Yes, the Trump Administration Has Ideas, and Some Are O.K.
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Version 0 of 1. Complaining that nobody pays attention to its policy initiatives, the White House carved last month into four thematic weeks — Infrastructure Week, Workforce Development Week, Technology Week and Energy Week. You’re forgiven if you didn’t notice. Kellyanne Conway’s claims to the contrary, it’s hard to pay attention to “finer policy points” when their purpose is less to enunciate policy than to distract from Russia investigations, “die-in” protests against the health care bills, provocations by North Korea and all those presidential tweets. Nonetheless, after digging through June’s pronouncements and bullet points, and consulting the White House, its allies and its critics, we found a few promising ideas amid the blather, as well as some old clunkers. Week One: Infrastructure. A great idea, stalled on the runway. Even the hulking coal barges behind Mr. Trump as he made a “major” infrastructure speech on June 7 couldn’t hide that his biggest job-creation promise, a $1 trillion infrastructure overhaul, has fallen prey to his inattentiveness, a congressional logjam, Republicans’ worries about costs and their aversion to working with Democrats on most anything. Week Two: Workforce Development. Mr. Trump wants to expand vocational school, job training and apprenticeship opportunities to fill a deep gap in the manufacturing, health care, technology and construction labor pools. In a March hearing on Capitol Hill, a construction executive said that while activity is on par with 2007, there are 100,000 fewer skilled workers. Mr. Trump signed an executive order in June directing the labor secretary to channel available money toward programs that provide paying jobs with a training or educational component. It’s not a fully formed plan, but it’s a solid effort to address a recognized need. Ivanka Trump again promoted her plan for six weeks of paid family leave. Democrats say it’s not enough; Republicans recoil at government-funded family leave. She gets credit for pushing Republicans to consider an overdue idea, but it’s unclear that she has the commitment and experience to win them over. Week Three: Technology. Jared Kushner, the son-in-law whose packed portfolio includes the Office of American Innovation, updated tech executives on progress in modernizing the government’s technology infrastructure. Once the cameras were off, the chief executives stressed that cybersecurity and system modernization go hand in hand, and have been a priority at least since the Office of Personnel Management data hack during the Obama administration. They established a working group of experts from two dozen companies, which this week began drawing up recommendations for replacing antiquated government computer systems with secure networks. The project has bipartisan support in Congress. (Read: It might actually get funded.) Week Four: Energy. Lots of chest pounding by Mr. Trump and Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke about “energy dominance” and the need to extract even more of what America already has in abundance — oil and natural gas — with little attention to further developing carbon-free energy sources like wind and solar. On the plus side, the president promised to “revive and expand our nuclear energy sector.” Affordable, next-generation nuclear facilities would be a powerful weapon in the battle against climate change. For the most part, however, the administration’s ideas were Bush-Cheney ghosts come to life, not least the infatuation with drilling in vulnerable areas of the Arctic. In general, this administration has been far more adept at dismantling the policies of its predecessor than at fostering innovative ideas of its own. Most of Mr. Trump’s early “policy” moves have consisted of sweeping regulatory rollbacks, and many of the most damaging of these face court challenges. Hence the White House staff’s effort to keep the president off Twitter and create bandwidth for a few solid ideas that, with further work and persistence, could bear fruit. The hardest part might be securing reliable support, and sustained attention to them, from Mr. Trump himself. |