Trump Brings His Agenda to Congress

Daniel McCarthy

Politics, Americas

As president, no less than as a candidate, Trump is unconstrained by ideological orthodoxy.

The key word in Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress was “citizens.” The president reiterated what he told conservative activists at CPAC days earlier: “My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America.” This is a president who puts the historic nation-state at the center of all his policies.

He’s not the first to do so, but he is the first in many years. He cited two other Republican presidents in his remarks, both of whom suggest how Trump sees his mission. He invoked Abraham Lincoln on the importance policies that support American industry. And he referenced Dwight Eisenhower as a model of infrastructure investment, for the creation of the interstate highway system. Donald Trump’s economic nationalism is not in the least unexampled, either in American history or the history of the Republican Party.

The president was firm in his demands, even as he conceded to some of the formalities of the joint address to Congress (or, in other years, the State of the Union address). He had given his inaugural address with his suit jacket open and signature red tie hanging low. For his address to Congress, he was dressed sharply, with a blue-and-white striped tie. He delivered his remarks in measured tones, with hardly an ad lib, and eschewed the fiery rhetoric of the inaugural. He did not employ any language quite as shocking to Washington sensibilities as “America First” or “American carnage.”

But if Trump made concessions to establishment expectations in the way he looked and sounded, he did not dilute the substance of his message in the slightest. Not only did he insist he would curtail illegal immigration, but he also called for reforming the legal immigration process to be merit-based, as it is in most other countries. The president not only stayed true to his economic nationalism in his remarks, but he also touted greater government spending on infrastructure, paid family leave and childcare support for working families—themes that earned him applause from Democrats, including Bernie Sanders. As president, no less than as a candidate, Trump is unconstrained by ideological orthodoxy. House Speaker Paul Ryan stood and clapped for the president, but Trump’s Republican Party is profoundly different from the one that Ryan once aspired to lead, even if repealing Obamacare remains an article of faith.