It will take about five hours for Washington’s finest movers to install the Trump family’s personal effects in the White House today. It will take longer to find out if Donald Trump is as impulsive and provocative a president as he has been a president-elect. Even if he is, that does not rule out success.
Millions are alarmed by the prospect of having someone so fond of tweeting and personal invective as leader of the free world. Their concerns are not unfounded. From today President Trump will face life-or-death decisions, such as whether to continue with his predecessor’s bombing of Isis targets in Syria, and yet he appears to disdain the intelligence agencies that traditionally help to guide such decisions. There is not one strong advocate of free trade among his nominees for senior cabinet posts, and yet free trade is an essential plank of American prosperity. He seeks a friendly relationship with Vladimir Putin, while the Russian leader seeks to disrupt and if possible dismantle Nato and the European Union.
How Mr Trump intends to reconcile these apparent contradictions, or whether he will bother, remains a mystery. Yet precisely because so much of how he will govern is uncertain, he has a historic opportunity to confound his doubters and prove himself a genuine reformer.
His stock in trade is surprise. His weapon of choice, at least until noon today, has been the tweet. Sometimes he tweets to exhort rather than to threaten. But the tone is still far from presidential by any previous definition. As he wrote on Sunday: “For many years our country has been divided, angry and untrusting. Many say it will never change . . . IT WILL CHANGE!!!!”
That, in different language, is what President Obama promised eight years ago only to founder on timidity, partisan rancour and in the blood-soaked sands of the Arab Spring. Expectations of Mr Trump are lower, but he will be emboldened by control of both houses of Congress. He has two urgent tasks: at home he must prove to those who voted for him that he can bring manufacturing jobs back to the rust belt without derailing the wider economy. If he fails he will pay dearly at mid-term elections that are less than two years away. Abroad, he needs to reassure America’s allies that Trumpism is not isolationism.
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Whatever else it is, Trumpism is a reflection of profound impatience with the western liberal institutions that have guided the US and Europe since the end of the Cold War. Many of them, from America’s underperforming public education system to the EU itself, need a shake-up. Mr Trump has the instinct and now the platform to demand one. The world can only hope that he chooses to listen to sound advice and govern with the benefit of knowledge. In the Oval Office, instinct is not enough.
Mr Trump promises to be busy signing papers in his first 100 days in office. Many will be executive orders rescinding those signed by his predecessor to enforce healthcare and environmental regulations that Congress would not approve. He has also promised to invest heavily in infrastructure. Mr Obama did, too, but there is no reason not to continue. America’s roads, airports and rail network are in dire need of upgrades. What Mr Trump must guard against is driving up still further a US national debt that already stands at nearly $20 trillion, or more than 100 per cent of GDP.
With this in mind he has warned Nato’s other members that they must pay their way. He is right. At the same time he must know that Russia will exploit any sign of an American retreat from Nato leadership, as it has exploited US weakness in Syria and Europe. He has shown a zeal for straight talk that is refreshing after “No drama” Obama’s careful scripting, but he should resist the urge to bully the press for doing its job. He has shown that he can nudge individual business leaders into rethinking where they build their factories, but he cannot let that morph into protectionism.
America’s fastest-growing markets and 80 per cent of the world’s purchasing power are outside the United States. Contrary to the emerging view of Mr Trump’s nominee for commerce secretary, trade is not a zero-sum game. A rising tide floats all boats. If the new president shows enough flexibility, he can rise with it.