The One Book You Must Read to Understand American Politics in 2018
2018-09-14 · Guest: Frank Buckley (Professor of Law at Scalia School of Law) · 51:10
Trump and the Republican Workers Party
Bob Zadek interviews Professor Frank Buckley about his book The Republican Workers Party, exploring how Donald Trump’s 2016 victory signaled a shift in the GOP toward blue-collar interests. They discuss the philosophical underpinnings of American nationalism, the economic impact of deregulation, and a comparison of the US and Canadian approaches to immigration and healthcare.
Topics: Donald Trump, Republican Party, Nationalism, Immigration Policy, Trade and Tariffs, Healthcare Reform, Blue-collar Workers, Conservatism, Libertarianism
Speakers: Bob Zadek, Frank Buckley
Introduction of Frank Buckley [00:00]
Announcer: You’re listening to the Bob Zadek Show, a full hour of libertarian discussion with the smartest guests on radio. Live, spontaneous, and thoughtful, it’s the show of ideas, not attitude. Now, your host, Bob Zadek.
Bob Zadek: Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. Thanks so much for listening this beautiful Sunday morning.
This morning’s guest, back for the third time on my show—and that’s not nearly enough in my opinion—is Professor Frank Buckley. Frank has been a guest on my show back in October of 2014 when he wrote a fascinating book that I still talk about on and off the air entitled Has America Become an Elective Monarchy?, where Frank made me so envious for alternative forms of government rather than the form we have. He then reappeared on my show back in 2016 when he wrote The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America.
Frank is now back a third time to discuss his newest book, The Republican Workers Party. It is subtitled with one of the great understatements in political writing: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy and Why It Was Just What We Needed. Frank has been active in the Trump campaign. He was a speechwriter for President Trump. He was involved in the transition of the Trump administration into power after the election. Frank has unique insights into the political system in America. Frank was born in Canada and brings the ability to compare a Canadian parliamentary form of government with our form of government. He is a professor of law at Scalia School of Law, part of George Mason University. So Frank, welcome back to the show. It has taken too long. You have to write books faster than you do so that I can have you back on the show more often. So welcome to the show this morning.
Frank Buckley: Oh, thank you for having me. It’s great to be with you.
The Republican Workers Party [02:38]
Bob Zadek: Now, Frank, The Republican Workers Party. Everybody listening is scratching their heads, and they have visions—these old grainy drawings of Marx and Lenin and sickles and hammers and people with their sleeves rolled up—all of this communist-type graphics. So tell us, what do you mean by the Republican Workers Party, and what does that have to do with Donald Trump and his election and how he has governed since he became elected?
Frank Buckley: Well, I’ll tell you, what I mean by it isn’t so important. What matters is what Trump meant. Remember, I ripped off the title from Trump. Trump said, “This is going to be a Republican Workers Party.” That phrase had so much resonance at so many levels with people. He said, “I’m going to be the greatest jobs president America’s ever seen.” So far, he’s fulfilling that promise.
We were waiting for something like that for so many reasons. On the one hand, there was a jobless Obama recovery. People say, “Wait a minute, the unemployment rates began to dip towards the end of Obama’s term.” Yeah, but normally after a recession, we bounce back big time, and we didn’t this time. 2009 to 2014-15 was a terrible time for American workers. Then the business cycle hit and things started to pick up, but it’s been roaring back over the last 18 months. That’s importantly attributed to a lot of things Trump has done. Business confidence is back. It was in the tank when Obama was around, but now business confidence is at 18-year highs. We’ve been waiting for that kind of recovery.
That’s kind of number one. Number two, the Hillary campaign positively took delight in taking jobs away from people. I’m thinking of the coal miners. Hillary gave a speech in Kentucky at one point where she said, “You’re not going to have a job, but that’s okay. We’re going to train you to work in Silicon Valley.” Now, if you’re a coal miner in Kentucky, that’s kind of an empty promise. “We’re going to give you a bicycle to get there, by the way.” It was basically, “You’re deplorable, but we can morally re-arm you and train you to be a proper little intellectual just like we are, part of the thinking class.” People saw through that. People saw the class divide between the people who were the ordinary blue-collar workers of America and an intellectual elite.
