I was raised in a working-class family. My father was a janitor. He worked hard and took pride in doing a good job. In my college summers, I had menial and factory jobs, and I worked alongside full-time employees. I was young and fit, but the labor they did day after day and during the nine-and-a-half hour shifts one summer made me doubt my fitness. And always they made sure the work was done correctly. And then there was my grandfather.

My parents, sister, brother, and I lived on the ground floor of a two-story house. My father’s parents lived upstairs. While I talked with my grandmother some, I spent almost no moments with my grandfather, who just seemed silent with us most of the time. I have no idea how he ended up in Wisconsin. He was born in Pennsylvania to an immigrant family, most of whom migrated back to Germany. I felt like I knew only two things about him: He played skat, a card game, at a local tavern on some weekends and evenings, and he worked at the Kohler Company, the firm that makes toilets and sinks and bathtubs. I didn’t know what he did there other than that he was some sort of laborer in the factory.

I do know that he started at Kohler in 1917. I am confident of this fact because I now have my grandfather’s Hamilton pocket watch, which was awarded him by his employer on his twenty-fifth anniversary of working for the company. His initials are inscribed on the back. A cover opens revealing his name and further inscriptions: “1917 SERVICE 1942” and “KOHLER OF KOHLER”.  A gold-colored chain is attached to the watch and to a medallion, which is inscribed on the back with my grandfather’s name and on the obverse has a relief of a factory worker, “Kohler” boldly written across the medallion, with a slogan on one side: “He Who Toils Here Hath Set His Mark.” (When I used to wear three-piece suits to court, I would often carry this watch and medallion in my vest pockets. The watch still works beautifully.)

My grandfather continued working at Kohler for another dozen years, but then a strike came. Kohler was by far the largest employer in the area, and the walkout, with my grandfather joining the strikers, had a huge effect on the town. As the strike went on and union benefits lessened, families faced tough times. Some strikers sought other work, but there was not much to be had. A few decided to return to work. Loyalties were tested. In a town with a tavern culture, some regulars found they were no longer welcome at their favorite bar. Sporadic acts of violence occurred. I was only eight or nine when it began, and the kids seldom mentioned it. Child friendships did not follow the fault lines fissuring from the strike, but at home I learned the epithet “Scab” and the words to Solidarity Forever.  (Richard White in Railroaded: The Transcontinentals, and the Making of Modern America states that “scab” “In its derivation from an old English word for ‘slut,’ the term was deeply gendered, a slur upon a worker’s virtue and manhood.”)

And I saw the effect on my grandfather. He was now home at times I had never seen before. And he looked lost, bewildered. Part of his life, his identity, had been stripped. I have no idea what kind of economic strain was weighing on my grandparents, and from the sanctuary of childhood, I never thought about it, or I never thought about it until a few years after the strike started. I was with some friends, and we wandered into a park behind our school’s playground. And there was my grandfather raking leaves. Until then, I was not aware that he worked for the city’s Parks Department. He saw me; I saw him. We made no signs of recognition. He looked embarrassed. Raking leaves was the kind of demeaning make-work projects of the depression. It was akin to a handout. It was not the real work of making something as was done at the Kohler Company. Or perhaps, my grandfather was fine, and only I was embarrassed for what he now had to do. I know that I did not want my friends to know that the lonely-looking figure under the trees was my grandfather. Perhaps my grandfather was truly embarrassed or perhaps he recognized that I was or perhaps both, but we exchanged no greetings.

The strike lasted six years, then, and I still think today, the longest strike in the country’s history. The National Labor Relations Board eventually found that Kohler had not bargained with the union in good faith, and that set off another round of contentiousness about what back pay was owed the strikers. The year the strike ended, my grandfather died.

