Colin Firth and Geoffrey Rush did a splendid job portraying King George VI and his speech therapist, Lionel Logue, respectively, in the Oscar-winning 2010 film “The King’s Speech.” The film told the story of how George VI overcame a nearly disabling stutter, thanks to the tutelage and friendship of Logue, and then went on to inspire the people of Britain to their challenge in a speech at the outbreak of World War II.
{mosads}We should be so lucky as to have a “Lionel Logue” in the Trump White House; not to correct any speech impediment, but rather to fix the tone of the president’s speeches.
Sadly, the president’s speech-writing muse, Stephen Miller, is less “Lionel Logue” than pugnacious attack dog.
Miller’s recent Sunday morning news program debut displayed a vituperative anger that was the antithesis of “the happy warrior.” Despite Trump’s flurry of activity and many successes, Miller and his colleagues have caused the new administration more than its share of fits and starts, the worst being the inept and ill conceived travel ban for travelers from nine Muslim-majority countries, which Miller reportedly wrote.
They have also suffered several communications gaffes:
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Even conservatives found the president’s inaugural address, said to be written by Miller, bombastic. George Will called it “most dreadful;” the Wall Street Journal called it “ominous.”
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Kellyanne Conway’s “alternative facts” faux pas, was followed closely by her careless endorsement of Ivanka Trump’s products, and her assertion there was a “Bowling Green massacre,”
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Sean Spicer’s belligerent debut as press secretary inspired a hilarious Saturday Night Live send-up by comedienne Melissa McCarthy.
Then, last week, Trump lost National Security Adviser Flynn over “trust issues” and his nominee as Labor Secretary, Andrew Puzder, withdrew his nomination over a domestic worker he had hired. To cap off a horrible week, Trump’s first replacement for Flynn, a highly regarded Navy Seal, refused the job.
In the meantime, all the president’s positive messaging – Apple adding U.S. manufacturing, Japan’s planned investment, an employment report that far exceeded expectations, and a soaring stock market — has been lost amid the chaff of bad headlines of the White House’s own creation.
But there is hope.
When President Trump speaks before a joint session of Congress next week, he has a rare opportunity to re-brand himself, refocus his administration and restate his aspirations. He can lay out his agenda in a tone that restates America’s ideal and assuages the partisan anger of Democrats and progressives; he can offer an olive branch.
Democrats, seemingly devoid of any agreed leadership, lacking an agenda and, occasionally, letting their most inept membership speak for them, would be wise to accept it.
President Trump should have the Senate’s page boys and girls bring in all 175,000+ pages of the Code of Federal Regulations, (by wheelbarrows, if need be) as he discusses his executive order to reduce federal regulations, 2 for 1. Then, he should propose that Congress approve any new regulation with an estimated cost of compliance exceeding $50 million.
He should promise that the popular elements of Obamacare will be retained, but set a date certain to “repeal and replace” it. He should promise that all those covered now will continue to be covered, and commit that the replacement plan won’t the single-party bill it was under President Obama.
“We need Democrats”, he should say, “to help reform our healthcare system, but we also need Democrats to decide whether they prefer to protect Americans’ healthcare or to protect a failed legacy.”
The president should set similar deadlines for his tax and trade agenda, while warning both sides of the aisle of the political consequences of obstructionism. On taxes, he should prioritize capital investment — the weakest sector of GDP for the last several years — over stock buy-backs and dividend repatriation, a giveaway to lobbyists’ that failed miserably in its last iteration.
The president should invite Congress to resume its Constitutional role of regulating foreign commerce, by joining him in formulating a model U.S. trade treaty and passing it through Congress by June.
Then, to inhibit Chinese aspirations to be the Pacific Rim hegemon in international trade, he should commit to concluding bilateral trade treaties, by the end of 2018, with each of the eleven Trans-Pacific Partnership countries, using the new model treaty as the baseline for negotiation.
Donald Trump can erase a very difficult first few weeks in office on Feb. 28. But the dark tone set by his subordinate speech writer, and certain others among his staff, must be eliminated. The president should borrow his signature line from “The Apprentice:” “You’re fired!
J.G. Collins is the Managing Director of Stuyvesant Square Consultancy. He has previously written on U.S. trade policy for Forbes, The Daily Caller, the American Conservative, and various policy and political blogs.
An author’s error in an earlier version of this story referenced Kellyanne Conway as having said a massacre occurred in Greenville. She said it occurred in Bowling Green. The author regrets the error.
The views of contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.