John McCain and What Might be Trump's Most Incredible Accomplishment

There were things I did not like about John McCain's politics. McCain and his buddy Lindsay Graham seemed intent on sending troops into every hot spot around the world. He gave us Sarah Palin, helping to move us towards candidates whose major qualification is fame rather than understanding. (He obviously regrets that. Palin was asked not to come to his funeral.)

There were things I did like about his politics. Most importantly, he pushed the Bush - Cheney administration away from torture; without him it's plausible that our official policy on torture would be no different from that of dozens of dictatorships around the world. 

Beyond politics, I'm not sure how you would dislike his person. A man who nobly stayed a prisoner of war for years rather than leave behind his fellow prisoners - a price that cost him, among other things, his ability to raise his arms above his head - is a man you can't help but respect.

He was an icon of the Republican Party and yet Trump attacked him.

Even though he was not running against McCain in the primaries, Donald Trump went out of his way to say that McCain was not a war hero. "I like people who weren't captured," said the man who claimed that his own personal Vietnam was avoiding sexually transmitted diseases at Club 54 in the 80s and who avoided being drafted into Vietnam because of "bone spurs." Trump made more than one enemy with that comment.

Trump has also - repeatedly - shown disrespect towards all the former Republican presidents named George Bush.

Here's Trump's remarkable achievement. To side with him, you have to side against both living, former Republican presidents and one of the party's most iconic figures and former candidate for president in John McCain. He has repeatedly shown contempt for those men. They have repeatedly made clear their disdain for him.

Trump has forced his supporters to choose between him and *

• American prisoners of war
• a gold star family (a family who has lost a child in combat)
• every living former Republican president
• the FBI
• his own Attorney General Jeff Sessions
• the American Intelligence community (which includes the CIA)
• Economists who argue for multi-lateral trade agreements like the WTO, TPP, and NAFTA (which includes the overwhelming majority of economists)
• the Editorial boards on 100 of the nation's top 102 newspapers (of the two newspapers that endorsed him for president, one was owned by Jared Kushner, his son-in-law)
• iconic conservative voices like George Will, David Frum, and David Brooks

And Trump has succeeded in this. Republicans have sided with him over all these opponents to his policy and person.

In spite of making enemies of every living Republican candidate for president and every former Republican president, Trump's approval rating among Republicans stays close to 90%.

Based on this, I think it is safe to say that no president has - in my lifetime - changed a party more. Republicans not only love him but are willing to side against so much of what past Republicans have sided with to do that. Most recently they have happily joined with him in his contempt for McCain. (40% of Republicans disapprove of McCain.) To redefine a party that much is an incredible accomplishment.

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* And of course as time goes on, the list of people Trump supporters have to side against grows. His former allies who have turned against him immediately end up on his enemies list. His former lawyer and confident Michael Cohen and former adviser Omarosa Manigault are just the most recent of the people who his supporters had to once revere and now disrespect.

Deficit Swing - How Deficits Have (and are projected to) Change Under Each President

Trump signed a budget that will increase the deficit to a trillion dollars.

The deficit will grow simply because the economy is growing. If the deficit were stable as a percentage of GDP, it would grow about $100 billion during Trump’s four-year term.

Using the average spending and tax levels since 1979, the deficit under Trump would grow from about $600 to $700 billion. But given his tax cut this year and spending increases in the next few, it will instead hit $1,017 billion (a trillion) in 2020, or about $300 billion higher than what it would be if the Republican budget just met average standards for fiscal responsibility. (Since 1979, spending has averaged 20.6% of GDP and taxes 17.4%.) And this during a projected boom time; if you aren’t going to lower the deficit when unemployment is under 4% and the stock market is at an all-time high, you aren’t going to lower the deficit.

Here’s a table showing how much the deficit swung during a president’s time in office. Reagan’s first year in office, he had a deficit equal to 2.5% of GDP. In George H. Bush’s first he had a deficit of 2.7% of GDP. So, during Reagan’s time the deficit swung negative by 0.2 percentage points of GDP, which you can see in the "Swing" column.

