second post
MAGA—for All
Trump needs to give voters a reason to support him. He’s working on it.
By Kimberley A. Strassel
June 18, 2020 6:48 pm ET
Potomac Watch: Trump needs to give voters a reason to support him. He’s working on it.
President Trump convened a roundtable last week in Dallas, which the media described as a talk on police and race relations. It was much more. Some Republicans are beginning to hope it was the basis of a compelling second-term agenda.
As national unrest continues, Democrats are intent on limiting this debate to law-enforcement brutality and “racism.” Mr. Trump’s Dallas event was an effort to broaden the discussion into one about “advancing the cause of justice and freedom.” Part of that, Mr. Trump said, was working together to “confront bigotry and prejudice.” As important, he added, is providing “opportunity” to every American.
The president handed it over to Attorney General William Barr, who called education the “civil-rights issue of our time” and argued for school choice. Housing Secretary Ben Carson discussed efforts to use telemedicine to remedy health-care disparities. Scott Turner, executive director of the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, touted the success of “opportunity zones,” created in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, which have funneled tens of billions of dollars into distressed communities.
Mr. Trump campaigned in 2016 to work on behalf of “forgotten” Americans—whether they be in struggling blue-collar areas, inner-city minority communities, or rural towns. As fate would have it, both the coronavirus and George Floyd’s death have shined a spotlight on glaring disparities in the country. The white-collar elite work safely from home in shut-down cities, while hands-on workers and small-business owners become economic statistics. The focus on rare cases of police abuse has resurfaced the all-too-common reality of so many African-American communities—crime, high unemployment, poor health care, failing schools.
In those bleak headlines is an opening for Mr. Trump to embrace a second-term “opportunity” agenda, a promise that free-market policies won’t only revive the struggling economy but throw it open to those forgotten Americans. So far, Mr. Trump has seemed content to let the race with Joe Biden boil down to a debate over the past four years and whether the Democrat is too radical or too incompetent to be trusted. Those points will certainly energize the Republican base. But making inroads with independents, minority voters and suburban housewives will require something more concrete and aspirational. Why not an “American Dream” theme?
That’s the case many Republicans are making to the White House, even as they think about how to refine it. One benefit of such an agenda is that it doesn’t require the administration to try to package a theme around disparate or expensive proposals like infrastructure or tax credits. It gives the president something more to pitch than a return to lost prosperity. And it provides the Trump campaign with an opportunity to make inroads with minority voters—crucial in a close race.
The greatest merit of an opportunity agenda is that it rests on core conservative policies and principles. It’s about tailoring them—and ramping them up—to serve struggling communities. That’s the brilliance of opportunity zones, which South Carolina’s Sen. Tim Scott got included in the 2017 tax reform. He harnessed the power of smart tax relief and directed it at underserved, struggling communities. School choice is, likewise, about providing minority parents the opportunity to rescue their kids from crummy schools. Health-care choice is about giving poor Americans the opportunity to escape Medicaid. Deregulation is about providing more Americans the opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship.
Even better, the Trump administration already has the record, people and infrastructure to build on this theme. The common and absurd claim that Mr. Trump is “racist” has always been belied by the diversity of his administration and the programs it has pursued. Sentencing reform. An unprecedented focus on vocational education. Funding for historically black colleges. Tackling the opioid epidemic. Mr. Trump in 2018 set up the Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which Messrs. Turner and Carson oversee. In May the council put out a report brimming with case studies and best practices for spurring investment in economically distressed areas.
Promoters also note that an American Dream theme is optimistic and inclusive—a needed contrast to perpetual Democratic anger, partisan and racial animus, the fear and gloom of the virus. The administration aside, that kind of positive agenda could prove a lifeline for Senate Republicans who have been provided little that is forward-looking to campaign on, and who aren’t running against Mr. Biden.
But perhaps the best argument for this agenda is that Mr. Trump already believes in it. Advisers note that there’s a reason he talks so frequently about the historically low black and Hispanic unemployment rates; he’s genuinely proud of them. The 2016 slogan was “Make America Great Again.” It would be no lift for Mr. Trump to add a couple of words and sell what he has done, and what he could with four more years. “Make America Great Again—for All.”
