Donald Trump’s crisis with Russia, the thumping his appeal of Obamacare got at the Senate and the quitting of some key members of his cabinet, have placed the administration under pressure, AWAAL GATA writes
When Donald Drump was announced as the winner of last year’s presidential election in the United States of America (USA), a wave of shock was sent across the world. Before he launched a career in politics, the 45th US president was a successful business man. In many climes, and US isn’t an exception, when a businessman comes into politics, people believe, for their shrewdness in management and creative verve in turning-in profi ts, they will neutralise the ‘missing link’ that is always associated with governance.
Th is, obviously, together with his populist campaign slogans, drew for him a lot of supporters in the early days, not only in the US but from across the world. But as the electioneering wore on and he began to unmask who truly he was, his beliefs and the policies he will pursue as a president, his support base staunchly waned. Some of his ‘crazy’ ideas at the time were: the US should use waterboarding, he would be a walk between the US and Mexico and the latter will pay for it, Muslims should not be admitted to the US, Obamacare is a disaster and “climate change is just weather”. Other were: the world would be better off if the Muamar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were still alive, Syrian refugees could be Trojan horse, the Black Lives Matter movement is a trouble and Seoul and Tokyo should build up nuclear arsenal.
He also fl ayed the North Atlantic Treaty Organisations (NATO), saying “it was a rip off ”. Although since he started holding sway as the president of the US, considering the strength of the country’s democracy and institutions, at least as Africans believe, he has been able to toggle with only a few. At a time, he even had to make a reverse that “NATO is no longer obsolete”. Th ese ideas, for the time being, aren’t what are trying to unmake him but his administration which is obviously under pressure, given the ongoing Russia investigation, the departures of some members of his cabinet, the recent legislative setbacks and also the way the president occasionally goes ‘off -message.’ Th ese events show cracks in the structure of his administration.
Th e supposedly ace chief executive has so far lost a Chief of Staff , a Deputy Chief of Staff , a National Security Adviser, a Communications Director and a Press Secretary. Although fi ring members of cabinets has precedence in US’s presidency, starting from the fi rst term of President Harry Truman in 1945, however, modern presidents hardly allow it to happen because of the media dusts it trigger, according to a presidential historian, Michael Beschloss. Beschloss cited President Jimmy Carter’s 1979 fi ring of four Cabinet secretaries as an example of why presidents are hesitant to fi re top-level appointees, saying it contributed to Carter’s reelection loss to Ronald Reagan the following year.
While four of Carter’s appointees departed in his one term, throughouth President Barrack Obama’s two terms, only three of his appointees resigned, to indicate that Trump’s is unprecedented, considering the fact that his administration is barely more than six months old. After more than six months in offi ce, and despite full Republican control of Congress, Trump cannot point to a single substantial legislative achievement. Th e bid to repeal the Aff ordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, which fi nally dissipated in the Senate last week, was the most spectacular and telling of Trump’s failures. His executive orders, such as the racist ban on Muslim travellers and last week’s attack on transgender people in the military, have mostly run foul of the courts or been preemptively ignored by those charged with implementing them.
Trump has instead squandered the political goodwill that traditionally accompanies a presidential honeymoon, shocked and outraged many middle-ofthe-road voters who initially gave him the benefi t of the doubt, thoroughly alienated Republican party traditionalists, who had tried in vain to swallow their doubts, and undermined the authority of the offi ce of the president. However, perhaps John Kelly, the retired general hired to replace Reince Priebus, the departed Chief of Staff , can restore some semblance of order to the White House.
It looks like a tall order. Kelly has no political experience beyond his brief tenure at the department of homeland security. Perhaps he will fi nd an ally in HR McMaster, another army veteran, who is Trump’s national security adviser. But there is no good reason to believe the internal feuding, and Trump’s inability or disinclination to halt it, will end. Anthony Scaramucci, the recently appointed, foul-mouthed communications director, has unfi nished business with Steve Bannon, Trump’s top strategist. Trump seems determined to undermine his attorney general, Jeff Sessions. Th en there is the self-interested leverage exerted by Trump family lightweights Ivanka Trump, Donald Jr and son-in-law, Jared Kushner. On top of all that, Kelly must work out how to handle the ever-expanding investigations of special counsel Robert Mueller into the Trump campaign’s dealings with Russia.
A good start would be to halt scurrilous White House eff orts to dig up dirt on Mueller and his team. Yet even if Kelly succeeds curbing the in-fi ghting and containing the Russia scandal, he still has to deal with Trump himself. He has proved far more interested in settling scores, berating adversaries and showing off than in advancing a coherent domestic policy agenda. Th e next prospective slip, following the Obamacare, is a September deadline for a federal budget and linked tax reforms and increased military spending promised by Trump. A budget deal proved impossible last spring and may do so again. If there is no agreement, a government shutdown looms. A number of Africans believe the US president won’t serve out the whole of his tenure, for, according to them, the man who predicted his victory at the poll when no one gave him the hope has also predicted his impeachment. Although he is enmeshed in crisis, let’s wait for what the future holds
