President Trump's Tax Reform Speech: Who is the Real Donald Trump?

President Trump spoke yesterday in Missouri to present his tax reform program. The tax program is intended to be pro-business, and Trump delivered his speech at a medium-size business, the Loren Cook Company in Springfield, a manufacturer of ventilation equipment. I visited Springfield many years ago, and enjoyed my stay immensely. The speech was not open to the public, although it was recorded and posted on the Internet.

Donald Trump Giving His Tax Reform Speech

People often comment – I have commented – that there seem to be two Presidents Trump. One President Trump gives dignified speeches from a Teleprompter; the other President Trump gives wild, controversial speeches off-the-cuff. Which is the real President Trump? I think both are. I will give my reasons at the end.

Mr. Trump started the Missouri speech by thanking his hosts at the Loren Cook Company, and he then welcomed the distinguished guests, who included members of his administration and representatives from Congress. Interestingly, he did not name-check Gary Cohn, his economic advisor, who earlier criticized Mr. Trump's comments about the alt-right. That was an odd omission in a tax reform speech. Mr. Trump took time to discuss the heroism and selflessness demonstrated by the people of Texas in the wake of Hurricane Harvey. He made some humorous comments, praised Route 66, which he described as the corridor of American economic activity, and said "This is the place where the "Main Street of America” got its start, and this is where America’s main street will begin its big, beautiful comeback that – you are seeing it right now. This is a comeback of historic proportions. You're seeing it happen right now. (Applause.) Right? You're seeing it." This was all vintage Trump, the conversational Trump using standard Trump phrases. Was he being himself at the beginning? It seems so.

He then began to read a prepared text. He promised that the way to encourage job growth was tax reform. He promised to work on a bipartisan plan that would be "pro-growth, pro-jobs, pro-worker – and pro-American." So far, so good. He complained that economic growth was lacking below 3% until he became president and talked about the number of jobs that would be created.

The speech was long on goals, but short on content, which many news media pointed out. He wanted a tax code that was "simple, fair, and easy to understand," that would help "loyal, hard-working Americans and their families," be competitive on the world market, and so forth. He praised the Ronald Reagan tax reform, as a result of which, he said, "the middle class thrived in median family income increase." He complained that the Democrats were trying to "obstruct tax cuts and tax reform, just like they obstructed so many other things." He wanted to reduce the corporate tax rate, which he said would bring jobs back to the United States.

Of course, when we talk about tax reform, it's all about the details. And Trump provided no details. What would be the percentages of tax cuts for ordinary Americans? Which loopholes would be closed? And so forth. On a larger point: Trump campaigned as a populist who would support the "forgotten American." His tax plan, so far, sounded just like standard Republican plans of the last 40 years. While campaigning, he promised something different. Is he going to deliver? We won't know until we see the details of the plan.

Back to my first question: who is the real Donald Trump? The populist who knows how to work a crowd is a real Donald Trump. That Donald Trump expresses what the man really thinks and feels. But people also care about policies, and, when he reads from a Teleprompter, Mr. Trump generally presents hard-right Republican policies right out of the Reagan playbook. In the long run, which Donald Trump will win?


Was Trump right that the Reagan tax cuts brought unprecedented prosperity? That's actually controversial among economists. I'll think about that and post something about Reagan, the man and the myth, later on.

Update: FactCheck, the Annenberg School of Communication service, found that Trump generally got his numbers right in this speech, but put a lot of spin on them. The lesson is for listeners to get information from more than one source before forming an opinion about the issues. We expect politicians to spin things, don't we?

President Trump's Hurricane Harvey Speeches: Liberal Comfort or Conservative Strength?

President Donald Trump gave a few very brief, apparently impromptu speeches when he visited south Texas after Hurricane Harvey. The hurricane had caused terrible flooding. I have family in the area, and the disaster has been quite frightening. Let's look at how different audiences could perceive two of these speeches differently.

