Nothing Was the Best We Could Hope For

How much of the time, energy, and money of other people has the Administration wasted?

1. On July 6, the Trump Administration announced it would require international students studying in the United States to take at least one face-to-face (as opposed to on-line) class at their universities or lose their visas and face deportation.  The announcement naturally created panic in the lives of international students and turned university plans for the coming year into chaos.  Universities didn’t know whether they would even be open for face-to-face classes and students had no time to consider other choices before the fall.
   In response, there was widespread anger and objection.  Scores of universities signed on to lawsuits to prevent the new policy going into effect.  Twenty state attorneys general across the country also sued in objection.   
   On July 14, eight days after the initial announcement, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) dropped the requirements for face-to-face classes.  Everybody breathed more easily; the policy had been reversed; the political system had worked.    
   But at what cost?  How many millions of dollars did universities spend in unneeded administrative meetings and legal fees preparing the suits?  How much time did state lawyers spend preparing their legal objections instead of taking care of other important issues?  What will be the impact on the mental health of international students whose entire futures whipsawed before their eyes?
   
   It wasn’t the only time.
   
   
2. The President recently signed a memo in support of barring undocumented immigrants from being counted in the current census for the apportionment of congressional representatives.  It was a frivolous directive: The 14th Amendment to the Constitution is quite specific that “the whole number of persons in each State” shall be counted.  It couldn’t even survive administrative review.
3. Since his inauguration the President has issued hundreds of directives interfering in some way with the Affordable Care Act.  Most of these are redundant since they have already been passed in legislation or the Administration does not have the power to enforce them, but each requires the time, energy, and money of individuals, non-profit organization, congressional committees and others to investigate and challenge.

Professor of political science Paul Musgrave, at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, has recently written an important article on the enormous impact — in both time, cost and energy — of countering President Donald Trump’s tweets, announcements and random statements.  Literally millions of opposition dollars are wasted in responding to hare-brained ideas launched — at almost no cost to them — by the President, his advisors and his acolytes.  Writes Musgrave:

It’s a struggle between firefighters and a spree arsonist. The firefighters must stamp out every blaze, while the arsonist enjoys pouring accelerant, igniting a spark and sauntering off to start anew with kindling elsewhere. And the gradual exhaustion of the firefighters makes it likelier that they will someday fail to contain the flames.

In essence, the administration has hit upon a low-cost way to make opponents spend time and energy. “If time is a political resource of value,” Syracuse University professor Elizabeth Cohen said, “then anything you can do to force people to spend their time on what you want them to do, not the work they would want to do, is effective.”

Each time Trump issues one of the directives or muses in a tweet about issuing one, the opposition jumps into action.  Often, that is the last we hear about it, and opponents consider themselves successful in blunting the President’s actions.  A tweet, however, is cheap for Trump to create, which he does multiple times a day.  But the opposition must then spend its time, money and energy to counter each one.  

 

And in the end we get … nothing.  Most days, nothing is the best we can hope for.