… Given the same Congressional circumstances, of course.
For example, I don’t think the “standard” President would’ve made the Chicago tweet. I do think there’s a not insignificant likelihood that the “standard” president would’ve also tried something like the current censorship with the National Parks Service online.
I guess I’m just trying to sort through what’s happening because he’s Trump and what’s happening because he’s the Republican standard bearer. Might have even more relevance later on in his relations with Congress.
I think the transition disorder and the blatant unsuitableness of some of the Cabinet picks are all Trump’s.
Likewise the petulant tweeting, the rambling egotistical speeches, the war with the media, the feuding, the dubious business entanglements, the lawsuits, the personal coarseness, the non-release of tax returns, the nepotism, and the overwhelming old-white-maleness of the Cabinet as a whole. I think no competent mainstream Republican politician would be saddled with any of that.
The general policies such as reinstating the global gag rule on health organization funding, the attacks on Obamacare and other Obama policies, and probably the leaning on science agencies to stop them contradicting conservative ideology about climate change etc., are probably not much different in the most part from what Pence or any other establishment Republican would do if it was his butt in the Oval Office chair.
The TPP withdrawal, though, I just can’t guess. Would depend on the “standard” Republican, perhaps.
I doubt that the “standard” Republican president would have spent nearly the entirety of his first two days in office whining, falsely, that his inauguration crowd was under-reported or going to the CIA to make a speech falsely declaring that it was the media that created the impression that he had a problem with the intelligence community or declaring that we should have violated international law by stealing Iraq’s oil (with a sidebar comment that he might try to do that, himself).
Freezing government hiring and announcing withdrawal from trade agreements would not be outlandish for a Republican president.
Trump is a very unusual politician in some ways. He’s far more combative and thin-skinned than most.
But while Trump definitely brings a huge amount of crap on himself, one thing remains clear: ANY Republican who won the election would have gotten similar blowback.
You think Trump’s flare up with John Lewis is new? Hardly. Lewis compared John Freaking McCain to George Wallace eight years ago! ANY Republican (be it Jeb, Rubio, Kasich or Fiorina) would be called a racist and a radical. ANY conservative nominee for Attorney General would get the Jeff Sessions treatment. If Rubio were President, you think Slate or HuffPo would be treating him any more respectfully?
I happen to think Trump really IS a horrible person, which is why I didn’t vote for him.
But he’d get the same scorn from liberals even if he were much nicer.
I doubt that your standard GOP prez would threaten to slap big tariffs on car manufacturers for building cars outside the US, nor threat to do so to foreign manufacturers who don’t produce cars in the US. Come to think of it, I doubt most Democratic presidents would do that, either. Oh, and most GOP types would be in favor of the TPP. Democrats, not so much.
To the extent that Trump has a political philosophy, he’s a conservative, populist, nationalist. Which doesn’t bode well for us in the next 4 years if he gets much of agenda through Congress (I’m counting on him NOT being able to do that).
I doubt that any “ordinary” president, Republican or Democrat, would have given his son-in-law the office right next to the Oval Office so as to be his closest advisor. No other president would have hidden their financial dealings and income tax situation for this long, either.
The open hostility to the press is new. Guess we’ll see how that turns out. It looks like the press plans on needling him about the size of his inaugural crowd for a while yet, probably until Trump learns to stop roaring back, “No! Biggest ever!!” It’s becoming comical.
Going back to the campaign, this site compares the Republican platform to the Trump platform.
ISTM probably the biggest divergence with “standard” Republican policy is his isolationism regarding trade, and his willingness to spend on jobs/infrastructure.
Trump is a big government guy who loves using eminent domain. He champions (or claims to champion) right wing causes but with left wing solutions. I expect him to have few supporters among pundits, politicians, and the public (on either side) by the end of his term if he follows through on what he proposed in his campaigns. Ironically, as populist as his approach is, it seems destined to alienate people.
Nonsense. He found about the biggest budget cutter he could find as Director of the Office of Management and Budget–and the indications are there will be truly massive budget cuts. Budget cut proposals from the left are overwhelmingly in the national security area–an area Trump wants to substantially increase.
No other Republican would have whined about massive vote fraud when he won the election.
Apart from the honey-badger atmospherics that others have mentioned, I expect a great deal less willingness to compromise on immigration restrictions that an establishment Republican would have displayed. But I guess that hasn’t really erupted as such just yet.
I read a report last night that a standard GOP president wouldn’t have recalled 80 ambassadors on his first day. Replace them all, sure, over the first few months as replacements are found, vetted and appointed, but we’re leaving some of our most sensitive embassies without a leader.
From a policy standpoint the only thing he’s done differently is kill TPP. That’s a major shift from past Republican orthodoxy on trade.
From a style standpoint he’s unique, of course, but we all know that. But style doesn’t mean much beyond the immediate news cycle. It’s the policies we’lll have to live with.
The thing The Donald is doing that’s different from other Republicans is that, while he’s busy making a lot of important decisions he also has everyone, especially the media, chasing their tails in silly attempts to prove him a hypocrite or a liar. Who cares? It takes him 5 minutes to make up some outrageous tale, then the media spends thousands of reporter hours talking about it until they’ve convinced themselves that everyone agrees with them. When that fuss dies down he throws out another bone.
It’s not, and it’s really not even close. The Attorney General has broad statutory powers and is confirmed by the Senate, senior advisors to the President have no power to order anyone in the Federal government to do anything.
DOJ was quite correct when it noted such a position isn’t one that should be covered by nepotism laws–for the simple reason the President has the right, to consult whomever he wishes for advice. It’d be silly to say a President shouldn’t talk to their family members for advice, and in fact that’s never been a standard. Presidents have frequently talked with family and friends about matters of national importance, to varying degrees, to get a broad base of opinions.
There might be some fears of a President giving jobs to family members for financial reasons, but my understanding is Kushner has agreed to forego his government salary. All that him being on staff does is make various things more convenient, like gives him a permanent pass into/out of the White House, and lets the President more easily share classified information with him since he can get a security clearance. But again, if the President’s son-in-law who wasn’t on staff showed up at the White House every day to get in, and the President had standing orders that he was to be admitted, he would be as a guest of the President. If the President chose to share classified information with him, he would be able to regardless, since the President has more or less unlimited powers of disclosure (i.e. unlike say, Hillary Clinton as SecState who had to follow classification laws, the President basically doesn’t since it’s understood as the chief elected office of government he has ultimate authority about dissemination of government secrets, above and beyond classification system bureaucrats.)
So really the idea of blocking a son-in-law from a White House advisor position just doesn’t make any sense, given the plain reading and obvious intent of the anti-nepotism law created after Bobby Kennedy.
FWIW I think the law is unnecessary. Bobby was subject to the same Senate confirmation process as any other AG candidate, to me, that is the check against a President appointing “unqualified” relatives to high government office. While Bobby Kennedy probably wasn’t qualified enough to be AG, there was no need for a special law to prevent him from becoming AG–the Senate just needed to vote no. They didn’t.
He’s about to try to scale back the US contribution to the UN. This is largely due to a dispute/vendetta he had with Kofi Annan in the 90s about remodeling the UN building in NY or some such thing.