President Trump Still needs an Agenda
With the first of President Trump’s show trials over, he is now, as he said, a political prisoner. Does anyone really believe he would have faced any of the four legal processes launched against him if he were a liberal Democrat? We need only compare his treatment for retaining classified documents with that accorded to President Biden, or the kid-glove treatment Biden has received for making himself millions of dollars, to see the blatant double standard.
At least in America’s heartland, everyone perceives the unfairness of it all. Even people who do not like Mr. Trump as an individual are planning to vote for him in protest of his treatment. But martyrdom alone is not enough to win in November. Mr. Trump also needs an agenda that speaks to the needs of the ordinary people.
I outlined one agenda item that does just that in an earlier column. Instead of forcing young people and their families to choose between going deeply into debt to get a college degree or crippling their prospects for employment by forgoing one, a new Trump administration could require any school district that receives federal funding to offer some extra courses in high school which, if taken and passed, would give the graduate a high school diploma and a B.A. at the same time. A B. S. would still require going to college, because careers such as engineering require hard knowledge and skills. But most universities’ social sciences and humanities departments now offer little more than brainwashing in cultural Marxism, so a student bypassing them would actually be better off, as well as richer, or at least less poor. And a vast financial Burden would be removed from the backs of their families.
Higher education is one great expense for middle class Americans. Another is the enormous cost of new automobiles. The average cost of a new car is now around $45,000. How many people can afford that? Car loans now sometimes last longer than the car itself. A President who could offer Americans reasonably priced new cars would be immensely popular.
There is a way President Trump could do exactly that in a new term. How? By making the federally mandated safety equipment in cars, such as airbags, optional. That equipment adds many thousands of dollars to a car’s price. Manufacturers should be required to offer it, but the buyer should be able to decide for himself whether he wants to pay for it or not. The safety Nazis would howl, but who are they to tell the rest of us what to buy? In a free country people make such decisions for themselves.
Another way to lower the price of a new car is to back off the excessive fuel efficiency requirements the federal government now lays on manufacturers. The environmentalists have no concept of the law of diminishing returns, so even the slightest gain is in their eyes worth whatever it costs. Then again, most of them have buckets of money, and they seldom think about people who don’t. But if President Trump’s new agenda offered a way to reduce the cost of new automobiles by, say, one third, the whole middle class would rally to him.
These are just two ideas for Mr. Trump’s 2024 agenda. I’m sure others can come up with more, all directed at making life less expensive yet also better for middle class Americans. My point is that he must offer such an agenda, not just campaign on the unfairness with which he is being treated. The latter will motivate his supporters to turn out and vote, but only the former will bring neutrals over to his side. His campaign needs both emotion and reason, not just the former.