It’s Been One Month. How’s the Trump Agenda Going?
byBenjy Sarlin (NBC News) February 21, 2017
Donald Trump is sworn in as president on Jan. 20. Mark Ralston / AFP - Getty Images
One month in, Donald Trump's presidency looks much like his campaign: a continual series of crises.
Trump's formula worked in the campaign and led to his surprise victory. So far, however, his administration is having trouble turning his election promises into a functioning government.
Trump has been confronted with a series of administrative crises while struggling to move the ball on key policy priorities. He even returned to the campaign trail in Florida on Saturday.
At his first solo news conference last week, Trump likened his White House to a "fine-tuned machine." But the president faces a personnel crisis after firing national security adviser Michael Flynn. Trump's first choice to replace him, retired Navy Vice Adm. Robert Harward, turned him down.
The White House has also been bogged down in side battles over such issues as the size of the crowd at his inauguration to voter fraud conspiracies, sapping attention and draining aides.
One month in, the Trump presidency has been anything but usual3:29
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One of Trump's signature policy initiatives, blocking travel and refugees from seven Muslim-majority countries, has been held up by the courts and widely panned for its faulty deployment. And there are ongoing issues surrounding his potential conflicts of interest and recent reports linking campaign advisers to Russia.
Trump has said the focus on those struggles overlooks success elsewhere.
He has argued that other executive orders he's signed, besides the travel order, deserve more attention, along with emerging work on foreign policy, trade and energy. Many of his key Cabinet choices have been confirmed despite a wall of Democratic opposition, which delayed their Senate votes and helped derail his first nominee for labor secretary, Andy Puzder.
"There has never been a presidency that's done so much in such a short period of time," Trump said.
But most of Trump's executive orders are still limited in scope, and some of the more far-reaching proposals face serious obstacles before they can take effect.
Congress has yet to send major legislation to his desk, apart from measures to roll back some regulations issued in the last months of President Barack Obama's administration.
In many cases, the new administration still hasn't worked out consistent positions on such important issues as health care, immigration and taxes, which makes it hard to judge their progress.
There's also still a feeling-out period abroad, as world leaders nervously try to determine which of Trump's more unorthodox proposals were campaign rhetoric and which ones are new policies.
At the same time, Trump has attended to some less difficult campaign promises and laid the groundwork for potentially major moves. There's still plenty of time to regroup, but the first 100 days are considered crucial to enacting a new president's agenda. One month in, here's a look at some of the movement Trump has made.
Health care
Trump made no mention in his inaugural address of repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act, despite its being a cherished Republican priority. Yet the future of the ACA, or "Obamacare," may end up as the defining policy fight of Trump's presidency.
Republican hopes for rapid repeal have been deflated by intraparty disagreements on policy and procedure.
House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin, says legislation is imminent that would partly repeal and at least partly replace the ACA. But details are scarce, and there's a widening divide between conservatives, who want a cheaper replacement that would likely cover fewer people, and moderates (especially in the Senate) who are reluctant to adopt changes that would take Medicaid or private insurance from those who have obtained it under the law.
Part of the problem is that Trump's own orders have been unclear. He initially said he would release his own plan that would include "insurance for everybody" and "much lower deductibles," but so far Congress is taking the lead.
Trump said at his news conference to expect an "initial plan" in March, without specifying its origin. It's not yet clear whether he'll intervene if Republican leaders produce legislation that falls short of his coverage goals or violates his pledge not to cut Medicaid spending, which looks especially likely in the House.
In the meantime, ACA exchanges are troubled as more insurers pull out, and delays in naming a replacement plan could spook companies further. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price has taken some steps to try to stabilize the market while the administration works out a replacement.
Immigration and refugees
The Trump administration moved quickly to implement a version of Trump's pledge to enact "extreme vetting" of travelers and a freeze on refugees from countries that pose "security concerns" — a climbdown from his initial proposal to ban all Muslim travel to the United States, which almost no Republican official supported.
The confusing rollout of the executive order ended up trapping permanent U.S. residents at airports and generating widespread protests. It was blocked by the courts, which prompted an enraged response from the president. Trump has since said he plans to issue a new order rather than continue to defend the original one in court.
