Читать книгу The Trump Presidency - Donald F. Kettl - Страница 5

As vote counting began on the evening of November 8, 2016, just about everyone was sure how it was going to work out. The Clinton campaign had designed an elaborate show, complete with a glass ceiling scheduled to be demolished when her victory was announced. Hillary Clinton herself had picked out a white suit to commemorate the work of suffragists who had worked a century earlier to win the right to vote for women. Americans never saw that show because American voters stunned everyone—even the Trump campaign. The story of the first year of the administration of President Donald J. Trump was one no one really expected to write.

That year created a presidency like no other. Many people were sure that, after the election, Trump would put aside his favorite smart phone and cut down on tweets. He did not and, in fact, turned tweeting into an entirely new form of presidential communications, unmediated by the media. Trump had promised to “drain the swamp,” and in his first 100 days he issued more executive orders than any president since Harry Truman. He pledged attacks on illegal immigration, Obamacare, and the Paris climate agreement and launched frontal assaults against all of them. But he battled to post legislative victories.

The first year of his administration saw an unprecedented frenzy. Tweet storms came, often unpredictably. The exhausting pace of the president’s policy announcements came side-by-side with a growing investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election. Not long ago, TV manufacturers warned consumers not to keep any image long on their televisions because it would burn into the screen. “Breaking news” would have been indelibly branded onto everyone’s television by the end of 2017.

Trump admitted he was struggling to master his new job. In an April interview with Reuters, he confided, “I loved my previous life. I had so many things going.” And, in a telling admission, Trump said, “This is more work than in my previous life. I thought it would be easier.”¹

It will take political scientists and historians decades to sort out the remarkable tale of the Trump presidency. But there are important clues in the first year’s battles over four important policy issues: immigration, health insurance, climate change, and the campaign against “fake news.”