I’m starting to think the real reason the Barnum & Bailey circus is going out of business has nothing to do with the elephants. Rather, I think, it has to do with the stiff competition it’s been getting from the Trump White House.
The three-ring circus that’s been coming out of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue makes “the greatest show on earth” look as exciting as a PBS documentary on The Joys of Watching Paint Dry.
If it’s not a very public fight with the president of Mexico then it’s an obsession with illegal voters who threw the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, or so the president claims. And if it isn’t that, it’s a fixation on the size of the crowd at his inauguration. And just when you think things are about to calm down, say, for 10 minutes, Mr. Trump rolls out a temporary ban on visitors from seven Muslim-majority countries, places that he believes pose a threat to our national security.
Okay, but for whatever reason the rollout is so confusing that it creates needless turmoil at airports, and mass demonstrations denouncing the president as a bigot, and the (legitimate) firing of the acting attorney general for refusing to defend in court the president’s order, a dismissal that some liberals are only too glad to dub “The Monday Night Massacre.” And now one more distraction: It comes out that our president had a less than friendly (also described as blunt) phone conversation with the prime minister of Australia, one of our closest allies.
If Barnum & Bailey put on a show as “colorful” as the one President Trump has rolled out, they’d still be in business — whether PETA likes it or not.
Does Donald Trump thrive on chaos? Is that why he’s giving us so much of it? Maybe, but I think there’s something else going on.
When Mr. Trump was running his business out of a skyscraper on Fifth Avenue, he was the boss. His company was private; it wasn’t listed on any stock exchange. So he didn’t have to please stockholders or a board of directors that could fire him. Sure he had to make nice to mayors and the like, but inside his tower in midtown Manhattan whatever edict Businessman Trump ordered was the law of his domain. As Mel Brooks so elegantly put it, “It’s good to be king.”
I’m getting the impression that Donald Trump may think he’s still running a business where he’s got the final say on everything that goes on. Yes, in his new job he can still make smart deals and try to cut costs the way a good businessman would, but now, for the first time in his adult life, he’s got people and institutions he has to answer to – whether he likes it or not.
He can’t sign executive orders non-stop for the next four years, though you get the impression he just might try. Sooner or later he’ll have to deal with Congress, with both Republicans and Democrats. The federal courts will also have a say on what he can and can’t do. As a businessman he didn’t have to worry if the general public liked the looks of his newest hotel. Now, as president, he needs to take the general public into account. And while it’s true that he’ll never have the support of hard-core progressives who take to the streets whenever they see something they don’t like, if there’s too much bluster coming from the White House, he risks losing the support of mainstream Americans who were willing to give him a chance.
And while he doesn’t have to kowtow to the news media that he so publicly detests, he does need to understand that the press is another check on his power. That’s what the founders had in mind when they drew up the First Amendment. He can call journalists dishonest if he wants, and his top advisor Steve Bannon can tell them to “shut up,” but they’re not going to shut up and they’re not going to be intimidated by this president. He may want bad news as a strategic matter, knowing that a large chunk of the American people don’t trust the media either. But a constant war with the press isn’t good for either side – or, more importantly, for the American people.
The introduction of his nominee to the Supreme Court was smooth and professional. We could use more of that President Trump. Still, Kellyanne Conway might want to walk into the Oval Office and gently remind her boss that being president of a company that builds skyscrapers and hotels and golf course is not the same as being president of the United States of America. Not even close.
As for the circus, we go there, whether we admit it or not, because a lot of us are hoping something crazy happens. Is the lion going to bite the lion tamer’s head off for rudely putting it in the lion’s mouth? Are the elephants going to relieve themselves on the guy with the whip’s shiny new shoes? Is the guy they shoot out of the cannon going to land in the net or in the first row?
The circus can be fun. But the White House isn’t the big top. And at the circus the clowns don’t talk.
