More than just words
Candidates in this week’s debate have sweeping proposals. It’s worth paying attention.
At least one thing is of interest in this week’s Republican presidential debate besides Donald Trump.
The former president will dominate discussion, although he’s skipping the event and has arranged a talk with Tucker Carlson to be seen at the same time on Elon Musk’s X. “If he’s not there, he’ll still be there,” Bret Baier, one of the moderators, told Politico. And in fairness, what the candidates say about Trump’s four criminal indictments will be newsworthy. Most are trying out tortuous formulas to attack Trump’s prosecution while still suggesting that someone else should be the nominee.
The other thing to watch for is what the various candidates would do if elected. This month NPR reported on plans by former Trump administration officials to strip senior federal civil servants of their protections against being fired. The idea is to ensure that unelected officials—even those in agencies such as the Justice Department that are supposed to maintain some independence—are loyal to the president’s agenda.
Russell Vought, once Trump’s budget director, told me he rejects the idea that federal officials can work impartially for an independent regulatory agency such as the SEC, or for an institution such as the Justice Department. Even where prior Congresses and presidents have passed and signed laws to insulate them from politics, Vought felt they should only respond to the agenda of the current president.
Vought acknowledged that this would leave the president free to order specific prosecutions of specific people, or to cancel his own indictments. He insists Trump could be trusted not to do so, regardless of his efforts to influence the Justice Department in the past.
We also reported on a proposal by the Heritage Foundation to address climate regulations. The approach is to admit that yes, human-caused climate change is happening, but that despite the overwhelming consensus of scientists, the effects will be no big deal. Regulations are to be seen not as climate measures but as a tool for control wielded by the left. And that belief will guide which regulations are approved.
The former officials pushing these plans are associated with Trump, but their ideas will be on the shelf for any Republican who wins.
Other candidates have their own concepts. Pence proposes to shut down the Education Department and shift federal education, health, highway and housing money to the states. Vivek Ramaswamy promises to eliminate the Education Department by fiat on his first day in office, notwithstanding laws that require it to operate until Congress says otherwise.
Florida governor Ron DeSantis proposes to change the national economy. One particularly interesting point is his call to “be a country where a family can raise children on a single income.”
In the 1950’s most households did live on a single income, since most women didn’t work outside the home. From the 1970’s onward far more women entered the formal workforce, but wages also stagnated, and families faced new expenses, from childcare to the internet to the soaring price of real estate and the expanding size of homes.
DeSantis, then, has identified a real and meaningful trend in American society, which surely bothers a lot of people. But to roll it back he would have to roll back half a century of economic and social change, recalling a simpler time when one parent is at home raising the kids.
According to the plan on his website, DeSantis’s methods for boosting the economy involve numerous steps such as cutting off technology to China (which the current administration is already doing in many cases), cutting off illegal immigration (which Donald Trump couldn’t do), and attacking disloyal elites. How will this drastically raise current wages, or cut prices, so the average two-income family can live on one?
Some may be tempted to ignore such ideas because they are always promised and never happen. In 2012, Republican candidate Rick Perry promised to eliminate three Cabinet departments—Education, Commerce, and Energy. It was an old idea then, such a rote promise on Perry’s part that he forgot one of the three departments during a debate. (“Oops,” he said of his self-own.) Years later all three departments still existed, and Perry took charge of the Department of Energy, which was the one he had forgotten.
But it would be a mistake to disregard such proposals. Ending abortion rights was also once seen as an unlikely goal that Republicans cynically promoted. Some Republicans may well have been cynical, but many of their base voters genuinely wanted this, demanded that their party deliver, and eventually got it.
In the same way, many people listened to Trump talking of “building the wall” in 2016 and assumed it was just rhetoric, red meat for his masses, hot air, or a metaphor. Once in office they discovered he really intended to build a wall, and his most passionate voters expected it. Trump found the task was far harder than he had promised them it would be, but he spent a lot of money and upended a lot of lives while trying.
Any Republican who wins in 2024 will have assembled a political coalition that expects him to keep campaign promises—even if they are divisive, even if they are impractical, and even if the new president never really intended to keep them. So it matters what the candidates say, both at the debate and over time.
Thanks for reading Differ We Must, a companion to my forthcoming book of the same name. It’s a biography of Lincoln as told by his meetings with people who differed with him, and I hope you’ll consider preordering at this link so you will receive it Oct. 3. I also hope you’ll keep reading here, as I explore our modern-day differences.
So a bunch of serial killers are having a debate at your house about the best way to kill you. Let’s look at all their proposal’s and see how they differ.
Thanks for this piece. One nit I’d pick at... “The idea is to ensure that unelected officials—even those in agencies such as the Justice Department that are supposed to maintain some independence—are loyal to the president’s agenda.” Based on Comey’s memoir and other reporting, I would argue it appears the loyalty demanded is not to any agenda, but to him personally. Also to his personal interests, whatever they may be at any given time.