Ashok Dhillon
Feb 15, 20176 min
On January 20, 2017, Donald J. Trump became President of the United States of America. And since then nothing has been the same in American politics, the White House, the Presidential Office or in the United States of America.
The new President, Donald Trump, came into a generally stable and arguably improving economic-political environment, built and maintained by the 8 years of the Obama administration. In the period of less than a month, the Trump Presidency has shattered that relative calm, upturned the functioning of the U.S. government and its credibility, and had the perforce resignation of the Trump hand-picked National Security Advisor, General Michael Flynn.
Almost every single day of this Presidency has been a minor or major scandal including the President, his inner circle, his nominees, and his policies. It has been an unprecedented breathless 26 or so days, as often stated by the American main stream media, since the inauguration, and it promises to get more exciting.
When President Obama took over in January 2009, America had come off the rails in the most spectacular fashion. The crash of late-2008 had almost destroyed the American, and the World’s, financial and economic systems. Additionally, America’s international reputation was in tatters after the infamous and universally condemned George W. Bush era of ‘War on Terror’ that shattered the wrong countries, for the wrong reasons, and killed millions of innocent civilians in Muslim countries.
To right the ‘off the rails’ America on all fronts, Obama had to work and battle, as the first ‘African American’ President, the blatant racism and bigotry of the Republican Party, the collapsing economy, and the two major out-of-control wars that were racking up unacceptable costs, in monetary, military, civilian, and reputational terms.
In the eyes of the World, Obama succeeded brilliantly as U.S. President, but in the eyes of enough voting Americans, he was a failure, and they elected Donald Trump instead of Hillary Clinton, to bring about real change.
Well, as the saying goes, ‘be careful what you wish for, because you might actually get it’. In President Trump, Americans who elected him, have got the radical change they had wished for, if the last 26 days or so are any indication of change from the status quo.
Firstly, it has become quite clear that this administration takes its cues from the President seriously, and has not been shy, just like President Trump, to speak falsely, repeatedly and without hesitation. The President has been challenged again and again about his blatant lies, as have been his Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, his Advisor KellyAnne Conway, among others, and now his National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn, who had to resign because of ‘inadvertent’ lying to the Vice President.
The falsehoods that have been flagged so far in this Presidency and proven as blatant falsehoods, in these early days, have been stunning and unprecedented.
The Trump administration has been so bold about not speaking the truth that it is now known as the Administration of ‘Alternative-Facts’. And that is a problem. In society, no person is relied on by others when it is found that they consistently rely on ‘Alternative Facts’ to tell their side of the story. If the United States government becomes known for not telling the truth (President Nixon comes to mind), it becomes dysfunctional and loses all credibility.
Donald Trump, so far, has proven that succeeding in business does not necessarily make for a good public servant, a good President, or for good governance for that matter. High Office in government requires an inordinate amount of sobriety, restraint, good sense, and above all else a highly developed sense of altruism, all of which Trump lacks.
Donald Trump’s perceived success in business, and his many bold and at times controversial statements and promises led to a lot of Americans putting their faith in him during the election, to lead their country back to greatness again. Most of those that backed him are still hopeful, in spite of mounting evidence that his statements, and his Advisor’s statements, cannot be entirely relied upon at any given time, and may change on a day by day and sometimes on a hour by hour basis.
Having put such hope and faith in Donald Trump one cannot blame the supporters for stubbornly holding on to their aspirations of him. Yet, President Trump’s performance since the inauguration has not been reassuring. His illusion of productivity and frenetic activity in the early days of the Presidency have given some of his supporters the feeling that he is carrying out his promises post-haste, just as he promised he would. The fact that there is not much substance behind the showmanship eludes them.
