Trump Rides the Vibes, for Better or Worse

        After a flurry of activity -- the president's tariff threats and showdowns
with Mexico and Canada, his expressions of interest in Greenland, the
policy changes obtained by Secretary of State Marco Rubio's trips to Panama
and El Salvador, the release of arrested Americans in Venezuela -- it
seemed clear that the focus of Donald Trump's foreign policy would be the
Western Hemisphere.

        And then, just a few days later, as he welcomed Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu as the first head of government to visit the White House
since Trump's inauguration, Trump announced that the United States "will
take over the Gaza Strip."

        This is obviously in tension with Trump's and many Trump supporters'
opposition to U.S. military actions and "nation-building" in the Middle
East, and while Greenland is arguably within the Western Hemisphere, Gaza
clearly is not. Cleaning up and policing Gaza doesn't sound like a way for
Americans to avoid endless wars and violence, as Trump says he wants.

        On the other hand, looking for outside-the-box solutions sometimes works.
It had been gospel among Middle East specialists that Israel couldn't
achieve diplomatic relations with Arab nations without sanctioning the
establishment of a Palestinian state first. But the Abraham Accords that
Trump negotiated between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and with
Bahrain in 2020 did exactly that.

        As the Abraham Accords suggested, so Trump's proposal that the U.S. "take
over" Gaza jogs the mind and, as Fox News's Brit Hume writes, moves people
"away from the endless pursuit of a 'two-state solution,' which has proved
such a dead end." Maybe in some better direction, though no one, including
Trump, seems to have an idea of exactly what.

        In September 2016, the Pittsburgh-based reporter Salena Zito explained
that while "the press takes him literally, but not seriously; his
supporters take him seriously, but not literally." To them, he signals the
kind of "make America great again" change he seeks, even where his
proposals, as on Gaza, seem ludicrous on their face.

        Almost 10 years later, economist Tyler Cowen advances a similar
explanation. "I think of Trumpian policy," he argues, "as elevating
cultural policy above all else." The cultures of the foreign policy
establishment, of great corporations, of public schools, of public health
and scientific research -- none is in great shape.

        So whenever "the policy or policy debate pushes culture in what you think
is the right direction, just do it," Cowen writes. Assume that "the
cultural factors will, over some time horizon, surpass everything else in
import." Don't worry about other constraints, whether it's legal, whether
it will persist.

        Much of it probably will. Democrats and journalists hope the courts will
put the kibosh on Trump's initiatives. But at some point, this lawfare runs
up against the first words of Article II of the Constitution: "The
executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of
America."

        His orders to end diversity, equity and inclusion programs have the
backing of the large majority of people of all ethnicities and hues who
oppose racial quotas and preferences -- and the text of the Civil Rights
Act of 1964. His termination of foreign aid programs that advance widely
unpopular cultural stands, the hill Democrats are choosing to die on this
week, are likely to stand as well.

        His threats to impose huge tariffs on Canada and Mexico, while
economically ruinous if put into effect, prompted promises of increased
border surveillance. His instant and massive retaliation against Colombia's
refusal to accept deported immigrants resulted in immediate surrender there
and a preemptive surrender by the Maduro government of Venezuela, whose
legitimacy the United States and the European Parliament refuse to
recognize.

        Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, confirmed by only a 51-50 Senate vote, is
reporting that Army recruitment has had its "best recruiting numbers" in a
dozen years in the two months since Trump was elected. A change in the
culture resulting from Trump's abolition of DEI and Hegseth's emphasis on
the "warrior ethos"? Not clear, but sort of looks like it.

        Whether Trump's tactics and unorthodox policy initiatives will produce his
promised peace in Ukraine and deter China from attacking Taiwan is far from
certain. Clearly, some of Trump's executive orders and policy directives
are carefully vetted, while others -- the Gaza acquisition? -- are not.

        If one of his audacious bluffs gets called, the resulting damage could
prove horrifying: Think seriously about the wreckage those 25% tariffs
would have inflicted on auto supply chains. On foreign policy, matters of
war and peace, damage could be orders of magnitude worse.

        After two weeks, Trump's job approval is hovering around 50%, higher than
at any point in his first term but still below that of all other incoming
presidents since 1953. But the "vibes," what John Maynard Keynes would have
called "animal spirits," of the nation seem to have shifted.

        The death of Jimmy Carter last December reminded us that some of his
policies -- transportation deregulation and a defense buildup -- helped
produce the accomplishment and morale boost of the 1980s. But in his
"malaise" speech -- he never actually used the word -- he admitted that the
nation's "vibes" were negative. They turned positive under his successor,
Ronald Reagan, though he entered office with job approval not much above
Trump's, with positive material consequences for America and the world.

Could something like that happen again?

        Michael Barone is a senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner,
resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author
of The Almanac of American Politics. His new book, "Mental Maps of the
Founders: How Geographic Imagination Guided America's Revolutionary
Leaders," is now available.

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