Donald Trump’s Populism Decoded: How a Billionaire Became the Voice of the “Little People.” By Leonard Steinhorn. Moyers and Company, July 3, 2017.
Brooks, GPS Transcript:
ZAKARIA: Ronald Reagan: In the minds of many on the right, he will forever be the king of conservatism, his presidency the high point of that movement.
So what
does Donald Trump’s presidency represent? Where does conservatism go from here?
Where does the Republican Party go from here?
Early
in the week, I had the opportunity to talk to a man who thinks a lot about
these issues, the New York Times
columnist David Brooks.
(BEGIN
VIDEOTAPE)
ZAKARIA:
David Brooks, pleasure to have you on.
BROOKS:
Good to be with you.
ZAKARIA:
When you look at Trump and the way he’s been governing, the things he’s passed,
it’s, kind of, a hodgepodge of some things that seem hardcore Republican
economic agenda, the repeal of Obamacare. Some of it is the trade protectionism
he’s always promised. Is there a new conservatism developing?
BROOKS:
No, I don’t think so, not – not in this administration. I think we saw glimmers
of it in the campaign. And what Trump understood but a lot of us didn’t
understand, what debate we were having. We grew up in the debate of big
government versus small government, whether you wanted to use government to
enhance equality, as Democrats did, or reduce government to enhance freedom, as
Republicans did. But in the campaign, Trump said “That’s not our debate.” As
many people, including you, have said, it’s open-closed. It’s between those who
feel the headwinds of globalization blasting in their faces and they want
closed borders, closed trade, security, and those who feel it’s pushing at
their backs, and they want open trade, open opportunity and open social mores.
And he
identified that we’re having a new debate now. And what's central to his
administration is he hasn't delivered on that.
And
that’s because there are not a lot of Trumpians in the world of policy. And so
he hasn’t exactly helped the people who got him into office. He’s staffed his
administration, to the extent it is staffed, with people who basically believed
in the Reagan bargain of 1984, which is, you know, cut tax rates, reduce
government regulation. And so I think he opened the door for a new kind of
conservatism but has not fulfilled it. That’s for somebody in the future.
ZAKARIA:
So where do Republicans go?
When
you look at Republican congressmen, politicians, have they looked at that
campaign and said, “We need to become more populist conservatives?” Is that
where the party is heading?
BROOKS:
Yeah, there was a book that was really useful to read, a short book called The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
by Thomas Kuhn. And he said what happens in science – but it’s also true in
politics – is you get a paradigm; you get a way of looking at the world,
Reaganism. That was a paradigm. It works for a little while and then slowly it
detaches from reality and it’s hollow, but nobody knows it. Somebody comes
along, punctures it and it collapses.
And
that’s what Trump did to Reaganism. But then you get this period of chaos,
where people really haven’t released the old paradigm but they haven’t – don’t
know what the new one is. And then you get a period of competition of
paradigms.
And so,
in the Republican Party, you’re going to get a libertarian paradigm; you’re
going to get a paleo-conservative Pat Buchanan paradigm. You’re going to get a
whole bunch of different ones and they will fight it out.
And if
I had to bet, I would like an Alexander Hamilton, open trade, a lot of
immigration, a lot of economic dynamism. But frankly, when I look at the polls,
there are not a lot of people who want what I want. The Steve Bannons of the
world – that’s where a lot of the people are. If you – they’re older; they’re
economically disadvantaged, and they want a national conservatism that will
protect them.
ZAKARIA:
And if that is what they want, the party, you think, will – will fold. Because,
to me, what’s been really interesting to watch is conservative intellectuals
have, by and large, particularly the more prominent ones like you, have stuck
true to their ideas and ideals and, you know, been very critical of Trump. I
think somebody like George Will essentially got fired from Fox for that reason.
BROOKS:
Yeah, right.
ZAKARIA:
But the Republican politicians have not. They have all caved and, in some way
or the other, have accommodated themselves to Trump?
BROOKS:
Yeah. And either those of us in the intellectual class are hidebound and rigid
and we’re stuck with our ideas and we’re not reflecting reality, or the
politicians are craven and they just don’t want to lose their jobs, so they’ll
go wherever the people are. And that’s basically where they are.
