Whether you like Donald Trump or not, it seems not a bad
idea, given how far along he is in getting delegates to be the Republican
nominee at the summer party convention, to start envisioning, and somewhat coming
to terms with, what a White House with him in it might be like.
We need not feel this is inevitable (and I certainly don’t
plan on voting for him), but trying to anticipate what might, to some, seem an
appalling prospect is a little like preparing emotionally for surgery. You
know, imagine what the painful, risk-spotted journey will be like. Anticipating
the evils can help us absorb them a little better if/when they come. And if Trump
doesn’t become president, we’re OK; and maybe we will have “geared up for a
rough ride” for how bumpy the White House will be if someone else gets elected we’re not sanguine about.
First, think of the broad conception that some have lately
held: an outsider is running for president. He will shake things up
policy-wise, and talks about getting tough with our overseas enemies, in a way
he presupposes our current pres is not doing well enough. He has been employed
as an entertainer, while having held other positions (and in some respects, in
some of his career, he may have proven to be little more substantial than a vacuous
figurehead), leading some to have asked stoutly, “How is he qualified to be president?” His defenders will quickly
rejoin: “Aside from the debate of his own standing, it depends if he gets a
really good Cabinet around him.” A popular comical TV show has made jokes about
the idea of him becoming president.
Who am I talking about? Trump?
How about Ronald Reagan. Yes, that one who’s considered such a saint today.
(And yes, a joke was made—as if the joke couldn’t be more
obvious—about a possible Reagan presidency on Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In.)
I remember from the 1980 campaign: so much, seemingly to my
young mind anyway, of Reagan’s platform was to “get tough with the Russians.” (This
was unsettling, if not merely reflective of an unrealistic cast of mind we saw
in him, for those of us of an age to possibly be drafted, if the draft were
reinstated. I remember when Reagan won in November 1980, a fellow college student
could be heard uttering on the street, “Get ready to fight”—i.e., as a foot soldier.
At the time, I didn’t think the prospect of our going to war was that strong.)
Never mind that the big military buildup that Reagan was,
for years, given credit for actually started in Carter’s last term, in response
to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.
“Yes,” you say, “but whether Trump gets good people around
him is really up in the air. Reagan had solid people.”
Really? Let’s recall:
* David Stockman, his
budget director, who famously in about 1982 was (per the journalists’ metaphor)
“taken to the woodshed” for a spanking by Reagan, so to speak, after Stockman had
commented in some forum that Reagan’s economic trickle-down budget work was “basically
smoke and mirrors” (quotes in this whole entry are sometimes from memory; some
may not be exact). If Stockman was out of step here at all, it was in being
truthful, and I recall him as holding up honorably over many years; but it
showed some of the rot (policy-wise, at least) in the Reagan revolution.
* Ed Meese, Reagan’s blah blob of an attorney general. I
think Meese proved to be weakest when he did a soft-peddling initial
investigation of the Iran-contra scandal shortly after it broke in November
1986. It then took extensive congressional hearings, which made for TV theater
in the warm-season months of 1987, to get more of the truth out.
* Off-color comedy, you want? How about James Watt, the Secretary of
the Interior, who made headlines when (I had to read his Wikipedia article to
get clear on this), in responding to the issue of whether he had diversity in a
certain panel, he said, “I’ve got a Black, a woman, two Jews, and a cripple.” (I
remembered the “woman” component, erroneously, as “Oriental.”) Also, as I’d
forgotten till I read the Wiki article, there was a kerfuffle where he forbade
the Beach Boys to play at a holiday summer event on the National Mall, thinking
they would attract the wrong element. (I mean, even for 1984, Watt was well “out
of it.”)
##
These were among Reagan’s Cabinet, but perhaps some of the
worst problems with his presidency, leaving aside the Iran-contra scandal, were
his shows of a high-handed dismissiveness (in almost an amateurish way) that he
had toward the Soviets, which made him seem like a bumpkin scarily too close to
the “nuclear football.” Remember his joking remark, when sound-testing was done
for a radio show, and which upset the Soviets when it was picked up and
broadcast, about how “The Soviet Union has been outlawed; we begin bombing in
five minutes”?
Also, when the Soviets shot down a South Korean airliner in
about late 1983 (out of their over-abundance of caution about their borders),
though this wasn’t Reagan’s fault, it was part of a larger picture, composed of
many notable un-encouraging moments from 1981 through ’83, where by no means
did it seem we were making glorious headway with winding down the Cold War.
On Reagan’s part, it would take some moderation, vision-oriented
practical-mindedness, helpful political developments on the other side of the
Iron Curtain, and probably no small amount of subtle influence from his wife
Nancy to get him to be the adept statesman with the Soviets he has gotten
credit for in more recent years, starting (stumblingly) in about October 1986
when he first met with Mikhail Gorbachev (a particular meeting that did not go
well for Reagan). In 1987, Reagan got into more of a stride of winding down the
arms-race insanity with the Soviets, such as a significant arms-reduction
treaty later in the year. This would not have cohered with how he rhetorically
and diplomatically dealt with the Soviets in his first term.
##
So, not being conclusive about the whole-Cabinet idea, if Trump
was elected, and Chris Christie joined his
cabinet, what type of role would Christie take? A James Watt type? (If CC was
Secretary of the Interior, aside from the “promise” of controversial remarks,
maybe he would be pressed by an HR type on needing qualifications like knowing
what to do about forest fires. Brushfires like “Bridgegate”—a different matter,
and one with mixed reviews.)