President Trump is unconventional to say the least, but, unconventionality can come in many forms, some very productive and some very destructive. Where the worry starts to mount for the unconventionality of Donald Trump is his proclivity to lie, shoot from the hip, and his seeming distaste for preparation and details, and his need for constant self aggrandizement. These above mentioned traits are anathema to good governance. And so he has proven in these past early days. His showman nature resulted in him rolling out numerous ‘Executive Orders’ upon taking power, that were more ‘Statements of Intent’, and were more for show than for implementation.
Trump of course framed these Executive Orders as fulfilment of his many campaign promises ‘to the American people’, because he would refer them (the Executive Orders) as such, upon signing them, but which in reality could not be moved upon, as there were no operational details attached to them.
The most important one was the ‘Repeal and Replace ObamaCare on Day One!’
Well, it turned out after the Executive Order was signed, that neither he, nor his team, nor the Republican Party had any ‘Replacement’ aspect of ObamaCare worked out to implement after the Repeal part was triggered.
So of course nothing happened after the Executive Order was signed, except, the Republican Party bosses started to back pedal from their ‘Repeal & Replace Immediately’ rhetoric, citing the complexity of the Health Care Policy.
They obviously had not looked at or tried to understand the complexities of replacing Obamacare with something really workable, forget something better, for years under Obama Presidency (as it was just a tool to beat him up for political points) before having to actually try and enact the ‘Replace’ part.
Days later, President Trump was on National Television, after all the criticism that arose from disappointed Republican base upon the back pedalling, stating that in ‘a year or two’ a well thought out replacement for ObamaCare would implemented. Not quite what he had said all along or what the Trump supporters wanted to hear, but the lack of seriousness on his, his team’s and the Republican Party’s part, made any real action and implementation impossible (After the Flynn fiasco the Republicans are again making noises to repeal ObamaCare immediately, to distract the American people from the potential fallout from the ‘Russia-Flynn-Gate’).
Needless to say, the other BIG promise, the Mexico Border Wall, is neither funded nor has a credible means to be funded (and the price is far bigger than anticipated), or is going to be seriously attempted any time soon. A great many Republican Senators are not in favour of the ‘Wall’, which adds another degree of difficulty to the start of the implementation. Trump promised it repeatedly and forcefully and promised Mexico would pay for it, which Mexico equally forcefully rejected, and now it’s all up in the air, instead of being solidly in the ground.
The one area where Trump and his team rolled out an Executive Order for immediate implementation was the ‘Ban of Refugees and Immigration’ from 7 identified predominately Muslim countries for a certain amount of time. That hurry to roll out a campaign promise and/or policy that would earn brownie points with the electoral base, turned out to be an unmitigated implementation and policy disaster. At the current time it is on hold under the orders of at least two courts that have found serious flaws in it. The Trump administration is back to the drawing board having to try and do it properly next time, while its opponents are willing to fight such a policy all the way to the Supreme Court.
The promise to ‘Drain the Swamp’ (DTS) turned out to be an outright lie to the people, as nominee after nominee, to head some of the most powerful agencies that would affect every ordinary American’s life in every way, turned out to be a Billionaire, or a proven anti-fairness, deregulating, anti-ordinary people, anti-public education, anti-civil rights, anti-environment candidate. This was one hell-of-a-way to drain the swamp by adding to it some of the most vicious predators there are in the swamp, but there it is -‘DTS’- Trump-style.
As the drama of Mike Flynn’s ‘Russia conversations and connections’ starts to play out, the Trump administration is finding itself entangled repeatedly by its own predominant preference to function with untruthfulness, and a predilection towards ignoring the rules of the highest office. That fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants means of operating the most powerful government in the World is playing havoc, not with the Country so far, but with the Trump administration itself, and making them look awfully amateurish.
But behind the almost comical theatrics of a clownish Donald Trump and his less than professional inner circle, both prone to seemingly endless gaffes, is the realization that this team of buffoons is steering the largest and most powerful country in the World, that if not corrected, are bound to do America and the World a lot of damage. The World is strapped onto a Trump roller-coaster, and so far it’s been fun.