The other thing about a workers party is—well, there is the image of class struggle. We can get into analogies to Marx later on. But the other thing is, why is work such a big deal? I’ll tell you. Because with jobs, from jobs follow marriage, houses, mortgages, family. These are all the things that make you moral. Whereas Hillary had her own campaign to make us moral. She wondered why the deplorables belonged in America. She said of them, “Thankfully, they’re not America.” At which point they might have wondered, “Well, gee, if that’s true, to what country do we belong?” She had the ambition, it seemed, to mount a moral re-armament crusade, whereas the message about jobs was, “All the government should be doing is creating the economic conditions for people to have jobs. After that, we take care of ourselves.”
Jobs and the Constitution [06:57]
Bob Zadek: Now, Frank, I have a point I struggle with what I’m about to ask you all the time. Nowhere in the Constitution—which is, of course, the document that sets forth the relationship between citizens and our government, those are the rules—nowhere is, of course, the word “jobs.” Nowhere is any even vaguely economic concept. The Constitution is not an economic document. It is a political document basically to protect people from overreaching government. So the core question is: where did it become, and what is the philosophical underpinnings that make job creation the job of government, as opposed to simply once government steps aside in general and allow people to pursue their lives as they wish, jobs are a byproduct? In other words, to summarize, is job creation—or should it be—merely a byproduct of a benign government, or is job creation one of the jobs of government?
Frank Buckley: Well, yes and no. Let me explain. You’re right, there’s nothing in the Constitution that says “produce jobs.” But remember that the founders set up a Constitution which wasn’t going to dictate what the policies of government were. Would we be friends with England? Would we be friends with France? The Constitution is silent about that. Would the government embark on this policy or that policy? The Constitution is neutral and lets us fight it out. That’s the best you can do.
But as for what happens thereafter, what kind of policies would people want to support? A government that creates the economic conditions for jobs is, as you say, a government that mostly backs off. In other words, it’s not a government that tries to produce make-work jobs for people. There are things you want the government to do, and that’ll involve hiring people, but that’s not how you solve the jobs problem. So in answer to your question, yeah, mostly it’s a matter of simply backing off.
But let me just say one other thing on the subject of jobs. Recall how Milton Friedman came up with the idea of a negative income tax. The idea of a negative income tax is we pay so much in welfare, what if we just sort of bundled it all up and gave people whatever the amount of money is, let’s say $60,000? Some cities are toying with that right now. Here’s the problem with that. The difference between a job where you make $60,000 a year and a flat-out gift of $60,000 a year from the government is huge, enormous in psychological terms. Why? Because from jobs you get a sense of belonging, you have the fraternity with fellow workers, you have the idea that you’re contributing to the economy. From jobs also comes a sense of independence from government. One of the proverbs goes like this: “Seest thou a man swift in his labor? He shall stand before kings.” That is, if I have a job, whatever the heck I’m doing, I have the independence so I can flip the bird at a king. That’s something you don’t get if you’re dependent on a handout.
Bob Zadek: Now, what’s interesting about what Trump has done and how he campaigned is, as I observed a few seconds ago, a government which is benign in effect creates jobs by, as you have said, stepping aside. Trump has been better than all who have preceded him in recent memory in reducing the regulatory burden on the country. Trump has, in one of his most important steps, rolled back in a way that he doesn’t even get credit for because when you stop doing something, nobody is as aware of it as when you do something positive, even if it’s bad. By rolling back the regulatory state, that has been a profound gift to the economy and been very important in job creation. So Trump has, in fact, been quite benign and has rolled back government in the way that I think was consistent with the vision of the founders.
Now, the creation of jobs and Trump’s approach of the Republican Workers Party—that doesn’t seem to me to be part of a building block of a philosophy, but rather a way to get elected. He has followed through. So was the creation of jobs part of a broader philosophical worldview, or was it simply something to do or the way to get elected?
Frank Buckley: You know, people have said a lot of things about Trump, but the one thing they never did is they never accused him of being a philosopher. He’s a pragmatist. I think some of his deepest beliefs stem from his nationalism and also from the milieu from which he emerged. Not enough is said about this, but he was a guy who put up a lot of hotels and he just liked hanging out with the people who worked on the construction sites. He liked these people. So it’s not surprising the blue-collar workers reciprocated. Very early in the campaign, it was decided one thing we’re not going to do is beat up on private sector unions. We’re not going to beat up on the union members and we’re not going to beat up on the unions themselves and union management because we respected work. Public sector unions, that’s something else. That’s the teachers’ union. We’re not on their side particularly with their causes. But private sector is completely different. We like those guys. We like the guys on the automobile plants in Michigan and Ohio.
