In 2017, on the day after Trump’s inauguration, I wrote an essay on my predictions for his presidency. There was a lot of angst and hand wringing going on and I wanted to write down what I thought would happen (or not happen) as a way to get clarity in my head outside of the echo chambers I frequent. I never published the essay (at least not anywhere I can find) and I promptly forgot about it until a couple of weeks ago when I was looking through my drafts. Upon re-reading, what struck me was how much I got wrong and what I (kindof) got right. Even more interesting was trying to understand why I got some things hilariously wrong (“Trump’s administration will be uneventful domestically”).
The entire essay is reprinted below but to save you having to read it all, here is a quick summary of the predictions I made back in January 2017.
Trump will keep Obamacare in all but name.
Global security arrangements that have been in place since WW2 will be destabilized.
Trump will moderate his rhetoric and will be shown to have more bark than bite.
Trump will have very little domestic impact and will be unable to make much change.
Global spheres of influence will shift as other world leaders seek to take advantage of American isolationism.
The obvious really big miss is on Trump’s domestic impact. My thinking was guided by the understanding that the Republican and Democratic establishments loathed him and would not work with him. I completely missed the possibility that he would capture the (Republican controlled) legislative branch of government through the sheer force of his grassroots support. With a fiercely loyal army of supporters, it did not matter if the Republican establishment liked him or not. They simply had no (courageous) choice but to do as he wished.
I think about these kind of errors in judgement a lot because I make predictions all the time at work, in relationships, and in life in general. I want to understand why I was wrong so I can be less wrong next time. The root cause of my wrongness comes from my assumption that things will be the way they have always been. In this case, my expectation that party politics is driven by the party machineries and no one individual can single-handedly overwhelm the machine. Once that premise was shattered, any thesis built upon it could not stand. Fundamentally, you really need to be careful making predictions about domains where you don’t have expertise because you do not have the breath of knowledge and experience to anticipate what might happen.
Predictions (circa January 2017) I like to make predictions not because I have any great skill or track record at prognostication but because straining to look into the future causes me to re-examine what I believe in the clarifying light of what I know to be true today. For the cost of an afternoon’s reflection, I get to prune along the edges of my biases and hopefully, come to a more pragmatic view of the world I live in. Of course, like everyone else, I am partial to my foibles and don’t really like to change my mind that often so I try to keep these episodes to a minimum. Therefore, my reflections are usually only triggered by significant events like the birth of a child, a major career decision or discovering I have run out of cookies at 2am in the morning. One such event is the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th president of the United States. Donald Trump is, to put it mildly, a very divisive figure in American politics. He is almost equally loathed by both the democratic and republican party establishments. When Donald Trump announced his candidacy, I predicted he would be out of the race before the first primary. I assumed he was just in it for the publicity and ego boost. After he lost the first Iowa caucus to Ted Cruz, I again predicted that he would drop out after losing a couple more races. Trump went on to win the Republican party nomination and then, against my last prediction, the presidency of the United States. I was wrong every step of the way. I bring this up, not just to highlight my abysmal track record of predictions about Trump but as an opportunity to examine my own blind spots. I am asking the same question as the dazed boxer staring up from the canvas, ‘Why did I not see him coming?” The answer for the most part I think comes from his cartoonish character. Trump is the kind of guy you almost can’t make up. He says outrageous things that would doom most political careers in an instant. He makes comically narcissistic statements that would be inappropriate for a fourteen year old. He often disregards the social convention of at least trying to appear to tell the truth. This makes it easy to overlook the fact that Trump has done impressive things. He built a multi-billion dollar global business that spans multiple industries. Sure, he got a head start with a “small” multi-million dollar loan from his dad. Sure, several of his companies have declared bankruptcy and gone under. Sure, several of business partners and customers have complained about sharp elbowed and less than ethical tactics but the fact is that he grew a relatively small real estate business in New York into a globally recognized brand and made billions along the way. Anyone that has run any kind of business will recognize just how hard that is. I scoff when people describe him as a failure in business. We would all be so lucky to fail like Trump did. The other overlooked factor was the extreme discontent of wide swaths of the electorate. A quick look at the numbers makes it appear that all is (economically) well in America. Unemployment is at historic lows, the stock market is surging through the roof and inflation is so low, the Feds were worried about deflation for a brief shining moment. What’s not to like? Unfortunately, most people don’t buy groceries or pay rent using economic indicators. If the factory you used to work at upped and moved to Mexico, then you are not doing good. If your boss cut your hours in order to keep from having to give you benefits then you are not doing good. If the only industry in your area lays you off, along with thousands of other employees, citing rising costs to comply with