Pres. Trump Briefing, Corpus Christi

Trump gave some brief remarks at Annaville Fire Station 5 in Corpus Christi, Texas. Texas Governor Greg Abbott gave some brief remarks thanking the president for his help. Trump praised Texas and Texas' elected leaders: "And I can tell you that my folks were just telling me how great your representatives have been in working together.  It's a real team, and we want to do it better than ever before.  We want to be looked at in five years, in ten years from now as this is the way to do it." Trump commented that the hurricane "was of epic proportions. Nobody has ever seen anything like this." He then thanked the Governor and state officials for their work: "We won't say congratulations.  We don't want to do that.  We don't want to congratulate.  We'll congratulate each other when it's all finished.  But you have been terrific.  Really terrific.  It's a great honor.  And you've been my friend, too, for a long time."

Some of President Trump's critics complained that he didn't say anything to comfort the victims, that he was simply congratulating his political allies. In this respect, he fell short of some of the speeches that we've heard during times of disaster from other presidents. These criticisms are true, in one sense, but they may also miss a distinction between the way conservative and liberal audiences perceive things. Trump is a conservative president. Trump actually opened his speech with this comment: "This is a very special place in a special state." That is, he praised the state of Texas and its people. The critics may be right that he spent more time praising his own people than praising the population, which was still struggling under terrible hardships. Still, Texans like to think of themselves as fighters, do they not?

Trump, Corpus Christi Fire Station

A short time later, Trump gave a second speech outside the same locale with a somewhat different focus. He reassured the audience of first responders: "I just wanted to say, we love you, you are special.  We're here to take care of you." He then said, "It's going well," which it obviously was not. He thanked Governor Abbott for doing "a fantastic job." He then praised Texans again: "I will tell you, this is historic, it's epic, what happened.  But you know what, it happened in Texas, and Texas can handle anything." While a liberal speaker would want to give comforting words, Trump offered something more like fighting words: Harvey had thrown Texas a big punch, and the people of Texas were counterpunching. So, maybe he didn't quite do the job that some people expected, but, then again, maybe understood his audience better than his critics did.

Another point: maybe sympathy can wait. Trump gave people hope that their leaders were doing their jobs and would struggle to save them. That's what they cared about.

There is history here: when President George W. Bush flew over Louisiana during Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, he told his inept Homeland Security Secretary: "Brownie, you're doing a heckuva job." That out-of-touch statement gave Bush's prestige a nasty hit. It's great to praise people, but you don't want to praise people who are obviously messing up. Are Texas officials doing their jobs? Honestly, it's too soon for anyone to pass judgment. Maybe Trump should have been more careful, maybe not. Who knows? Time will tell.

In the meantime, we are all hoping that the disaster doesn't get any worse, and that South Texas and Louisiana will recover stronger than ever.

James Mattis: "Understanding Each Other and Showing It"

James Mattis, DoD photo

Secretary of Defense James Mattis gave an impromptu pep talk to a small group of American soldiers, sailors, and marines somewhere overseas. His message was simple and inspiring: "Hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it." He continued:  "We're so doggone lucky to be Americans. And we got two powers: the power of inspiration, and if you don't get the power of inspiration back, you've got the power of intimidation." He reminded them to listen to their NCO's. Good advice.

So, yes, Americans have become divided, and Mattis wants the military to hold things together until the country is unified again. Optimism is grand. A simple, terrific speech. An example of what my former professor Charles Larson called the "unifying style." 

Janet Yellen's Speech at Jackson Hole: Do We Need a Stable Financial System?

Janet Yellen, Fed Reserve photo

Federal Reserve Chair Janet L. Yellen spoke yesterday at Jackson Hole to talk about "Financial Stability a Decade after the Onset of the Crisis." The financial world expected her to talk about future Fed policy; instead, she talked about general government financial policies. Her theme, which should not be controversial but is, was that a secure financial system requires regulatory safeguards. Her speech was highly controversial, and yet she delivered it in a very scholarly, serious tone.