Defining American Nationalism [14:23]
Bob Zadek: You said a word a second ago which was inevitable that we talk about it, which is nationalism. Nationalism is a word that kind of scares me. I don’t quite know what it means, and when I think I know what it means, it doesn’t present in my brain a very pretty picture. So if you could explain—because it is so important in Trump’s approach to immigration and to trade, and how he interacts with leaders of other countries—tell us what you meant and therefore what Trump means by nationalism. “Make America Great.” Help us understand that concept and what it means as how America behaves in the world stage.
Frank Buckley: Well, first of all, there’s a debate about nationalism with some people saying either nationalism is good or nationalism is bad. I want to say you’re making a category mistake here. You’re talking about nationalism in general. What you should be doing is talking about nationalism in certain countries. Israeli nationalism may be fine, English nationalism may be fine, American nationalism is great. German nationalism, I don’t know about, you want to know the truth. So there are bad forms of nationalism where it’s been perverted to evil ends.
But American nationalism is by nature benign because the icon of identity for Americans mostly is the sacred texts of our founding: the Declaration, the Bill of Rights, the Constitution. So an illiberal American nationalist is a contradiction in terms because what you’re denying is that which makes you American. At that point, some people say, “No, no, you’ve misunderstood it. You’re talking about creedal nationalism. You’re saying American nationalism is just about believing in the Declaration of Independence, for example.” It’s more than that. We’re not just philosophers following a text; we’re also a people with our own culture and institutions. That’s true too. But it takes a moment to figure out what those core cultural artifacts are in a country as diverse as America. What you can’t do is identify it with the culture of a particular people. You can be a nationalist if you don’t like baseball and apple pie. You can be a nationalist if you don’t like jazz and country and western and Aretha Franklin. It’s just that you’d be more of an American if you like all that. Part of the baggage of being an American nationalist is a support of liberal principles and a support of a broad kind of diversity. All the things that the world looks at as typically American. We’ve gone global really in many respects. There are Swedish country and western stations, there are jazz clubs in Moscow. This is America exporting itself.
Immigration and the Welfare State [17:55]
Bob Zadek: Putting aside the cultural, in terms of policy—core policy decisions—Trump’s nationalism seems to manifest itself in a dislike of immigrants. I can’t really tell; I can’t read his mind. I only can try to process what he says and what others say about him and what his policies are. In trade, it seems to be just he doesn’t understand trade or those around him are giving him bad advice. So how does the very broad, amorphous concept of nationalism manifest itself in immigration and in trade? Those are close to home. What does that tell us about a Trumpian country?
Frank Buckley: Well, let’s take immigration. This is another important part of the idea of nationalism. If you’re a nationalist, yeah, you’re going to like America. But in addition, American nationalism draws you to the left on issues of social welfare. It draws you to the sweet spot in American politics. Most Americans, the majority of voters, were people who were economically middle of the road and maybe even a little bit left of center on welfare or trade, but who were culturally nationalists. These are the Trump voters. These are the people who gave Trump the election. This is the reason why the left is having such conniptions about Trump—it’s because he stole their lunch. He went after their constituency.
Let me explain about the welfare part of this and immigration. If you’re a nationalist, you’re an economic nationalist. That is to say, you prefer Americans to non-Americans by definition. So what you would deny to the non-American in effect must be paid for by what in addition you would give Americans. You would, for example, discriminate between Americans and non-Americans with respect to, say, healthcare or tuition at college. If, for example, you privileged people who are not citizens over American citizens in terms of free tuition at college, what you’re doing is anti-nationalistic. So as I say, you’ve got to have a more generous welfare system for American citizens if you’re a nationalist than if you’re a globalist.
This is a point where the elites of the Democratic and Republican parties were on the other side. They were globalists. Apart from Bernie Sanders, by the way. The guys who liked open borders are the guys who are saying, “Screw Americans. They don’t count in all of this.” Whereas what Trump wanted was basically the Canadian system. What Trump wanted was an immigration system which screens people on the basis of: are they going to make American citizens better off? You can do that and be much more an immigration country than the United States. You can do that and you can have a much more generous refugee policy than the United States, where people don’t think the government holds you in contempt.