My sister recently told me something I did not know: that my grandfather waited by his upstairs window watching for me to come home from school. He knew that I was studying German, a language that he considered his native tongue (he also spoke English, of course, and Lithuanian), and he was proud of my German studies. Although I would try to exchange a few words of German with my grandmother, I never said a word of German to him. I am sorry for that, and I am sorry that I did not go up to him in that park. We did not hug much in my family, but I wish that I had hugged him. He may no longer have had the job that had been part of his identity for forty years, but work was still important to him, and the many others like him. I try to remember that, especially on Labor Day.

I am not suggesting answers to these various questions about the text of the Second Amendment or that Heller’s outcome was wrong, but rather I am claiming that interpreting the Constitution is not as simple as Alito would have us believe. Alito seems to say, “Just read the words and you can understand the right.” I am suggesting, instead, that we remain skeptical when a judge or anyone else states that the other guy’s method of constitutional interpretation is really a disguise for personal preferences, but his method is pure and neutral and keeps out personal predilections. Heller was not decided, in spite of Alito’s implications, without many, many interpretive choices, and perhaps, just perhaps, those choices allowed for personal preference. And maybe, just maybe, practitioners of originalism and its cousin, textualism, are not as innocently disinterested in the outcomes as they pretend to be. (Jack Rakove in his Pulitzer-Prize winning book, Original Meanings: Politics and Ideas in the Making of the Constitution, after giving reasons to doubt originalism as a viable theory of constitutional interpretation states, “On the other hand, I happen to like originalist arguments when the weight of the evidence seems to support the constitutional outcomes I favor—and that may be as good a clue to the appeal of originalism as any other.”)

The Constitution does not allow for a merely mechanistic method of interpretation that insures judicial neutrality and guarantees that personal values of a judge will not enter into judicial decisions. The Constitution itself makes it impossible. That document contains broad or vague words, terms, or phrases, and not all reasonable people will agree on their meaning when applied to a particular circumstance. For example, Congress has the constitutional power “to regulate commerce . . . among the several states . . . “ (what is often called the Interstate Commerce Clause). Under this provision, can Congress regulate commerce between just two states, or does “among” require the involvement of multiple states? Does the term “commerce” require a commercial transaction? For example, if I take a pleasure trip from Brooklyn through New Jersey to Pennsylvania, has there been “commerce” that Congress can regulate? (Did I really just use “pleasure” and “New Jersey” in the same sentence?) Relying on the Interstate Commerce Clause, Congress prohibits the growing of marijuana, but does the power to “regulate” mean the power to “prohibit”? If I grow wheat and consume it myself, I will no doubt buy less grain from the national market for wheat. Can Congress regulate my personal garden because my wheat cultivation affects interstate commerce? The Supreme Court has addressed questions like these many times, and the answers could not have come from a judicial automaton. They could come only from justices exercising judgments, and those judgments may be influenced by personal values.

The Constitution is filled with terms that are even more open-ended than the Commerce Clause. Article I lists specific congressional powers and then goes on to state that Congress has the power to enact laws that are “necessary and proper” for carrying out the enumerated powers. Article II states that the “executive power” is vested in the President. Not all will agree in a particular circumstance as to what is “necessary and proper” or what is an “executive power.” What does “due process” or “equal protection” mean.  And so on; and so on; and so on. The Constitution cannot just be read and mechanistically applied. Constitutional decisions require contemporary interpretations of the words and phrases written centuries ago, and in spite of what some conservatives say, that will always permit personal values to affect the outcome. We can hope that a judge will select a reasonable method for interpreting the Constitution, but no method, including trying to fix its meaning in the amber of 1787 or some other time, will eliminate the opportunity for personal values to affect the outcome. (The distinguished and learned conservative judge Richard Posner has stated, “It is questionable whether there has been anyone in the history of law who could really divorce his jurisprudential views from his personal and political ones. . . . It’s hard to get excited about judicial conduct that violates principles unless it is bringing about results you don’t like.”)

