Trump at 100 Days: Who Else Will Blow Your Horn If You don't?

President Trump has spent the evening of the correspondents dinner going back to his comfort level--rallying crowds of angry people whose cheers serve as balm for all the things that didn't work out as he hoped.  The correspondents, in turn, spent the evening, rallying their own troops, laughing at what can be laughed at, and deflecting criticism of them as fake news.

Well, if one has to choose sides on this, anyone not emotionally involved in the matter will probably take the correspondent's side, if only because they are the only ones who can admit to having to correct themselves now and then. President Trump and his supporters, on the other hand, appear to be quite unable to recognize their own or his biases and lack of understanding.

As many others have already pointed out, we are in the midst of government by ratings. Daily polls of Trump's popularity are like applause meters. If he pays attention to them, and I rather assume that he does, it must be a daily struggle to explain away why his polls are so low. No wonder he needs to go back to the cheers of his base in order to convince himself that these figures don't matter. After all, he can hear the cheers while statistics are remote and abstract--things he does not much care for.

The most recent flap is over exactly what he has accomplished during the first hundred days of his administration.  He cites a laundry list of things he has done, which seem to be mostly signing orders and shouting at anyone (courts mostly) who opposes him. To give him the benefit of the doubt, these probably do appear large achievements to him because he (and his White House staff) had no idea of how to get things accomplished in a system of checks and balances.

I recognize his dilemma. We once had a vice president at the university who had risen too quickly through the ranks. He was not an unwise or unintelligent man but the scope of his responsibilities was beyond him. He never knew how to delegate or trust his staff, and he seemed to spend a lot of time covering up his inexperience or blaming others when the inevitable hit the fan. It was a shame in a way because it cost him any chance of becoming a president in the future, while a slower advancement might have served him much better. Unfortunately, Trump may well be rattling sabers at North Korea in order to cover up his own failings.

If asked what he has accomplished in the first hundred days, I would say that he has not changed Washington at all, and once he goes out of office, however that happens, Washington will go I immediately back to where it was before him. In other words, he did not drain the swamp.  He merely changed the alligators. This, it has to be said, is how he runs his businesses--changing alligators by firing them.

Only time will tell where he is going to take this country. My guess is that he will take it on a major learning curve of its own. The greatest lessons will be learned by his supporters who will find it almost impossible to admit that his purposes and interests only sound like their own. There is an historical subtext in the US about intellectuals and elites. Middle America has reason to distrust those whose policies have dammed financial reward at the very top. They would love to see this upper class given its comeuppance and the rewards more generally distributed. (Actually, most of us would) What they don't understand is that their president doesn't want to dismantle this upper class. He wants to be part of it. He has never been accepted by the old money, the landed gentry of the founding fathers. Amassing money does not gain entry, any more than riding in a gilded coach means that the president has become an aristocrat. He doesn't know this yet, and neither do they.

I've always said that he may turn out to be a rather tragic figure. It remains to be seen how far he will go to gain that elusive respect.