To understand her speech, we need to understand its controversial political and social context. This has been well understood since the days of Adam Smith, but the finance industry has a lot of political and media power, and many of its representatives do not want to be regulated. Conservative and libertarian politicians had long blamed the financial crisis on government regulation, which never made any sense, but which appealed to them ideologically. Their argument, which was factually false, was that the government required lenders to finance home-building by minority families who could not afford it. Much of what we hear in public discourse on this topic has been vitriolic, angry, and totally uninformed. I suppose I should write a future post about the influential rantings of popular Libertarian politician Ron Paul, who seems to have quite a following of people who would, apparently, love to lose bunches of their money by investing in risky commodities.

Anyway, let's take a quick look at Yellen's speech. She reminded her audience that it is been 10 years since the global financial crisis, "that resulted in the most severe financial panic and largest contraction in economic activity in the United States since the Great Depression." She pointed out that: "A resilient financial system is critical to a dynamic global economy." She also reminded the audience that borrowing and debt are essential to our economic system, as they enable people to purchase things like cars, houses, and businesses that they need to have successful lives.

Yellen reviewed the dramatic steps that the government took to resolve the financial crisis, which she admitted were helpful but insufficient. She then explained the various new government policies that have greatly strengthen the financial system in which prevented a second crisis. She also reminded the audience that all of the lessons that the finance industry learned after the financial crisis were lessons that had been learned before, but which they then forgot. She cited considerable evidence: "The evidence shows that reforms since the crisis have made the financial system substantially safer." The prepared text of her remarks included 27 footnotes citing technical and statistical sources to support her opinion. Yet, do policymakers care? Policymakers tend to respond to political donors and to the public opinion, neither of which is reliable with financial decisions. Political donors have their own best interests at heart, not the public's, and public opinion is, as our Founding Fathers worried many centuries ago, easily swayed by polemics.

Do we need more sober, scholarly, serious, well-informed speakers like Janet Yellen? The answer, obviously, is yes. But with respect to economic opinion, I greatly fear that people are more swayed by cable news commentators, Wall Street Journal editorials (what a shame! The Wall Street Journal used to offer accurate conservative opinions not too many years ago), and the angry ravings of talk radio hosts. From what I have seen in public commentary, a surprising number of people are more upset about Yellen's Jewish heritage than about the financial crisis from which he helped rescue us; a surprising number of right-wing commentators disparage the very idea of fiat money. The main problem is that economics is a technical subject, and yet, although everyone handles money, many people do not make the effort to understand it. Maybe they would be happy trading Krugerrands with Ron Paul.

With President Trump and the Republicans in Congress making noise about deregulating the financial industry further, many pundits seem to think that Yellen was laying down the gauntlet. She was more interested in telling the truth to powerful people than she was in getting another term as Fed chair. Good for her! It's about time that public leaders began to show some courage, giving their real opinion even when the truth is unpopular. Wall Street banker Gary Cohn was slated to replace Yellen, until he made the political mistake of criticizing racist demonstrators, which, apparently, put him at odds with President Donald Trump. So, now, who knows?

Aristotle said that persuasion was due to logical, emotional, and credibility appeals. He felt that credibility was the most powerful. Yellen, instead, relied on logical appeals, the kind of appeals that Aristotle said were most important and reasonable. But are enough people listening?

Trump's Afghanistan Speech, Part 2: Was He Presidential?

Pres. Trump's Afghanistan Speech, Aug. 21, 2017

To be presidential probably doesn't mean the same thing to everyone. To a mainstream-type reporter, being presidential means that the president is dignified, concerned, and unifying. In that sense, Trump's speech yesterday was presidential. He did not rant and rave. He did not pointedly insult anyone, and he did not talk about "fake news." That was all good. To a political scientist or policy expert, being presidential probably means checking one's facts, and making sober, responsible decisions. In that sense, Trump also did pretty well last night. For example, his speech did well on PolitiFact's fact checking. That may be a first-ever for a major Trump speech.

