For example, while citizens and leaders of the western world try to figure out what happened in Helsinki, Trump supporters are in plaintive wail mode: âHe just wants better relations with Russia,â they say. âWhatâs wrong with that?â
In a previous op-ed, I posited three possible reasons for Donald Trumpâs behavior relative to Russia: that heâs a witting or unwitting stooge, a wannabe dictator, or desperately broke. Several people noted, in comments to the article, that Iâd missed a fourth option: âHeâs trying for world peace. Wouldnât better U.S./Russia relations be a good thing for the U.S. and world peace?â
Of course, it would be a good thing if the U.S. and Russia could get along better. It would be a very good thing.
Relations have been badly strained with Russia ever since we first started pushing NATO onto her borders (in ways that Reagan/Bush had promised Gorbachev would never happen if heâd let the USSR dissolve), and Russia (in part, citing those broken promises) intervened in Georgia, Crimea, and Ukraine.
But Donald Trump is never going to untangle that mess: He simply lacks the skills, and isnât willing to turn details over to underlings who are competent. Instead, in Bolton and Pompeo, he has selected âhawksâ historically hostile to Russia, which may be why he went out of his way to exclude them from his talks in Helsinki. It says a lot when a president is so incompetent he canât even appoint advisers who agree with his worldview.
He just canât do things competently.
This pattern has repeated almost daily since the election: consider how his other promises and actions reveal his distressing lack of competence and his failure to understand even the most basic elements of statesmanship and governance.
Donald Trump was elected on an âoutsiderâ platform that, in significant ways, mirrored that of Bernie Sanders and progressive Democrats, earning him large swaths of former Obama voters. But his incompetence has betrayed them, and every world leader, looking on, now knows exactly what theyâre dealing with and wonât be suckered the way working-class Americans were in November of 2016.
On entitlements, for example, Trump famously stood on the stage on April 18, 2015 (and multiple other occasions), and said, âEvery Republican wants to do a big number on Social Security, they want to do it on Medicare, they want to do it on Medicaid, and we canât do that and itâs not fair to the people that have been paying in for years and now, all of a sudden, they wanna be cutting it.â (Bernie, of course, didnât believe him for a second and called him out.)
He canât do it on entitlements.
On trade, Trump took the position of the Congressional Progressive Caucusâand every U.S. administration from George Washington to Jimmy Carterâwhen he said he would protect U.S. jobs (and bring home manufacturing jobs) with the use of targeted tariffs. The last time we had a substantive national discussion of the issue was when Ross Perot challenged Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush for the presidency in 1992, and won over 20 percent of the national vote (correctly) warning of that âgiant sucking sound from the southâ that would happen if the U.S. signed NAFTA and joined the GATT/WTO.
Most Americans then, and most now, supported targeted tariffs. But Trumpâs all over the map, doling out exceptions to tariffs and trade rules when it suits his business interests or when he gets hassled by his wealthy Republican constituency.
Even worse, companies must operate over decades-long periods when planning to invest millions or billions into new manufacturing facilitiesâbut because Trump is doing what he is by executive actions (with a ânational securityâ excuse that will probably be struck down in the courts) instead of moving comprehensive trade legislation through Congress, no company has the assurance that his protective tariffs wonât simply evaporate the day he leaves office.
While tariffs should lead to increases in domestic manufacturing and, thus, more jobs, they arenât in this case because no company can take that large a risk on such an unstable president with an eccentric policy that has no laws behind it.
He just canât do it on trade.
On international relations, Trump repeatedly called for better relations withother nations, a goal that (outside of a few hardliners) is widely embraced, at least in the abstract, by both parties and the people of the world (particularly in Europe). Sadly, heâs managed to damage or destroy our relations with all but a handful of autocratic nations, disrespecting and angering American allies whoâve been with us for centuries.
He canât do it on international relations.
On infrastructure, Trump parroted Bernie in calling for a $1.5 trillion national investment in Americaâs crumbling infrastructure, repeatedly pointing out that since U.S. infrastructure investments collapsed following Reaganâs huge tax cuts in the 1980s, weâve let our roads, rails, and airports deteriorate to Third World status. But action since the election? He seems to have forgotten.
He canât do it on infrastructure.
On issues affecting women and children, Trump called for increased federal spending for child care, child tax credits, and paid maternity leave. The GOP in Congress and the billionaires who fund their campaigns and their voter suppression efforts simply laughed at him.
