Category: Politics

Domestic Policy, General, General, Politics

100 Days of Myopia

Bob Claude |

Source: “Pictures of TR & FDR Together”, Theodore Roosevelt Association Journal, Vol. 16, No.1 in Theodore Roosevelt Digital Library, Theodore Roosevelt Center, Dickinson State University

Nothing worth having comes without effort – Theodore Roosevelt

Since the purpose of this website was to develop a positive ideology of nationalism, I have avoided keeping up with the chaotic first three months of the second Trump administration. We have now reached the vaunted 100-day mark in his presidency, which is too often used to judge a president’s success. It leads to a temptation to focus on quick, shallow policy victories at the cost of lasting change and thus risks squandering a mandate.

Trump’s victory came amid claims that it heralded a historic realignment towards a new nationalist majority in the American electorate.  However, history shows that lasting political realignments are processes, not specific events. They begin before the election and are then fostered by the victors afterwards. The campaign doesn’t end, but continues as the victor explains their new national priorities and broadens his movement’s connection to the American public.  As Trump should have learned in his first term, he had no automatic sinecure, but was simply on probation. His support may have been a mile wide, but was only an inch thick.

The obsession with a president’s first 100 days harks back to the first administration of Theodore Roosevelt’s cousin, Franklin.  In an attempt to revive the economy during the Great Depression, he used the Democratic majority in Congress to enact a wealth of legislation to stabilize the economy and create jobs.  No one knew what would work, and so it was the policy equivalent of throwing mud against the wall and seeing what stuck. The Supreme Court voided some of it as unconstitutional. Most economists now agree it had little impact and that the economy did not fully recover until the advent of World War II.

This, however, does not mean it was ineffective.  Americans may not have known much about the alphabet soup of federal agencies FDR created, but every family huddled around their radios each week to listen to his fireside chats.  In a calm avuncular manner, Roosevelt used this relatively new medium to promote his legislative program and explain his philosophy. This created the support that enabled him to eventually pass iconic liberal goals like Social Security and the National Labor Relations Act in the latter two years of his first term.  It cemented a realignment that continued for almost 40 years and still is a part of our political landscape.

Trump has an opportunity to achieve a new nationalist version of the Roosevelt majority. Globalist Democrats are in disarray and their popular support has sank to historic lows. It is a golden opportunity for the kind of debate that would cement a lasting nationalist mandate. Instead, Trump 2.0 has taken the easy way out by making the same myopic mistakes as Trump 1.0, but on steroids. It has been dominated by Trump’s desire for revenge and his addiction to executive orders, many of which are futile, bombastic, unconstitutional or all three at once.

Theodore Roosevelt certainly pushed the boundaries of presidential power (see this earlier article), but as part of a coherent discussion of the policy reasons for it.  His most important political role was as a cheerleader for local Progressive reform movements. Much like FDR, he enjoyed using the “bully pulpit” of the presidency to promote his philosophy and embraced the possibilities for persuasion that the legislative process offered. It was hard work, but worth the reward. Instead, Trump’s arrogance and dictatorial methods risk reviving globalist legitimacy while justifying the use of similar tactics by a future president of that ideology.

2024 Election, Globalism vs. Nationalism, Nationalist Theory

American Nationalism Wins! – If

Bob Claude |

Congratulations to new President-elect Donald Trump and his Vice President-elect J.D. Vance. They achieved a solid and historic victory crossing demographic barriers that had previously defined American politics.  The black community, once confined to the Democratic Party, broke free and gave him over 20% of their vote.  Latinos also joined his coalition. Even dark blue urban metropolitan communities voted for Trump in unprecedented numbers.

The crux of my past doubts about Trump centered on whether he could unify the country around nationalist principles. This breadth of his victory shows that he can do so. Indeed, he has the opportunity to cement a historic realignment from the globalist political culture that began in 1992 to a politics of nationalism. The coalition is still fragile and can be lost unless it becomes not only a “big tent” demographically, but ideologically as well.

The Old Culture

The 1992 election between George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot marked the end of the Cold War, a nationalist conflict fought with globalist methods.  The real issue in that election was which of these two ideologies would define the post-war political debate.  On the globalist side was Bush, who believed the US had a duty to lead the coalition that fought the First Gulf War to preserve an international system of stable nation-states. On the nationalist side were Clinton and Perot. Clinton campaigned on redirecting attention to domestic issues while Perot criticized the Gulf War and deficit spending.

Clinton’s victory seemed to usher in a nationalist era in American politics.  However, his failure to incorporate the Perot nationalists into his coalition led to the 1994 midterm Republican sweep. In response, Clinton pivoted not only on domestic issues but also on foreign policy.  He championed the concept of a new world order where the US would use its apparent unipolar primacy to spread, by economic and military force if necessary, democracy and free enterprise throughout the world. American politics would be fought on globalist rules, which included the corporate globalist goals of free trade and relaxed immigration. The 9/11 attacks and the Global War on Terror gave this crusade a nationalist patina, but the core goal of reimagining the world in our own image remained.

The New Political Culture

Trump’s victory renews a revolution against this previous culture he began in 2016. To succeed this time, he must govern as the head of a coalition of the two different nationalist ideologies discussed in my Globalism vs. Nationalism series (see the category under the Politics tab above);  namely, cultural nationalism and progressive nationalism.

