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Playbook: "Is there anything left to learn about Trump?”
IS THERE ANYTHING LEFT TO LEARN about President DONALD TRUMP, any fresh analysis that’s left? Has he changed at all -- one iota, one shred -- over the 1,329 days of his presidency?
We grappled with this question in the wake of the excellent reporting in the BOB WOODWARD book. Was there anything at all to take from it? Or are the last three-plus years just a tumbling cycle of repeating self-destruction?
THERE’S ONE THING worth thinking about, and it’s a throughline of TRUMP’S presidency. Imagine if he learned at some point that he can’t go it alone -- nor should he.
It doesn’t benefit him politically, or the country writ large. It’s actually more advantageous, for him and for the country, to forge alliances and involve others in the machinations of the government.
FOR EXAMPLE …
-- SPEAKING TO WOODWARD or any author in and of itself isn’t considered political malpractice. BARACK OBAMA did it, as did JOHN BOEHNER, when WOODWARD was reporting on “The Price of Politics.”
-- SPEAKING TO WOODWARD or any author in and of itself isn’t considered political malpractice. BARACK OBAMA did it, as did JOHN BOEHNER, when WOODWARD was reporting on “The Price of Politics.”
But OBAMA enlisted his entire staff to support him -- a stenographer was in the room, and key aides were cleared to speak to WOODWARD.
For that book, BOEHNER’S team seems to have forked over filing cabinets’ worth of notes to help give its side of the story.
TRUMP, on the other hand, looks to have just held riffing sessions with WOODWARD, while the Washington Post legend burrowed his way into his senior staff with much of the White House none the wiser.
THE RESULT is a White House that was almost completely blindsided by Wednesday’s revelations.
-- IMAGINE IF TRUMP HAD SWALLOWED HIS PRIDE and personally told congressional leaders what he told WOODWARD about the coronavirus: that he understood how deadly this was, and he wanted Congress to step up and help him beat it.
That way, there would’ve been a robust response -- and the legislature would’ve had skin in the game. (BTW: Congress was getting briefed about Covid during impeachment in January and February. People were worried. We witnessed it in the Capitol.)
BUT HE DIDN’T DO ANY OF THIS. Instead, he treated WOODWARD -- a meticulous reporter with over six decades of work -- like a “Dear Diary” hotline, all while much of his professional staff was in the dark.
AS FOR TRUMP, we’ve never been all too interested in his moods, whether he’s seething or not, angry, happy, upbeat -- we have found those kinds of nuggets to be fun, but largely immaterial.
But what we are interested in is whether he has learned at all about government and how to navigate it. And the analysis at this point has to be that he’s learned very little.
The totality of his job isn’t watching television, tweeting and issuing executive orders. It’s governing -- even with legislators he doesn’t like, and with a media he considers hostile.