But there's been other movement on immigration, too. Trump issued executive orders to build his signature wall along the Mexican border, cut funding to so-called sanctuary cities and expand deportations. The Homeland Security Department is considering further directives that could authorize officials to detain and deport certain undocumented immigrants more quickly.
The wall, which would require funding from Congress, faces a variety of legal and logistical hurdles, and it's not clear that the White House has much leverage over local governments. But the administration's order broadening its deportation priorities beyond serious criminals might already be having an impact.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials say recent raids and arrests are in line with policies under Obama, but immigration activists say Trump's orders are spurring authorities to go further. In one case, a mother of two children who are U.S. citizens was arrested and deported, even though she had checked in with immigration authorities regularly after a 2008 arrest for using a false Social Security number to work.
Other areas are still to be determined.
Trump has held off calls from the right to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals policy, which protects young undocumented immigrants brought to the United States as children, but his long-term position is ambiguous. He told reporters "I love these kids" last week, saying the situation was a "very difficult subject" that required "heart," without elaborating on policy details.
His stance on legal immigration and foreign work visas is also unclear, and it could pit advisers against one another.
Courts
This is arguably Trump's biggest success so far. His choice of Neil Gorsuch to fill the Supreme Court seat left open by the death of Antonin Scalia earned universal praise from Republicans, and the rollout has been relatively smooth, even if Trump wasn't always happy with the process. Gorsuch hasn't been confirmed yet, however.
Trade
Trade is another area in which Trump has had at least one significant accomplishment: He formally rejected the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which he attacked regularly on the campaign trail.
Trump has continued to criticize Mexico for what he claims are unfair trade practices, and he reiterated his demand that Mexico pay for a border wall, which prompted Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto to cancel a planned meeting.
The TPP Is Dead. So What?
At the same time, Trump has suggested that Congress fund construction of a wall immediately, even if no agreement with Mexico is in place. Republican leaders in Congress sound amenable, but there's no legislation yet.
The president said at a news conference with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he still plans to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, but his primary concerns were with Mexico and not Canada.
Energy
Trump signed executive orders advancing approval of the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines, a departure from Obama administration policy. Smoothing their progress was a popular promise among Republicans during the campaign, but it faces opposition from environmental groups and Native American activists.
There could be more action soon, however. When he was attorney general of Oklahoma, Scott Pruitt, now the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, led lawsuits against the federal government's regulations on emissions tied to climate change. Environmental groups are gearing up for a fight over what they expect to be a major effort to dismantle them.
Trump has also questioned climate science and criticized regulations and international agreements surrounding the topic as overly burdensome to business.
Tax reform
Trump campaigned on a pledge to cut taxes, although he was inconsistent on the details and changed plans entirely late in the race. He's identified tax reform as a top priority since winning in November.
As with repealing the Affordable Care Act, it's a popular Republican idea on paper, but it's troubled in practice a month into Trump's presidency. And as with health care, Trump has made fairly confusing statements about what he expects from a deal.
House Republican leaders want to adopt a new border adjustment tax, which would penalize companies that rely heavily on imported goods, to finance an across-the-board cut in corporate tax rates. Trump criticized the idea shortly before he took office, but he has since indicated that he might be open to it.
Manufacturers, whom Trump has emphasized in speeches, like the idea, but big retailers, who rely on cheap goods from abroad to stock their stores, are gearing up for a major campaign to stop it.
Infrastructure
Trump and top advisers like Stephen Bannon have long mentioned infrastructure spending as a top priority to generate jobs and fix crumbling roads, bridges and airports. But so far, there hasn't been much visible movement in Congress.
Democrats are usually more enthusiastic about the idea than Republicans, and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York unveiled a $1 trillion plan last month in hope of attracting the White House's attention.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, told reporters last week that Republicans still expect to tackle the issue in some form, but he has previously warned the White House against spending too much.
Foreign policy
Nowhere has Trump broken further from mainstream politics than in foreign policy, with even few Republican lawmakers willing to fully endorse his views.
