President Trump Is in the Building

By ARTHUR C. BROOKS and GAIL COLLINS

President Trump on Monday in the Oval Office, where he signed a memorandum pulling the United States out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Credit Doug Mills/The New York Times

Gail Collins: Arthur, we now have a President Trump. Yipes. Wow. Holy cow. Oh dear oh dear.

I still have to steel myself to get through that sentence. But you’ve got more equilibrium on the matter. What do you think so far?

Arthur Brooks: Yep, President Trump is real. He lives in the White House and can now be experienced under the Twitter handle @Potus.

I think we should begin with the Inaugural Address. It was certainly an aggressive speech, but let’s start with the most unifying part: “At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America, and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.”

Gail: Well, it’s not like the concept of patriotism is a new theme for these events.

I liked “We will shine for everyone to follow.” Like the world’s little sunbeam.

Arthur: I confess I did like that, because it was one of the few really Reaganite lines. I also appreciated Trump’s point that the antidote to our corrosive identity politics is greater love of country — it’s not just about turning down the volume on disagreements, but about greater focus on the things we hold in common.

Gail: I was trying to imagine the rest of the world listening to him yell about putting America first. Obviously we care most about the homeland. But the best way to lead isn’t by announcing to everybody else that they’re also-rans.

Arthur: It was definitely nationalistic. The surprise from abroad is understandable, given the deeply international tone and focus that our last two presidents preferred. But I doubt many foreign leaders saw the core message as much different from what they tell their people every day: I’ll secure our interests before those of other countries.

Gail: Yeah, but that’s a little different from the new leader of the most powerful nation on the planet telling us that America’s spent way too much time helping out the rest of the world.

Arthur: Notwithstanding the shock and outrage coming from the journalists who are still waiting for some mythical “pivot,” the remarks were a précis of precisely the themes Trump has emphasized for the past year and a half. The speech was less a grand rhetorical moonshot and more a practical greatest-hits medley drawn from the campaign.

To my ear, the basic promises were these: The guy sitting behind me really messed up the country over the past eight years and I’m going to reverse his policies. Elites have been ripping off ordinary Americans and will get their comeuppance. I’m going to protect American jobs by any means necessary and will always put our interests first. Radical Islamic terrorists are about to take a huge beating. We’re going to secure our border. And a partridge in a pear tree.

People who approve of this agenda think his directness was a breath of fresh air. People who disapprove of that agenda or mistrust the president found the speech to be radical and scary. It’s pretty much that simple.

Gail: There were some people who were praying that he’d rise above. Admit it, you had a little twinge of hope.

Arthur: I’ve never heard an Inaugural Address where I liked every rhetorical turn or policy suggestion, and this was no exception. But I wasn’t at all surprised by the president’s speech. What does surprise me is the persistence of this expectation that any day now, he will shift course entirely and begin talking like a conventional politician. Trump is Trump. He had an agenda; he stated it over and over with zero variation in the major themes for more than a year; he won the election; and now he plans to carry it out while retaining the style that got him this far. People may like or dislike this, but how can anyone find it shocking? It reminds me of when my kids were little and were shocked every single night when I instructed them to brush their teeth.

Gail: It’s a little different in that Trump was so muddled and contradictory during the campaign that there was some reason to wonder which version would pop up. Swamp drainer or the guy whose friends are almost all part of the swamp? So far the answer is that we have a president who gives his Inaugural Address about the downtrodden little people while he’s appointing a bunch of bankers and billionaires to run the government.

Arthur: Conservatives generally place a high premium on business success and executive-level management experience, where prior success usually tracks with hefty salaries. Conversely, liberals tend to prioritize subject-matter expertise (both of Obama’s energy secretaries were physicists without much management experience) or long résumés in government service.

My biggest worry is not wealthy cabinet secretaries, but the mutual contempt that is still dominating our discourse. At a moment when we should be celebrating the peaceful transfer of power, there’s almost no effort to unite on either side. We are almost completely locked down as a nation, ideologically. This bodes ill.

