I was getting my hair cut in the local working class barbershop, a place where you can get your ears lowered inexpensively while hearing what the man in the street makes of the world. As it happens, President Trump’s bizarre press conference was on the flat screen instead of the usual sports.
Several patrons, or at least the loudest, expressed delight that Trump was socking it to “the media,” an idiotic term since it encompasses actual purveyors of reported facts along with infotainment TV channels and propaganda outlets like Breitbart and Fox. But clearly, watching the President of the United States bully the smart alecks at the New York Times and CNN was gratifying to many members of the grassroots where I live.
The great question is whether the enthusiasm for this kind of rant can be sustained if Trump fails to keep the populist promises he has made to working class people — better wages, better jobs, affordable health care, a brighter future for their kids. So far he has maintained his 40 percent favorable, 60 percent unfavorable position by the same techniques he used in campaigning.
He has signed with a flourish a few executive orders that he has claimed will change life for the better, but may not. He has chosen a more polite version of Scalia for the Supreme Court, but the rulings inspired by that judicial philosophy have tended to favor the state over the individual and business over labor, which may not delight Trump’s base, except when it comes to its antagonism to liberal social change in cases involving abortion rights, same-sex marriage and the like.
The theatrical attempt to ban immigrants without due process or congressional sanction quickly wound up in court, suggesting Trump will have to try to govern wthin constitutional parameters. His press conference showed him resorting to the usual bag of tricks of the demagogue when thwarted. Demonize foes and scapegoat critics.
Judges who rule against the administration are traitors, putting national security at risk. A free press is the enemy of the people. And in the face of any crisis or scandal, he inevitably takes a page from the National Socialist playbook and says the country has been stabbed in the back by immigrants, Muslims, hispanics or whichever villain plays best in Peoria.
Is this the behavior of a budding autocrat or of a spoiled rich boy who has never had to endure being told he’s wrong? Often it seems as if he’s pouting because the Washington establishment, the mainstream media, the courts, and a majority of the people feel no need to inhabit his alternative reality. King Canute has met his ocean and he doesn’t like it’s refusal to obey. But he’d better get used to it.
It is too early to say how his executive orders will play down at the barbershop level. He has rolled back an order denying mentally ill people the right to buy guns. But no matter how much they like hunting, do the barbershop boys really want to be fair game for heavily armed lunatics? Do they want financial planners to be free to fleece retirees, or would they prefer they be held to a fiduciary standard? Do they think profits for coal companies justify their being allowed to pollute streams their drinking water comes from? We shall see.
House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, with a straight face, called this last executive order a case of Trump making good on his promise to drain the Washington swamp. But aren’t most of these actions really the swamp as usual, Washington allowing special interests to profit at the expense of the average citizen?
If Trump’s actions and his appointments so far are a guide to how he intends to govern, the elites he rails against will have their Mar-a-Lago-size nests feathered and the barbershop voters will be getting a haircut they didn’t bargain for, administered by a barber who resembles Sweeney Todd.
Next time, a look at several instances of Trump and the Republicans struggling to make good on big promises, and who is going to win and who will be left behind. Spoiler alert: Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.