Daily surprise with two kinds of Donald Trump

Illustration: Sturt Krygsman

Donald Trump is going to govern in a style unlike that of any other modern president. There will be good Trump and bad Trump. When he’s good, he’s very, very good, and when he’s bad, he’s awful. When he’s good his administration will be much better than Barack Obama’s — and when he is bad, it will be truly alarming.

Every day will start with the question: is today a good Trump day or bad Trump day? One problem in distinguishing the good Trump from the bad Trump is that they will both be carried out in the same populist idiom, relying on tweets, an attack on the mainstream media or some hitherto venerable institution of state, or a foreign country, or a celebrity temporarily in disfavour never more than a whim away.

Distinguishing the style of populism from the substance of decision will be an ongoing task in trying to understand what the administration is doing and why.

Trump’s nomination of ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson as secretary of state is deeply perplexing. It is neither wholly good nor wholly bad. It has the potential, really, to be either.

I have spoken to a number of people who know Tillerson and they describe him as a highly accomplished businessman, a straight person, individually honourable and completely down to earth. He has, unlike Trump, a lifelong record of volunteerism, in his case with the Boy Scouts.

As the leader of such a giant company, Tillerson is plainly capable. He has the enthusiastic backing of Republican grandees such as Dick Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates and James Baker. But the Tillerson nomination has raised serious opposition among some Republican senators and this is because of his close business involvement with Russia, and his record of opposing US foreign policy towards Russia, especially the sanctions the US imposed on Moscow as a result of its invading part of Ukraine.

Tillerson owns hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of shares in his old company, which would be worth more if US sanctions were lifted. This poses an obvious conflict of interest. He has a vast pension plan, which would be similarly affected. However, these problems are easily solved. Tillerson can sell his shares, cash out his pension plan and put everything into a blind trust.

The greater difficulty is for him to change the nature of his geo-strategic thinking, when it is that very thinking that has attracted Trump. As the head of a giant oil company, and as an American citizen, Tillerson had every right to express disagreement with US sanctions policy. But his point of view, his starting point, must change fundamentally as secretary of state. He may still end up opposing specific sanctions, but Tillerson has expressed himself against sanctions altogether.

How could the US deprive itself of the tool of sanctions? If it does, there is nothing between a mere expression of moral disapproval and taking military action, no method of pressure in between. Trump has repeatedly threatened all manner of sanctions against nations, specifically China, he believes are not behaving fairly in trade towards the US. So would combining the Trump and the Tillerson doctrines mean the US can apply sanctions over unsatisfactory trade outcomes but would forswear them for trifles such as genocide or military invasion?

If you look for consistency in Trump, it can drive you mad.

Tillerson was a proud recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship. John McCain sums up the moral dilemma pretty starkly: “Anybody who is a friend of Vladimir Putin must disregard the fact that he is a murderer, thug and KGB agent whose aeroplanes are precisely targeting hospitals in Aleppo, who has invaded Ukraine, who has destabilised eastern Europe.”

McCain, Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio are Republican senators who have expressed grave reservations about Tillerson. If they vote against him, and all Democratic senators do likewise, his nomination will fail in the Senate. It may even have trouble getting through the Senate foreign relations committee.

Even presidents in good standing sometimes fail to get their preferred nominees confirmed. George HW Bush in 1989 nominated John Tower as defence secretary. He was rejected 53-47 by the Senate; Bush appointed Cheney, who was a splendid secretary.

Two other reflections on the Tillerson nomination suggest themselves. Trump has faith in generals and businessmen. He has appointed three generals to cabinet level positions and numerous businessmen. Generals and businessmen appeal to him because they get things done. I have more faith in the generals he has appointed than the businessmen.

Yet Eliot Cohen argues in Supreme Command that traditional politicians are actually much better equipped than generals to take the most momentous decisions about war and peace, partly because their thinking, although disciplined, is normally wider in scope. This is an insight against the anti-politician spirit of the times. However, anyone worried about Trump needlessly going to war should be reassured by the presence of the generals. No one is more conservative about the use of force than a general.

Some businessmen, who rely on the ubiquity of brand and celebrity, are, as Trump has demonstrated, well equipped to transfer these skills to politics. Others, especially those such as Tillerson who have operated in an extremely hierarchical and institutionalised corporation, may be much less well attuned to the give-and-take and public persuasion involved in mainstream politics. The last real businessman to be president was Herbert Hoover. and he was a dreadful failure.

The other question that Tillerson’s nomination begs is where Trump’s realism will find its balance. Trump upset Beijing by asking why the US should abide by the one-China policy in relation to Taiwan if Beijing does not give Washington a good trade deal.

This statement deserves exhaustive analysis, but one question it instantly raises is: what does that make Taiwan’s 24 million people of Taiwan — are they only a bargaining chip in a geostrategic version of the art of the deal?

Finally, Trump’s tendency to trash US institutions, this week the CIA, is dangerous in a president and conservatives would hate it in a Democrat.

Good Trump/bad Trump. Every day is a surprise.