News media look for succinct sound bites that encapsulate one’s message. Even so, Bush simplified political language considerably. Things were good or bad, the right or wrong thing to do. When Al Gore confronted him with carefully researched numbers, Bush simply responded that Gore’s was “fuzzy math.” That was a put-down; not an explanation. It gave people no reason to agree or disagree except the bare fact that Bush used a put down.
Even Bush tried to explain some issues in order to get public support. Unfortunately, the weapons of mass destruction claim was false, despite the lengthy explanation and pictures.
Trump clearly learned from Bush. He’s all about unsupported sound bites. That’s why tweets work – there’s no room for explanations. The world, however, is more complex, and short tweets allow Trump to keep changing the subject, burying thoughtful responses behind a flurry of new issues.
That brings me back to two basic points: First, what he’ll do for you can’t be limited to a tweet. Behind his tweets are claims about what causes what, how things will happen, for whom, whether he will follow through or ever meant to. His tweets bully us to listen only to him, though there is nothing backing his claims. That is truly talking down to the American people, talking to us as if we can’t and don’t need anything to back up his claims.
My second basic point is that the world is more complex than a tweet.
Global warming will be expensive, forcing us to repair or rebuild infrastructure, care for the injured, leave flooded lands and rebuild homes, business, industry and the lives disrupted. It has bred extremism, disease and refugees in Africa and the Middle East by drying fertile land, burning crops, salinating and flooding coastal lands. Yet Trump backs away from everything that would make it more manageable.
Trump claims global warming is a hoax. But the chemical and physical process by which carbon and methane trap heat and how much heating they force is very well established. Scientists have been measuring atmospheric changes in those greenhouse gasses and changing temperatures on earth with a variety of techniques. They’ve measured the loss of the Arctic and Antarctic ice shelves. So many studies by so many scientists have examined the problem in different ways that their consistent conclusions simply make Trump look like a fool, a sucker or a misanthrope.
One can willfully ignore climate change but the climate doesn’t ignore us. Even now, it’s making refugees of many island nations peoples, pushing families out of their homes in exposed areas of Hawaii, Alaska, New Jersey and Long Island. The climate is aggravating the refugee problem in Africa and creating serious problems for the free world. Storms have hit towns and cities across the country with a fury beyond living memory. Don’t be fooled by the receding waters after Hurricane Katrina made refugees out of New Orleanians and Hurricane Sandy brought New York City to a halt by flooding its subways. Those storms revealed how close we are to creating millions of refugees in our own country and destroying trillions of dollars of investment, jobs, and transportation networks that nourish our entire economy. Trump may ignore it. We can’t.
Leaders who understand the world in its complexity are crucial to our very survival. Like the Founders of America, I think immigration is a net plus, but I understand the feelings of social and economic dislocation. Aggravating the flow of refugees, however, sharpens those feelings of injury and is threatening the very institutions that have united and protected the free world since 1945. Yet Trump’s policies will aggravate the refugee problem and its consequences. This is a very dangerous game, whatever his reasons.
Stephen E. Gottlieb is Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor of Law at Albany Law School emeritus and author of Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and the Breakdown of American Politics. He has served on the Board of the New York Civil Liberties Union, and in the US Peace Corps in Iran.
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