spending, graft and corruption, to name initiatives that are always popular and which have been ignored by American Presidents during my lifetime. Even many of the worst run third world countries have managed to produce a leader who does tries that approach for a few years. We are long overdue.
Obama could also have achieved success by placing himself in opposition to the policies of his predecessor which had generated such disastrous outcomes, and which, not incidentally, were supported by the Congressional opposition to Barack Obama. That would have been a no-brainer. But Obama’s approach toward dealing with the Great Recession was to keep doing what GW had been doing, and above all, holding nobody accountable. Mimicking GW and doing nothing to restore faith in the system had predictable results – a lackluster recovery to an economic meltdown.
So Obama saved the Republicans from themselves with his ineptitude. And now we have the spectacle of millions of Americans on the left behaving the same way the Republican Congress did eight years ago. The protesters are counting on Trump to fail as badly as Barack Obama (and GW) did before. And perhaps he will. Trump’s policies aren’t entirely thought out, and shooting from the hip often generates poor outcomes. But luck matters. And so does the ability to communicate, and to bring the crowds to your side. If Trump fails, it will probably be in a very different way than Obama (and GW) did before him. His failures may not look as bad as their failures. Similarly, if Trump’s policies are sufficiently unorthodox, in those areas where he does succeed, the appearance of success may well be magnified. Chewing out Boeing over the bill for the next generation of Air Force one or cowing Ford into keeping a few jobs in the US may be little more than good optics, but good optics create positive morale, and positive morale feeds back on itself. There is also no reason to believe he will stop with Boeing or Ford.
If I were to advise the protesters, it would be like this: wait until Trump has had a chance to fail before you protest. If he does fail, after all, it will come fast and it will come soon. But if he connects with the public, and you oppose him from the beginning, a lot of voters won’t be taking you seriously by the time the next election rolls around.