The Left and some Republicans are attacking Trump as a madman. The media are taking this tack. They are mightily confused, shocked and thrashing around.
However, Trump’s actions and style are both rational. He is not a lunatic, not crazy, not erratic and not acting at random. What he’s doing is no less calculated or rational than anything that Bush or Obama did in the past 16 years, although I admit that sets a pretty low hurdle. Trump is no fool. What critics bemoan as “chaos” consists of calculated effects.
He has definite goals in mind. He’s engaged in political shock therapy. He is also smart enough to bob and weave, mixing his statements up in ways to confuse his opposition, all the while placing them on the defensive. He has to use shock tactics and quickly if he wants to change anything, because the existing system is so frozen in place. The system is crusted over with frozen paths and barriers of money and power. He’s out to smash the psychology of it and its comfort level. He is not letting himself be captured by established interests, although he may feign such accommodation temporarily. Trump is a very clever man, from what I can see of how he’s operating.
His style of dickering with other politicians overseas is designed to shake them up and force them into channels they’re not used to. Even their defensive reactions may be exactly what he wants from them. He’s breaking down the stuffy and guarded bureaucratic ways of assessing issues by his blunt language. This is designed to awake new ways and approaches to relations that are now frozen in ways he dislikes.
This assessment is only of Trump’s mind and methods. It doesn’t attempt to say whether he will succeed, and it doesn’t evaluate the content of his goals.
8:00 pm on February 2, 2017