Bob Zadek: You had pointed out one of the bits that I learned from you. I always thought of America as being the most welcoming country on the planet in terms of immigration. We have the most—we’re the most skillful at assimilation. We are the destination that immigrants want. But you shared with me an interesting statistic about where actually the United States ranks vis-a-vis other free world countries in immigration. Vis-a-vis Canada, Australia, and the like. Before we go to break, share with our friends out there or publicly correct my misperception about how we stand vis-a-vis our partners in the planet.
Frank Buckley: Well, Australia’s about 25% foreign-born. Canada’s about 20% foreign-born. United States is, including illegals, about 13% foreign-born. France and England are about 10% foreign-born. So we don’t have all that much to boast about in terms of total numbers. Not only that, but Canada and Australia want to massively increase the number of people living in their country. Canada’s 33 million people; it wants to go up to about 50 million people, at which point it would be roughly the same kind of country in terms of size as France and England. It’s kind of moving up on the basis of immigration. If you go to a Canadian city like Toronto or Vancouver, you recognize immediately that this is a more diverse country than America.
Bob Zadek: We’re about to go to break. I’m speaking with Frank Buckley. Frank has written The Republican Workers Party: How Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy and Why It Was Just What We Needed. Frank, when we come back from our very short break, the question I’d like to pose to you is: when Trump’s campaign seemed to hit the sweet spot in American politics at the time, did Trump design a campaign in order to be elected, or did Trump simply say what he thought and discovered, “Wow, what I thought appealed to more Americans than what Hillary campaigned on?” Was Trump’s policies starting with policies and then he got elected, or was it start with “how do I get elected” and he designed his policies around that? I’d love to hear the answer when we come back from our really short break. Please stay tuned to our conversation with Frank Buckley. We’ll be right back.
Campaign Strategy vs. Authenticity [26:59]
Bob Zadek: Welcome back to the Bob Zadek Show, the longest-running live libertarian talk radio show in all of radio. The show always of ideas, never of attitude. Thanks so much for listening this Sunday morning to my conversation with Professor Frank Buckley. Frank is a professor of law at George Mason University’s Scalia School of Law. Frank has just written The Republican Workers Party: How the Trump Victory Drove Everyone Crazy and Why It Was Just What We Needed.
Frank, before we went to break, I posed a question to you. When a politician runs for major political office, a politician either is quite pragmatic and sits down with his advisors and tries to figure out, “Okay, what do I have to say and who do I have to say it with in order to get elected?” Or a politician says, “Here’s what I believe. I’m going to say what I believe, and if a majority of the people like it, they’ll elect me. If not, I’m in a minority.” Which, if either of those two approaches, describes the Trump political campaign? I’m asking you that because you were so important in the campaign itself. You were there on the scene. You watched it develop. You watched political strategy get developed. So your answer to that question carries a lot more weight and significance than somebody else’s answer.
Frank Buckley: Well, my answer is both. By the way, I describe all this in my book, The Republican Workers Party. What was basic to Trump was his nationalism, his love of America, and his sense that ordinary Americans were being screwed by trade deals and the like and by a Democratic Party and a Republican Party that had kind of given up on ordinary Americans. So that was the core. He didn’t have to do a thing. You didn’t have to prep him. You just put him on a stage and he could deliver wonderfully. He was so completely authentic by comparison with the formaldehyde-frozen face of Hillary Clinton and all her advisors that people could look at him and say, “Yeah, I know where this guy is coming from.” So that was purely natural.
But on the other hand, in the campaign, one figured out there were certain constituencies you had to reach out to. The big swing constituency in American politics is the Catholic voter. The Catholics have supported the winner in every election except 2000 since 1952. They went for Obama. This time around, they went plus six for Trump and plus 23 for white Catholics. That was something that took a little bit of work. It required Trump to tweet about Mother Teresa, to do telephone hookups with Catholic leaders, to appear on a Catholic television station, EWTN. He did all that. What happened as a consequence? Well, what happened was Pennsylvania and Ohio and Michigan and Wisconsin. That was the election. So Trump did not—your summary is that Trump simply happened to come on the scene with the right message for the right time, and that’s what got him elected, rather than somebody who in the womb was determined to be president and simply every act that hypothetical individual did was designed solely to get elected.
