The Trump Presidency – Look, Don't Listen

By P.J. O'Rourke

Everybody's paying a lot of attention to President Trump. Everybody's looking and listening. But let's make sure we're paying the right kind of attention.

We should look, for sure. But I'm not so sure how much we should listen... because this is a noisy president.

All presidents are noisy. But usually the noise is high-flow rhetorical baloney rather than just-plain baloney about things like the size of the crowd at the inauguration.

Personally, I prefer plain baloney to what we were served by President Obama – baloney mixed with idealistic fruit salad and a nut fudge of liberal pieties.

But still, we should keep in mind that we have a president to whom we should apply the old "sticks and stones" playground adage.

Putting it in chief executive terms: Legislative sticks and regulatory stones may break my bones (or the bank), but words will never harm (or help) me.

So rather than listen to what President Trump has been saying, let's look at what he has been doing. What he has been doing is signing executive orders. Let's examine just four of them:

Curtailing Obamacare

President Trump directed federal agencies to "waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay implementation of" certain parts of Obamacare.

I have to hand it to Trump. With one executive order on his first day in office, he managed to show us something that the Obama administration had kept obscured for eight years. Trump showed us what Obamacare really is.

We can see what Obamacare really is because the parts of it that Trump waived are "any provision or requirement... that would impose a fiscal burden on any State or a cost, fee, tax, penalty, or regulatory burden on individuals, families, health care providers, health insurers, patients, recipients of health care services, purchasers of health insurance, or makers of medical devices, products, or medications."

That's all of Obamacare.

Obamacare was a cockamamie scheme – screwing up the market in health insurance at the expense of health care itself.

Obama's insistence on people getting insured for health care rather than getting health care was like making everyone install a burglar alarm and then put an ADT sticker in their window instead of locking their house.

Hiring Freeze on All Government Departments Not Engaged in National Security or Public Safety

Well, it's a start. But the federal government employs more than 2.8 million people. So this is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse... or rather, the jackass... actually, an enormous herd of jackasses... has run into the barn instead of away from it.

I'd rather have a smaller barn. But I like the hiring freeze for the result it will produce – which is none. The federal government will remain unresponsive, inefficient, and clumsy. The federal government is always unresponsive, inefficient, and clumsy.

The hiring freeze will produce the same result as the government "shutdowns" under President Clinton in 1995 and 1996 and under Obama in 2013. Also the same result as Vice President Al Gore's "reinvention of government." And the same as President Reagan's elimination of "government waste, fraud, and abuse." The federal government is unresponsive, inefficient, and clumsy no matter what.

Maybe this will give the Trump administration an idea for a novel approach to reducing the federal workforce. If government is unresponsive, inefficient, and clumsy no matter what, then fire the responsive, efficient, and agile people. Among 2.8 million employees, there must be some. They can get better jobs in the private sector and help the economy grow. It won't matter if they're fired. And the federal workforce will be reduced.

Withdrawal From the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The TPP trade deal was not necessarily a good deal.

Generally speaking, free trade is good. One country produces one kind of thing. Another country produces another kind of thing. They trade things and each country gets more different kinds of things.

But this theoretical mutual benefit is based on the assumption that there is free enterprise and economic liberty in the countries trading with each other.

Among the countries involved in TPP negotiations were Vietnam, Malaysia, Mexico, and Brunei. Economic liberty is badly distorted by corruption in most of these countries. Free enterprise is sorely oppressed by authoritarianism in some. The rule of law is not strong, reliable, or transparent in any.

What if you needed a new roof? And you gave the job to the lowest bidder? Then you discovered the roofing contractor was using indentured workers, forced labor, and 10-year-old children to nail your shingles... plus the shingles were made out of paper.

You'd be morally better off if you had paid more for your roof. Also, you'd be drier if it rains.

Giving the Go-Ahead to the Keystone XL Pipeline

The most important thing for America is our national security. For nearly a generation, the worst threat to our national security has been trouble in the Middle East. The Middle East is able to cause trouble because of its energy resources.

What if all the energy resources we needed were readily available at a reasonable price here in North America?

In that case, who do you think could go pound sand?

As I said, with President Trump, we should look more than listen.

And I have another reason for saying so. I'm reminding myself as well as Stansberry Digest readers.

I'm not a fervent Trump supporter. Although he's 70, he has a youthful – or to put it bluntly, immature – personality. The president of the United States is the nation's adolescent-in-chief.

I suppose this, like noisiness, is true of every president. The office of the presidency turns whoever occupies it into a sort of humongous teen – over-privileged, possessing more strength than sense, and thinking he's the center of the world.

I have three adolescents at home. And I've learned not to listen to them too much. What they have to say seems to go back and forth between the extremes of "I hate you!" and "Can I have $50, please?" with not a lot of substance in between. And I don't even want to think about what they tweet.

I do, however, watch my adolescents. I look carefully to make sure they're exercising a modicum of wisdom about the important things in life, engaging in some measure of moral thinking, doing a sufficient amount of their homework, and not swiping more than a few of my beers from the fridge.

So far, with our adolescent-in-chief, I like what I see. Plus, my six-pack is intact. This kid doesn't even drink.

Regards,

P.J. O'Rourke