What Donald Trump Must Do In Order to Win

What Donald Trump Must Do In Order to Win
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Early in their study of the wealth of nations, students of classical political economy discern the ineradicable link between liberty and prosperity. As such, most come to have a deep reverence for the high ideals of the American Founding, which entailed institutions of limited government that induce sustainable economic growth, including inalienable property rights, sound money, and rule of law rather than of men. The Founders were a singularly great, if imperfect, group of men, and collectively an amazing study in moral virtues including courage, integrity, wisdom, perseverance, and selfless humility.

As such, the classical liberal looks upon modern American politics, epitomized by this year's presidential contest involving two deeply corrupt and venal statists, with sadness. But at least Hillary Clinton does not try to hide her lifelong fealty to the economic illiterate Saul Alinsky, a socialist hero of her youth. Donald Trump, however, is another matter: nominally the head of a political party dedicated to free markets, entrepreneurship, low-taxing/frugal government and a laissez-faire approach to regulation, Mr. Trump instead acts as if motivated by the ghost of Keynes - he will pursue wasteful higher domestic and defense spending, seeks to regulate international trade and corporate investment decisions, and would devalue the world's global reserve currency in a bid to support domestic manufacturing. While Mr. Trump has embraced the concept of tax cuts on both corporate profits and personal incomes, his proposal went through three iterations, was never a focus of his speaking appearances, and comes with the promise of higher taxes on investors via the elimination of carried interest provisions.

At the moment, Mrs. Clinton seems poised for a narrow victory: according to Real Clear Politics polling averages, Mr. Trump is some millions of votes short in a handful of battleground states. And it's a situation Mr. Trump brought on himself: Mitt Romney earned the votes of 93% of all Republican voters four years ago, but at the moment Trump is still stuck somewhere in the 80s within the GOP electorate-a death knell if not rectified by Tuesday.

However, momentum is on Trump's side, and victory is, while a stretch, within reach. Central to any chance he has is a recoupment of GOP voters now disenchanted with his Nelson Rockefeller-type policy mix (as well as considerable moral shortcomings), and below are outlined five specific action and messaging steps for him to take to effect this. Included among these is the singular best move he could make now to optimize his chances: following his push for term limits for federal officials, a bold announcement that he himself will serve only one 4-year term.

Before enumerating these items, let us take stock of the moment, and understand how Mr. Trump arrived where he is now, and hence why these five steps might make a difference. First, Mrs. Clinton is on her way to winning the 18 states that, along with the District of Columbia, the Democrats have owned since 1992, yielding her 242 electoral votes. Adding Virginia, where she is currently ahead in all polls and has strong get-out-the-vote organization, gets her to 255, and she is also ahead in Colorado, Florida, and New Mexico to get her past 270. Plus, she may well win Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, North Carolina, and/or Ohio for good measure, given the neck-and-neck tight polling in all these. Thus the odds still look very long for Trump at the moment.

GOP voters are despondent about this: Mrs. Clinton is the second least popular presidential candidate since World War II (and the first presidential candidate in American history who, on Election Day, is the main target in a federal criminal probe), and hence supremely beatable; the problem, of course, is that Mr. Trump is the least popular, having done an excellent job of alienating and insulting many voter groups along the way.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump has a half-decent shot at winning if he can win back disaffected GOP voters in the end. He has been given considerable gifts recently in the form of "October surprises" that include several WikiLeaks revelations damning to Mrs. Clinton, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) disclosures, Obamacare's agonies, and now James Comey and the FBI investigations (that include a reprisal of the disgraced wannabe-pedophile, Anthony Weiner, a sure GOP vote-getter). All of these combined have the Clinton campaign on the defensive, and Trump has a real, if narrow, path to victory.

What cannot be underestimated, nor modeled in any polling, is perhaps Trump's ultimate weapon that may be manifested in force on Tuesday: the deep, abiding, visceral contempt that tens of millions of Americans have for the institutions of government in general, and for our Beltway political class specifically. By more than two to one, Americans see this country as being on the wrong track, see Washington, D.C. as deeply corrupt, blame the career politicians for it all, and are thus desirous of real and substantive change going forward. In a year of loathing for career politicians, Mr. Trump benefits from being only the second total outsider major party presidential candidate in American history (after Wendell Willkie in 1940): he is thus the vessel and tribune through which angry Americans, especially those who reside far away from the bi-coastal elites, are seeking real change - they literally want to see Trump "drain the swamp" that is, for them, the Beltway.

