The Art of Creating Crisis: How Trump Behaves at the White House

Trump’s managerial style leads to a constant creation of political crisis which behooves the populist president in mobilizing his supporters.

Within the first ten days of his presidency, Donald Trump signed 17 executive orders against the background of the most mass protests in the most recent history of the U.S. Apparently for him, political crisis is not an obstacle to a successful reign but, on the contrary, it creates additional possibilities. Will this managerial style work?

The U.S. political tradition supposes that, despite the tension of the election campaign and its results, each president elected initially tries to demonstrate the unity of the nation. First, this shows itself in the work output of compromise solutions, which take into account the point of view of both parties, different interest groups and social strata. Second of all, this work is usually carried out in conjunction with Congress, and is recorded in the form of legislation acts that raise the status and legitimacy of these decisions. Last of all, president does not rush to spend his political capital, knowing that he is supposed to be working with it for the next four years; in particular, he needs to lead his party in midterm elections less than two years after the inauguration.

Of course, Donald Trump broke all the traditions.

Turning Slogans Into Reality

On the first day, he began with fulfilling his campaign promises. Or, rather, he began with the imitation of fulfillment: most of the executive orders signed by him are declarative and preparatory. Basically, they are Trump’s tweets but long and officially formalized. These orders have two main goals. First, they are coming not from the party but from the president personally, who thus assigns himself the status of the main political actor. All the rest are only supporting institutions for registration of the head of state’s will. Secondly, the receivers of these orders are not the entire nation but only those who lead Trump to power, the core of his support. Trump built the entire logic of his first ten days in the White House based on the slogans of his election campaign, marking the exit from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the beginning of Obamacare reform, the construction of a wall on the border with Mexico, the regulation decline for a number of industries and initiatives, as well as restricting the entry into the U.S. for citizens of certain countries.

Many of these decisions provoked a negative reaction, especially in large cities, which are the strongholds of the Democrats. Moreover, the president’s executive order about the refusal to fund a number of programs in these cities because of their liberal attitude toward migrants is the essence of Trump’s negotiation style.

The key point of this style is that whoever is not with me is against me and I’m ready to use any kind of power politics to make them agree with my point of view. All this damage that will be created as a result of these power fights is not my problem. The cherry on top of this cake is the special understanding of justice: if someone attacked and critiqued me and did not change their mind, then I can take revenge over these people. Nowadays we see how this attitude is distributed toward the officials of cities, the large liberal media and some politicians, even members of the Republican party who are constantly and openly critical of Trump, like John McCain.

Policy of Likes

This style inevitably leads not to the decrease of conflicts, but, on the contrary, to a constant creation of political crisis. Trump is not trying to fight against the polarization. He instead is strengthening it from both sides. This fragments the political class, creates a sense of uncertainty and hinders the creation of strong coalitions. Apparently, according to the new U.S. president’s point of view, it ensures his position as a leader on the political scene under the principle “divide and rule.”

An important component of this style is the direct communication between the populist president and his supporters. Numerous likes and comments like “within this week Trump has done more than Obama during his eight years of presidency; keep it up, Mr. President,” urging the frantic Donald that he is doing everything right, are much stronger than the members of Congress and journalists. He and his supporters act like therapists to each other: people are delighted that someone finally kicked Washington politician and clever liberal asses, and Trump is happy that his actions immediately received the positive appreciation of hundreds of thousands of people.

According to this picture of the world, protests of the liberals and escapades of the media are not a threat to the president. On the contrary, they help him mobilize his supporters. These supporters see that the evil liberals not only did not calm down after the November defeat, but also continue to put spokes in the president’s wheels. The president is trying to help the country, but snickering Democrats go to protests instead of going to work. If Trump set up a live call-in show with the population, certainly some “Kholmanskikh” from Ohio would have asked him for permission to come and deal with these protesters.* Thus, the protests could be used by Trump for his own purposes.

At the same time, this approach carries a number of risks. First, it still provokes growth of a broad coalition against Trump as a factor of instability in American policy. At some point, this coalition can seriously limit the possibilities of the president, who will be left only with his Twitter activity as well as the adoption of the framework executive orders. Secondly, a lot of pressure will be placed on the Republicans in Congress, who will eventually lose the motivation to support an unpopular and way too impulsive president. Finally, in such a context, it will be difficult to create real serious changes. Even the first major reform, when we begin to talk, for example, about the complex mechanisms of the health care system, or the tax system, or a migration policy, can put the whole structure under threat, because Twitter has word limits for these meaningful discussions.

* Translator’s note: Igor Kholmanskikh is the plenipotentiary of the president of Russian Federation in the Urals Federal District. He became notoriously famous after the televised call-in show with Putin in 2011 where he offered his help in taking care of the protesters within the law.