Posted on December
31, 2019
Trump Tees Off
But how accurate is his scoring?
by
Daniel
Clark
In the middle of a long, rambling letter to Speaker of
the House Nancy Pelosi decrying his impeachment, President Trump took a moment to
rattle off a list of his accomplishments, under the heading, "You and your
party are desperate to distract from ..."
He's obviously correct that the Democrats are obsessing over their
quixotic attempt to remove him from office as a diversion from their inability
to campaign against him on the issues.
Is he equally correct in touting his many supposedly remarkable
achievements, or is he being just as creative in scoring his presidency as he
is in scoring a round of golf? Let's
score the president's scorecard, and find out.
Holes
in one
"cancellation of the unfair and
costly Paris Climate Accord" -- Actually, the Paris
Climate Accord still exists, just without American involvement. In fact, the United States had never been a
party to the agreement, President Obama's signature notwithstanding, because it
was never ratified by Congress.
Nevertheless, Trump's rejection of the pact was an important reversal in
stated U.S. policy. Not only that, but
Trump called out the United Nations on the fact that its agreement did not even
substantially address the mythical threat of "climate change," and was
primarily meant as an international wealth redistribution program that would
have mugged the American taxpayer.
"recognition
of Israel's capital, opening the American Embassy in Jerusalem, and recognizing
Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights" -- Even the
president's worst enemies should concede this as a genuine demonstration of
bold leadership on his part. Previous
presidents of both parties had recognized that we should have moved our embassy to Jerusalem, but backed away because
our diplomats believed it would be a provocative act. That's only true if one accepts the premise
that the existence of Israel itself is provocative. Israel has the right to choose its own
capital just as any other nation does.
Everyone really knew all along what was the right thing to do here, but
Trump was the one who took charge and followed through on it, and he deserves
to have that fact recognized.
Eagles
"incredible
jobs boom, record stock market, soaring confidence, and flourishing citizens"
-- Hyperbole aside, the stock market and consumer confidence are booming, and
recent jobs numbers have been very strong.
One must wonder where they would be if not for the "easy to win" trade
war.
"the elimination of the individual mandate" --
Technically, the Obamacare individual mandate still exists, except that there
is no longer any enforcement mechanism since Trump signed the 2017 tax cut
bill, which contained a provision eliminating the tax penalty for violating the
mandate. This would have scored higher
had he not undermined his own party's attempt to repeal Obamacare altogether,
by calling the House bill "mean" and demanding that they spend more.
"withdrawal
from the terrible Iran Nuclear Deal." -- President Obama had
thrown Iran an economic life preserver, in exchange for an agreement that was
unverifiable by design, and even though Obama acknowledged that it would result
in increased Iranian funding of terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. For Trump to ditch the deal and ratchet the
sanctions up again was undoubtedly the right move. His only mistake here has been to gullibly
describe the agreement as "the worst deal ever negotiated." Anyone can see that Obama did exactly what he
wanted to do by rescuing Iran. The
interests of the United States were never even represented at the negotiating
table.
"a
colossal reduction in illegal border crossings, the ending of
Catch-and-Release" -- Nobody can really know how many illegal
border crossings there are, but their numbers are surely on the decline since
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appels approved the Trump administration's Migrant
Protection Protocols. This is the policy
by which asylum seekers are returned to the adjacent territories from which
they entered the country while their cases are being expedited. The only negative here for the president is
that he was not content to simply take the credit for it that he deserves, but
instead tried to parlay it into a validation of his tariff policies. Trump had threatened Mexico with massive
tariffs if that country did not agree to take those aliens who are subject to
the MPP, to which Mexico replied that it was already taking measures to
accommodate them, and that the tariff threat was unnecessary. In truth, Mexico had no choice. If U.S. policy is not to allow them to enter
the U.S. from Mexico, then they stay in Mexico.
Birdies
"7
million new jobs; the lowest-ever unemployment for African Americans, Hispanic
Americans, and Asian Americans" -- Okay, but 7 million
jobs in three years is hardly unprecedented.
In fact, it mirrors the last three years under Obama. An unemployment rate of 3.5 is certainly very
low, but what does it mean? When Obama
boasted "full employment" with an unemployment rate of 5 percent, conservatives
were quick to point out that this number was artificially low because of the
plummeting labor force participation rate.
Under Trump, the labor force participation rate has inched up only
slightly, nowhere near its pre-Obama norm, so there's no honest way to take
Trump's unemployment numbers at face value.
"historic
tax and regulation cuts" -- Trump delivered on his tax cuts,
although the accompanying tax simplification has actually made filing more
complicated for many taxpayers, who have had to supplement their returns with
multiple new schedules. The president's
regulatory reforms have been mostly laudable, but also mostly achieved through
executive actions that may be easily undone by his successor.
"massive
new trade deals with Japan and South Korea." -- As usual, he's
overstating things. His deal with South
Korea was merely a revision of an existing agreement, whereas the one with
Japan is only a preliminary arrangement, made in hopes of arriving at a more
comprehensive deal in the near future.
"the first new branch of the United States
Military since 1947, the Space Force" -- He certainly deserves
credit for seeing this through. How good
an idea it is, only time will tell.
"becoming
the world's top energy producer" -- Trump is an infinitely
more energy-friendly president than his predecessor, but the U.S. actually
became the world's leader in energy production during the Obama years. Energy producers are surely better off
without Democrat obstruction, but they are not dependent on government for
their success.