It is noteworthy, however, that one of the earliest Supreme Court pronouncements about how the charter should be interpreted did not proclaim it as a document with an unchanging meaning. Having been present at its creation, Chief Justice John Marshall knew as well as anyone how the framers and adopters wanted the Constitution interpreted. When the Constitution was proposed, he advocated its adoption, and as a delegate to the Virginia convention, he voted in favor of it. When he was on the Supreme Court, Marshall gave his view on how the Constitution should be interpreted. He said it was a document “intended to endure for ages to come, and, consequently, to be adapted to the crises of human affairs.” (Emphasis added.) Constitutional provisions do limit constitutional interpretations, but Marshall recognized that the document has many generalities and interstices that must be refined and filled in by judges. Constitutional meaning was not rigidly fixed in 1787. Rather, that meaning needs to adapt and evolve in light of “the crises of human affairs” if that document is to endure. This really addresses the most fundamental question about our fundamental charter. Is our Constitution only backward looking giving true sovereignty over us to the people of 1787 or did the framers of the Constitution, in the words of the recently retired Justice Anthony Kennedy at his confirmation hearing, “make a covenant with the future”? Are the framers to be admired because they thought they had the answers to whatever might arise, or should they be admired because they were trying to build a nation that would endure for generations?

The originators did not tell us how to interpret the Constitution. Each generation must decide for itself what method or methods are to be used. This generation of conservatives has concocted a method that supposedly gives our fundamental law a meaning fixed from generations ago and supposedly removes a judge’s values from constitutional interpretation. This method is not constitutionally required, and its goals cannot be met. When a judge tells us that he acts merely as an umpire having removed his values from his decisions, he is either delusionally naïve or disingenuous.

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Some justices now seem to have morphed originalism even further to lessen a reliance on the old dictionaries. They simply pronounce that the constitutional text controls without ever referring to the original meaning of the words. This approach is evident in Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s opening address to the Federalist Society convention a year or so ago. He paid tribute to the Supreme Court’s 2008 decision of District of Columbia v. Heller guaranteeing an individual’s right to own guns. Alito criticized Justice Breyer’s dissent in that case. Breyer had proposed a balancing test that would weigh self-defense against public safety. Alito stated that if a judge uses such a balancing test, the balance will almost always come to rest where the judge wants it to. Instead, Alito told this conservative group, “Heller, I am sure you know, holds that the Second Amendment actually means what it says.” Breyer was allowing personal values to control the constitutional right. Alito, certain that he knew the “proper” interpretation of the text, claims an unbiased conclusion.

This is not the place to trace the history of the Second Amendment’s interpretation or what it now does or does not mean. Instead, I am struck by the implications of Alito’s statement. He implies that those who would allow some gun control are using Breyer’s balancing test, and that means that they are relying on their own preferences rather than adhering to the Constitution. The conservative majority in Heller, Alito maintains, was not following individual preferences but was simply reading and enforcing the words as written. We in the majority are constitutionally pure (he implies); the dissent is not. (Thought experiment: For how many of the justices in the majority did the outcome in Heller fail to coincide with their individual preferences?)

But how should we interpret the words as written? The Second Amendment reads: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” I don’t mean to delve into those opening “militia” words about which much has already been written. (Reports state that that first clause is not reproduced in the lobby of the NRA headquarters, only the last part of the provision. Why is that?) Instead, I ask whether there is one, single unambiguous meaning for “the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed”? (I will also ignore the intriguing question of why that last comma exists.)

For Alito the Second Amendment words say unambiguously that individuals have the right to own guns. Period. Full stop. The end. The provision, however, does not expressly grant rights to individuals as Heller held it did. It states that it is a “right of the people.” Wouldn’t the Amendment more clearly have granted an individual right if it had said, “No one’s right to keep and bear arms, shall be infringed”? (Okay, we’ll keep the mysterious comma.) Or perhaps it would have been even more clear if the Second Amendment read: “Every person has the right to own and use firearms.” But it does not make these more unambiguous assertions. Instead, on its face, the provision grants a collective right, not an individual one.

