The Potemkin Presidency

Yesterday, the President finally acted on his promise to deal with the corporate-created opioid crisis by holding what was essentially a photo-op event and announcing a “really tough, really big, really great” advertising campaign that essentially says “just say no”. Because that worked so well when we tried it in the 1980s. The President did not announce a public health emergency and did not allocate any new funds to alleviate the crisis.

This non-event is pretty much typical of the Donald Trump presidency. It is a wonderful TV show without any substance, a Potemkin village as pretense for governance.

Yesterday was also the day that the long-awaited JFK files were supposed to be released. Congress passed a law demanding their release by this date 25 years ago so the government certainly had plenty of time to prepare for this day. Apparently not. Eventually, some time last evening a portion of the documents were released. The reason for the delay was that the Trump White House had not signed off on the portions of the documents that the intelligence agencies felt either need to be redacted or not released at all.

Yesterday was also the day that the prototypes for Trump’s beloved border wall were officially revealed. Trump has vowed to hold an “Apprentice”-like made-for-TV moment where he will come down to Texas and pick the design that he has chosen. Of course, he will be picking a prototype for a wall that will probably never be built. As one academic who has studied border walls says, “A wall symbolizes action whether or not it actually does anything.” Pretty much the definition of Trump as President.

Don’t get me wrong, there are more than plenty of terrible things going on in Trump’s agencies. ICE is engaged in mass deportation. The EPA is gutting environmental regulations, endangering lives and lining corporations’ pockets. The Interior Department is apparently just a vehicle for Ryan Zinke’s corruption. And Congress is engaged in a class war, desperately trying to strip healthcare from millions and give that money and more to rich people and its corporate benefactors.

But Trump himself is basically running a Potemkin presidency, all show and no substance. His indifference and inability to understand policy basics, much less policy nuance, ensure his empty suit status. Beyond the horrible policies being implemented by his government, that might not pose an existential problem. But the fact is that every other leader in the world, ally and enemy, knows the same thing and that makes Trump and the world more dangerous.