The Claremont Institute's Angelo Codevilla anticipated these raging and semi-revolutionary energies in a seminal article in the summer of 2010 ("America's Ruling Class--and the Perils of Revolution"), four months before the GOP's massive electoral earthquake that November, that served as a rebuke to Mr. Obama's first two years in office (this was a congressional term that, thanks to a filibuster-proof Senate, had included Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, and other massive tax, spending, regulatory, and corrupt cronyist initiatives, all leading to a sclerotic economy and the worst recovery since the Depression). Mr. Codevilla's essay, perhaps the finest analysis and commentary on American politics since Tocqueville, described the popular anger felt by flyover denizens toward Beltway and Manhattan elites, whom he felicitously characterized as a contemptible and corrupt bipartisan "ruling class." He echoed Ronald Reagan's vision for an American political framework that rejected the conventional Left-versus-Right paradigm in favor of an up-versus-down orientation for policy formulation (that is, prosperity versus misery-inducing), developed in an ongoing "us-versus-them" contest.

And this is of course a contest for policy outcomes that is adversarial (regarding taxation, government spending, regulation, trade, money and banking, health care, energy, foreign wars, and the like), in which "them" refers to the bipartisan ruling class inside the Beltway and their elitist supporters on both coasts, whereas the "us" signifies the tens of millions of hard working Americans in flyover country who have no political clout, no lobbyists, no financial resources, and hence no real voice in the halls of government power. From these anxiety-ridden millions come Trump's most ardent supporters, and Professor Codevilla counts them as likely more than two-thirds of the electorate - good news for Trump. These Americans, emblematic of William Graham Sumner's hard-pressed "Forgotten Man," are beyond fed up with an arrogant, corrupt, and distant government stealing, in their view, their hard-earned wealth in what is a giant game of redistribution from them and to the Beltway ruling class and their acolytes in favored industries, academe, the media, Wall Street, and so on.

These people see excessive taxation as theft, Obamacare as an abomination, endless warfare overseas as insane, and the venal Beltway ruling class and especially career politicians as deeply corrupt and morally bankrupt. They are tired of a sclerotic economy that entails the longest run of sub-3% economic growth in the 240 year history of America (11 years and counting), stagnant incomes, and paucity of full-time jobs. They are screaming for change, and they know they'll only get more of the same petty agonies with Mrs. Clinton. As such, they are the key to a Trump victory, and it is imperative now, in the final hours of his 17-month journey, that Trump motivate them to turn out Tuesday.

Indeed they are ready to confer upon him an historic opportunity to leverage this righteous anger at a corrupt political ruling class straight into the White House, and have left him now standing astride history. In a long, colorful, and even spectacular life, this is surely Mr. Trump's supreme moment. How tragic then that Trump treated much of the campaign as though it were one long-running lounge act, either ignoring, being wrong about, or taking multiple positions on several critical issues involving fiscal, monetary, trade and regulatory policies, entitlements, education, foreign affairs, and his signature issue of immigration. Rather than cruising to victory against a weak and flawed statist, Trump, having trailed her end to end, is fighting to pull off a miracle finish seen only once before in modern history: in President Truman's defeat of New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in 1948. But in a unique year like this it is possible, and thus here are a few specific action items and needed messaging that optimize Trump's chances on Election Day:

1. Reprise Ronald Reagan's Election Eve address to the nation on November 3, 1980. Mr. Reagan purchased a half hour of prime time network television to make a 3,700 word speech entitled "A Vision for America," that included a few minutes' opening by his running mate George H.W. Bush, the night before the election that eventuated in the first of his two electoral landslides. Network television ad rates are expensive, often north of $200,000 per minute now, so this would entail an investment of several million dollars. But Trump could build it up with marketing to ensure a monster audience, and any resistance due to the television media's bias against him could be overcome by approaching one or several networks and offering to do matching contributions to worthy charities. One or a few will bite, and he can then show a determination to take command via aggressive moves to cut taxes, invoke the "Penny Plan of spending cuts, and deregulate - moves he has promised to make, but of which no specifics were ever offered. This is a bold and dramatic move designed to afford him and Mr. Pence an opportunity to starkly define the choice before voters, and their different policy intent for the years ahead. It was a huge last-minute boost to Mr. Reagan in 1980, and helped him win both the U.S. Senate and a governing mandate. The same can happen for Trump if done well, and would set viewing records if pre-sold for a few days promising a major closing announcement.

2. Hammer home twin inter-related themes in final messaging: (a) drill down on a detailed vision of economic prosperity and the steps needed immediately and in his first year, such as the significant pro-growth reforms in our tax system, regulation, out-of-control spending, repeal of Obamacare and pro-market reforms, sound money not "rigged" against savers and small businesses by the Fed, and open trade. And then, (b) run against Beltway corruption, the growing existence of which has harmed the economy. That is to say, cutting down on (b) can only help with (a).