The text also does not grant a right to “own.” Instead it says there is a right to “keep and bear.” Does “keep” mean the same as “own”? Have you never kept something without owning it? And you can keep an object in many places. I might keep a boat at the marina. I keep my tools at work. If a law required me to remove my Winchester or Glock from my home and store it at an armory, wouldn’t I be keeping a gun at the armory?

The Second Amendment right, however, is not just to “keep” guns; it is to keep and bear them. Why the conjunction? The right is not just to keep but to keep and somehow use. “Use,” however, is not the word in the text. Instead, it specifically reads “bear.” That could imply that only those arms are protected when they are “borne,” which seems a narrower word than “use.” And what does it mean to “bear arms”? What did it mean then? What does it mean now? Do we “bear arms” outside the military? When I go deer hunting, do I “bear arms”? (If so, don’t hunting seasons and other hunting restrictions infringe on my right to keep and bear arms?) When I grab the revolver because I think I hear a burglar, do I “bear arms”? Did Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton “bear arms” in their famous duel? If I drunkenly point a pistol at my spouse during an argument, am I “bearing arms”? (That last one was a hypothetical; the spouse and I never argue.)

Furthermore, the Amendment does not directly refer to guns. It reads “arms.” The Supreme Court shrugged off an originalist notion that “arms” must be limited to eighteenth century weapons. In this instance, Heller allowed the word “arms” something other than an originalist meaning, but then how are we to decide what arms are now included in the protection? Perhaps the 1828 Webster’s dictionary would provide an approximation of what is meant. If so, “arms” are defined there as “Weapons of offense, or armor for defense and protection of the body.” If a rifle (clearly a weapon of offense) is protected, why not a machine gun, a flamethrower, a cannon, a killer drone, a switchblade, and so on? Aren’t they all “weapons of offense”? Does the text really make it simple to decide what kinds of firepower and killing machines are protected?

Finally, the Second Amendment on its face does not create a right. Instead, it indicates that a right is not to be violated. This, of course, only raises the question, “What was that right?” It is not spelled out in the Constitution, only that the right “to keep and bear arms” shall not be infringed. The scope of that right is not actually in the Constitution’s text, and we must have to look outside the document to find it.

(Concluded August 29)

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Original public meaning at a superficial glance is a more promising method of constitutional interpretation than original intention and original understanding. It would have the Supreme Court use the original meaning of the words and phrases in the Constitution to interpret it. This interpretive method has judges jiggling off to ancient dictionaries to find that original meaning, but problems still appear. Perhaps Samuel Johnson’s dictionary, published in 1755, was the most well-known one in the founding era, but Johnson’s definitions were often as prescriptive as descriptive. That is, in the opinionated Johnson’s opinion, he listed what a word should mean, not necessarily what it did mean to all or even most English speakers of the day. And, of course, what really should matter for the United States Constitution is what words meant in America, not England. This is made more difficult because the first relatively complete American dictionary of English was not published until 1828, some four decades after the Constitution was adopted.

Other difficulties with the ancient dictionary approach have also emerged. The Constitution includes the word “emoluments,” but what does that mean? In a lawsuit involving that seldom-considered part of the Constitution, the Justice Department said that it applies to benefits to the President from services rendered by the President in his official capacity. Georgetown Law Professor John Mikhail along with student Genevieve Bentz examined forty regular dictionaries and ten legal dictionaries published from 1604 to 1806 and concluded that 92% of the dictionaries had a broader definition of “emoluments” than what the Justice Department contended. But the remaining ones did have the definition that favored the president. How then should we determine the original meaning of “emoluments”? Do we say it was what the majority of the dictionaries say? Would we come to that same conclusion if the split had been 60-40? Are seventeenth century dictionaries really relevant? And language is always in flux. Was that true for “emoluments”? In a summary of Mikhail’s research, no dictionaries define the word as a benefit, profit, or advantage without linking it to an office, as the Justice Department sought to do, until 1759. But in that dictionary and ones published in 1761 and 1774, the definitions specifically say an “emolument” is a “profit from an office or employ.” Around the time of the Constitution, the meaning of the word might have been narrowing. Indeed, 20% of the dictionaries published between 1759 and 1787 when the Constitution was written had the definition of “emolument” Trump’s Justice Department favors. Can we really be positive that the office-linked definition was not the one being used in the Constitution? It turns out that even using a comprehensive set of dictionaries does not eliminate choices, and when choices must be made, personal values, predilections, and experiences may influence a judge’s selection.