Since taking office, Trump has sent mixed messages on his priorities, with a mix of conciliatory moves and more aggressive ones, and world leaders have expressed deep concern about whether he will undermine the current system of alliances and agreements on trade, defense and human rights.
Trump has praised the use of torture — even as he says he won't implement it — and he has suggested that he might consider seizing Iraq's oil in the future, which Defense Secretary James Mattis reassured Iraq was not the case in Baghdad this week.
Trump is noted for his calls for closer relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom he praised often during the campaign. That story got more attention after Flynn resigned over his discussions with Russia's ambassador to the United States and reports — unconfirmed by NBC News — that several Trump aides had contact with Russian intelligence officials during the campaign.
Trump was reluctant to accept the intelligence community's consensus report that Putin was behind hacks against his political opponents, and he has dismissed interest in the cyber-attack as an effort to undermine his legitimacy.
Policy changes toward Russia are still a work in progress, however.
Trump's secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, faced extra scrutiny from senators in both parties for his business ties to Putin. Mattis is publicly wary of Russia, and Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, has criticized Russia for supporting Ukrainian separatists.
Vice President Mike Pence, who often took more conventional positions during the campaign, told world leaders this week that the White House would "hold Russia accountable." Republican leaders, meanwhile, have suggested that they might reimpose sanctions on Russia if Trump withdraws them.
Trump criticized NATO throughout the campaign and alarmed world leaders when he appeared to suggest that the United States might not defend an ally from a Russian attack if it hadn't paid its dues. Mattis praised NATO extensively in his confirmation hearings, but he also warned in Europe last week that the United States would "moderate its commitment" if members didn't increase their defense budgets.
In other areas, early bluster has given way to a different reality. After the election, Trump said he potentially would abandon the "One China" policy toward Taiwan and China as leverage to negotiate a trade deal. But he quickly backed down this month and reiterated his commitment to the longtime agreement in a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
The Trump administration also reaffirmed its commitment to defend Japan and South Korea after the president threatened to withdraw his support as a candidate and even suggested that both countries might be better off pursuing nuclear weapons rather than relying on U.S. protection.
On Israel, his administration has wavered on whether it is committed to a two-state solution, a longtime U.S. policy, and it waffled on a promise to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, which past presidents have abandoned once in office, as well.
Trump also surprised some observers by opposing Israeli settlements and indicating interest in a new peace initiative at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, even as he kept his criticism gentler than Obama had.
FAREED ZAKARIA is the host of Fareed Zakaria GPS, on CNN. Some of the ideas in this essay draw on his columns in The Washington Post. Follow him on Twitter @FareedZakaria
Donald Trump’s admirers and critics would probably agree on one thing: he is different. One of his chief Republican supporters, Newt Gingrich, describes him as a “unique, extraordinary experience.” And of course, in some ways—his celebrity, his flexibility with the facts—Trump is unusual. But in an important sense, he is not: Trump is part of a broad populist upsurge running through the Western world. It can be seen in countries of widely varying circumstances, from prosperous Sweden to crisis-ridden Greece. In most, populism remains an opposition movement, although one that is growing in strength; in others, such as Hungary, it is now the reigning ideology. But almost everywhere, populism has captured the public’s attention.
What is populism? It means different things to different groups, but all versions share a suspicion of and hostility toward elites, mainstream politics, and established institutions. Populism sees itself as speaking for the forgotten “ordinary” person and often imagines itself as the voice of genuine patriotism. “The only antidote to decades of ruinous rule by a small handful of elites is a bold infusion of popular will. On every major issue affecting this country, the people are right and the governing elite are wrong,” Trump wrote in The Wall Street Journal in April 2016. Norbert Hofer, who ran an “Austria first” presidential campaign in 2016, explained to his opponent—conveniently, a former professor—“You have the haute volée [high society] behind you; I have the people with me.”
