So it is Steve Bannon’s intent to “deconstruct the administrative state.” Let’s turn the tables and deconstruct him. What lies behind the mask?
On foreign policy, I see two different threads that are not completely consistent. The first is a Huntingtonian “clash of civilizations” motif that focuses primarily on Islam, although concern about China is present, as well. The Huntingtonian approach ignores the fact that hundreds of millions of Muslims don’t hate us, and are in fact the principal victims of what amounts to a civil war within Islam. My real problem with this strain of Bannonism, however, is that the logical solution to the “clash of civilizations” would be to unite all Christians, including South and Central Americans and Europeans, against Islam, but Bannon doesn’t attempt to do that.
In practice, Bannon is just a 1930’s style ethnic nationalist who thinks we won World War II and the Cold War, but lost the peace by putting the interests of our so-called “allies” ahead of our own. It is as if the British and the French, having won World War I, wanted to tear up the Treaty of Versailles and divide up Germany in 1932. It just doesn’t make any sense, and why someone would want to return to the world of the 1930’s, given how that turned out, is beyond me.
In domestic policy, Bannon appears to subscribe to a Palinesque view that red America is the only real America, and has been sold out by an unholy elite conspiracy involving big business, the media, the judicial system, intellectuals, and both parties. As a result, while blue America prospers, red America withers economically, and its values, the bedrock of the country, are no longer respected.
Note that Paul Ryan and the “old” GOP are almost as guilty as Barack Obama if you accept this point of view. There are a number of problems with it:
- Notwithstanding Bannon’s opinion, blue Americans have just as much claim to be “real Americans” as red Americans, and the American culture that he wants to protect is dynamic and hardly limited to the contributions made by dead and elderly white people;
- The economic phenomena of which he complains can be found throughout the developed world, and thus are not the result of policy cooked up by American elites;
- Red Americans benefit from free trade in the form of lower prices for manufactured goods;
- Agricultural interests in red America have been among the big winners of free trade, and would suffer from the creation of “Fortress America;”
- All of the data indicate that the loss of American manufacturing jobs since World War II is due primarily to automation, not free trade; and
- If his plan is to “drain the swamp” of members of the elite who have benefited from the corrupt status quo, his boss has a strange way of showing it. Trump has filled his cabinet with billionaires and intends to propose a regressive tax cut that will make the current elite even wealthier.
For all of his outrageousness, Bannon represents the interests of an old, tired America, not a dynamic, progressive one. His ideas run counter to the interests of most of his own party, without which Trump cannot govern. He is, therefore, doomed to fail.