Energy Dominance

Document Type

Contribution to Books

Publication Date

2022

Abstract

And the oil and gas industry, I want to promise you, has no greater friend than President Donald Trump. And as the President said, in his words, our administration will not only seek American energy independence but will seek American energy dominance. He promised to "eliminate the barriers to domestic energy production, like never before."

Then Vice President Mike Pence, at the 2019 Oil and Gas Association Annual Meeting, Columbus, Ohio, March 8, 2019

The election of President Donald Trump and his administrative leadership since were novel for a number of reasons. He upended countless democratic norms that have shaped expectations for how presidents are supposed to communicate, both in form—such as his heavy reliance on Twitter as an outlet for official pronouncements—and in content, including his reliance on “simple, impulsive, and uncivil” messages (Ott, 2017). While stagecraft and showmanship have always been essential to politics, Trump merged the world of entertainment and spectacle with the staid world of policy making in ways his predecessors would not have dared. It is hard to imagine Ronald Reagan, for example (also an entertainment celebrity turned politician) holding a Trump-style rally (Hall et al., 2016). Trump also maintained a singular focus on electoral politics, including repeated and single-minded defenses of his 2016 electoral college victory and comparative inattention paid to the specifics of achieving pragmatic and lasting legislative policy victories, despite holding a Republican supermajority for his first two years in office. Finally, there was Trump’s heavy reliance on “unofficial” and unusual ways of doing things, including managing foreign policy, which led to his being impeached twice by the House of Representatives.

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