I think
one of the things we’ve learned and Trump has demonstrated is that parties are
not that ideological. Trump ran against a lot of Republican positions and
Republicans signed on.
What
parties are these days are cultural signifiers, social identity markers and
just teams. And people think, “What team has people like me on it? What fits my
social identity?”
A lot
of people looked around; a lot of suburban women in Missouri looked around and
said “Sarah Palin, she’s, kind of, like me.” And whether Sarah Palin believed
in high tax rates or low tax rates or health insurance markets or some other
health care policy, that’s not what they were thinking about. They were
thinking about, “Who’s like me?”
And for
a lot of people in the Republican Party, which is older, whiter and less
educated at the core, Trump was like that.
ZAKARIA:
Does that tell you that they will be loyal to him to the end, if there – if
these investigations go – go badly for the president?
BROOKS:
Yeah, pretty much. One of the things I think we’ve learned in spades over the
last 20 years is that we in the political class get super-excited about
scandal, and we think, “Oh, it’s about to tear that person down.” But, time and
time again, when you actually go out to districts where people are voting, it’s,
sort of, just a noise in the background, and they’re voting the things that
they care about, their economics, their health care, their education, or they
like the person.
And so,
in my conversations with Trump voters, the scandals just don’t come up. They
think – always, he’s kind of a buffoon or whatever, but at least he’s still
basically trying to say the right things. And so I don’t think it will have any
difference.
ZAKARIA:
And is part of Trump's support that that – you know, that core 35 percent or so
of the country strengthened every time the media criticizes him?
BROOKS:
Yeah...
ZAKARIA:
Because the last thing they want to do is to give you the satisfaction...
(LAUGHTER)
BROOKS:
Correct.
ZAKARIA:
... of having been right about Donald Trump?
BROOKS:
Correct. Yeah, one of the things we learned about the class structure in this
country is that people in the lower middle class or people in the working class
or people who voted for Trump don’t mind billionaires; they do not mind rich
people. What they mind are bossy professionals, teachers, lawyers, journalists
who seem to want to tell them what to do or seem to want to tell them how to
act.
And if
you had to pick the classic epitome of that person who most offends them, that
would be Hillary Clinton. And so she was exactly the wrong person.
And so
I find them remarkably stable in their support. There’s been some seepage
around the edge for Donald Trump, but so far it’s just seepage.
ZAKARIA:
David Brooks, pleasure to have you on.
BROOKS:
Thank you.
Steinhorn (excerpt):
Steinhorn (excerpt):
But populism has always been about more than a loss of jobs, status and prestige. It’s also about who they blame for that loss. And typically they train their fire on those they view as elites.
Notwithstanding
the threads of nativism and xenophobia woven into the early populist rhetoric,
their targets were clear: monopolies, banks, industrialists and those who
controlled the levers of capital in America. To them, they traced their loss of
livelihood and status directly to the economic barons who constituted the
elites of their time.
But
today’s populists — with the notable exception of the Bernie Sanders wing —
don’t rage against the capitalist elites and corporate boards and CEOs and
financiers for outsourcing their jobs, closing their plants, squeezing their
incomes and soaking up much of the nation’s wealth.
Rather,
they aim their anger at those who they believe have deprived them of their
cultural capital. To them, it’s the liberal, intellectual and media elites that
have redefined who and what America values. On the cultural pedestal is now a
rainbow flag, not the American flag. The masculinity of old is now declassé. We
elevate diversity and multiculturalism, not the hard hat, cop and white picket
fence.
In the
white working-class worldview, these elites have hijacked what Sarah Palin once
called the “real America” — through globalization that stole their jobs,
dispensations and benefits for those that haven’t earned it, and a politically
correct hierarchy that privileges gays, minorities, immigrants and now the
transgendered, but not the white working class even though, to them, they’re
the ones who built the country and deserve respect.
From
their perspective, all these elites seem to hand them is disdain and
condescension. So they see themselves, in the words of President Trump, as the
“forgotten Americans.”
Trump
understood all of that from the very beginning of his campaign. Sporting his
trademark “Make America Great Again” red baseball cap signaling white
working-class solidarity, he vowed to stomp on the elites that his supporters
believed were putting them down.
