Trump's Speech to Congress

"Trump Offers Up A More Hopeful Vision," "Trump Seeks to Turn Post-Speech Boost Into Action," "Trump's Congress Speech Marks A Shift in Tone," "Trump Tries on Normal." If anyone had questions after last night's speech about its likely impact, those headlines - from the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and Politico, respectively - should say all that needs to be said. From a political standpoint, Trump delivered a very good speech yesterday. His comparatively measured tone has inspired a predictable outbreak of what we might call "Tame Trump" storylines, of the sort that have been published more or less every time he has appeared in public with his feet on the platform instead of in his mouth. That will reinforce the reaction of the waverers in the GOP and the white middle class, for whom this speech was clearly written, that perhaps Trump isn't quite as alarming as he seems. In that sense, it was quite successful.

Though he may not have been frothing through the delivery, the content of the speech was exactly what I have come to expect from Trump, and it shed more light on the substance of his nationalism. The influence of Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon was palpable at many points. Two passages in particular caught my attention. First:

I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future. For too long, we've watched our middle class shrink as we've exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries.We've financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit and so many other places throughout our land. We've defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open for anyone to cross and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate. And we've spent trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled. 

The similarity to his inaugural address is striking. Also:

According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country... Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values. We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America. We cannot allow our Nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.

Both of these passages - like much else in the speech and in Trump's previous statments - are inward-looking, but in different ways.

The first is resentful, and actually recalls many favored talking points of the Democrats during the last few years of the Bush administration. Trump is telling his audience that the "establishment" has treated "them" better than "us." Anyone who has had any contact with a white middle class household should immeditely recognize the emotional force this argument has with that group, particularly as applied to immigrants. In the last fifteen years, for the first time since the Depression, the white middle class has suffered. It has not been actively helped by public policy during this period, so latent resentments against those seen by it to have the aid of the government - the very poor, the very rich, immigrants, nonwhites generally - have become open and increasingly intense. "The (othered group) gets (list of benefits), but a hardworking American like me can't get anything" is a common refrain. These people will hear Trump saying he is on their side.

The second passage is similar, but fear rather than resentment is the dominant emotion. The bad guys are coming in from outside and we have to stop them before they kill us. This is obviously meant to justify the controversial travel bans, but as ever with Trump the issue of immigration isn't far behind. This time, legal rather than illegal immigration is the target:

Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal immigration. The current, outdated system depressed wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers... According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America's taxpayers many billions of dollars a year. Switching away from thie current system of lower- skilled immigration and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits: it will save countless dollars, raise workers' wages, and help struggling families - including immigrant families - enter the middle class.

As expected, the justification for this policy is economic. Like his message on trade and foreign policy, it is designed to appeal to the insecurities of poor and middle class whites. More importantly, it is a part of a coherent nationalist policy which views poor immigrants as a burden on the state instead of as aspiring individuals who want opportunities to succeed. It is a misleading and dangerous view. The report he cites states that the benefits of even the least skilled immigrants to society significantly exceed the costs their presence imposes, but only the costs found their way into his speech.

In sum, the tone of the speech may have been altered, but the content was vintage Trump. He made a conscious, and intelligent, move to force the GOP to unite behind him by recasting his message, but the message is the same. It calls for a nationalism defined by hostility to immigration, aversion to multilateral agreements of any kind, and a predatory trade policy. No matter how wide he smiles, his vision is the dismantling of the international system of trade and alliances the United States constructed after the World Wars and the Cold War. Its implementation would not only undermine international stability, but also do further harm to America's ability to project moral force worldwide by making a mockery of the principles for which we have fought at our best.