He canât do it on family issues.
On health care, Trump continued to insist, even after he was elected, that he would follow the Democratsâ plan to change the law so that Medicare could directly negotiate prescription drug prices (ending a $600 billion windfall for the drug companies inserted by the GOP in 2005), and would provide âinsurance for everybodyâ that was âmuch less expensive and much better thanâ Obamacare. Instead, heâs changing the law so your insurance company can once again refuse to pay your bills if they can dig into your records and find any remote evidence of a pre-existing condition. Or simply dump you when you get sick.
He canât do it on health care.
On taxes, while President Obama signed into law the largest middle-class tax cut in the history of the nation, Trump promised an even bigger tax cut for working people. Instead, he and the GOP handed over $5 trillion in U.S. tax dollars to the billionaire and corporate class, while further depressing wages on working people.
He canât do it on taxes.
He promised to help out low-income blacks, saying, âWhat have you got to lose?â Turns out that, along with other low-income minorities and low-income whites, theyâre losing a lot, from the right to vote, to essential government help with housing, food, and health care. His white supremacist base seems happy with his ârapistâ/âshitholeâ rhetoric, but theyâre being screwed economically by his policies, too.
He canât do it for low-income folks, people of color, or even the racists among his base.
Trump is breathtakingly incompetent. His businesses have failed repeatedly, foreign oligarchs are bailing him out, and he and Michael Cohen apparently broke numerous U.S. election laws just getting him elected. He couldnât even run a competent campaign for president, and without âa little (illegal) help from his friendsâ wouldnât be in the White House.
He canât do it through politics.
Trump canât get his pitiful wall out of his own Republican-controlled Congress, and his brutal child-separation/detention-camp policies have horrified Americans across the political spectrum.
He canât do it on immigration.
He has utterly failed at health care, to the point that massive increases in insurance prices (and declines in the quality of coverage) are predicted for this winter when rates are reset, further hammering working families who are seeing their wages drop as the natural result of the ongoing Republican War on Unions.
Meanwhile, working-class Americans are further getting hammered with rising gasoline prices as Trumpâs newfound Saudi âfriendsâ are laughing all the way to the bank.
He canât do anything successful for working-class people.
His tax-cut scam will, in the first weeks of October, collide with the Fedâs program of unwinding quantitative easing (QE). The Fed will be looking for purchasers of $800 billion or so of Treasurys on their balance sheet, while the Treasury Department must find buyers for around $1.2 trillion in new debt to continue handing U.S. tax dollars to multinational corporations and billionaires. This, David Stockman told me, will probably push us into the next great depression.
He canât do it for the economy.
The drug companies are laughing at him (and pretending to go along by holding prices down⌠for a few months), his infrastructure investment ideas have been killed by McConnell and Ryan, and the GOP wonât even discuss his (Ivankaâs) campaign promises of more governmental help for low-income women and children.
He canât do it to keep us well.
Which brings us back to why I didnât include âTrump wanting better U.S. relations with Russiaâ in my list of reasons heâs so utterly obsequious when it comes to President Putin and Russian oligarchs.
We all would like a win-win of good relations with the worldâs second largest nuclear power, but is Donald Trump moving us in that direction? The evidence shouts, âNo, he canât do it.â Heâs simply too incompetent.
If Donald Trumpâor any president, for that matterâwanted to accomplish a rapprochement with Russia (or any other nation), it must be done systemically.
From the State Department to Congress to our military/intelligence agencies, a president committed to working things out with Russia would be realigning the levers of American power to consistently offer both carrots and sticks, holding a clear-eyed vision of the goals and needs of both nations.
Heâd be working with NATO to resolve issues that are troubling to the Russians while, at the same time, informing the American people about the history of this relationship and how it got to this point. (Ironically, that last would give him something to bash Bill Clinton with, as it was on his watch that America broke Bushâs promise to Gorbachev. Trump apparently canât even competently abuse a political foe.)
Trump grew up in his daddyâs business, which he eventually inherited. As a CEO, he was an absolute autocrat, and never seems to have mastered the necessary arts of compromise and cooperation. His legendary business failures, frauds (yes, with convictions), and bankruptcies attest to his inability to accomplish thingsâand also to his childlike belief that the way to âget things doneâ is simply by ordering it so.
