Transform Fear & Despise Into Oppose, Unite, and Vote

Rugaber and Woodward, in an AP Fact Check story anticipating the State of the Union Address, provide us with some much needed clarification. While their objective (as fact-checkers) is to determine the degree to which the current president is misleading us, I want to use their analysis to make a different point.

Tweets aside, year one shows at least as much continuity from Bush through Obama to Trump as it does disruption or catastrophe.

Let’s all step back and recognize that, despite grave concerns, at the end of year one we are still afloat, the slower-than-usual recovery from the Great Recession that started under Bush II and Obama continues.

While President Trump characteristically exaggerates our economic growth, the fact remains that year one saw a growth rate of 2.3%. This is below what the president loudly promised, and it is frustrating to hear him continue to pretend it was much higher and so much better than Obama, but that does not alter the fact that this is the same level of moderately good news we would welcomed when President Obama governed over nearly identical growth rates.

While President Trump chooses to measure job creation since the election, rather than for the year as is customary (resulting in his number being slightly higher than the measure we generally use), the fact remains that we continue to create jobs, albeit at the same slower-than-usual rate that has persisted from Bush II through Obama to Trump. This past year we created slightly fewer jobs (in part because the unemployment rate is particularly low), and the president is not correct in asserting that the rate of job growth is increasing, but the fact remains that the slower-than-usual recovery from Bush to Obama to Trump appears to be continuing.

While President Trump claims his tax cuts will increase average household income $4000, and most economists see the increase to be more in the range of $1600 (and only temporary), the fact remains that we expect this tax cut to increase average household income at a time when most households can use the additional funds. This is not a data point marking continuity from Bush through Obama to Trump, because when one party wins elections to control both the executive and legislative branches they have earned the capacity to make policy.

While President Trump points to Apple as an illustration of a company creating more jobs because the tax cut made that possible, it turns out that this is a much more complicated question. At the same time, the fact remains that Apple is doing well and investing in America and bringing back funds it has previously held overseas. We cannot dismiss the possibility that the new tax law contributed to this, just as we will not know for certain the impact of the tax law for years to come. Yes, the president is being misleading here, as Rugaber and Woodward conclude, but this is the type of misleading that nearly every elected official thrives on, marking this as another illustration of continuity from Bush through Obama to Trump.

This is not to say that the party out of power, or anyone opposed to this president, has nothing to be concerned about. The trauma is real. War with North Korea still remains a midterm possibility. Consumer & environmental protections are being diminished dramatically. We are falling behind China and others in the development of the new technologies that will define global leadership in ten years (solar, wind, AI, and more). Protectionism and nationalism threaten to do us great harm even if we avoid war, as George Will powerfully argued today.

Will noted that were President Trump’s protectionism being advanced by a Democrat it would immediately be attacked as ‘government rather than the market picking winners and losers, government redistribution, and crony capitalism.’ Further, he reminds us that protectionism in the recent past (2002) disproportionately hurt Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania—states that ‘voted for today’s protectionist president.’

But if we are to reason our way out of the mess we are in, we need to step back and see year one as simply (and thankfully only this) a consequence of democracy: sometimes the other side wins. This is why elections & voting matter. My hope is that the trauma will operate on those of us ages 16 to 60 like the Depression operated on my grandparents. It will change the way we think and eat and interact and live. We will pay closer attention to politics and power. More of us will run for office. All of us will vote more regularly.

Opposing this president makes sense, but our challenge is to oppose in ways that strengthen democracy, civility & contestation, the rule of law and our shared commitment to peace & justice. When we read every data point as merely more evidence confirming the indecency of this president (and coincidentally our own righteousness in contrast), we over-reach and reinforce trends that weaken democracy and catapulted this president into the White House.

If we want decision making based on the best available data, if we believe truth matters, than we need to go the extra mile to demonstrate that, even when it is inconvenient, even when it makes it harder (and less emotionally satisfying) to pummel a president we fear and despise for very good reasons. We need to transform fear and despite into oppose and focus on winning the midterms as step one toward making democracy both possible and desirable again. 

While it is not accurate to claim 'both sides are equally to blame,' there is still a lot more of this going on (cartoon above) than governing.