It is a recognition that a softer sales tactic was needed to sell the same hard-edge populist agenda
President Donald Trump loves the song “My Way,” bristles at the slightest alterations in his daily routine, and lashes out when the world won’t accept him on his own terms. Then, when that does not work, he tries something completely different.
Trump’s well-received address to Congress on Tuesday night, a conciliatory speech in which the word “we” outnumbered the word “I” by 3-to-1, represented precisely that kind of shift. Just last week, Trump shouted himself hoarse branding the news media “enemies of the American people” at a time when he was working on an address that invoked the better angels of his own nature, national unity and an “end to trivial fights.”
This does not represent a pivot, it is not a fundamental change of approach, and it does not mean that Trump plans to abandon his tweet-first-and-ask-questions-later style. But it is a recognition by the White House, that what it had been doing was not quite working and that a softer sales tactic was needed to sell the same hard-edge populist agenda he campaigned on, people close to Trump said.
“It was not a reset speech,” White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer told reporters Wednesday, as Trump’s team basked in its best news cycle since he took office 41 days ago. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker, and a Trump ally and adviser, said, “The thing people don’t get about Trump is how quickly he learns — he moves fast — so he’s going to be using different approaches.”
“He started out with a set of attitudes and assumptions, and he’s gradually learning which ones are worth keeping and which ones he needs to throw out,” Gingrich said. “On Tuesday he rose to the occasion because he knew the country was watching. That doesn’t mean next Tuesday he won’t have a 20,000-person rally where he strikes a different tone.”
Striking that presidential tone, as Trump did on Tuesday, was an important political move for a commander in chief facing historically low approval numbers and scepticism from fellow Republicans.
Republican Senate and House members were cheered by the president’s optimistic message. But in private, they are becoming increasingly anxious about the administration’s reluctance to present a detailed plan on how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, as well as offer a more specific budget document than a brief outline circulated last week, a $1 trillion infrastructure package that is still in the theoretical stage, and an as-yet vague proposal to cut corporate taxes.
Some Republican senators noted in private that nationalist edges on illegal immigration still cut through the speech, despite all the cushioning of the language. Democrats were even less charitable.
“Come on, there was no pivot, and there isn’t going to be one,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate minority leader. “The speech wasn’t as harsh as some other ones, but it was basically the same things he’s been saying all along. It had the same terrible policies on immigration and other issues.”
The speech, current and former Trump staff members said, was conceived as a bookend to the inaugural address, which was intended to be short and businesslike — to project the new president’s impatience in enacting his America First agenda that included quickly killing the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal and beefing up border security.
Aware that Trump would be speaking to the largest television audience since his inaugural, his messaging team — led by his chief strategist Stephen Bannon; his top policy adviser Stephen Miller and speechwriter Vince Haley, with input from his counsellor Kellyanne Conway, his spokeswoman Hope Hicks and a handful of others — took pains to soften his often incendiary language.
And they were pleased with the contrast between his slashing, improvisational speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference on Friday and his dignified delivery on Tuesday — all of which showcased Trump’s political range, according to one person close to the team. Trump also resisted any instincts he may have had to ad-lib.
But Trump faces weeks of significant governing challenges that might soon overshadow the success of the speech and the weeklong schedule of follow-up events around the country by him and Vice President Mike Pence.
Two people briefed on how Tuesday’s speech to Congress was crafted said the lack of details was an intentionally evasive manoeuvre, using phrases that allowed different groups to read in what they wanted. It buys the president more time to change the narrative that his White House is short-staffed and in disarray.
But none of a dozen people in Trump’s orbit said they had expected him to sustain the tone of measured magnanimity in the speech.
Inside the White House, the success of the address — three-quarters of respondents polled by CBS approved of Trump’s message — was greeted with relief after weeks of controversy over the president’s reported ties with Russia, the botched rollout of his immigration executive order and the resignation of his national security adviser Michael Flynn.
The question of when, or whether, Trump will ever move away from his brash, in-your-face style to a more sedate and conventional approach has been dogging the former real estate developer since the earliest days of his presidential campaign.
False pivots
There have been nearly as many false pivots as real crises: Trump was expected to adopt a kinder-gentler attitude after an “Access Hollywood” recording of him making lewd comments about women surfaced last fall, but after a short statement of contrition he went back on the attack.
The moment that came closest to Tuesday night’s change of tone came on election night when Trump called for unity and an end to a vicious political war he had so vigorously pursued.
“It’s time for America to bind the wounds of division — have to get together,” the stunned winner told his supporters at a Manhattan ballroom that night. “To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It’s time.”
But over the next few months, Trump often adopted a harsher and darker tone in interviews, speeches (often off-the-cuff) and on Twitter. He cannot afford that approach now, as he moves into the tougher, more public process of trying to push a legislative programme through Congress.
On Wednesday, Trump — who loves to linger in front of the cameras before ceremonial White House events — hustled the news media out of the Roosevelt Room after 30 seconds to begin his first real nuts-and-bolts negotiating session with Hill Republicans, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senator Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader. “We are here to start the process,” a solemn-faced Trump said. “It begins as of now.”
International New York Times