Very early on, the campaign outreach people—there was a guy dealing with outreach to various communities—and we said, “Who are you going after? What’s your priority?” The priority was evangelicals, African Americans, and Hispanics. That’s what the campaign thought it had to concentrate on in terms of votes. We said, “This is wonderful stuff, but have you forgotten about the Catholic voter?” So there was Trump, but then at one or two levels down, you’ve got these guys who are Republican operatives and who didn’t necessarily have much of a clue as to what’s going on. As it happened, once Trump was clued in to the fact that he had to make an outreach there, it was a natural forum, but he had to be told.
The Death of the JFK Democrat [30:11]
Bob Zadek: So much after Trump’s election, which has upset the political landscape so profoundly. Both major political parties are twisted—the establishment, the elite are twisted into knots. They simply don’t know how to adjust and haven’t yet even begun to adjust. So much has been said and analyzed about what this tells us about America. I have a question, Frank, that I have been dying to ask. Many observers believe that if Trump were running against another Democrat—that Hillary was such a horrible candidate, horrible candidate—that if Trump were running against a better Democratic candidate, Trump would have lost. Then we would have been saying entirely different things about America. So how much is the election simply the result of a really bad candidate in Hillary Clinton and not so much about the character of America? Or how much is the election result a true statement about what America is like in 2016?
Frank Buckley: You know, that’s a great question because what it tells you about is the importance of hindsight bias. Supposing that Lee had won the Battle of Gettysburg, we might then remember Lincoln as one of the worst presidents we’ve ever had. So what about Hillary Clinton in 2016? Yeah, she was absolutely terrible. But let’s not forget, she had the press completely in support of her. Trump got zero support from the major networks with the exception of Fox. Just about every newspaper in the country came out asking its readers to support Hillary. Who the heck else was there on the Democratic side? Joe Biden, we would have been happy with him as well. Even now, the tragedy of the Democratic Party is that it’s lost its soul. It’s no longer the party of just regular, rumpled Tip O’Neill type of Democrats who you could look at and say, “Well, this guy kind of gets it.” What happened to those guys? I miss those guys. I see myself as in many ways a JFK Democrat. So I mourn the disappearance of that party. I mourn its capture by an intellectual elite that’s lost touch with most Americans. I particularly mourn the hypocrisy of a party which says, “We’re going to look after you guys, we’re going to make our country mobile again,” when it’s they who are doing everything to make us unequal and immobile.
Bob Zadek: Well, you say, of course, a JFK Democrat. JFK would be a fairly conservative Republican today if we were to analyze simply his belief system, never mind his party allegiance and all that surface stuff. In the core, Kennedy was a fairly conservative Republican if you measure what he did and his belief system, whether it was Cuba, whether it was the tax cuts, foreign policy in general, his view of America, his nationalism—he was a profound nationalist. So Kennedy would have certainly qualified as a conservative Republican. Whether he would have self-identified that way is a different issue. He would have qualified by his beliefs and his conduct as a conservative Republican. So the words “Kennedy Democrat” are kind of an interesting twist on history.
Frank Buckley: Yeah. Apart from everything else, by the way, the Democrats or JFK at the time was on the right side of civil rights, and so were many Republicans. But the conservative ideologues of the time—I’m thinking of Bill Buckley—were very much on the wrong side of civil rights. As for the Kennedy tax cuts—“a rising tide lifts all boats” was what Kennedy said—at the time, the Republicans voted against reducing top marginal rates from 91% because they worried about the deficit. So Kennedy was very much a conservative in those respects.
Conservatism as a Longing [34:44]
Bob Zadek: You’ve used the phrase “conservative,” of course, several times during the course of our conversation this morning. I have found that the political philosophy of conservatism seems to—doesn’t have a home in either party anymore. I don’t know if Trump qualifies—I don’t even know if he self-identifies as a conservative, and perhaps you can shed some light on that. But conservatism seems to have become so diluted and been received in the mainstream parties. The Republican Party has gotten lip service, but the establishment party is no more conservative anymore than the Democrats are. So conservatism as a belief is not the core of either party, if it ever was.
