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A Post-Trump World

The views expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of ASPA as an organization.

By Carroll Robinson and Michael Adams
July 11, 2017

Public Administration educators and other academics in higher education must be active participants in the policy dialogue and debate what is needed to shape the future of our nation.

There are a lot of tough decisions that will have to be made in a post-Trump world. Are Democrats in Congress really willing to go to war (cyber or otherwise) with Russia over the hacking of the DNC? What about with the countries and people who have hacked federal agencies and possibly the White House during the Obama administration and since? How about those who have hacked American corporations and defense contractors?

Can America really afford to have Russia enter an official alliance with China?

With internal divisions in the EU growing beyond England’s Brexit, notwithstanding the recent French election, does NATO and the EU have the strength to expand and be a true counterbalance to Russia and China, individually or as allies?

How will America and the rest of the “West” respond to China’s “One Belt, One Road” global geopolitical, economic and diplomatic initiative? Is the EU moving away from America and towards China and will that trend continue after Trump?

A lot of attention has been on Russia, North Korea, the Philippines, Syria, the Saudis and Israel, but not enough attention has been/is being paid to India, Latin America and the Caribbean.

ChangeChallenges - PichlaWhat happens to America if (or when) China becomes the largest global economy and the dollar is possibly no longer the world’s reserve currency? Is that when Congress will finally make the tough spending, revenue and tax reform decisions to balance the federal budget? Will it be too late then to make a difference?

Will it take the states calling a federal Constitutional Convention to get Congress focused on balancing the federal budget and implementing political reforms to bring the nation together or will such a convention further divide the nation?

If Americans elect a democrat to President in 2020, can they bring the nation together? Will they even try? Is there an economic agenda in this age of robots, automation and A.I. that can really create good paying jobs on a broad basis and grow the economy in ways that mitigate, if not eliminate, economic inequality?

The details of any such economic plans should be fully detailed now and introduced as legislation in Congress. The author (or authors) of these plans should travel the country to explain how they would work and their benefits.

What we do today is what future generations will look back on as history. Let’s dare to make a difference as educators and intellectual leaders who claim to know how to make government work better for all Americans. It’s time to move from theorists to practitioners. “Statesmen” are not just elected officials; they are people who care about the “common good” and are willing to speak-out in the public square no matter their perch or position in life.

We cannot simply be silent technocrats standing on the sideline as Woodrow Wilson articulated. If you believe in a “fair prosperity” as articulated by former Senator Ted Kennedy in his speech to the 1980 Democratic National Convention, then public administration academicians can’t hide in the ivory tower or talk to our students about ethics but ignore the immorality of economic and structural inequality.

Whoever is elected President after Trump, if they don’t succeed, it won’t just be bad for that individual and their political party, it will be bad for our nation at home and abroad.


Authors: Robinson and Adams are professors at the Barbara Jordan-Mickey Leland School of Public Affairs at Texas Southern University.

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