So you could read Tuesday night’s remarks (a better idea than listening to their somewhat soporific delivery) in part as an attempt to hit the reset button, to pitch himself as a centrist dealmaker rather than a predictable ideologue, to leave the legislative struggles of his first year behind and get back to selling people on things they actually want.Thus even as he touted his tax cuts, Trump effectively buried further efforts at Obamacare repeal by suggesting that the repeal of the unpopular individual mandate sufficed as health care policy.There was no mention of deficit reduction or spending cuts, nor of the entitlement reforms dear to the heart of the House speaker just behind him.Apart from a long riff on immigration and a nod to judicial nominations, the conservatism of the speech was heavy on generalities about flag, faith and family, with more polarizing issues like abortion mentioned only by implication.Apart from the Islamic State, North Korea and Guantánamo Bay, the foreign policy section was … strikingly empty. America First, it seems, means not having to bore viewers by bringing up anything about the world beyond our shores except our enemies.And then for domestic policy there was a list of ideas that Bernie Sanders might campaign on in 2020: cheaper prescription drugs, a $1.5 trillion gusher of infrastructure spending, even a promise to pursue paid family leave.Not conservative ideas, these — but mostly popular ones. Categories: Editorial, OpinionWhere policy was concerned, the story of Donald Trump’s first year in office was simple.The populist of the campaign trail, the man who won the Republican nomination and the White House by ignoring conservative orthodoxy and promising the moon, was replaced by a president who essentially conceded control of his agenda to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell.It was characterized by a president who spent down his limited political capital pursuing conventionally right-wing policies — unsuccessfully on health care, successfully on taxes, but in each case without much moderate or bipartisan support.There are many reasons — one for almost every tweet — that Trump arrived at his first official State of the Union address as a wildly unpopular president despite a reasonably strong economy, but his failure to follow through on his campaign’s populist promises is high on the list. In this sense, and also in the canny and sometimes moving choices of inspirational figures in the balconies, I suspect the speech was effective, that it might help lift Trump temporarily upward from his mean of 38 percent approval toward the “we’re holding the House by our fingernails” promised land of 44 percent.But an effective speech is not the same thing as an effective agenda, and right now there are no prospects for Trump’s popular ideas getting enacted or even really considered in Congress.His party’s ideologues don’t want them, the opposition party doesn’t want to make a deal with Trump to get them, and his White House doesn’t actually have any detail behind the rhetoric.The ideas are just things that the president would probably like to do but that someone will talk him out of, or that he’ll forget about, or that he’ll offer in a halfhearted way and that Congress will never bother to take up.The only exception, the only issue where he does actually have some details to offer, is immigration reform.But here the speech’s appeal to the assembled legislators to make a version of the deal he’s offering on DACA — essentially an amnesty and path to citizenship now in exchange for future immigration reductions — was undercut by all the fearmongering about immigrant crime that Trump wrapped it in.For Democratic politicians whose base doesn’t want to compromise and whose own political interest isn’t served by any kind of major immigration deal, the bloody-shirt business with MS-13 murders was a permission slip for intransigence: Why make a bargain with a president who talks like half your immigrant constituents are gangbangers?
So this State of the Union both showed what a more successful version of the Trump presidency would look like — still conservative on many fronts but more genuinely populist, less same-old GOP — and why the possibility of that success has probably already slipped from this administration’s grip.There were ideas here that could make Trump’s second year more successful than the first, but there was no plan to actually enact them, no sign that Trump is prepared to build bridges where he’s burned them, no plan for getting more out of this speech than just a temporary polling bump.What there was instead was something you can expect to hear a lot of between now and November 2020: “If you like this economy, you should like me, too.”Politicians have won re-election with that sort of messaging.But few of them have had as far to climb to reach even basic likability as President Donald Trump.Ross Douthat is a blogger and columnist with The New York Times.More from The Daily Gazette:EDITORIAL: Urgent: Today is the last day to complete the censusEDITORIAL: Thruway tax unfair to working motoristsEDITORIAL: Beware of voter intimidationEDITORIAL: Find a way to get family members into nursing homesFoss: Should main downtown branch of the Schenectady County Public Library reopen?
Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week.
Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week.
To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week. Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters
To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week. Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters
To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week. Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters
To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week. Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters
To access this article REGISTER NOWWould you like print copies, app and digital replica access too? SUBSCRIBE for as little as £5 per week. Would you like to read more?Register for free to finish this article.Sign up now for the following benefits:Four FREE articles of your choice per monthBreaking news, comment and analysis from industry experts as it happensChoose from our portfolio of email newsletters
The Jakarta Police’s traffic division law enforcement chief, Comr. Fahri Siregar, said the driver of the SUV was a man.“The driver injured his left temple,” Fahridi said in Jakarta on Wednesday morning as quoted by Antara news agency. Fahridi said the driver was heading south on Jl. MH Thamrin. Near the pond at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle, he lost control of his vehicle. The car then drove over the sidewalk surrounding the pond before crashing into the pond itself.The front side of the Land Rover was heavily damaged and the driver was taken to a hospital for treatment. (gis)Topics :
A Land Rover crashed into the pond of the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle on Jl. MH Thamrin, Central Jakarta, in the early hours of Wednesday.
But he placed the ultimate onus for safety not on government but on individual businesses, saying they “are probably going to wind up leading this charge.” Higher death forecastMost US states have begun at least tentatively reopening for business, but that inevitably will mean more travel and higher risks.The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluations, whose virus projections have been closely watched, this week raised its US death forecast — to 137,000 deaths by August 4 — based largely on “explosive increases in mobility in a number of states,” said director Christopher Murray.That number, far above the current total of more than 79,000 deaths, reflects both looser restrictions and “quarantine fatigue,” he said on CBS, and it came despite positive trends in the hard-hit states of New York, New Jersey and Michigan. In states that have loosened their restrictions recently, Murray predicted “a jump in cases” in about 10 days time.But both Kudlow and Mnuchin stressed that undue delay in reopening would also carry a cost.”I think there’s a considerable risk of NOT reopening,” the Treasury secretary said on Fox. “You’re talking about what would be permanent economic damage to the American public.” Kudlow was asked on ABC’s “This Week” how US businesses could reopen with confidence when the White House — where virus protections are far more rigorous than what is available to most Americans — had proven vulnerable.Those cases, Kudlow said, represented a “small fraction” of the 500 or so staff members working in the White House complex. “I don’t know the specific numbers,” he added, “but we have had relatively very few.”The president, vice president and many others at the White House are tested daily. But Trump and Pence often defy the medical experts’ guidance about wearing protective masks.Across the broader economy, Kudlow said governmental guidelines coupled with private-sector innovation should allow relatively safe reopening, though he warned of jobless rates that might exceed 20 percent this month or next. ‘A tremendous snapback’ Kudlow, pushing back on reports of growing partisan tensions in Washington over another tranche of emergency relief, said informal talks with Democrats were under way, but he and Mnuchin emphasized the need to move ahead with deliberation.”We just want to make sure that before we jump back in and spend another few trillion of taxpayers’ money, that we do it carefully,” Mnuchin said.Still, both Mnuchin and Kudlow again expressed optimism that the US economy would register a sharp recovery in the second half of the year, with Kudlow predicting “a tremendous snapback” in 2021.Trump reiterated this week his belief that the virus would simply “go away,” even without a vaccine.Asked about that on Sunday, Tom Inglesby, director of the Center for Health and Security at Johns Hopkins University in Maryland, dissented.”No, this virus isn’t going to go away,” he said on Fox, adding that it would remain as a “background problem” both in the US and around the world until a vaccine is developed.
Two top US economic advisers on Sunday defended the need for an expeditious reopening of the economy even as the coronavirus reached into the White House despite the extraordinary precautions taken there.The comments by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and economic adviser Larry Kudlow came just two days after the country recorded its steepest job losses in history, with 20.5 million jobs lost in April, and as virus cases continued rising in some states with far more deaths projected. They also came after confirmation that Vice President Mike Pence’s spokeswoman and a White House valet to President Donald Trump had tested positive for the virus, and as three members of the White House coronavirus task force — including top expert Anthony Fauci — reportedly self-quarantined after potential exposure. Topics :