At the same time, Trump gave very few details. How many troops would he commit to Afghanistan? If we are to set Afghanistan policy according to results and goals, not according to a timeline, exactly what are the goals? When will we know that we have been successful? Let us keep in mind that Afghanistan is a very big country, and killing all of the terrorists is a terribly unrealistic goal. There will always be more terrorists. Trump's vagueness may also seem presidential. The president has a national security advisor, a Secretary of Defense, and various generals who can explain policy details. He does not need to do that himself. Still, successful foreign policy comes from the details. A group of uninformed teenagers can sit around a college residence hall and talk about general policies. I did that kind of thing myself when I was young. So what? Generalities do not always mean very much.

Before talking about Afghanistan, Trump talked about the evils of bigotry and hatred. This seemed to be something of a retreat from the belligerent remarks that he made in Trump Tower after the violent Charlottesville demonstrations. Yet, instead of giving details, he spoke in general, unifying terms. That, again, could be presidential.

Can Trump maintain his presidential air? At other times, Trump gave speeches like this during his campaign – dignified and scripted – only to undo his ethos with a couple of tweets from his Twitter account. We will have to wait and see, but he may well return to form.

Which Trump is the real Trump? The belligerent Donald Trump in Trump Tower? Or the dignified Donald Trump last night? Actually both were real. Donald Trump is quite capable of reasoned decision-making. He is also quite capable of going over the top. People who are waiting for the "real" Trump to emerge will have a long wait: people are more complicated than that.

In the meantime, Afghanistan has suffered from decades of war. Surely the country needs some stability, and its people need peace.

Here is the first part of my commentary about Trump's Afghanistan speech.

Here are my comments about Trump's very un-presidential Charlottesville press conference. 


Image: White House Briefing Room 

President Trump's Speech about Afghanistan, Part 1

President Donald J. Trump delivered a television address tonight about military policy in Afghanistan.

Let us look at the historical context. Afghanistan had provided training sites for the Al Qaeda terrorists who attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. President George W. Bush ordered

Donald Trump, WH photo

United States military forces to attack Afghanistan for the purpose of neutralizing Al Qaeda. This was done bloodily but efficiently; however,  ultra right-wing Muslim fundamentalist groups under the Taliban banner offered consistent resistance to the democratic government that the United States installed. At no time did the American supported government control the entire country. Afghanistan has proven to be a tough battle: difficult mountainous terrain, harsh weather, and a determined enemy have all offered resistance, while allegations of corruption and incompetence in the American-supported government continue.

Setting: Ever the master of staging, Trump delivered the speech to an audience of service personnel at historic Joint Base Myer, formerly Fort Myer, in Northern Virginia. Joint Base Myer is adjacent to Arlington cemetery, which Trump mentioned during his speech.  (Our father, a WWII veteran, often took my brother and me to the old Fort Myer to see the sights.) A respectful crowd was guaranteed, and Trump usually responds well to a live audience.

President Trump approached the speech with diminished expectations. Recent events, including the violence in Charlottesville and Trump's inconsistent reaction to that violence, have caused many people to wonder whether he is up to the job. At the same time, history shows that there's nothing like a good war to divert attention from domestic problems. Let us look at what Trump proposed, and what persuasive methods he used.

Trump began by reviewing and complimenting the service members' contributions to the nation's freedom and security. (Praising the audience is always a good move.)

Black Hawk over Afghanistan, US Army photo

Responding to the recent domestic  controversies, Trump offered a call for unity: "When one citizen suffers an injustice, we all suffer together." He continued: "There is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry, no room for hate." He transitioned to the War in Afghanistan, which he called the longest war in American history. He rejected the policy of rebuilding countries "in our own image," instead of making American security paramount. This reinforced his "America First" campaign theme.

A buildup in Afghanistan, however contradicted Trump's previous policies. He directly admitted that he had changed his mind after careful study. He reminded the audience that the terrorist attack in Barcelona showed terrorists' heartless evil. He called the enemy in Afghanistan "thugs," which was forceful, and "losers," which was classic Trump. Inappropriate, but it was the real him.