	Deficit (-) or Surplus (+) Swing
	Inherited	Passed on		Swing
Ronald Reagan	-2.5	-2.7		-0.2
George H. Bush	-2.7	-3.8		-1.1
Bill Clinton	-3.8	+1.2		+5.0
George W. Bush	+1.2	-9.8		-11.0
Barack Obama	-9.8	-3.5		+5.3
Donald Trump	-3.5	-4.9		-1.4

Trump's first year in office he inherited a deficit equal to 3.5% of GDP.

According to CBO projections, whoever is president in 2021 will inherit a deficit of 4.9% of GDP. And that assumes no recession, which could raise the deficit by hundreds of billions.

Since 1981, the deficit has worsened every time a Republican president was signing and vetoing bills and has improved every time a Democrat was. You know what they say: you campaign like a fiscal conservative and govern like you're trying to make friends with everyone at the bar. "Tax cuts on me! For everyone!"

The Truly Bizarre Policies of Donald Trump

How abnormal is Trump?

Today Jeffrey Immelt wrote in his annual letter to GE stockholders that basic concepts like "innovation, productivity, and globalization" were being challenged and that he still believed in globalization's future.

George W. Bush called a free press indispensable to democracy. (And said that a special prosecutor may need to be appointed to investigate the connection between Russia and Trump.)

This is seen as news and - rightfully as it turns out - a criticism of Trump's policies. A CEO in favor of globalization and a president in favor of the first amendment is like a mother who loves children. It's lovely but it's hardly remarkable. And yet, with a Trump presidency, it is news.

Job Numbers in Historical Context

Here are some graphs and a couple of tables to compare this decade and administration with those of the last few decades.

This first graph assumes that the monthly average for job creation during these first 4 years and 5 months holds through the rest of the decade. You can see that this decade's numbers aren't much different from the 1990s.

However, if we adjust the raw numbers to percent of population (you might think that a population of 300 million would be able to - and need to - create more jobs than a population of 200 million), you can see that this decade is so-so.

Here is a graph showing the cumulative job creation numbers during the last four re-elected administrations.

The ranking of administrations through month 64 - the most recent month for which job numbers have been reported for the Obama administration - results in this ranking.

Assuming that the effect of a president's policies won't be felt until at one year in (if even then, given the myriad forces at work on the economy, including Congress's tendency to at turns exacerbate or mitigate the president's plans), this graph shows job creation without the first year.

The ranking without the inclusion of that first year (a particularly favorable change for Obama given that during his first six months in office the American economy hemorrhaged 3.4 million jobs), Obama and Reagan trade places on the ranking.

It does look as though - Great Recession aside - this decade and Obama's administration are shaping up to be fairly normal in comparison to past decades and administrations. 

Who Would Have Believed that Obama Would be Worse at Communication than Bush?

About the time the US went from silent movies to talkies, presidents seemingly stopped talking and became images instead of leaders who provided a narrative.

Obama press secretary Jay Carney's retirement is a good opportunity to look at Obama's effort to communicate.

George W. Bush was able to initiate two wars, a department of Homeland Security, TARP, and a massive tax cut. His record of legislative initiatives was not as great as LBJ's list of Great Society initiatives, but at least he matched LBJ for the average number of press conferences per year. It didn't matter that he had a penchant for butchering the language, he put effort into talking directly to the American people.
Obama? Not so much.

Obama's average of 20 press conferences per year puts him below either of the Bush men or Clinton. Congress has made it clear that no issues are as important to them as obstructing any of his initiatives, but Obama hasn't exactly made extraordinary efforts to communicate directly to the American people. In this age of 24-7 news coverage, you might think that he could at least dictate the topic, if not the position on them. (I remember feeling so flabbergasted at George W. Bush's administration's ability to convince the American people that of all the things we could be focused on, Iraq was the one that deserved the most attention. As much as I opposed the war even then, this is pretty great example of what it means to control the narrative, to dictate the topics that receive attention.)

FDR averaged nearly as many press conferences per year as Obama has average per term. And he passed legislation at least the scope of Obamacare about once per year. Can you imagine what FDR would make of the incredible possibilities offered by continuous news coverage?

Just judging from the paucity of press conferences, it doesn't seem as though Obama believes that he can talk over the heads of Congress directly to the American people. I wonder what FDR would say to him about that?