'No explanation necessary': How Trump has 'degraded our expectations for governing'

27 August 2024

Former President Donald Trump's advisors are asking him to pivot away from personal attacks and to focus more on policy. But those policy discussions are frustratingly light on details, according to a Washington Post columnist.

In her latest essay, the Post's Catherine Rampell argued that the Republican presidential ticket is being unjustly rewarded by the media for claiming to discuss policy without actually delving into the meat and potatoes of how their proposed changes would be made. She lamented that the ex-president "has so degraded the state of policy discourse that few politicians are even trying to come up with real solutions anymore."

"The Republican presidential nominee often promises fantastical outcomes, without any plausible mechanism for how, as president, he would deliver them," she wrote. "Most recently, Trump promised to cut prices, with energy prices specifically falling by 50 percent. How? No explanation necessary. He simply declares it will happen, and the media and his allies amplify his claims."

When Vice President Kamala Harris became the sudden presumptive Democratic nominee following President Joe Biden's exit from the 2024 race, Trump immediately started belittling her and insulting her intelligence. This prompted some of his top advisors and surrogates to encourage him to "please stick to policy" in order to avoid looking like a bully. But during an Asheville speech supposedly focused on the economy, Trump quickly devolved into lobbing personal attacks on Harris and Minnesota Governor Tim Walz.

Rampell noted that when Trump does actually does discuss policy, it's usually accompanied by "bureaucratic pageantry." One example she cited was his promise to "sign an executive order directing every Cabinet secretary and agency head to use every tool and authority at their disposal to defeat inflation and bring consumer prices rapidly down," calling for "results within the first 100 days, or much sooner."

"[A] preposterous promise on a 100-day timeline is still preposterous. (Arguably more so.) Yet seemingly, the entire Republican Party — and much of the media — have chosen to treat such nonsense as though it were a Very Serious, Big-Brained policy treatise," she wrote.

One major obstacle toward talking about legislation on the campaign trail is the low popularity of traditional Republican policies. Rampell pointed out that the more GOP candidates talk about what ideas they would implemented once elected that "voters might realize just how bad they are."

"For instance, nearly all of Trump’s major economic policies would worsen inflation (mass deportations, devaluing the dollar, politicizing the Federal Reserve, imposing new global tariffs of 10 percent or higher)," she wrote, adding that Trump embracing the Republican "policy bible" of Project 2025 is electoral kryptonite. "Of 28 major Trump proposals YouGov asked about in June (on both economic and noneconomic issues), only six were favored by most respondents. For example, 6 in 10 Americans oppose his proposals to cut corporate taxes and to abolish the Education Department."

Rampell didn't spare Harris from criticism either, observing that the Democratic nominee still doesn't have an "issues" or "policy" section in her campaign website. Though she attributed this to the media's general overall failure to hold Trump to a high enough standard regarding how he would actually govern in a second term.

"There’s always been a temptation for politicians to under-plan and overpromise, to pledge outcomes without detailing the inputs," she wrote. "But just as Trump has lowered the bar for politicians’ character and ethics, he’s degraded our expectations for governing, too."

Click here to read Rampell's column in full (subscription required).

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