Pars
"rebuilt
military" -- This is perhaps the most overstated accomplishment
since Vice President Al Gore "reinvented government." Trump did restore the Pentagon funding that
had been "sequestered" during previous budget agreements, which is commendable,
but hardly Reaganesque. Almost immediately, he declared that "our
military is again rich," and tried on that basis to divert defense funds to his
border wall project. If our military is
any stronger now than it was three years into the G.W. Bush administration,
that's only because Obama seldom used it, whereas Bill Clinton deployed it
promiscuously, without ever replacing the resources he'd spent.
"a
completely reformed VA with Choice and Accountability for our great veterans" --
The VA Choice Act, allowing veterans to avail themselves of private-sector
medical care, was passed with huge bipartisan majorities, and signed into law
by President Obama in 2014. President
Trump signed bills extending that law in 2017, and expanding it in 2019, but
it's an issue on which Congress has taken the lead, regardless of who holds the
White House.
"more
than 170 new federal judges and two Supreme Court Justices" --
Every president makes lots of judicial appointments, which makes this a
peculiar thing to brag about, but let's look at Trump's judges in terms of
quality, and not quantity. There was a
time when the Trumpies' canned response to his
conservative critics was, "But Gorsuch," meaning that the value of his Supreme
Court appointments superseded all concerns about Trump's ethics and his lack of
philosophical grounding. There's a
reason they do not now say, "But Gorsuch and Kavanaugh." Brett Kavanaugh is
a liberal, and will cancel Gorsuch out on rulings important to conservatives
for decades. The best that can be said
about Trump here is that, having no ideology himself, he didn't know any
better. He agreed to pick his judges
from a list provided by conservative think tanks, and so he did. The big questions are: who belatedly added Kavanaugh to that list, and who persuaded Trump to pick Kavanaugh, out of all the potential nominees?
Bogeys
"the
first decline in prescription drug prices in half a century."
-- Of all the convoluted metrics by which this can be measured, the only report
that actually claims such a decline comes from the president's own Council of
Economic Advisors, which itself fails to argue how the administration might be
responsible. In addition to claiming credit
for an accomplishment that arguably isn't, Trump expresses a desire to
collaborate on the issue with congressional Democrats. Watch out.
"strong
protection of the Second Amendment" -- Trump has voiced his support
for "red flag" laws, which would allow a judge to confiscate an American
citizen's firearms if he believes that citizen to be dangerous. How is that anything other than an
infringement on the right of a person to keep and bear arms? He has also expressed his willingness to
"stand up to" the NRA. Why does he think
an organization of concerned citizens committed to preserve the Second
Amendment is something to be stood up to?
"criminal
justice reform" A Republican president leads his party to
go soft on crime. -- What conservative
considers this an accomplishment? The
First Step Act that Trump signed, nicknamed The Jailbreak Act by its critics,
makes Michael Dukakis look like Joe Friday.
By signing it, and through many of his pardons, the president has
adopted the Janet Reno view that distinguishes high-level narcotics dealers
from "real criminals." The fact that
he's done it in part to suck up to reality show trash celebrities doesn't make
it any better.
"a
defeated ISIS caliphate and the killing of the world's number one terrorist
leader, al-Baghdadi" -- He would have a lot more credibility
here if not for his capricious pullout from Syria, which betrayed the Kurds,
our closest allies in the fight against ISIS, while setting more than 800 captured
ISIS members free to rejoin the fight.
In addition, Trump takes an unrealistically narrow view of the conflict,
by which he does not recognize that ISIS and al-Qaeda are one in the same. In fact, it was al-Qaeda co-founder Ayman
al-Zawahiri who commanded al-Qaeda in Iraq leader Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi to establish a caliphate in Iraq, a plan that depended heavily on a
premature American departure. Moreover, Trump
is all but sending al-Qaeda an engraved invitation to reestablish its training
camps in Afghanistan when he attempts to negotiate a U.S. withdrawal plan that
would leave the Taliban once again in control.
"the
replacement of the disastrous NAFTA trade deal with the wonderful USMCA"
For all the breath that Trump has expended condemning NAFTA, is it too much to
ask him to specify which parts of it are so bad, and how his USMCA is such a
dramatic improvement? Throwing in
colorful modifiers like "disastrous" and "wonderful" does nothing to
demonstrate his point. Furthermore, he
hasn't even done this yet. To date, only
Mexico and the U.S. House of Representatives have approved the deal. The U.S. Senate and the Canadian parliament
have yet to take it up. When it is
enacted, however, it will merely be a somewhat revised version of the thing he
calls disastrous.
"a
breakthrough Phase One trade deal with China." --
This agreement is not a done deal, either. President Trump and Xi Jinping have only
agreed to arrive at an agreement within the following weeks. What this eventual deal would consist of is
still a bit hazy. More importantly,
given what is supposed to be Trump's tactic in this trade war, no kind of
intermediate agreement should even be up for discussion. All it can accomplish is relieving the pressure
on China, so that it will not feel the need to make any significant concessions
in the near future.
"the building of the Southern Border Wall"
-- No, really. Not only is he counting
this as part of his record, but he's applying the proper name, "Southern Border
Wall," as if it were a thing. He might
as well have included the accomplishment of making Mexico pay for it. One of President Trump's many disturbing
similarities to Bill Clinton is his tendency to take credit for having done things
simply because he's talked about them, and this is perhaps the most egregious
example.
Keep in mind that this scorecard is only on those
issues that Trump himself is bragging about.
It's a decidedly mixed record, even without the inclusion of things he'd
rather not bring up. Just like his golf
game, his presidential performance is better than that of Barack Obama, for
whatever that's worth. That doesn't mean
it's nearly as wonderful as his own dubious scorekeeping would have us believe.
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