It was as if Godzilla were smashing up their bridges, roads and railways before their eyes.
National Economic Council director Gary Cohn and transportation secretary Elaine Chao stood impotent, the horror slowly dawning as Donald Trump sabotaged an event that was supposed to be all about rebuilding America.
The official transcript of last Tuesday’s presentation in the gilded lobby of Trump Tower in New York is still entitled “Remarks by President Trump on Infrastructure”. But history will remember it rather differently: as the day Trump took on reporters in a verbal brawl, drew a moral equivalence between white supremacists and anti-Nazis and shredded his own pretensions to being a serious politician.
“If he’d just kept his mouth shut, which he couldn’t do,” mused Rich Galen, former press secretary to ex-vice-president Dan Quayle. “Maybe that becomes the metaphor for any legislative agenda: nothing comes before Trump and airing a grievance.”
The president’s much vaunted $1tn plan for American infrastructure now lies in ruins. On Thursday, he dropped plans for an advisory council on the issue, following the disbanding of two business advisory councils after an exodus of several chief executives. On Friday, his chief strategist Steve Bannon – who once said: “The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything” – left the administration having failed to realise that vision.
Most importantly of all, Trump’s outrageous comments, which came just after he signed an executive order to enhance infrastructure, appeared to have squandered the last vestiges of goodwill in Congress. Healthcare reform has already been a failure and tax overhaul will be a struggle. But infrastructure had appeared to be his best hope of winning support of Democrats and pulling off something big.
Galen added: “People said: don’t start with healthcare, start with infrastructure. If Trump had any view of the world that didn’t include him in the foreground, he could have started a process of conciliation with Republicans and Democrats on many issues, and infrastructure specifically.”
Now he has blown his chance with Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer and his House counterpart Nancy Pelosi. “I can’t imagine Pelosi or Schumer have any intention of working Trump or doing anything that will give him credit,” Galen said.
Infrastructure appeared to be a winner for Trump in the election campaign. His plan involves private and public investments to repair bridges and roads, boost the electricity grid and broadband internet and upgrade airports and dams. His description of America’s airports as “third world” was a rare point of agreement with Democratic former vice-president Joe Biden, who once used the term to describe LaGuardia airport in New York.
Trump claimed Democrats were “desperate for infrastructure” and told the New York Times in April: “I think it’s going to be one of the very bipartisan bills and it’s going to happen.” But the time sped by. In June his so-called “infrastructure week” at the White House was overshadowed by bombshell testimony from former FBI director James Comey on Capitol Hill.
Last month Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York, expressed impatience: “Remember the $1tn infrastructure proposal that he spoke about? One trillion dollars. Where is it? What happened to it? It was the single best idea that I heard come from his campaign, and now it’s disappeared.”
Philip Howard, a lawyer and champion of “government simplification”, was a member of Trump’s strategic and policy forum that dissolved this week. Earlier this year he took part in a session at the White House with Chao and others to discuss infrastructure development. Even before the Charlottesville outburst, he noted, there had been little progress.
“It should be one that everyone can agree upon but it requires funding and the Republicans refuse to consider raising the gas tax,” said Howard, who has called for an overhaul of the infrastructure permitting process to enable quicker decisions, a frustration that prompted Trump to display a colorful and complicated flow chart.
“Everything has receded because of Charlottesville but it’s receding from a barely visible position. It’s not like it was going anywhere last week. What’s needed is the White House to exercise leadership by making proposals. Until that happens, the chances of infrastructure happening are absolutely zero.”
Howard also condemned the “completely vile” demonstration by neo-Nazis last weekend and said: “It’s too bad a number of public policy goals took a back seat to moral issues that we thought we resolved a long time ago.”
The $1 trillion price tag was always going to be a hard sell with fiscal conservatives but could have struck a chord with Democrats. Schumer is an old New York acquaintance of Trump and there had been hope of finding common ground. But that prospect has looked increasingly remote over the past seven months. The president’s comments on Charlottesville – blaming the mayhem on “both sides” – appear to have been the last straw.
Rick Tyler, a Republican strategist and former spokesman for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, said: “I suspect Democrats would agree with a large part of infrastructure development. But they believe just being opposed to Trump on legislation – we stopped this, we stopped that – is a winning strategy. Going for legislative wins gives Trump a photo opp and who wants to stand behind him at the signing ceremony?”
Some analysts predict that Congress might now try to pursue infrastructure without the president. John Hudak, a senior fellow in governance studies at the Brookings Institution thinktank in Washington, said: “I don’t think it’s necessarily dead in the water because it’s something Congress is interested in tackling.
“But as the president’s comments alienate Democrats and more Republicans, he risks getting into a situation where Congress works without him or in spite of him. The more he’s involved directly, the more he’s likely to blow up the ship. So we’ll see more of Congress working behind the scenes, including on infrastructure. I don’t think he’ll be satisfied to sit on the sidelines but Congress is going to walk a fine line between making him feel included while not being included.”
But it will not be plain sailing on Capitol Hill. Democrats are wary of a the notion of public-private partnerships, tax breaks for private investors and the watering down of regulations that require environmental reviews and community consultation. Republicans’ House Freedom Caucus are no fans of outsized government investment.
Hudak added: “The size of the infrastructure plan is going to become more of a political talking point. A trillion dollars is going to be too much of a price tag. But we would still see conversations about hundreds of billions of dollars.”
Despite Bannon’s departure, the trillion-dollar target is still likely to have influential backers, possibly including Cohn and senior adviser Jared Kushner. But Evan McMullin, a former CIA operative and independent candidate in last year’s presidential election, said: “A trillion-dollar package is a huge amount. Republicans would have a hard time advancing a package half or a third of that size. I think their bigger priority is tax reform, quite frankly, if they want do something on their own. Infrastructure is something that would unite Democrats and divide Republicans.”
Trump’s moral authority is shot, McMullin added, denying him the kind of arm-twisting influence in Congress that Lyndon Johnson and other presidents have wielded. “When you lose the power of the presidential bully pulpit to move people in favour of your policies, you have a difficult problem. The platform of the presidency has very little political power right now.”