Donald And The Post Office

Writing at Bloomberg, political scientist Jonathan Bernstein ponders Donald and the Post Office:

I suppose I have to talk post office. But I’m going to leave to others the (fully justified) outrage about what certainly appears to be an attempt by President Donald Trump to improperly, and perhaps illegally, prevent absentee ballots from arriving in time. What I find astonishing is just how out of touch a president has to be to think that no one will be upset by an apparently deliberate slowdown in mail service. As the political scientist Ken Schultz put it: “Don't Republican Senators have constituents who depend on a functioning postal service?”

The thing is that Trump, by opposing money for the U.S. Postal Service and supporting “reforms” that have slowed it down, is just handing former Vice President Joe Biden yet another easy campaign issue. Democrats may or may not be able to overturn new procedures that are causing significant problems, but they certainly can make sure that anyone who’s waiting on a letter or a package thinks that Trump is responsible when it doesn’t show up on time. And that’s not the kind of thing politicians want voters to blame them for.

This isn’t the first time Trump has missed the obvious direct effects of a policy choice. That was certainly the case with the executive actions he took recently instead of cutting a deal to get real pandemic relief; Trump has been acting ever since as though unemployed people won’t notice that they’re getting much smaller checks as long as he keeps saying that he’s solved the problem. It’s also the case with his payroll-tax holiday, which may not happen but which has certainly given Biden a chance to say that Trump is slashing dedicated funding for Social Security.

It’s not just that. Trump talks constantly about slashing regulations, and it’s probably true that red tape in the abstract isn’t very popular. Specific regulations, however, are often extremely popular — and so for example when Trump’s changes put food safety at risk, as my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Amanda Little has pointed out, people are apt to be unhappy about it.

Of course, Trump is most out of touch when he talks about the pandemic. Months into the crisis — with more than 165,000 dead and 5 million infected — he is still bragging about how successful he’s been. There’s nothing wrong with politicians putting their best spin on things. But the nation Trump talks about just doesn’t bear much similarity to the nation most Americans are living in.

Why does this keep happening to Trump? As with many of his problems, the key is information. Presidents are well situated to learn exactly what the costs are of any proposed policy — they have experts to brief them and ties to their party’s politicians and operatives, all of whom they can use as early warning signs of a coming backlash. But Trump has effectively shielded himself from neutral expertise and intimidated many Republican politicians and other party actors into silence. He does listen to party-aligned media, and that’s one potentially useful source of information, but when it’s the only source … well, that’s how you manage to forget that a lot of people depend on the post office.

How much all of this costs Trump in November is hard to say. To a large extent, it’s events that matter, not the president’s attitude. But it’s worth remembering that throughout his presidency more than half the country has disapproved of Trump, and until the last few months it certainly wasn’t because of the economy. No one can say with certainty why he’s been so unpopular, but it wouldn’t be surprising if stuff like this has played a significant role. (This is the column in its entirety.)