(In a constitutional area where I have researched and published, Justice Antonin Scalia quoted Noah Webster’s dictionary for a definition of “witness” that supported the conclusion he reached [sought?]. That was only one of Webster’s definitions for that word, and some of the other definitions seemed to require a different result from Scalia’s. Scalia did not address the alternative definitions or explain why he had plucked the definition he had. But, while perhaps pretending otherwise, he had made a choice.)

(Continued August 27)

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With the United States Senate about to consider a nominee to the Supreme Court, we can expect to hear about “originalism,” a philosophy or method for interpreting the Constitution. Conservatives often assert it is the only way to properly interpret the Constitution. The originalism label makes it seem as if this interpretive method was the one our founding fathers mandated. Not so. The Constitution itself does not say how it should be applied to any particular dispute, and those who framed our fundamental charter in the Constitutional Convention and those who adopted it in the states were silent about the “proper” method, if any, for later generations’ constitutional interpretations.

Originalism, instead of being an eighteenth-century doctrine, only emerged in the 1980s when President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General Edwin Meese started advocating the constitutional jurisprudence of “original intention.” He asserted that a constitutional provision should be interpreted today to reflect what the drafters and adopters of the Constitution intended for it when the charter was adopted. This interpretive method, according to its proponents, gives a fixed meaning to the Constitution, thereby preventing “activist” judges from breathing their changeable, subjective predilections and values into our fundamental law. They believe that judging can and should be essentially a mechanical affair. The judge seeks out the original intention of the constitutional provision at issue, applies that intention to the case’s facts, and an inevitable result will be apparent. Only by applying the constitutional meaning that had been unbendingly established in the eighteenth century, the cant goes, can judges remain neutral.

The jurisprudence of original intention, however, never passed its beta test. Whose intention or purpose? That was left unstated. Perhaps the original originalist meant those who drafted the document, but problems quickly appeared with that idea. The historical record of the drafters’ intention is sketchy. James Madison kept notes of discussions at the Constitutional Convention, but we have no verbatim transcript. Madison could only record a fraction of what was said, and we don’t know what he left out. Furthermore, his notes were not published until decades after the convention and by then many of the framers had died. Others who might have corrected or added to what Madison wrote could not do so. And the framers’ thoughts had often been affected by readings of enlightenment thinkers—Locke, Hume, Montesquieu, and others. How should this affect any conclusions about original intentions?

Besides these difficulties another fundamental issue arose. The Constitution was written in the Constitutional Convention, but it was not adopted there. The draft was sent to state conventions where upwards of two thousand Americans considered and adopted it. We know little about the discussions in most of these conventions other than, usually, the final votes. Even if we would find more records of the state conventions, however, they would likely say little about specific constitutional provisions. The states were only allowed to accept the Constitution as written or to reject it as written, although many states did suggest amendments which led to the Bill of Rights Discussions of many specific provisions that might now be under dispute were unlikely under these terms. If we are to look at original intentions surely it is the intentions of those who adopted it that should count the most, but finding an “intention” out of the collective will of thousands is, to put it politely, a fiction.