Thatâs not even how competently run companies work, much less entire nations. Heâs just a third-level grifter, and just canât do it.
Trump believes that if the âleadersâ of a nation can get along, everything will work out. While thereâs actually a long history of personal chemistry between leaders leading to good results, dating back to the first years of our Republic and Jeffersonâs relationship with Lafayette, this all has to happen within a much larger and more institutional framework, and Trump canât do that.
Instead, Trump is handling U.S./Russian relations the way a small-time (non-public company, like Trumpâs) CEO would negotiate a deal between their companies. Except that a competent CEO would have had his underlings work out most of the details before the first meeting took placeâor at least immediately thereafter.
As if to flaunt his incompetence, Trump hasnât even yet told his national security team what he agreed to in his private meeting with Putin.
Itâs becoming pretty clear that he canât work out a deal with Russia, and meanwhile North Korea is openly flaunting their defiance of him (despite the superficial changes that have recently occurred). Even Trumpâs right-wing allies around the world are laughing at him: Bibi considers him a useful idiot, and the Saudis walked all over him (leading to millions of refugees in Yemen). ErdoÄan is ignoring Trumpâs pleas to release an imprisoned American pastor, and Xi, other than swapping financing for the Indonesian Trump property for ZTEâs future, is mostly ignoring him.
A few conservatives have tried to spin Trumpâs blundering in North Korea and Russia as being on the level of Reagan first âgoing off scriptâ with Gorbachev, something that did actually happen and eventually turned out well (at least until Milton Friedmanâs libertarian âChicago School boysâ began advising the privatization of the former USSRâs assets, but thatâs another article).
But the simple reality is that Reagan knew that government doesnât work like a corporation (unless itâs an autocratic government), and therefore he let competent statesmen and stateswomen around him work out the thousands of small but critical details. Reagan at least had the experience of running California, with the worldâs sixth largest economy and layer upon layer of fractious politics; his policies were terrible, but he knew how to get things done. Trump doesnât.
Trump, in apparent thrall to the idea that heâs Americaâs âCEO Presidentâ or, worse, our soon-to-be ErdoÄan or Mussolini, thinks he can have a âsecretâ conversation with Putin and heâll just magically charm Russiaâs far-more-sophisticated president into supine compliance with U.S. concerns.
Predictably, it doesnât seem to be working out. He just canât do it.
Trump should have learned from President Obamaâs successful negotiations, leading to world-turning agreements with Iran and Cuba, that there is a way to work things out with former adversaries. Step one, in fact, is to bring in all concerned parties, as Obama did when he successfully worked out the Iran deal with Russia, China, the UK, France, Germany and the UN.
But Trump just canât learn, and instead, like a spoiled child, heâs now trying to destroy two of the most important bipartisan and multilateral accomplishments of his own countryâs early 21st century.
So, yes, we should all hope for better relations between the worldâs two great nuclear powers. And if Donald Trump had shown any competence at anything other than demagoguery and race-baiting, it should be included on a list of reasons why heâs working so hard at his relationship with President Putin.
But the last two years tell us that Trumpâs Russia outreach is almost certainly more about the money he owes Russian oligarchs than any desire for our two nations to âget along.â
Itâs a good thing for world peace and stability to have an American president competent in international relations (and domestic governance, for that matter), and it would be a good thing for the U.S. and the Russian Federation to have a goodâor even a greatârelationship; most Americans would be grateful and supportive of such a presidentâs best efforts.
Proof of that is found in the early outreach to Trump from a number of Democrats, from Bernie to Chuck Schumer to Nancy Pelosi, right after the election. They each said, in various ways, âWhere heâs wrong, weâll fight himâbut when heâs right, like on trade, infrastructure, or strengthening Social Security, weâre prepared to work with him.â I even said similar things on my radio/TV program, and meant them.
Unfortunately, Donald Trump turned out to be so incompetent that he couldnât even turn Democratsâ âyesâ into anything real, and his promises to do things for average working Americansâor for world peaceâwere simply lies.
He just canât do it.
Trump will go down as the most dangerously corrupt and tragically incompetent president in Americaâs history, and the most it seems we can hope for is that he wonât start World War III or flip America into fascism with his next tweet.
Those are the things, history tells us, an incompetent leader actually can do.
If we want to avoid empty talk and legitimating propaganda, 
A lot more is at stake in this game than a trophy and bragging rights. Nothing less than the