Historically, populism has come in left- and right-wing variants, and both are flourishing today, from Bernie Sanders to Trump, and from Syriza, the leftist party currently in power in Greece, to the National Front, in France. But today’s left-wing populism is neither distinctive nor particularly puzzling. Western countries have long had a far left that critiques mainstream left-wing parties as too market-oriented and accommodating of big business. In the wake of the Cold War, center-left parties moved much closer toward the center—think of Bill Clinton in the United States and Tony Blair in the United Kingdom—thus opening up a gap that could be filled by populists. That gap remained empty, however, until the financial crisis of 2007–8. The subsequent downturn caused households in the United States to lose trillions in wealth and led unemployment in countries such as Greece and Spain to rise to 20 percent and above, where it has remained ever since. It is hardly surprising that following the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the populist left experienced a surge of energy.
The new left’s agenda is not so different from the old left’s. If anything, in many European countries, left-wing populist parties are now closer to the center than they were 30 years ago. Syriza, for example, is not nearly as socialist as was the main Greek socialist party, PASOK, in the 1970s and 1980s. In power, it has implemented market reforms and austerity, an agenda with only slight variations from that of the governing party that preceded it. Were Podemos, Spain’s version of Syriza, to come to power—and it gained only about 20 percent of the vote in the country’s most recent election—it would probably find itself in a similar position.
Right-wing populist parties, on the other hand, are experiencing a new and striking rise in country after country across Europe. France’s National Front is positioned to make the runoff in next year’s presidential election. Austria’s Freedom Party almost won the presidency this year and still might, since the final round of the election was annulled and rescheduled for December. Not every nation has succumbed to the temptation. Spain, with its recent history of right-wing dictatorship, has shown little appetite for these kinds of parties. But Germany, a country that has grappled with its history of extremism more than any other, now has a right-wing populist party, Alternative for Germany, growing in strength. And of course, there is Trump. While many Americans believe that Trump is a singular phenomenon, representative of no larger, lasting agenda, accumulating evidence suggests otherwise. The political scientist Justin Gest adapted the basic platform of the far-right British National Party and asked white Americans whether they would support a party dedicated to “stopping mass immigration, providing American jobs to American workers, preserving America’s Christian heritage and stopping the threat of Islam.” Sixty-five percent of those polled said they would. Trumpism, Gest concluded, would outlast Trump.
Fabrizio Bensch / REUTERS An anti-immigration protest in Dresden, Germany, October 2015.
WHY THE WEST, AND WHY NOW?
In searching for the sources of the new populism, one should follow Sherlock Holmes’ advice and pay attention to the dog that didn’t bark. Populism is largely absent in Asia, even in the advanced economies of Japan and South Korea. It is actually in retreat in Latin America, where left-wing populists in Argentina, Bolivia, and Venezuela ran their countries into the ground over the last decade. In Europe, however, not only has there been a steady and strong rise in populism almost everywhere, but it has deeper roots than one might imagine. In an important research paper for Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Ronald Inglehart and Pippa Norris calculate that since the 1960s, populist parties of the right have doubled their share of the vote in European countries and populists of the left have seen more than a fivefold increase. By the second decade of this century, the average share of seats for right-wing populist parties had risen to 13.7 percent, and it had risen to 11.5 percent for left-wing ones.
The most striking findings of the paper are about the decline of economics as the pivot of politics. The way politics are thought about today is still shaped by the basic twentieth-century left-right divide. Left-wing parties are associated with increased government spending, a larger welfare state, and regulations on business. Right-wing parties have wanted limited government, fewer safety nets, and more laissez-faire policies. Voting patterns traditionally reinforced this ideological divide, with the working class opting for the left and middle and upper classes for the right. Income was usually the best predictor of a person’s political choices.
A convergence in economic policy has contributed to a situation in which the crucial difference between the left and the right is cultural.
Inglehart and Norris point out that this old voting pattern has been waning for decades. “By the 1980s,” they write, “class voting had fallen to the lowest levels ever recorded in Britain, France, Sweden and West Germany. . . . In the U.S., it had fallen so low [by the 1990s] that there was virtually no room for further decline.” Today, an American’s economic status is a bad predictor of his or her voting preferences. His or her views on social issues—say, same-sex marriage—are a much more accurate guide to whether he or she will support Republicans or Democrats. Inglehart and Norris also analyzed party platforms in recent decades and found that since the 1980s, economic issues have become less important. Noneconomic issues—such as those related to gender, race, the environment—have greatly increased in importance.