regulations then you are definitely not doing good. The fact that most people enjoying the benefits of the American economy (like me) are not connected to the people who are losing out made it easy not to see just how strongly they felt. It was easy to disparage Trump supporters as racists, misogynists and poorly educated. If only we came up with a clever viral hashtag and brought these people up to our level of enlightenment and evolvement, they would see the light and vote in lockstep with us. Well, as a previous president once said, “It’s the economy, stupid”. Enlightenment is a tough sell when your house is being foreclosed and your kids are going hungry. All the other candidates pretty much promised more of the same with some slight tweaks around the edges. Donald Trump, however, seized the tide at the height of its flood and rode it all the way to the White House. He basically promised everything to everyone. You think illegal immigrants are taking your jobs, well, he’ll not only build a wall to keep those damn Mexicans out but also round up all their compadres who are already here and send them back on the fast train to Juarez. Your company outsourced your job to Asia, gosh darn, he’ll slap a tariff on them so fast it’ll make that greedy CEOs head spin. You heard China is kicking our butts and owns half of the United States, well, he is going to get us out of the TPP (never mind China is not part of this treaty but now is not the time for nitpicking) and negotiate tougher trade deals with those shifty Chinese. I don’t know that people actually believe he is going to enforce all these policies as some of them are infeasible, expensive and most likely counter-productive but the point is he was the only candidate that said he was going to vigorously attack the apparent root cause of the problem and was credible enough for voters to expect him to actually try. Now that I have set up my understanding of the Trump phenomenon, let’s get to the good stuff - the predictions. Let’s warm up with an easy one. Trump will repeal Obamacare and replace it with …. Obamacare? He’ll probably call it Trumpcare or Goldcare or anything else but it will be essentially the same thing. For the last seven years, the republicans have made great showings of wanting to repeal the Affordable Care Act, AKA Obamacare, but obviously could not actually accomplish much given the eponymous author of the law was the president himself. Now that they control both the legislative and executive branches of government, they have no choice but to actually make good on over half a dozen years of posturing. But here’s the rub, millions of Americans get access to healthcare through Obamacare today (the numbers are fuzzy but it is somewhere between 11 and 20 million) and it would be politically tough to take that away without any replacement. The media would run sob stories of photogenic people dropping dead for lack of insurance for months. The problem with coming up with a replacement is that some of the most attractive provisions, like abolishing coverage decisions based on pre-existing conditions, require some of the less liked provisions, such as levying fines for non-coverage. Abolishing some parts of Obamacare will be like pulling a thread on an old sweater. Once you start tugging, it doesn’t end until you are left with a useless pile of yarn. What I really wish is for the Republicans to come up with a universal health plan that goes beyond Obamacare and really delivers on the promise of healthcare for all Americans regardless of economic or employment status. It would be expensive, require a huge bureaucracy to manage, be horrendously inefficient and have to ration care (death panels, anyone?) but it will be worth it to ensure all americans get access to the massive technological advancements humankind has made in medicine over the last couple decades. There is no worse fate than for you or a loved one to suffer from an ailment with an available but unaffordable cure. The second prediction is that Trump will be a transformative president who will change how America operates long after his presidency is over. Whether this will be good or bad is yet to be determined. I say this because Trump appears to have no orthodoxy. Trump is a Republican who supported Planned Parenthood during the primary debate, challenged the unquestioned support of Israel as part of our foreign policy, questions our role in NATO, does not believe in unfettered trade and has flexible views on which countries constitute our allies. All politicians claim to want to bring change. Trump, by his nature, is change. He is not really a Republican and definitely not a Democrat. Trump is a party of one and because he won without the support of the establishment, he has no reason to feel any allegiance as he governs. Ever since the second world war, it has been an established part of American identity to be the protector of the entire world. I remember being amused when Obama would be berated for not “doing something” about civil wars in other countries. It is just part of the expectations of regular Americans that their government has the power, and responsibility, to set the rest of the world straight. Other countries, of course, have this strange affect as well. Many European countries have this same attitude towards former colonies but no other country sees the entire world as its sphere of influence. Well, Trump seems to want to change that. His inaugural speech suggests a policy of isolationism. No more paying for the defense of other countries. Sorry, Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and dozens of other countries, better start stocking up on missiles and planes because Uncle Sam may not be riding in to save you if things get hairy. This single policy change will usher in a whole new world order as countries start to figure out how to fill the power vacuum the US leaves behind. The impact of this single change will be huge and will have repercussions for decades to come. My third prediction is that Trump will not be Hitler. I feel pretty silly having to say this but amongst the left leaning part of this country, it has become almost mainstream to