The Intellectual Case for Donald Trump

Right-wing wunderkind Ross Douthat has recently claimed that all "intellectual" arguments for Trump fail because of the man's ungovernable personality and temperament. We have no idea what he really believes, or what he might do, cerebral and academic apologia to the contrary. May I suggest a few daring points in response? Trump is not nearly as unpredictable as some of his opponents (and apologists) claim, and a basic overall consistency can be detected in his history. That being said, he is not an expert in policy matters, but that needn't worry us because he will have a good team advising him. Finally, as a salesman (not an administrator, though clearly already a consummate politician), his current policies and even his personal presentation must be understood as part of an ongoing pitch, not as a settled set of proposals.

First, his basic consistency: Trump was once a Democrat at a time when the "conservative Democrat" was not such an endangered species, but his consideration of a presidential run for the Reform Party in the year 2000 proves that he held the same convictions about national policy as he holds now. (The Reform Party's actual candidate in 2000 was former Republican candidate Pat Buchanan, who has dubbed Trump his political successor.) What is more interesting than his Democratic past is the Democratic present. In the first debate, Hillary Clinton barely went after Trump's policies, instead attacking him for not paying income tax (despite this being perfectly legal if one uses the loopholes shrewdly) and for profiting off the 2008 housing crisis. (A recent Oscar-winning movie, The Big Short, celebrated several analysts who also made money off the meltdown, and no one seems to have taken a moral issue with them.) Part of this is because many of Trump's more controversial policies are also her policies: she, too, favors punishing foreign countries that engage in currency manipulation with tariffs, and not only does she also want to increase border security, but she actually voted for a wall along the border of the U.S. and Mexico in 2006. Yet Trump presents his own espousal of these policies in his typical excessive style, and since Clinton is building her case against him primarily on his personality, she is forced to keep her agreement with him on these points a secret – thus ceding these positions to him in the public forum. It is hard not to see a salesman's intuitive artistry in Trump's strategy here. And if that's the case, it suggests that – to some extent – the mercurial, extremist Trump we see on stage is something of an act. Slavoj Žižek has suggested that Trump's offensive style is a way of concealing how moderate and reasonable he really is. But it is also part of his current strategy of negotiating, the art of war combined with the art of the deal. Because the public is frustrated and angry, he matches their feelings as part of his "pitch" – "pacing," as Scott Adams put it. Like any effective salesman, he is "pitching" his policies, but he is in the process of negotiating them, based not so much on public reaction as on the qualified feedback he receives. Consider his tax policy, the only noteworthy thing Clinton went after him for during the debate. Yes, some independent studies said his policy would greatly increase the debt (though the same studies Clinton's fact-checkers cited contradicted her claim that her own policies wouldn't add "a dime" to the debt), but he has revised his tax policy since the campaign began, and I expect that it will be revised again. Already such luminaries as Arthur Laffer, founder of supply-side economics, and Lawrence Kudlow have offered Trump advice on his economic policies. Now, getting guys like those to volunteer their help looks a lot like he's operating from a position of strength. His economic policies are, we could say, in the "negotiation" stages. In the same way, his policy on illegal aliens always allowed for a policy of "touchback," and his supposed flip-flop on amnesty is therefore more of him gently "altering the deal." And this brings us to maybe the most important point: no, Trump is not a policy expert, but he doesn't really need to be. As fellow New York icon Tom Wolfe observed, high intelligence is not necessary to be an effective president. Given how complex the world is now, almost no one can be the kind of technocratic expert we seem to want our president to be. Gary Johnson consistently proves he is not this kind of expert, and while Hillary Clinton may fit the bill (i.e., she may be the most "qualified"), given the way the world looks right now, how she has run the machine does not make her experience look like an asset. Trump, on the other hand, for all his self-aggrandizement, is perfectly aware of his limitations. In his book Crippled America, he explains how he will solve the health care problem in America: he will lock the nation's top experts on the subject in a room together and not let them out until they figure something out. At first, this sounds outrageous and risible, but give it a moment's reflection: wouldn't you prefer a president who governs based on what the experts decide rather than his own agenda? This raises a point about Trump's style not often observed: as aggressive as he is to his enemies, he has a habit of reaching out to them for his projects, perhaps realizing the advantage of a corrective or complementary point of view. As much as he may disown Trump now, Tony Schwartz, ghostwriter of The Art of the Deal, reveals that Trump approached him after reading a negative article that Schwartz had written about him. But this is consistent with Trump's style. When he was going to build golf courses in Florida, environmentalist Ed Russo was vocal in opposing him. Trump approached Russo and actually put him in charge of the environmental work on the courses. Russo has since written a book lauding Trump as an environmentalist. And it is fascinating that his recently released list of Catholic advisers includes figures like John Klink, former president of the International Catholic Migration Commission and someone who has a long record of advocacy for migrants and refugees of all religions. Will Klink's presence influence Trump's rhetoric or policy on refugees? We'll see, but for now it is important to remember that, reportedly, Trump wants his V.P. to be in charge of most domestic and foreign policy, and while he wanted to offer the job to Chris Christie, he ended up going with Mike Pence based on his advisers' counsel. This, if true, refutes the stereotype of him as bullheaded and unreasonable. This doesn't mean Trump is an ideological vacuum, but rather that he has basically sound conservative instincts and a talent for recruiting competent people, even his critics, to come up with the best policies that are consistent with them. This, Mr. Douthat, is the intellectual case for Donald Trump. We'll see if time bears it out.