Notwithstanding dalliances in other fields, I’m a policy wonk.
But I will pontificate (often incorrectly) on politics when asked, which is what happened in this interview about the electoral impact of the coronavirus.
My basic point is that Trump is much better than the average Republican about “controlling the narrative.”
In other words, he doesn’t allow the media to frame issues in a way that is adverse to his interests.
Given Trump’s Jekyll-Hyde approach to economic policy, I have mixed feelings about his Jedi-like ability.
But I will point out why narratives are so important in public policy.
- History books are filled with inaccurate and nonsensical stories about the Great Depression being caused by capitalism
and being cured by FDR’s New Deal. In reality, statism deserves the blame. Bad policy by Hoover helped start the Depression and bad policy by FDR helped extend the Depression. - More recently, people have been subjected to an erroneous story that capitalism and greed caused the 2008 financial crisis. As I mentioned in the interview, that’s grotesquely inaccurate. The crisis was caused by easy-money policy by the Federal Reserve and misguided subsidies from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Since I’ve shifted to my comfort zone of public policy, I’ll also say something about trade.
One of the big risks from the coronavirus is that it will weaken global trade. Which led me to mention in the interview that hopefully Trump might learn from this growing crisis that expanded trade is good for prosperity.
Though I admit I’m not very optimistic given his mercantilist perspective.
P.S. Textbook discussions of “robber barons” and “sweatshops” are other examples of how bad narratives lead to distorted history.
[…] days ago, I shared an interview in which I pointed out that President George W. Bush acquiesced to a flawed narrative about the […]
Trump isn’t going to change, and no politician is going to let this crisis to to waste, on either side.
Trump is way ahead on coronavirus.
Trump has been trying to close the border. D’s want unrestricted border crossings.
Trump has been trying to build concern over globalization, particularly from China. One side effect of coronavirus is that critical components may not be available.
On these two, he just got lucky.
He also got lucky on the market. He has been claiming that his policies are reflected in market prices, which might be 20% accurate. The market collapse can now be blamed on the conoravirus black swan, rather than the fact that the bull market has now lasted 10 years, rather than the normal 7.
His approach to the market crash has been horrible. In this instance, he immediately should have dropped his “punch back” attitude, and focused on the general welfare of the country. Thereby making the D’s look small.
But maybe that’s too much to ask.