State of the Presidency: America's Politics Revealed

by AIDAN REED

Staff Writer

With the 2020 Election drawing closer, the pressure is

mounting on President Trump to ensure his reelection.

State of the Presidency

Graphic: T. VerVane

Amid pressures from the upcoming 2020 presidential campaign as well as renewed infamy from the recordbreaking government shutdown, President Trump delivered his 2019 State of the Union address this past January. Repeated calls for unity were largely drowned out by the president’s famous rhetoric, lambasting his enemies and touting his achievements two years into his term.

Between the repeated references to his self-proclaimed diplomatic success with the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea as well as a supposed military victory over ISIS, Trump used his platform to renew calls for border security, namely his long-promised and equally delayed southern border wall. Since early on in his initial campaign, the president’s base has fanatically rallied around the idea of said wall, placing relentless pressure on the President of The United States (POTUS) to actually deliver on his primary campaign promise. As the 2020 presidential race draws ever nearer, Trump has begun to focus heavily upon his border wall campaign, seeking a tangible success to show to his base. This has most recently been shown by the president’s hotly-contested state of emergency along the southern border, allowing him to circumvent Congress in appropriating funds for a wall. Though this recent move is being sued and contested by many states, upon reaching the Supreme Court it will likely be approved due to the current conservative and pro-Trump politics of the court.

Far from the standard and unrelenting “fire and fury” of the POTUS’ political speeches, the 2019 State of the Union address contained numerous messages of unity and hope for bipartisan action. Ranging from calls for healthcare reform to foreign military intervention, this uncharacteristic shift towards campaign issues popular with the Democratic Party represent part of the “new” Trump that we are likely to see in the coming months running up to the 2020 election, seeking to retain his conservative base while also trying to obtain moderate liberal voters through bipartisan

action and progress.

Despite an apparent shift towards bipartisanship, the president has always maintained his classic speech tactic of fear-mongering, and the State of the Union was no exception. This rhetoric centered around border security, with numerous references to human trafficking, drug smuggling, and violent crime committed by illegal immigrants. While consistent fear-mongering has kept Trump’s base energized, hyper-fixation on border security has done and will do much to maintain popular support for the POTUS in the coming months as his “state of emergency” border wall will likely face a gauntlet of constitutional and legislative challenges.

While the 2020 election is little more than a year and a half away, national politics is already gearing up for the electoral battle. The Trump campaign has begun strongly in 2019, maintaining focus on its successes while continuing his aforementioned rhetoric, and smear campaigns. If the president’s attempts at bipartisan action and fulfillment of his campaign promises prove fruitful, the Democratic Party will have an extremely challenging election ahead of them.

Historically, over 70% of incumbent U.S. presidents seeking reelection succeed. Combining this statistic with the current turbulence within the Democratic Party gives the POTUS outstanding odds of reelection in 2020. As the field of Democratic hopefuls currently stands, save Bernie Sanders, there is very likely not enough substantial difference between the candidates and Trump to offer true opposition and draw leftist votes. No matter who does eventually obtain the Democratic nomination, the president will assuredly run a smear campaign against them consisting of anti-socialist accusations and rhetoric, as we saw even in his 2019 State of the Union address. Such a campaign would likely bring in more independent votes, and win Trump the election. //

18 // BGQ // March 2019

to sugarcoat his actions is a point of pride for his base, supporting their view of Trump making real change as a political outsider.

American politics has never been a pretty stage; cutthroat electioneering by the 1% for the benefit of big business has ensured that. Those rare few elected to office upon a platform of promised reform rarely get to see their ideas realized in full, instead having their time and energies drained through bureaucracy to the point where the end result is a lifeless husk of what was once promised. The American political system does this not only to politicians, but also to the electorate as a whole, channeling rebellious energies and calls for reform into a sluggish election system set up to let us choose our new masters every two to four years. In this sense,

agenda within a divided government, which isn’t likely to end anytime soon. Utilizing his razor-thin legislative and judicial majorities, the president has been able to pass a travel ban against many Muslim-majority countries through a court injunction, reform federal taxes so as to provide massive breaks to the wealthy elite, and secure funds for an “emergency” border wall. These supposed successes, no matter how much Democrats fume at their passage, are not substantially different from those past presidents who were more popular among independents, such as Obama and W. Bush. While Trump put into place his infamous travel ban, Obama was responsible for the injuries and deaths of thousands of Middle Eastern children and civilians with drone bombings, while W. Bush staged a hostile takeover of Iraq

America’s Politics

Unveiled

American politicians have long been hailed as stalwart and charismatic, baby-kissing men who know how to play a crowd and buy votes. While Donald Trump undeniably has his own force of personality, his primary draw to his base has long been his unorthodox style of campaigning, straying away from traditional suaveness and civility in favor of unabashed critique and calls for action. This has led many to criticize the president for a lack of civility or presidentiality, but it also begs the question of how different Trump truly is from past politicians. Is the 45th president truly a shake-up of the American political system as he claims, or has he simply lifted the veil of our country’s political system and laid bare what has always been true? Trump critics are often quick to wistfully harken back to the presidencies

of Barack Obama and George W. Bush, longing for their character and presidential demeanor; yet the substantial difference between Trump and his predecessors is that Trump often refuses to hide behind a veil of bureaucracy, preferring direct and incessant action to further his agendas. While Obama did truly have a professional demeanor and comforting character, his policies are near identical to those of Trump, particularly in economics and foreign policy. Where Obama would make eloquent speeches to justify corporate bailouts and drone bombings of foreign civilians, Trump instead lambasts his opponents and shifts attention towards new scandals and or policies. This apparent refusal by the president

Trump strays from his predecessors solely in eloquence, where Obama and W. Bush would make veiled and yet rallying speeches for limited reform, Trump instead floods the news cycle with scandal and surprise to the point where keeping up is wholly overwhelming. The American government always has been and still is made up by and for the wealthy elite, the only recent difference being that these past couple of years we’ve had a shiny orange TV celebrity and business mogul, instead of our typical measured and smiling man in a welltailored suit.

That being said, however, Trump’s approach to the American presidency has allowed him to make unprecedented progress in fulfilling his

years before that. Consider, where Trump’s new tax plan saves the 1% even more money than under Obama, Obama’s $700 billion Wall Street bailout put money and power back into the hands of the wealthy few who had crashed the American economy and sent us into a recession in 2008.

Perhaps Trump’s flash and awe do not represent any true change in American politics, merely a lifting of the veil to show everyone the ugly truth of our political system. Is it possible that anger against or love for our 45th president do nothing to halt his administration or change American politics for the better, but rather siphon energy away from meaningful reform and waste it on an unchangeable system? //