They don’t have much in common, but Donald Trump and Barack Obama may soon share the distinction of having overreached on important policy matters, imperiling their popularity and political clout.
Trump has whirled into the White House like a Tasmanian devil, shredding policies he opposes with aggressive executive actions and presidential fulminations. He has banned immigrants from a handful of Muslim nations, repeatedly threatened border taxes on cheap imports, vowed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, declared war on regulations and made a down payment on the Mexican border wall.
Trump supporters are supposedly delighted that he’s doing what he promised as a candidate. But Trump might want to pause for a moment and study how his predecessor, Obama, bungled by moving too far, too fast and overlooking Americans likely to be hurt by changes he felt were necessary. That happened during the rollout of the Affordable Care Act in late 2013, a fiasco that tarnished the rest of Obama’s presidency and even set the stage for the coming repeal of what was supposed to be Obama’s crowning achievement.
As everybody knows, Obama notoriously claimed that under the ACA, “if you like your healthcare plan, you can keep it.” That became an obvious falsehood in late 2013, as Americans began to sign up for health insurance valid the following year. Most major provisions of the ACA went into effect in 2014, and it turned out the law imposed new coverage requirements on all insurers, which led them to cancel “noncompliant” policies many people were happy with. Most people whose policies got canceled had to sign up for new policies that cost more, because they covered more—even if those consumers didn’t want the added coverage or didn’t want to pay for it.
The media coverage was relentless and devastating, focusing on ordinary Americans who, in many cases, made too much money to qualify for subsidies under the ACA, yet faced insurance bills that doubled or tripled. The fiasco garnered Obama the Politifact “Lie of the Year” award for 2013. By December of that year, Obama’s approval rating had plunged to the lowest level of his entire 8-year presidency.
Victims first
Obama’s cardinal mistake was his willingness to hurt some Americans in order to help others. Architects of the ACA knew that a relatively small group of people would have to adopt new coverage, and probably pay more for it, even if they were happy with what they had. From a public-health perspective, it made sense, because on the whole, far more people would end up better off than worse off under the new law.
What Obama and the technocrats who drafted the law didn’t count on was the powerful backlash that arose when the president seemed to be punishing middle-class Americans who did nothing to deserve it. The beneficiaries of Obamacare may have outnumbered the victims 20-to-1. But the victims came first and their stories dominated the rollout of the law. The beneficiaries amassed over time and never had a single gripping narrative that matched the saga of heavy-handed feds blind-siding a bunch of ordinary working folks and kicking them off insurance.
Trump may be even more self-assured than Obama, and more oblivious to hubris. His ban on immigrants from 7 Muslim countries relies on the same public-good mentality as Obamacare did; some people will get hurt by the ban, but on the whole it will benefit America, by making the nation safer (at least that’s Trump’s theory). So it doesn’t matter to Trump if a few people with a legitimate right to be in the country get separated from their families or otherwise inconvenienced. He thinks most Americans won’t mind the tradeoff.
He’ll amplify this sort of political risk if he imposes border taxes on cheap imports, as he has threatened repeatedly. At least some of those new taxes will get passed on to American consumers, because that’s how tariffs work. Trump is betting Americans won’t mind, because at some point this ought to create new jobs. But look at the parallels to Obamacare: The victims will come first, and the beneficiaries, if there are any, will only come later. An added wrinkle: If Trump pulls out of the North American Free Trade Agreement, fulfilling another threat, some Americans will lose their jobs right away, because their work depends on trade with Mexico. Again: victims first, with relatable tales of woe.
The repeal of the ACA is the political iceberg Trump is steaming toward. Some 20 million Americans have gained healthcare coverage because of the ACA, and Trump’s challenge is to repeal and replace the law without making anybody worse off. Trump has vowed a new program that offers “insurance for all,” with lower costs and other goodies. But nobody knows how that will be possible, unless Congress is willing to appropriate far more money than Obamacare costs now. If Trump’s replacement makes some people better off but others worse off, Trump could end up facing a worse PR problem than Obama did at the end of 2013, and perhaps his very own lie-of-the-year award.
Voters obviously sent Trump to Washington to shake things up and fix a government many view as failing. He has certainly shaken things up. But he’s speeding much faster toward unintended consequences than Obama, who at least made it to a second term before one of biggest initiatives unraveled. Trump has hurt a few Americans during his very first month in office, and whether he realizes it or not, many others are standing in the way of his steamroller.
Newman tip line: rickjnewman@yahoo.com
Rick Newman is the author of four books, including Rebounders: How Winners Pivot from Setback to Success. Follow him on Twitter: @rickjnewman.
