President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Yes, when you are president you have a bully pulpit. He won't be the first president to take advantage of it. At one point, you had a president scolding Bethlehem Steel about their prices and their executives earning too much. You have senators today (Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren) who avail themselves of the bully pulpit to demonize pharamaceutical companies and banks about their pricing. Many of the people bent out of shape over Trump right now, though, would never register a peep in those cases.

There is a difference too, though, even if they are both crude forms populism -- Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump. In the case of Boeing, Trump isn't just looking at a company and deciding they charge too much (in his opinion) to score votes and the soundbite. He is looking at a company the government is actually transacting with for his populist appeal. At least he's directly involved in the transaction and is attempting to negotiate.

Also, in the case of Sanders and Warren, there is always a threat that they are going to pass legislation that fucks with companies they have demonized. And they have tried to. Maybe that is Trump's plan. To try to advance legislation that puts price controls on things. But until that is really an implicit threat, really, that was just someone who has negotiating leverage due to a serious bully pulpit. ... trying to use the leverage he has. That is actually exactly how a free market operates.

 

I was very young in 1971. So it wasn't a scandal to me -- but only because it didn't cut into Sesame Street. Others I know who are older than me? It went BEYOND a scandal. And the worst of what Nixon brought led to the disastrous results that price controls always bring on -- shortages, a spillover effect to other areas of the economy, and a drag on economic growth, etc.

But Nixon is a good parallel. The Wall Street Journal had something on the opinion page a few days ago (can't remember exactly which day) making the comparison. Nixon was non-ideological and all over the place, too. So he disoriented Republicans at the time whose rhetoric claimed to believe in free markets. It's why when he came in with wage and price controls and he created the EPA they didn't fight him hard enough. And we paid for the worst of what Nixon did. In the case of Trump, they were suggesting that Republicans should support things that they think fit the typical "pro growth" republican agendas, but when he veers off into the big-government populism or shake-downs of companies so he can claim political glory fight him -- because if that becomes the norm, our economy will pay the price.