With these shortcomings apparent, originalism morphed. Of course, that it morphed says something about the assertion that this is the only proper way to interpret the Constitution, but now the originalism advocates dogmatically asserted we needed to examine not the original intent but the original meaning (sometimes amended to the original public meaning) or the original understanding of the fundamental charter. Original understanding seemingly refers to the impressions, views, and interpretations of the original readers of the Constitution who were part of the adoption process, including not just those who drafted or voted on the document, but also those who wrote about or advocated for rejection or ratification of it. Seeking a common understanding from this broad group is even harder than finding an original intention out of the delegates to the state conventions.

(Continued August 24)

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No matter what reasons you might give for the lack of fulfillment of many the Trump’s promises and no matter whether you agree with Poltifact’s categorizations of compromised, stalled, or in-the-works promises, only a fraction of the President’s pledges have been kept. Even so, educated, knowledgeable, historically and politically astute friends maintain that Trump is keeping his promises. That disconnect makes me think back to Ronald Reagan. Reagan was politically popular even though polls often showed widespread disagreement with many of his specific proposals and policies. Even so, Reagan was able to project an overall message that resonated with many. Ethan Bronner in Battle for Justice: How the Bork Nomination Shook America examines this phenomenon and finds this lesson: “People would go with you if they were attracted to the feel of your campaign, even if they disagreed with many aspects of it.”

Something similar is happening with my friends, and I assume for others. Trump’s promises projected a feel. His speech announcing his candidacy was important not for its promises but for an attitude. Trump said that existing politicians could not make America great again because “they’re controlled fully by lobbyists, by the donors, and by the special interests, fully.” The public does not want the usual “nice” person in office because “they’re tired of being ripped off by everybody in the world.” America is no longer a winner. “We used to have victories, but we don’t have them. When was the last time anybody saw us beating, let’s say, China in a trade deal? They kill us.” The world has taken advantage of the United States. America, battered, stands alone. For example, Mexico is “laughing at our stupidity. And now they are beating us economically. They are not our friend, believe me. But they’re killing us economically. The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everyone else’s problems.”

There are no promises here, but in this opening salvo Trump projected a tone or a feel. His promises have been consistent with that tone. For many that feel is what was promised and is being kept no matter what the score is on specific promises. It may be overwhelmingly likely that Trump will keep only a minority of his promises, but it does not matter to many because what he does and says all seem consistent with that feel he has communicated to so many in the country. If we think that what he promised was that feel and don’t look at the specifics of his pledges, then it feels as though he has been keeping his promises.

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Many presidential promises require the action of Congress. Trump does not have the constitutional authority to enact the tax plan that he promised. It requires congressional passage. Perhaps we can conclude that a president is hypocritical in making promises that are not entirely in his control, but many, if not most people, know this when the promise is made and reasonably conclude that the promise really is, “I will work for the enactment of a law that will do this.” On some level the promise is broken if the promised law is not enacted, but this broken promise is not as bad as other unfulfilled promises if the president has worked sincerely and diligently for the passage of the promised legislation.

More blameworthy are Trump’s promises where a president has no role or authority in their implementation. For example, Trump said that he would sign an executive order that would require convicted cop killers to be executed. No president has the authority to do this. The sentences for killing state and local police offers are determined by state law. The president does not have authority over state criminal laws. The federal government does have a death penalty, but not one that imposes that sentence on cop killers. Even if the federal government could constitutionally authorize executions for the murder of police officers (and that is a big if), it would require legislation passed by Congress, and the president has proposed no such legislation. Instead, he said that he would sign an executive order to accomplish this death penalty, but the president does not have the constitutional authority to decide how and when crimes are to be punished. (Dare I say that that only happens in dictatorships.)  Furthermore, the Supreme Court has held that the Constitution forbids the automatic imposition of the death penalty for any crime and that juries must weigh aggravating and mitigating factors to decide whether a death sentence should be imposed. A mandated death penalty for cop killings is unconstitutional. In other words, Trump made a promise that would require him to take an unconstitutional action.

