The start of any presidency is always closely monitored. However, it is not usually contentious, partially due to what is considered “the honeymoon period,” which usually lasts around seven months, during which the public, Congress and the media are generally supportive.
However, as the Chicago Tribune points out in a recent article, it appears that President Donald Trump’s honeymoon period has passed very quickly. With a slew of unpopular executive orders and international mishaps, public discontent has increased rapidly.
Coming off a contentious primary and an even more contentious general election, Trump’s approval rating has dropped swiftly, with a Gallup poll finding that Trump reached majority disapproval in just eight days after his inauguration, with only 43 percent approving of Trump’s performance.
More recent polls have been conducted and suggest an even further slide. RealClearPolitics, a poll aggregator, finds that among nine different polling organizations, including Quinnipiac, Emerson, Gallup, and Pew Research, the average is 45.1 percent approve and 50.4 percent disapprove. The Boston Globe notes that Trump set a presidential record (but likely not one that comes with a medal) for fastest time until majority disapproval.
In order to understand this historically low approval rating, we need to understand what is driving a discontented public. We are going to cover some of the less obvious actions by the president that have upset the public. The torrent of executive orders coming out of the White House clearly has a role, and it is not only the “big ones” that are causing trouble.
One order that is often overlooked is the one that effectively guts Dodd-Frank, a post-2008 financial crash bill that acted to increase oversight in the financial sector. Dodd-Frank definitely does not go nearly far enough in protecting consumers, but it does contain several key provisions, such as the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which acts to protect consumers from predatory lending practices, among other things, and the establishment of the Volcker rule, which restricts the risks that banks can take with their customers’ money.
Another aspect of this order was the shelving of a policy that would have gone into effect this April, known as the “fiduciary rule.” According to Forbes, the rule basically states, “if you hired a financial advisor to help with your retirement planning and assets, the financial advisor acted in your best interest, avoided conflicts of interest when possible, and was transparent with you about his or her compensation and fees.”
This executive order is not a surprise considering that Trump selected Steve Mnuchin, a hedge fund manager, for the Treasury Department, and appointed to the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, a Goldman Sachs executive (yes, that Goldman Sachs) who received a $100 million care package from the bank before taking his position.
During his campaign, Trump repeatedly uttered the phrase “drain the swamp”, which to many of his supporters signaled a turn away from corruption in politics. It has become evident that these were just words, as the appointment of CEOs, major campaign donors and Wall Street executives to high-
ranking positions proves.
However, nobody ever expects a politician to admit that he/she lied, but at a stop on the post-election “Thank-You tour,” it appears that Trump did just that. The Independent of December 2016 notes, “Mr Trump addressed the origin of his “drain the swamp” chants even more brazenly.
“Funny how that term caught on, isn’t it? I told everyone – ‘I hate it!’. I hated it. I said, ‘oh, that’s so hokey, that’s so terrible.’ I said, ‘all right, I’ll try it.’ So like a month ago, I said ‘drain the swamp.’ Place went crazy. I said ‘woah’. Then I said it again. Then I started saying it like I meant it, right?””.
That last line about “saying it like I meant it” might have been something that Trump never intended to say out loud, and many of his actions in the first month of the presidency have given credence to the idea that he never really did mean it.
It is clear that there is no single policy or action that is keeping Trump’s approval rating underwater, but as we approach the halfway mark of his first hundred days in office, it is becoming apparent that even those people who are not usually politically active are beginning to take a step into the realm of U.S. politics – not only to resist dangerous policies and ideas, as we have seen in town halls across the country, where people are speaking out in record numbers, but to push for people, policies and ideals that are beneficial and drive us as a nation and a society, as well as the larger world, forward, instead of pulling us backwards. Always forward.
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