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" President Donald Trump basically told Americans last night that he’s going to make sure we can have our cake and eat it, too—and by the way it will be a spectacular cake, it won’t cost much, and it’s going to help us lose a lot of weight.
Trump used his first speech to Congress last night to lay out a heroic vision of an America where “every problem can be solved.” He promised to ensure clean air and water while getting rid of environmental regulations. He vowed to ratchet down taxes on corporations and the middle class while jacking up spending on the military, immigration enforcement, infrastructure and veterans—and at the same time somehow rescuing America from its crushing national debt. He suggests that he'll increase tariffs on foreign goods, and that foreign countries would respond by lowering tariffs on U.S. goods. And he pledged to replace Obamacare with terrific reforms that “expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and provide better health care.” He didn’t explain in much detail how those reforms would work, or whether they would also do something about those embarrassingly skimpy gowns patients have to wear in the hospital.
The media takeaway was that Trump’s speech sounded optimistic, which was true compared to his dyspeptic inaugural address, and also true in the sense that infomercials promising baldness cures or eight-minute abs are optimistic. But there’s a fine line between optimism and magical realism. Politicians routinely deploy sunny rhetoric about “cures to illnesses that have always plagued us” and “American footprints on distant worlds,” but Trump was playing a high-risk game by promising just about everything to just about everyone—especially when he also declared that “above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people. "
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/donald-trump-salesman-214845
Trump used his first speech to Congress last night to lay out a heroic vision of an America where “every problem can be solved.” He promised to ensure clean air and water while getting rid of environmental regulations. He vowed to ratchet down taxes on corporations and the middle class while jacking up spending on the military, immigration enforcement, infrastructure and veterans—and at the same time somehow rescuing America from its crushing national debt. He suggests that he'll increase tariffs on foreign goods, and that foreign countries would respond by lowering tariffs on U.S. goods. And he pledged to replace Obamacare with terrific reforms that “expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and provide better health care.” He didn’t explain in much detail how those reforms would work, or whether they would also do something about those embarrassingly skimpy gowns patients have to wear in the hospital.
The media takeaway was that Trump’s speech sounded optimistic, which was true compared to his dyspeptic inaugural address, and also true in the sense that infomercials promising baldness cures or eight-minute abs are optimistic. But there’s a fine line between optimism and magical realism. Politicians routinely deploy sunny rhetoric about “cures to illnesses that have always plagued us” and “American footprints on distant worlds,” but Trump was playing a high-risk game by promising just about everything to just about everyone—especially when he also declared that “above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people. "
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/03/donald-trump-salesman-214845