Explicit labeling of the bipartisan Beltway political elites as "the ruling class" would complement Trump's "drain the swamp" war cry, and would have branding power every bit as meaningful as his other labels deployed so effectively in the past ("low energy", "crooked,", etc.). Mr. Trump would be wise to note that major Washington institutions from the IRS to the Federal Reserve to the Department of Commerce are all geared toward serving the ruling class and heir Beltway clients, and that an outsider is best poised to come to the Beltway and drive needed reforms.

3. If Trump is smart, he will show some humility and make peace with Republicans. He can acknowledge that politics is a tough business, things get said in the heat of battle, but he knows that Paul Ryan is a man of integrity and a brilliant policy analyst, with a firm grasp - indeed, better than anyone else on Capitol Hill - on the needed initiatives to restore a sustainable and widespread prosperity. In all his final speeches and advertisements, he can ask the American people to deliver him congressional majorities. And where appropriate, mention pro-economic growth candidate names specifically, such as Senator Ron Johnson in Wisconsin, now in a valiant knife-fight of a race against a career politician (former Senator Russ Feingold) to retain his seat. Senator Johnson, a plastics manufacturing CEO and entrepreneur, committed to Wisconsinites that he would serve only two terms, and is a model solon for our challenging times. His loss would be devastating in terms of Senate brainpower and integrity, and if Trump is perceptive he will help Mr. Johnson.

4. Embrace economic growth and prosperity by signaling it is the top priority. So many issues, from ISIS and terrorism to climate change, hold endless fascination for the Beltway ruling class and media elites, but polling data have consistently shown that "it's the economy, stupid" is the perennial focus for voters. Tax reform, spending control, deregulation, health care - it's pretty simple. Trade is a challenge: Mr. Trump has been wrong about international trade and America's trade deficit for decades, and one of his economic advisors, Professor Peter Navarro of UC-Irvine, is similarly erroneous and retrograde in his thinking. There's no time to correct on this in the next few days, but Trump does have people around him, such as David Malpass (Encima Global Advisors) and Steve Moore (Heritage Foundation), who understand the drivers of growth and importance of free trade. For the couple of millions of Americans who hear Trump talk and recall Smoot-Hawley and depression, there could be no smarter move on his part than to invoke the names of Arthur Laffer, Steve Forbes, and Larry Kudlow.

Particularly in the case of Mr. Laffer, a founding father of supply-side economics and advisor to Reagan, there could be no better signal for Trump to send than to suggest that he would ask Mr. Laffer to come to Washington to help design and pass the economic recovery package. Bluntly, Trump's critics fear that an economic reform put forth by himself or Mr. Navarro will be wrong-headed, but there is no doubt that a Laffer-Forbes proposal would serve to ignite strong economic growth in this country. And there are a few million potential Trump voters who see it this way.

5. Finally, here's the bombshell and game-changer: Mr. Trump should offer up his own "November surprise" and announce he will serve only one term, as part of his own serious embrace of term limits for all federal officials. 75% of the American people favor term limits; it is a dynamite issue that divides the masses from the Beltway ruling class like no other. Such an announcement would serve to electrify the American people, as no president since George Washington has signaled so clearly a desire to limit the reach of executive power via personal renouncement of it. It would help underscore the major differences between Trump and the power-mad career politician in Mrs. Clinton. There could be no clearer signal that Trump intends to go to Washington to get things done in a hurry, and he would be leading by example as he moves to "drain the swamp." Importantly, too, nervous Republicans and independents who have preternaturally shied away from Trump due to fears about his own desire for power would be reassured. He would suddenly become a much "safer" vote for many fence-sitters, and deep down, it seems likely that it is not a job that Trump wants to do for eight years anyway.

It must be emphasized that Mr. Trump is still the underdog, and after all that has happened, it may be too late for him. But if he will follow these five suggestions, victory becomes more possible for him on Tuesday. Of course, in 1928, Republicans rejoiced in Herbert Hoover's victory over Governor Al Smith of New York, only later to apprehend that it would have been far better for them to have had Mr. Hoover lose that year. There is a legitimate chance this could happen with Trump, too. But there is no gainsaying the opportunity Trump has to do great things on behalf of a deeply worried electorate and make his mark on history were he to be elected - an opportunity, here at the end of his life, to do good for literally hundreds of millions of people he claims to care about. For this to happen, ironically, Trump must repudiate a great deal of what he has always been about, beginning this weekend. Whether or not he embraces this is up to him.

 

John Chapman is an economist and merchant banker at Hill & Cutler Co. in Washington, D.C. 

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