What can explain this shift, and why is it happening almost entirely in the Western world? Europe and North America include countries with widely varying economic, social, and political conditions. But they face a common challenge—economic stasis. Despite the variety of economic policies they have adopted, all Western countries have seen a drop-off in growth since the 1970s. There have been brief booms, but the secular shift is real, even including the United States. What could account for this decline? In his recent book, The Rise and Fall of Nations, Ruchir Sharma notes that a broad trend like this stagnation must have an equally broad cause. He identifies one factor above all others: demographics. Western countries, from the United States to Poland, Sweden to Greece, have all seen a decline in their fertility rates. The extent varies, but everywhere, families are smaller, fewer workers are entering the labor force, and the ranks of retirees swell by the year. This has a fundamental and negative impact on economic growth.
That slower growth is coupled with challenges that relate to the new global economy. Globalization is now pervasive and entrenched, and the markets of the West are (broadly speaking) the most open in the world. Goods can easily be manufactured in lower-wage economies and shipped to advanced industrial ones. While the effect of increased global trade is positive for economies as a whole, specific sectors get battered, and large swaths of unskilled and semiskilled workers find themselves unemployed or underemployed.
Another trend working its way through the Western world is the information revolution. This is not the place to debate whether new technologies are raising productivity. Suffice it to say, they reinforce the effects of globalization and, in many cases, do more than trade to render certain kinds of jobs obsolete. Take, for example, the new and wondrous technologies pursued by companies such as Google and Uber that are making driverless cars possible. Whatever the other effects of this trend, it cannot be positive for the more than three million Americans who are professional truck drivers. (The most widely held job for an American male today is driving a car, bus, or truck, as The Atlantic’s Derek Thompson has noted.)
The final challenge is fiscal. Almost every Western country faces a large fiscal burden. The net debt-to-GDP ratio in the European Union in 2015 was 67 percent. In the United States, it was 81 percent. These numbers are not crippling, but they do place constraints on the ability of governments to act. Debts have to be financed, and as expenditures on the elderly rise through pensions and health care, the debt burden will soar. If one secure path to stronger growth is investment—spending on infrastructure, education, science, and technology—this path is made more difficult by the ever-growing fiscal burdens of an aging population.
These constraints—demographics, globalization, technology, and budgets—mean that policymakers have a limited set of options from which to choose. The sensible solutions to the problems of advanced economies these days are inevitably a series of targeted efforts that will collectively improve things: more investments, better worker retraining, reforms of health care. But this incrementalism produces a deep sense of frustration among many voters who want more dramatic solutions and a bold, decisive leader willing to decree them. In the United States and elsewhere, there is rising support for just such a leader, who would dispense with the checks and balances of liberal democracy.
Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in Athens, January 2015.
FROM ECONOMICS TO CULTURE
In part because of the broader forces at work in the global economy, there has been a convergence in economic policy around the world in recent decades. In the 1960s, the difference between the left and the right was vast, with the left seeking to nationalize entire industries and the right seeking to get the government out of the economy. When François Mitterrand came to power in France in the early 1980s, for example, he enacted policies that were identifiably socialist, whereas Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan sought to cut taxes, privatize industries and government services, and radically deregulate the private sector.
The end of the Cold War discredited socialism in all forms, and left-wing parties everywhere moved to the center, most successfully under Clinton in the United States and Blair in the United Kingdom. And although politicians on the right continue to make the laissez-faire case today, it is largely theoretical. In power, especially after the global financial crisis, conservatives have accommodated themselves to the mixed economy, as liberals have to the market. The difference between Blair’s policies and David Cameron’s was real, but in historical perspective, it was rather marginal. Trump’s plans for the economy, meanwhile, include massive infrastructure spending, high tariffs, and a new entitlement for working mothers. He has employed the usual rhetoric about slashing regulations and taxes, but what he has actually promised—let alone what he could actually deliver—has been less different from Hillary Clinton’s agenda than one might assume. In fact, he has boasted that his infrastructure program would be twice as large as hers.