Frank Buckley: Well, let me answer that by referring to the last line in my book, which is from Virgil. So let me get classical and classy on us. Virgil describes how the souls of those who died and who were not properly buried can’t cross over to see their friends on the other side of the underworld, the River Styx. The line is, “They were holding out their arms in longing for the farther shore.” What I want to say is conservatism is not a philosophy, or maybe it’s too many philosophies. But the only thing that’s consistent about conservatism is the idea of a longing for something that’s gone, something in the past that we lost. Which is “Make America Great Again.” That was all about a longing for a past that we had lost. We had indeed lost it. We used to be the country of the American dream, and we had lost that. It had moved to other countries. So the idea of “Make America Great Again” expressed precisely what Virgil was talking about: the idea that it used to be good and we can get it back again. That’s conservatism. It’s not libertarianism, it’s not liberalism. It’s something very distinct, and it’s something that you’ll find in every conservative who was a conservative.
Healthcare and Entitlements [37:17]
Bob Zadek: Trump’s identification—strong identification and appeal to the blue-collar voter, which you have identified as being quite significant in his victory—does that explain why Trump is somewhat sympathetic to our entitlement system and does not have entitlement reform as an important political-economic goal?
Frank Buckley: Well, you know, if you feel an identity with ordinary Americans, you then feel a responsibility to look after those people who can’t help themselves and who are deservedly the objects of our compassion. So let me give you one for instance. On healthcare, Trump said, “I don’t want to just repeal Obamacare, I want to repeal and replace it.” By the way, I briefed people on the Canadian national health system. I said, “You know, it needs improvement, but it’s nowhere near as bad as what people say. We can do it better.” Trump bought that. Then, you know, he ran into the separation of powers and Paul Ryan, and nothing happened. But it’s quite doable.
Obamacare was a complete mess, and I’ll tell you why. The number of Americans who really have severe pre-existing conditions and who can’t help themselves: 400,000 people. That’s not a lot. That’s very few people. But the way Obamacare was structured is those 8 million people who are part of the Obamacare exchanges have to cross-subsidize the 400,000. Well, you know what? All of America should be picking up the tab for those 400,000. That would solve the Obamacare exchange problem by itself. As it is, I mean, people who want to preserve the perfect free market system of healthcare in the United States are nuts. We’re already 50% national health—it’s called Medicare and Medicaid. Then you’ve got the crazy incentives of the US tax code with respect to employee contributions. So we’re a long ways away from getting a free market system. But if you took care of those 400,000, for the rest, the free market in healthcare would go a long way towards solving the problem.
Personal Freedom and Libertarianism in the Political Discourse [39:51]
Bob Zadek: I am—have a libertarian orientation, obviously. Therefore, I always observe and look for where the concept of personal freedom, being left alone, fits into political discourse. I didn’t see anything in the conversation in the election—and there almost never is—where a candidate or a philosophical point of view has in support of it, “Well, my approach simply makes Americans more free, less involved in government, with government taking less of a role in individual lives.” It seems to me the degree of freedom that a policy offers is the litmus test of whether the policy makes any sense or not. But instead, freedom seems to be devalued and a throwaway benefit. Trump has never ever spoken about—and of course, neither have the Democrats at all, and neither have most other mainstream presidential candidates—spoken about personal freedom as an end in itself. I can’t tell how important, if at all, that crucially important abstract concept fits into Trump’s worldview. Can you help?
Frank Buckley: Sure. Two responses. The first is America has almost the world’s most generous welfare policy in terms of the amount of money we spend per capita. We’re like number two or three in the world. I have the references in my book, by the way, The Republican Workers Party. That’s just not going to change. So number one, it’s something you live with.
Number two, you know, you’re absolutely right. One way to understand the Trump campaign is that it was a war fought on two fronts. On the one hand, it was fought against extreme anti-nationalists in the Democratic Party, the Hillary people. On the other hand, it was fought against people like Ted Cruz on the right. So we specifically were not talking about freedom per se, although when you get down to it, mostly what we were saying overlapped with a libertarian agenda. I mean, we wanted to remove all the burdens that small business faced from all of the regulatory morass. We didn’t like crony capitalism as represented by Hillary Clinton. We didn’t like the campaign finance laws. These were themes in the campaign.
In the 18 months since then, our politics has gone crazy. There is no possibility of deal-making with the Democrats. On the right, you have a completely fractured party which is still in shock and which hasn’t figured out the Republican Workers Party.