This promise of executions for cop killers may have just been empty words. Trump may never have had this as a policy goal; perhaps he made the statements merely because the statements appealed to his supporters. If so, however, it falls into the hypocritical category. If he was sincere, he had to be ignorant of presidential limitations and the basic structure of separation of powers and our federal system. If the promise fell into this latter category, how should this death-penalty promise be considered? My view: A person in authority or seeking authority should comprehend the limits of that authority. The promise that the maker knows or should know cannot be fulfilled is the equivalent of being hypocritical. The adage is appropriate here: Ignorance is no excuse.

Politicians may also backtrack on promises claiming that circumstances have changed since the promise. For example, Woodrow Wilson ran for re-election in 1916 proclaiming that he had kept us out of the Great War. Less than a year later he was asking Congress for a declaration of war, but he said that the continuing destruction of neutral shipping by Germany now made war necessary. A politician may acknowledge that he promised to build a dam, but he no longer would support the new dam. He might say that when he made the promise the dam would have cost $1 billion and now it be $2 billion. The dam no longer makes sense, he says, and it will not be built.

Surely promises should not be followed if changed circumstances make a once wise promise unwise, but in judging the broken promise, we should not just accept the changed-circumstances rationale. With that dam, for example, we should question the cost estimates. Were the numbers sound or the product of ignorance or fabricated for the politician’s purposes? If the promise-maker knew or should have known that the estimates were not truly sound, then the promise and its breaking was hypocritical or ignorant. However, even if the numbers are solid, it still may be hard to determine if the new circumstance is the real motivation for the change. The politician may have promised a dam he did not intend to build and seizes the fig leaf of valid numbers to explain a result he always intended—no dam.

Trump’s promises so far, however, have not fallen into the category of not-fulfilled-because-of-changed-circumstances. They probably won’t in the future either because it seems unlikely that Trump would ever admit that he had not kept a promise.

(concluded on August 20)

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At least some right-leaning pundits suggest that Trump has not kept promises that Politifact has not rated as broken. Consider the conservative columnist Ross Douthat who writes that Trump has to be strong on tariffs “because it’s the only remaining economic issue where he’s stuck to his campaign promises. . . . . Those campaign promises, as everyone is well aware, were generally more populist than the official G.O.P. agenda: Trump promised middle-class tax cuts and a generous Obamacare alternative, he stiff-armed the entitlement reformers and talked up infrastructure spending, and he railed against free trade deals with every other breath.” Douthat states these promises were essential to his victory, but as President he has mostly reverted to traditional Republicanism and he has not fulfilled his populist promises: “The infrastructure plan never materialized and the tax cut was a great whopping favor to corporate interests and the health care repeal-and-replace effort was a misbegotten flop.” Attacks on free trade and imposing tariffs are all that is left of Trump’s economic populism.

Douthat’s opinions indicate that different people can come to different conclusions about whether Trump has broken his promises. While the conservative columnist sees important broken promises, Politifact sees the enacted tax plan as a Trump compromise; the infrastructure promise in the stalled category; and the Obamacare pledge as in the works.

Douthat also indicates that in judging promises, all promises are not created equal. Assessing the relative importance of a promise is even more subjective than categorizing whether a promise has been broken or whether someday, somehow, even though unlikely, it will be fulfilled. What did you consider Trump’s most important promises? That list is probably different from mine, and we no doubt would differ as to how Trump is doing in keeping or breaking his promises. There is great value in Politifact tracking 102 promises, but it treats them all equally when, of course, they are not.

Which promises are kept and broken is important, but perhaps it is also important why a promise is broken. For example, the President promised to do many things on his first day in office, at least some of which he did not do.  Does that really matter if he does them a month or two later?

On the other hand, some Trump promises may not have been kept because he was not sincere in making them; fingers were crossed behind his back. Of course, any insincere promise-maker is a hypocrite or a liar. If there are gradations for broken promises, this is the worst, and I am sure anti-Trump people see many of his unfulfilled promises in this category.