This convergence in economic policy has contributed to a situation in which the crucial difference between the left and the right today is cultural. Despite what one sometimes hears, most analyses of voters for Brexit, Trump, or populist candidates across Europe find that economic factors (such as rising inequality or the effects of trade) are not the most powerful drivers of their support. Cultural values are. The shift began, as Inglehart and Norris note, in the 1970s, when young people embraced a postmaterialist politics centered on self-expression and issues related to gender, race, and the environment. They challenged authority and established institutions and norms, and they were largely successful in introducing new ideas and recasting politics and society. But they also produced a counterreaction. The older generation, particularly men, was traumatized by what it saw as an assault on the civilization and values it cherished and had grown up with. These people began to vote for parties and candidates that they believed would, above all, hold at bay these forces of cultural and social change.
In Europe, that led to the rise of new parties. In the United States, it meant that Republicans began to vote more on the basis of these cultural issues than on economic ones. The Republican Party had lived uneasily as a coalition of disparate groups for decades, finding a fusion between cultural and economic conservatives and foreign policy hawks. But then, the Democrats under Clinton moved to the center, bringing many professionals and white-collar workers into the party’s fold. Working-class whites, on the other hand, found themselves increasingly alienated by the cosmopolitan Democrats and more comfortable with a Republican Party that promised to reflect their values on “the three Gs”—guns, God, and gays. In President Barack Obama’s first term, a new movement, the Tea Party, bubbled up on the right, seemingly as a reaction to the government’s rescue efforts in response to the financial crisis. A comprehensive study by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson, however, based on hundreds of interviews with Tea Party followers, concluded that their core motivations were not economic but cultural. As the virulent hostility to Obama has shown, race also plays a role in this cultural reaction.
For a few more years, the conservative establishment in Washington remained focused on economics, not least because its most important financial supporters tended toward libertarianism. But behind the scenes, the gap between it and the party’s base was growing, and Trump’s success has brought that division into the open. Trump’s political genius was to realize that many Republican voters were unmoved by the standard party gospel of free trade, low taxes, deregulation, and entitlement reform but would respond well to a different appeal based on cultural fears and nationalist sentiment.
NATION VS. MIGRATION
Unsurprisingly, the initial and most important issue Trump exploited was immigration. On many other social issues, such as gay rights, even right-wing populists are divided and recognize that the tide is against them. Few conservative politicians today argue for the recriminalization of homosexuality, for instance. But immigration is an explosive issue on which populists are united among themselves and opposed to their elite antagonists.
There is a reality behind the rhetoric, for we are indeed living in an age of mass migration. The world has been transformed by the globalization of goods, services, and information, all of which have produced their share of pain and rejection. But we are now witnessing the globalization of people, and public reaction to that is stronger, more visceral, and more emotional. Western populations have come to understand and accept the influx of foreign goods, ideas, art, and cuisine, but they are far less willing to understand and accept the influx of foreigners themselves—and today there are many of those to notice.
Immigration is the final frontier of globalization.
For the vast majority of human history, people lived, traveled, worked, and died within a few miles of their birthplace. In recent decades, however, Western societies have seen large influxes of people from different lands and alien cultures. In 2015, there were around 250 million international migrants and 65 million forcibly displaced people worldwide. Europe has received the largest share, 76 million immigrants, and it is the continent with the greatest anxiety. That anxiety is proving a better guide to voters’ choices than issues such as inequality or slow growth. As a counterexample, consider Japan. The country has had 25 years of sluggish growth and is aging even faster than others, but it doesn’t have many immigrants—and in part as a result, it has not caught the populist fever.
Levels of public anxiety are not directly related to the total number of immigrants in a country or even to the concentration of immigrants in different areas, and polls show some surprising findings. The French, for example, are relatively less concerned about the link between refugees and terrorism than other Europeans are, and negative attitudes toward Muslims have fallen substantially in Germany over the past decade. Still, there does seem to be a correlation between public fears and the pace of immigration. This suggests that the crucial element in the mix is politics: countries where mainstream politicians have failed to heed or address citizens’ concerns have seen rising populism driven by political entrepreneurs fanning fear and latent prejudice. Those countries that have managed immigration and integration better, in contrast, with leadership that is engaged, confident, and practical, have not seen a rise in populist anger. Canada is the role model in this regard, with large numbers of immigrants and a fair number of refugees and yet little backlash.