Both the Friday inauguration and Saturday’s march displayed some of our finest political traditions. But around Washington, both events felt more menacing and dystopian than joyful or patriotic. To be sure, like my colleague Jonah Goldberg, I am generally suspicious of huge crowds who are in agreement on almost anything. But rude protesters on Friday, vulgar signs on Saturday, and smashed-up store windows all suggest that an excess of unity is not our chief problem.

For my money, the lowest point came when Madonna gave a speech to the cheering anti-Trump audience at the Women’s March. The content was so obscene that CSPAN had to apologize for airing it. It could practically have been staged by a conservative saboteur to scare people in the middle away from the left.

By the way, though, who says Trump can’t attract celebrities to D.C.?

Gail: Yeah, when he said there would be a lot of big-name talent at the inaugural festivities, we didn’t know they’d all be out in the street.

Obviously I don’t defend the window smashers. And I certainly didn’t expect President Trump to come out of the White House on Saturday and tell those throngs of women that he wanted to work with them on important issues like early childhood education.

However, while the women were marching, Trump went over to the C.I.A., where he really could mend fences. And what did he do? He stood in front of the memorial to fallen officers, and he delivered a harangue about how his crowds were much bigger than the media said they were.

Tell me that isn’t just … scary.

Arthur: Based on the signs I saw Saturday, igniting a thoughtful deep-dive on education policy was not a primary goal for most of the marchers. But I certainly agree that a multiday debate about the size of the crowd was an inauspicious start for everyone, especially a brand-new administration with the power to change the conversation at will. But to be fair about the C.I.A. appearance, Trump preceded his claims about the inauguration crowd with remarks of appreciation such as, “Very, very few people could do the job you people do and I want you to know I am so behind you.”

What do you expect to see this week?

Gail: He’s certainly going to sign some executive orders undoing some of Obama’s initiatives. He will visit some other agencies. And wherever he goes, he’ll continue to talk about himself. His nominees will keep plodding along. Even if they can get confirmed with just Republican votes, I can’t believe they’re all going to survive. The vetting was incredibly sloppy, there are conflicts of interest all over the place and some of them — particularly on the domestic side — are just terrible.

Let’s pick our Most Likely to Not Be Confirmed. You go first.

Arthur: I’ll have to pass on Cabinet Bingo. I think there’s a good chance his whole cabinet will make it through.

Gail: Oh, Arthur. You’re raining on my parade.

Arthur: I think executive orders will be the big news for the next couple of weeks at least. Trump will aim to erase big chunks of Obama’s regulatory agenda. Progressives will boo, conservatives will cheer, and both sides’ views on executive power will keep flip-flopping with depressing predictability every time the White House changes hands.

You’re our historian here, Gail. What’s the closest historical parallel to the political environment we see today, and what ended up happening?

Gail: It’s funny, I was talking with a presidential historian friend who kept saying: “Nothing like this has ever happened!” I asked him about William Henry Harrison — that was the election where the rich guy from a plantation ran as a humble soldier in a cabin while the president, Martin Van Buren, the son of a struggling innkeeper, was portrayed as the heir to privilege and fortune. And then the winner gave a long inaugural speech in the rain and died. Giving way to a vice president who turned out not to really be from the same party.

And my friend said: “Not even close!” So I’m short on parallels from the past.

Arthur: I never buy the “this is the worst time in history” argument, which I heard over and over when Obama got elected, and I hear again today. I mean, at one point, we did actually have a Civil War, which I think no one outside the nastiest fever swamps is predicting today. (Although Madonna did talk about blowing up the White House.)

Gail: Arthur, I guess we have to end where we started. The Trump administration is underway. I’m filled with dread. But at least we’ll have a lot to discuss.

Arthur: We will indeed, Gail. Many different things might happen over the course of the Trump administration, but a drought of discussion topics doesn’t seem likely to be one of them.