Donald Trump isn’t getting stuff done because Donald Trump doesn’t know what he’s doing—or even what he would need to do to get stuff done.
Take infrastructure. Jonathan Cohn lays out the differences between how Barack Obama put together a major infrastructure package and got it passed despite Republicans refusing to work with him, while Trump has failed on infrastructure despite some Democrats being willing to work with him.
Newsflash: Obama put work into his plans, and had a big staff of experts meeting and researching and trying to figure out what would work. Whereas:
During the presidential campaign, Trump mocked Hillary Clinton for her wonkishness: “She’s got people that sit in cubicles writing policy all day,” he said during one interview. “It’s just a waste of paper.” At one point, Trump’s own policy advisers quit because nobody was paying them or taking them seriously.
Trump was too busy proposing—in broad, flashy terms—an infrastructure plan that could have been popular and good for the economy. You know, a Democratic-style one, involving spending lots of money to fix or build bridges and schools and hospitals, and creating jobs doing just that. But:
In a December interview with The New York Times, Trump confessed that he was still figuring out exactly what he wanted to do ? and that he hadn’t realized FDR-style infrastructure building might alienate conservatives. “That’s not a very Republican thing ? I didn’t even know that, frankly.”
So once Trump realized that today’s Republicans are opposed to rebuilding America’s bridges and schools and hospitals, he came out with an infrastructure plan that was a giveaway to big business. But even then, he wasn’t really going to put any work into it—not when he could be tweeting attacks on the media and signing horrible executive orders.
This article originally appeared at DailyKOS.com on February 21, 2017. Reprinted with permission.
Laura Clawson is a Daily Kos contributing editor since December 2006. Labor editor since 2011.