To be sure, populists have often distorted or even invented facts in order to make their case. In the United States, for example, net immigration from Mexico has been negative for several years. Instead of the illegal immigrant problem growing, in other words, it is actually shrinking. Brexit advocates, similarly, used many misleading or outright false statistics to scare the public. Yet it would be wrong to dismiss the problem as one simply concocted by demagogues (as opposed to merely exploited by them). The number of immigrants entering many European countries is historically high. In the United States, the proportion of Americans who were foreign-born increased from less than five percent in 1970 to almost 14 percent today. And the problem of illegal immigration to the United States remains real, even though it has slowed recently. In many countries, the systems designed to manage immigration and provide services for integrating immigrants have broken down. And yet all too often, governments have refused to fix them, whether because powerful economic interests benefit from cheap labor or because officials fear appearing uncaring or xenophobic.
Immigration is the final frontier of globalization. It is the most intrusive and disruptive because as a result of it, people are dealing not with objects or abstractions; instead, they come face-to-face with other human beings, ones who look, sound, and feel different. And this can give rise to fear, racism, and xenophobia. But not all the reaction is noxious. It must be recognized that the pace of change can move too fast for society to digest. The ideas of disruption and creative destruction have been celebrated so much that it is easy to forget that they look very different to the people being disrupted.
Western societies will have to focus directly on the dangers of too rapid cultural change. That might involve some limits on the rate of immigration and on the kinds of immigrants who are permitted to enter. It should involve much greater efforts and resources devoted to integration and assimilation, as well as better safety nets. Most Western countries need much stronger retraining programs for displaced workers, ones more on the scale of the GI Bill: easily available to all, with government, the private sector, and educational institutions all participating. More effort also needs to be devoted to highlighting the realities of immigration, so that the public is dealing with facts and not phobias. But in the end, there is no substitute for enlightened leadership, the kind that, instead of pandering to people’s worst instincts, appeals to their better angels.
Eventually, we will cross this frontier as well. The most significant divide on the issue of immigration is generational. Young people are the least anxious or fearful of foreigners of any group in society. They understand that they are enriched—economically, socially, culturally—by living in diverse, dynamic countries. They take for granted that they should live in an open and connected world, and that is the future they seek. The challenge for the West is to make sure the road to that future is not so rocky that it causes catastrophe along the way
Referenda are terrible mechanisms of democracy. As a case in point, the recent British referendum over the United Kingdom’s membership in the EU was a reckless gamble[2] that took a very real issue—the need for more open and legitimate contestation in the EU—and turned it into a political grotesquerie of shamelessly opportunistic political elites. The raucous debate over the United Kingdom’s continued membership in the EU was riven with lies and misrepresentations, some of which are now being explicitly rolled back [3]by Brexit advocates; even the British press rues its bombastic support[4] for the Leave side. Unfortunately, many British voters appear not to have known exactly what the EU is[5], validating other recent research demonstrating a lack of factual knowledge[6] about the union.
Observers of the referendum should therefore be wary about drawing conclusions about broader globalization efforts, the Western order, the inevitability of the rise of populist anti-immigration parties, or the viability of the EU project overall. The answer to the breathless question posed in the New York Times on Sunday[7]—“Is the post-1945 order imposed on the world by the United States and its allies unraveling, too?”—is simple. No, it is not. And yet the emotions and cultural chasms brought to bear in the Brexit vote cannot and should not be ignored.
Brexit’s real lesson is that there is a consequential divide between cosmopolitans who view the future with hope and those who have been left behind and have seen their economic situations and ways of life deteriorate. The same story may well play out in the United States and elsewhere, with important electoral effects. But the Brexit story also speaks to the uniqueness of the EU as a new kind of polity with a profound impact on the lives of all within it. History has shown that the development of new political formulations rarely goes smoothly. The divisions between those who can imagine a better life in the new system and those who cannot will likely continue to drive politics[8] in the EU and elsewhere for years to come.
A demonstrator stands outside the Houses of Parliament during a protest aimed at showing London's solidarity with the European Union following the recent EU referendum, in central London, Britain, June 28, 2016.
