GELFAND’S WORLD - It’s two months and a day until the November elections. There are expectations that the Republicans will lose legislative control at least in the House of Representatives. This will have a substantial effect when it comes to budget bills and any other legislation that requires both houses of congress, but continued Republican control over the Senate would have its own effects. That’s because the Senate by itself can OK the appointment of Supreme Court justices, ambassadors, and other high officers.
In the event that the Democrats win control of both houses, we might expect a round of Supreme Court retirements (Thomas, for example?) since Democratic ownership of the Senate as of 2027 would make it difficult for Trump to win approval of replacements.
I’m going to skip the subject most dear to the hearts of the great mass of editorial writers, which is the expectation that a Democratically controlled House will immediately return to hearings and investigations of Trump administration corruption. Maybe so, maybe not. (It’s within the realm of possibility that the administration might try to do a little deal-making with the other side, which could result in some sort of quid pro quo which avoids another round of impeachment hearings and the like.)
What Democratic control of at least one house will accomplish is to avoid Republican control of the budget reconciliation bill. The most likely outcome is – drumroll – an even higher national debt. Here’s the logic: Trump would never agree to tax increases, but the Democrats will insist on bringing back what has been lost in the Affordable Care Act and other social welfare programs. Aid to starving children overseas would come back under any such compromise. Even worse deficits will be the result.
Of course the Republicans will suddenly remember that they used to complain about the debt and will start talking about it again. This Spend But Don’t Tax Republican congress will start accusing the Democrats of being the Tax and Spend party, just as they have done for decades. It’s up to the Democrats to make the counter-case, that it was irresponsible tax cuts on the rich that started the cycle in the first place, and Republican refusal to remedy those effects is what will accelerate the massive deficit.
The Democrats ought to be yelling and screaming about the effects of Trump policies on the economy. They ought to be predicting that every day in office for Trump accentuates the damage, and that only Democratic control of the presidency and the congress will alleviate the situation. (There is plenty of historical evidence that Democratic administrations are better for the economy and for workers.) When they take control, they need to explain – every day – that it is going to take four years to fix the damage, and they need to talk about the progress they are making every one of those days.
But enough about that. I’d like to raise one other question, which is about the Trump sense of humor.
To some extent, this discussion goes back to all those mean things that Donald has said on the campaign trail and to reporters over the past 10 years or so. The latest involves his invention of the word dumocrats to refer to the political opposition (whether or not spelled with the letter b), but we might eventually hear that the suggestion to rename the Pacific and Atlantic oceans and the state of New Mexico are just attempts at humor. Remember that Trump has used this excuse in the past.
And guess what? I actually believe that some of the nastier things Trump said were, indeed, his way of trying to be funny -- joke telling -- even if they were in bad taste. And remember that Trump has complained that critics and the press have routinely misunderstood simple attempts at humor.
But here’s the thing. It is improper and inappropriate for the President of the United States to engage in such activities. To the rest of the world, such verbal attacks and tariff threats come across as sadism and diplomatic terrorism. They do damage to our international standing and ultimately damage our economy through damage to trade. To dust off an old word, it is unpresidential for the commander in chief to be anything but serious in any manner that can be misunderstood or misconstrued.
There is of course one continuing problem to Trump’s entire approach. He appears to be oblivious to the beneficial effects of trade on human populations that were described by David Ricardo and Adam Smith centuries ago. The idea that any country which runs a trade surplus is “stealing” from us is bizarre thinking, but we continue to hear this from the presidential lips. Perhaps medical science should invent a discipline called economic psychiatry to deal with such delusions. In the meanwhile, Donald Trump continues to toss off a mixture of threats and jokes, and we don’t know which is which at any moment.
(Bob Gelfand writes on science, culture, and politics for CityWatch. He can be reached at [email protected])