While it is difficult to determine whether a promise-maker was insincere, a related category of unfulfilled promises broken is more objective. These are promises that were uttered to please the listeners but were made without any plan for their implementation and no efforts made to fulfill them. Replacing Obamacare with a system that would have better coverage with lower premiums falls into this category. Who wouldn’t like the country to have this? But there was never a plan for it or even an attempt to devise such a plan. This is not surprising, because, in all likelihood, it is impossible. Perhaps Trump really meant to propose this golden health care system, but the promise was so problematic that it comes close to a false promise. Having Mexico pay for a border wall also falls into this category. (My friends who say Trump keeps his promises tell me that this is not a broken promise because no one could take this promise seriously. Yet, I have seen many Trump supporters say that, of course, Trump will get Mexico to pony up. My friends’ conclusion that the promise was so ludicrous that it should not have been taken seriously seems to be in effect saying that Trump was lying when he made the promise.)

(continued on August 17)

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In separate conversations, two of my very smart friends who regularly criticize Donald Trump have pronounced that they give him credit for keeping his campaign promises. These mirror signs at Trump rallies: “Promises Made: Promises Kept.” My reaction has been “Really!”

I remember him whipping up his campaign crowds with four major pledges: To build a border wall that Mexico would pay for; to repeal Obamacare and replace it with a better system where all would have health insurance at lower premiums; to bring back manufacturing jobs; and a tax plan where everyone would have a tax cut and businesses would be taxed at a 15% rate. And, of course, in addition to these biggies, Trump made a slew of other promises.

I went to look for a more objective source than my memory of how the President was doing in keeping his myriad promises. I turned to Politifact.com, a fact-checking website that has been awarded a Pulitzer Prize. Politifact had kept score on Obama’s promises and concluded that he had broken about a quarter of them. That website now has a Trump-O-Meter which tracks 102 promises made by Donald Trump. Its summary states the President has kept twelve promises and broken eight. It concludes that seven have been “compromised,” thirty-three are “stalled” and the other forty-two are “in the works.” The Trump-O-Meter makes interesting reading, and I urge my friends and everyone else to look at it.

You can argue with some of Politifact’s assessments. Take the tax cut. By most analyses, everyone does get a tax cut for a while, but taxes will increase on many people in a few years, and the business rate is 21%, not 15%. Politifact places the tax cut promise in the “compromise” category, a defensible categorization, but others might conclude that a compromised promise is a broken promise.

The “stalled” category contains promises that conceivably might someday be fulfilled, but for many of them, the President could have taken action but has not. Thus, Trump said he would propose a constitutional amendment to impose term limits for all members of Congress; impose a hiring freeze on federal employees; and appoint a special Hillary Clinton prosecutor. Presumably such promises can be categorized as “stalled,” not “broken,” until his last day in office because there is a chance they will be kept one day.  On the other hand, the chances that some stalled promises will be kept seem so slim as to be really non-existent. What odds would you lay that, as Trump promised, the federal debt will be eliminated in eight years or that the federal budget will be balanced “fairly quickly”?

The Obamacare promises are rated “in the works.” The plural is used because Trump’s pledges on the topic varied. As a candidate, he sometimes said Obamacare would be repealed and replaced “immediately.” I would say that promise has been broken. Other times he left out immediately but said that Obamacare would be replaced “with a great, great plan” with premiums at a “fraction” of existing ones. Other times he promised that all would continue to have their present doctor. Sometimes he promised more complete coverage than under Obamacare. Other times he would just promise to “repeal and replace Obamacare” without further elucidation. Congress, of course, considered repealing Obamacare, but the effort failed. While actions have been taken to undermine Obamacare, I am not aware that Trump ever proposed any replacement plan that was “great,” that had extensive coverage, allowing all to keep their doctors, and paying only a fraction of existing premiums. If the President is working on such a replacement plan now, he is uncharacteristically quiet about it. But Politifact categorizes the Obamacare promises as “in the works” as they do many other promises, including ones that I was hoping for, his pledges on improving our infrastructure.

(continued on August15)

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