CLASS CONSCIOUS
Although the Brexit referendum was a highly imperfect form of democratic representation, the emotions[9] voiced by Leave voters were very real. They echo important and valid feelings of other populations across the Western democracies. There are two worlds of people, as analysis of Brexit voting patterns clearly indicated, that are divided in their experiences and their visions of the future. Educational attainment[10], age, and national identity decisively determined the vote[11]. Younger voters of all economic backgrounds and those with a university education voted overwhelmingly in favor of Remain. Older voters, the unemployed, and those with a strong sense of English national identity sought to leave. The fight over Brexit is a reflection of the social exclusion that arises in a world of stark economic inequality.One way of thinking about the division is to see it as cosmopolitan versus parochial thinking, rooted in deeper social and economic trends that create their own cultural dynamics. Cosmopolitanism, a sense of belonging to a global community beyond one’s immediate borders, requires confidence in one’s place in the world and implies a hope about the future beyond the nation-state. The parochial view is tinged with fear about that future and a sense that societal transformation will leave the common voter behind. In part, that fear reflects the opening of markets, but it is equally due to changes in technology and broader shifts in capitalism away from protection of both the middle and the working classes. These shifts can’t be blamed solely on globalization; they also have much to do with domestic politics and policy decisions. In the United Kingdom and elsewhere, political choices have accelerated deindustrialization while decimating social safety nets and doing little to put the brakes on rising inequality.
Given this harsh reality for the unemployed, the older, and the uneducated, the Remain campaign’s warnings about the economic disaster of Brexit carried little weight; many voters believed that their opportunities were closed off long ago. The clever marketing of the Brexit campaign, including the mantras “Take Back Control” and “Breaking Point,” spoke to very real senses of exclusion but offered few solutions; the reality is that British political dynamics, more than the EU’s rules, have created the United Kingdom’s social and economic problems.
The economic divide and the social effects of it pushed immigration to the forefront of the debate. Voters were right that immigration of both EU nationals and non-EU immigrants has risen tremendously[12], particularly since the financial crisis. Whereas other states within the EU have struggled with immigrants from Syria and Iraq, however, the United Kingdom has had a tiny number of asylum claims[13]. And studies show that immigrants pay far more in taxes than they take out in benefits. Nevertheless, the underlying fears made such facts unimportant. Indeed, the areas with the most foreigners voted overwhelmingly for staying in the EU. They are regions already integrated into a new cosmopolitan world.
A taxi driver holds a Union flag, London, United Kingdom, June 24, 2016.
NEW POWER, NEW PROBLEM
The fight over Brexit is a reflection of the social exclusion that arises in a world of stark economic inequality. But the referendum should also be viewed in terms of a much longer history of political development and state building. The EU is far beyond a simple international organization or trade treaty, since it has accrued significant political authority across a wide range of areas. The rulings of the European Court of Justice, for example, supersede national law, and the laws of the EU have transformed everyday life in Europe, even as the Brussels bureaucracy and its fiscal presence remain tiny.
Historically, new political authorities have emerged and evolved in messy, ugly, and often violent ways. National projects of unification have involved coercion, civil wars, and the brutal exercise of power. Questions of federalism in the United States are still being fought today. Although the nation-state seems universal and natural, there have been many other forms of government in Europe alone: the Hapsburg monarchy, Italian city-states, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Hanseatic League, for example, have all come and gone. The EU, for all its faults, is an innovative new form, a polity in formation. Those under 45, and particularly those under 30, embrace it and see it as a natural and positive thing, a backdrop to their changed everyday lives that creates more opportunities than it closes down.
Given history’s guide, we should not be surprised that the deepening of the EU has created a backlash. But we can be appalled by the craven opportunism and lack of political leadership in the United Kingdom and on the European continent in guiding this development. The EU will only work if all its citizens can imagine themselves part of a cosmopolitan, thriving democratic polity, one that balances local, national, and EU powers and creates economic opportunity. Listening to those on both sides of the cultural divide, and working to ease the economic inequality that underlies the division between the hopeful and the excluded, is the only way forward for the EU—and the rest of us.