Trade, Tariffs, and Cronyism [43:31]
Bob Zadek: You said cronyism is something which Trump does not necessarily embrace. But yet, just as an aside, with the issue of tariffs, there’s been a lot of reporting recently that tariffs beget exceptions to tariff. Therefore, the line forms around the block in DC as businesses and industries seek to have special treatment or exemptions from tariff because tariffs are bad for business, of course. Therefore, there is this new—my label—Department of Cronyism in DC awarding, on the basis of nothing in particular, exemptions to the tariff. So his trade policy—Trump’s trade policy—is kind of painful to me, and I find it contradicts a lot of what else he is saying. If you can just respond to the particular issue—and I guess I would observe and solicit your views on it—if Trump is using the threat of monumental tariffs against China, Canada, and other of our trading partners, if it is a negotiating ploy and if it results in better transactions, then it was quite intelligent. If he intends to carry through, it’s kind of scary. Any thoughts?
Frank Buckley: Yeah, you just gave away my answer. I mean, there are two possibilities. One is this is the really scary scenario where he really doesn’t understand the importance of, say, trade with Canada—9 million US jobs at stake. So that’s one possibility. The other possibility is—which is I think probably more plausible—this is a really canny bargainer who recognizes that Canadian trade barriers are hurting Americans and he wants to get all of that on the table. At the end of the day, what he’s going to do is come back with a deal and we’ll all hug each other and we’ll say this is great. But in the end, we’ll end up with more free trade than otherwise we would have had. The point is, which is the real Trump here? The answer is, I don’t know.
Deep in his heart, the signs have not been exactly encouraging. Deep in his heart, he is not particularly friendly to countries that have been terribly—greatly supportive of United States in the past. There’s no historical memory there. There’s a sense of grievance with respect to other countries. Maybe it’s a pose and maybe in the end it’ll all turn out right. But hey, I’ve written stuff very critical of the President on the subject of trade. Being conservative, I tend to be cynical and dour about everything, but with a hope that it’ll turn out right.
The Future of the GOP [48:42]
Bob Zadek: You have spoken a lot and written a lot about the Canadian what’s called the “points system.” What Trump is seeking to accomplish in immigration—is it approximating the Canadian system, which I find and others find appealing, or is it not as thought out as that?
Frank Buckley: Look, it’s totally the Canadian system. Not only that, but the guys who presented it in Congress were people who were liaising daily with Canadians to tell them how to fine-tune it. It’s totally the Canadian system. As I say, once you have a system geared towards bringing in people who are going to help the citizens of the country, then you can take in a large number of people. So it’s about the quality, not the quantity. When that happens, you can be more generous generally. Check out YouTube for Justin Trudeau welcoming refugees to Canada in December 2015. It’s very moving. Wish we could do the same.
Bob Zadek: Tell us two things as we close. Number one, how will Trump, if at all, affect the future core philosophical approach of the Republican Party? Will he be a flash in the pan, or will the Republicans learn from that? And how our listeners can follow your writings and your thoughts.
Frank Buckley: Well, the best thing to answer the second question is pick up my book, The Republican Workers Party, off Amazon. Secondly, with respect to the Republican Party, it’s totally in shock. They haven’t figured it out. There are some people—Tom Cotton, for example, Jim Jordan—they’re figuring it out. But most Republicans at this point just have not a clue what Republican presidential politics are like. At the local level, I think allegiance to the Trump campaign and to the Trump presidency is going to be crucially important in getting people elected. So it’s a Republican Party in transition is the answer.
Bob Zadek: And in your book, you observed that the philosophy that seems to be on the wane—sorry to my friends out there—is libertarianism as a political philosophy.
Frank Buckley: Well, philosophy is on the wane. Pragmatism is back in. You want to understand Trump, you want to look for a parallel? It’s not populist, it’s not Milton Friedman. It’s Benjamin Disraeli, who destroyed the old English Conservative Party in 1845 and created a new party. That’s where we are now. We’ve got a guy who is suspicious of free trade and who wanted a national party that would reach out to all parts of Britain. That’s Trump.
Bob Zadek: Frank, thanks so much for your time this hour. We’re running out of time. Thanks so much for giving us an hour of your time this Sunday morning. To all my friends out there, have a very nice Sunday.
Frank Buckley: Bob, take care. Thank you for having me.