Afghanistan has been known as the place where empires go to die. First, he announced that instead of setting deadlines, the United States' policy would aim at goals. Consistent with his campaign statements, he emphasized surprise attacks. He acknowledged that a political settlement might include Taliban elements, which is a dramatic policy option. Second, rejecting nation-building, he said that the United States would not impose a government on Afghanistan. Third, he promised to provide the military with the resources they needed. He offered veiled criticism of Obama administration policies. Trump also addressed partnership with Pakistan, who he accused of harboring terrorists. This was much bolder and riskier than it appears, as Pakistan is geographically necessary for the war in Afghanistan.

Trump was at his best, speaking with energy and emphasis, pausing appropriately, never raising his voice, and gesturing with a sense of style.

Were Trump's policies realistic? I am no foreign policy expert, but time will tell. His proposed plans were multi-faceted, and involved many changes other than troops. They were also very vague. The proof could be in the details.

Was Trump presidential? We always have to ask! He hasn't been consistent! The Afghanistan speech was tough in tone, and belligerent at times, but much more in line with the image that the United States expects a conservative president to project. One impressive aspect is that he admitted that he had changed his mind as a result of careful study and consultation. Since he is often accused of being rigid and uninformed, this seemed like a big step.

I'll post a follow-up after we see some reactions. Stay tuned!

Here it is: Trump's Afghanistan Speech, Part 2

Rex W. Tillerson's Speech about Hatred

Rex Tillerson, DoS image

In what some people thought was a break from President Trump's remarks about the Charlottesville demonstrations, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson talked on August 18, 2017 about race relations and diversity to the State Department Student Programs and Fellowship participants. After an introduction expressing sympathy for the terrorist attacks in Spain, he addressed racism: "we all know hate is not an American value." He continued that "Racism is evil; it is antithetical to America's values. It's antithetical to the American idea."

In a clever rhetorical move, Tillerson cited a letter that George Washington sent to the Newport, Rhode Island synagogue, in which Washington advocated "a government which to bigotry gives no sanction; to persecution, no assistance." Why was this clever? Right-wing speakers routinely cite the Founding Fathers and say that they want to return to the Founders' values. My experience is that, most of the time, extreme right wingers have no idea what the Founders actually believed, and Tillerson's move - to cite our first president - struck directly at white supremacists' major talking point. What made Tillerson's point even more powerful is that the Charlottesville demonstrators were shouting anti-Semitic slogans. Tillerson contradicted the demonstrators without mentioning them, but everyone knew what he was talking about. He turned the tables on racists with great gentleness.

Tillerson also said that "hate speech" should not be tolerated and that "those who embrace it poison our public discourse and they damage the very country that they claim to love." With a nice flourish - for rhetoric students, he used a tricolon - he said that "Racism is evil; it is antithetical to America's values. It's antithetical to the American idea." 

Continuing, Tillerson discussed steps the State Department was taking to create a more diverse Foreign Service. He insisted that whenever an ambassadorship was open, one of the candidates must be from a minority. He also wanted to recruit from beyond the Ivy League campuses. He reviewed in detail the statistics on the low representation of ethnic minorities and women in the Foreign Service.

Tillerson further emphasized that the future leaders whom he was addressing needed to place personal integrity first. He praised the students and fellows for their accomplishments. He promised that they would be outstanding leaders.

Reactions were mixed. Roger Clegg's column in the conservative National Review called Tillerson's speech "appalling," Clegg opposed "race-based hiring" as "unfair" and "identity politics."  CNN's Nicole Gaouette and Elise Labott called the speech "a powerful condemnation Friday of both hate and those who 'protect or accept hate speech.'"

Tillerson's speech was admirable, but should not have been controversial. He addressed values; he tied his values to the United States' founding values. Given Tillerson's reputation as a conservative, this was no surprise. However, for him to cite George Washington against bigotry was brilliant. He used tradition to advocate change. Also, Tillerson proved that conservatism does not require racism; indeed, he contended the opposite: that conservative values prohibit bigotry.

P.S.: I have read hundreds and hundreds of pages of the Founding Fathers' writings. I enjoy reading what they wrote. They had many good ideas. I recommend their works to all Americans.  It is important to know their real ideas, not the invented interpretations that we hear on talk radio and cable news.