In that series, I originally described one of these sub-ideologies of nationalism as Ethnic Nationalism.  In fact, it is more accurately termed cultural nationalism. It is the belief that the particular values and way of life of a nation are valuable and must be preserved. It can be based as much on religion, cultural traditions or even economics as it is on race or ethnicity.  In particular, American culture has always prized individual autonomy and free enterprise entrepreneurship. Trump may be best characterized as such a cultural nationalist. It is why business leaders like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy became such avid supporters.

At the same time, President Trump has signaled the importance of progressive nationalism through the addition of Robert F Kennedy, Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard to his coalition.  RFKJr brings his commitment to health, safety and the environment and Gabbard her commitment to a more restrained foreign policy. Both wings of nationalism share a hostility to lawfare and the unchecked administrative state.

However, there will be differences that need to be bridged. Obviously President Trump will have the final word, but there is another influencer in the coalition to be reckoned with – Vice President JD Vance. He has a history of articulate advocacy for both progressive and cultural nationalist causes. For example, he castigated the railroad industry after the East Palestine derailment and introduced new stringent railroad safety legislation in response. Unlike the other members of the coalition, Vance can’t be fired as Vice President. In the end, his chances of succeeding Trump after this one term will depend on preserving and expanding the nationalist vision.

There is no guarantee in politics and thus, no guarantee that the realignment towards a nationalist political culture will succeed. If Trump wants to engineer the same kind of generational change that presidents like Lincoln and FDR achieved, he will work to incorporate both the individualist and community ideals of nationalism. Otherwise, the globalists will win again.

2024 Election, Nationalist Theory, Politics, Uncategorized

2024 American Nationalist Voting Index – Summary, Final Score & a Personal Decision

Bob Claude |
Issue (linked to past articles)
 Harris Trump
Political Reform 0 – 5
Foreign Policy – 6 + 1.5
The Square Deal + 4 + 2
Conservation & Environment +6 – 5
A Strong America – 7.5 – .5
Political Philosophy – 2.5 + .5
Character – 3 – 5
FINAL SCORE – 9 – 11.5

This series of articles was designed to provide an ideological structure for evaluating the presidential candidates in the face of a campaign filled with pandering and personal invective. I believed in doing so through the metaphorical eyes of fellow progressive nationalist Theodore Roosevelt. While this analysis generated a numerical score, I recognize that it is based on a series of subjective judgements. You may believe other issues should have been included or the issues weighted differently and thus come to a very different conclusion. I hope it at least was helpful in cutting through the noise of the campaign and creating a focus on real issues.

Nevertheless, based on these metrics, the scores of the two candidates are appalling. Neither come close achieving the nationalist ideals of TR. We thus are not choosing the more nationalist candidate. We are not even choosing the least globalist candidate. We are left with choosing the candidate who would do the least harm to the nation and the nationalist cause.  Once again, I cannot endorse either one. Yet, as I grudgingly accepted in the introduction to this series, choose we must among these two, while being clear eyed about the realities of the choice. At the same time, we remember we are electing a new Congress as well.  Here is where the genius of our Constitution can save us from a disastrous result.

A Personal Decision

The introductory post in the series cited TR’s comment about a vote being like a rifle. My vote will arguably be more akin to a shotgun than a rifle. Nevertheless, and relying on the above results, I will be voting for Vice President Harris and then voting Republican for the House and Senate.

The standard response of most partisans to this ticket-splitting is “But nothing will get done”. This is not true. For example, the Trump tax cuts will expire of their own accord at the end of next year since it is highly unlikely the two sides can agree on successor legislation. This resulting tax increase, combined with the Republican resistance to new spending, will keep the budget deficit in check. As discussed earlier in the series, a Harris Presidency would continue the aggressive antitrust and consumer protection agenda of the Biden Administration and its climate and environmental program.

However, the voting index also shows her administration would require close supervision on curbing the administrative state, immigration and foreign policy.  The Congress can and should hold a President Harris’s feet to the fire on these issues. On administrative power, the Supreme Court ‘s Loper Bright decision ending deference to agency interpretation should start a process of specifying agency jurisdiction in more detail lest more rules be struck down. The Republican House has been eager to challenge open immigration policies by impeaching Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas. Meanwhile, an opposition Senate would hopefully create a check on a continuation of Biden’s liberal interventionist foreign policy. Harris cabinet nominees also would be subject to the advice-and-consent authority of the Senate. There would be sharp and sometimes unpleasant policy disagreements that could create progress on nationalist legislation or, at the very least, highlight the issues for the American people to eventually resolve.  In a constitutional structure that encourages consensus, the debate would begin building the necessary support for a true nationalist presidency in 2028.

In contrast, the first Trump Administration damaged the nationalist brand with his erratic behavior and autocratic methods.  He has little patience or understanding of the need for consensus in the American constitutional system.  Instead of restraining executive administrative power, he prioritized policies he could enact by executive fiat and failed at enacting lasting legislative changes. Immigration is a classic example. Trump certainly controlled the border as president but failed at passing a comprehensive immigration reform through a Congress controlled by his own party that could have prevented the Biden-Harris border fiasco. Thus, he is unlikely to unify the nation around the extent of change he is promising while risking future broader support for such change.    

As TR said, you do what you can with what you have. Politics in a democracy is the art of the possible and not necessarily the perfectly correct. This election is proving to be an extreme and heart-wrenching example of these realities.   As American progressive nationalists, we believe in this democracy and that we can succeed in it.  Let us keep the faith and continue to build support for our cause.  Now (if you haven’t already done so) get out and vote and God bless America!