Reboot America

Whenever I finish the publication of one of my commentaries I have a lot of junk on my computer screen: my audio program (Audacity), my video program (iMovie), my word processor and video highlights programs (Microsoft Word and PowerPoint), my website publisher (Wix), my audio publisher (libsyn), my video publisher (YouTube) plus a lot of the websites for the sources referenced in my commentaries and screenshots of those pages for my presentations. That’s a lot of junk and most of it is no longer of any use to me. So I close all my programs, shut down my computer and walk away.

After a while, after I have done some household chores or other time-wasting activities, I go back to my office turn on my computer and wait for it to reboot. And once the computer has rebooted itself the screen is fresh and clear and ready for me to start cluttering it up with programs. We all do that a lot. Whenever one of our devices stops working the way we want it to the best way to fix the problem is to reboot the device. Smart phone, iPad, TV even the GPS on the golfcart. And usually that fixes the problem. Our government in Washington has been in need of a reboot for a long time. And now, after the 2024 election, it seems it seems we are going to get a reboot of America whether we want to or not.

Of course, it is not easy to reboot an entire country. But I think Donald Trump is going to give it a try. 2025 will be very different from 2017. Back then Mr. Trump knew very little about how the levers of power worked in Washington. He intended to drain the swamp but what little drainage he eventually got was quickly refilled when his successor, Joe Biden, took office. Princeton’s Allen Guelzo asserts in an interview with WSJ editor David Taranto (Did Trump Just Win a ‘Tectonic’ Election?, January 10, 2025) that the 2024 election was “tectonic” by which he means transformational. He compares the 2024 election to the 1800 election (Jefferson’s win over Adams), the 1860 election (Abraham Lincoln) and the 1932 election (Roosevelt). Elections that changed the course of America.

Tectonic elections are like reboots. Starting over and changing direction. Of course, rebooting leaves all your old apps and your data and photos intact. Some of those apps (such as spider solitaire) are better off deleted as well. And some apps (like Adobe) are almost impossible to get rid of even though you haven’t used them for years. If you really want to clear the table you can redo the factory installation taking your computer all the way to back to when you bought it. Of course you will lose everything both good and bad that you hadn’t backed up.

Mr. Trump’s agenda seems to be to not just a reboot but to take America back to its factory settings. His foreign policy hearkens back to the great powers era of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries where each great power had its sphere of influence (and its colonies). His proposals to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal (and rename the Gulf of Mexico) reminds us of the Monroe Doctrine which declared that the Western Hemisphere was America’s sphere of influence. That would leave Europe in Russia’s sphere of influence (the Russians call it the “near abroad”) but I think that Mr. Trump considers our alliances with European countries a liability anyway. That would leave much of Asia for China and they could probably also have Africa if they wanted.

His economic policies also remind us of centuries past. High tariffs  to protect domestic industries emulate the state mercantilism of China that considers world trade a zero sum game with only a few winners and a lot of losers. It is true that newly independent America relied on tariffs to raise revenue but this was because the government at that time had few other ways tax people (the lack of funds also helped keep government small  - at least until politicians figured out that massive amounts of public debt were much better than raising taxes).

But the world has changed since our Founding. Back then it took three to four weeks to cross the Atlantic. Now a crossing takes only a few hours (and weapons can get here even faster). Mercantilism requires spheres of influence or colonies to support the domestic industrial base and generating economic growth requires expanding those spheres of influence or conquering new territories. But wars between great powers were not existential threats back then. They are now as Vladimir Putin threatens the use of nuclear weapons in his war to annex Ukraine (even former colonies have nuclear weapons now).

Going back to our factory settings, as Mr. Trump appears to be proposing, may appeal to some. But a little bit of thought about the possible unintended consequences of such a course of action will chill that vision as I described in my commentary The Specter of Nationalism (August 25, 2024). Software updates to keep your computer running smoothly keep getting bigger and more complex until you are told your antiquated computer will no longer be supported. I am not about to give up my smartphone in order to go back to a blackberry. A reboot to make the machinery of government work better would definitely be a good thing, but a return to factory settings will not make a better world for our children and grandchildren.