compare Trump with Hitler in a way that would be laughable if the people doing it were not so earnest. I find myself in a strange place amongst Americans. My friends are almost equally distributed across both the left and right leaning political spectrum so I get to see the worldview of both sides. When Obama was elected, my right-wing friends believed, earnestly as well, that his only agenda was to usher in the end of America as we know it by capitulating to all our enemies, destroying religion and forcing everyone to get gay married. I could not believe the insanity of their beliefs and last I checked Obama didn’t really accomplish any of those things despite two terms as President. Now that Trump is in office, my left-leaning friends are making equally bombastic claims about Trump’s agenda. Plus ca change, I guess. Now to be fair, Trump has given people some reason to be worried. The idea of a creating a registry of citizens based on religion is a scary thought. The wingnuts who crawled up out from the sewers and showed up at his rallies and increasingly on Twitter are scary. Trump’s willingness to accommodate racists and misogynists in his populist approach is scary. But there is a big difference between playing the populist card to gin up votes and rounding up people to send to camps. There is also the little issue of the constitution that prevents the government from doing crazy stuff like this even if they were so inclined. There is also the fact that both sides of the legislative branch hate Trump and would not go along with any such plans. Now, it is easy for me to make this prediction as I don’t fall into any of the groups within the cross-hairs. If I were, I probably would be justifiably nervous. But my best judgement tells me that there will not likely be any issue here. My fourth prediction is that Trump will have very little success with his domestic policy. The simple reason is that both party establishments hate Trump. Trump may be the Republican president but I can’t be sure if he is hated more by the Democrats or the Republicans. Trump is going to have a very hard time getting anything done. His combative and prickly nature is going to make it very hard for him to get along with the political elite in Washington. Also, the fact that Republicans now control both houses of Congress is going to be a mixed blessing. Without a common enemy to focus on, the party is going to devolve into in-fighting. We all know that there is no worse enemy than the one you sleep with and there is no greater apostate than the believer from another denomination. In between the inevitable ensuing conservative knife fights and purity tests, Trump may be able to finagle portions of his agenda but quite frankly, I think, even for a skilled politician, this is out of his control and falls into the hands of the gods. My fifth prediction is that the world will become a more interesting place. Every sane world leader is at this moment asking the same question, “What is the opportunity for me and how can I seize it?” With the potential for America to withdraw from the world stage, there are going to be all sorts of regional leadership vacuums. Does this signal to China that there is an opportunity to settle the Taiwan issue once and for all? Can Putin expect no resistance from the US if he starts to cobble together the USSR once again? How much push back will be applied if Iran starts to expand its territorial influence in the Middle East? Countries that always assumed the US had their back now have to plan for their own defense. This may be a good time to stock up on Lockheed shares. Of course, all of this may be posturing by Trump. He may not really mean all these things he has said and is just setting up a negotiating position. To be honest, I still don’t feel like a have a good read on the man. “Is he crazy or is he crazy like a fox?” Only time will tell. My last prediction is that Trump will be a one term president. This is probably my shakiest prediction because, well, I have been wrong on every aspect of his election. However, I base this on a couple of things. First, I doubt Trump is going to be able to deliver on many, if not most, of his campaign promises. Anyone with a basic knowledge of economics knows that the traditional rust belt jobs are not coming back to America. Walls on the border are not feasible and will not do anything to reduce illegal immigration. Trade tariffs are counterproductive and will cause the loss of domestic jobs as other countries slap tariffs on our exports. Once the bloom wears off, his supporters will turn on him. They will be less willing to overlook his rough edges once it is clear that he is not able to deliver for them. Also, did I mention that the establishment of both parties hate Trump? Without friends on the Hill, Trump will be reduced to tweeting insults trying to rally populist rage. This gets old really quickly when nothing is being accomplished. Lastly, I don’t think he will enjoy being president. Trump has lived almost his entire adult life in a world where he is surrounded by people who suck up to him. To be sure, any American president is the recipient of some major world class sucking up but also major world class trolling. Trump is thin-skinned and easily provoked. He joins fights with people that even I would overlook as insignificant. Sometimes I wonder how he sleeps at night if he is as affected, as he appears to be, by every insult thrown his way. Being an ex-president is the best job in the world. Jimmy Carter is basically Mandela-lite at this point and even George W is being remembered fondly. I think he is going to do his four years, declare victory and retire to become an elder statesman for the rest of his days. As an ex-president, you retain the power and gravitas of the office but none of the responsibility. That’s a really sweet gig. So to sum it all up. I believe the Trump administration is going to be uneventful on the domestic front but cause dramatic change internationally. Of course, all these go out the window if there is another 911 style attack in the US. In that scenario, regardless of who is in power - Democrat or Republican, all bets are off.