Trump Is Bad At This: (Possible) Wartime Edition
The costs of abdicating the president's ability to represent the entire nation.
I noted over the weekend several reasons why Donald Trump himself, his presidency, and his administration overall are nowhere near prepared for the Iran/Israel situation.But the more that it becomes an Iran/US situation, the more it’s important to add one more important point: Trump is absolutely, utterly unprepared to rally the nation around a war effort. And nothing we’ve seen in the last ten years even hints that he’s capable of it.
Pointing to the very stupid Tucker Carlson/Ted Cruz clash over Iran, someone on Bluesky asked whether the debate over the Iraq was in 2001-2002 was as stupid as this. The natural inclination among cynics was to say “stupider,” and I saw several people who were around and blogging or otherwise speaking publicly back then say exactly that and pull up some of the dishonest, lame, or just plain foolish arguments made by the George W. Bush administration.
But I think Dan Drezner is correct: “Disagree. There was a lot of dissembling to be sure but there was also a lot of genuine attempts to make pro and con arguments.”1
And that’s the problem. So far at least, and with the possibility that the US could jump in by the time y’all read this, the administration hasn’t made a public case for even a quick (and presumably massive) strike – let alone the longer involvement that they might end up with (see Dalia Dassa Kaye here for a good overview). Yes, there’s been a public debate among Trump’s supporters – see excellent items from David’s here, and from Greg Sargent – but that’s not the same thing as the president and the administration making a case to the nation.
So on the immediate question: As bad as the run-up to Iraq was, bad arguments are better than no arguments at all.
But to get back to the broader point, among Trump’s major weaknesses as president is that he is basically incapable of speaking to the entire nation as their representative. That appeared to be true during the first three years of his first term, but it was most obvious during the national emergency of his fourth year, when he totally failed at talking about the pandemic. Indeed, he basically spent a total of an hour or so of the ten plus months of the crisis even pretending to be the leader of a nation in trouble; the rest of the time he retreated to his normal blame-assigning, subject-changing, or just ranting about all sorts of nonsense, relevant or not.
The truth is that Trump rarely speaks to, and for, the nation. Most often he speaks for himself – as in his comments on Wednesday that no one knows his plans for Iran. Not the US. Him.2 Trump also sometimes speaks to and on behalf of his political allies, especially his strongest supporters. Or sometimes it’s the groups he favors. Even on ceremonial occasions, he either can’t or won’t speak as if he’s president of the whole nation.
Indeed, normal presidents draw strength and authority from the dual role of “head of government” and “head of state,” but Trump from the beginning of his first term onward has basically abdicated the role of head of state.
If Trump does choose war, and somehow manages to keep US intervention very limited and brief, that won’t matter much. But what all the experts (and I’m certainly not one on either the Middle East or military stuff) tell us is that once the US gets started, it may not be able to dictate the limits of that involvement. So the longer things go on, the messier they are, and especially the more the costs pile up (including both Iranian and US casualties), the more it will matter that Trump can’t even conceive of trying to bring the whole nation together.
Again, he hasn’t done that so far; both in public and institutionally he’s entirely personalized the question of going to war. Which isn’t just a poor way to make important choices and a poor way to enter into a war, but it’s also dangerous to the president because if things go bad, it will be very obvious where the blame lies.
My actual answer is that a big part of the difference between now and then is that everyone has far lower expectations of the Trump administration. So while the Bush presidency constantly fell way below everyone’s expectations in ways that were perceived as dramatic, Trump and his administration are merely doing exactly what they always do and what everyone knows they always do, so it’s not as striking. Even if it is also more stupid.
Yes, LBJ supposedly told an aide who was pointing him to the vehicle he was suppose to enter that “they’re all my helicopters” and it’s likely that all presidents feel that way at least some of the time. But Johnson and all those other presidents, whatever they really thought, were careful to make public arguments in public. Trump? Not so much.).