Those of us who follow sports become accustomed to keeping up with free agents. We live in the era of free agency.
We have just seen some astounding free-agent signings in major league baseball. The burning questions during the recent Hot Stove League were over which teams would get the signatures of the most sought-after free agents, Bryce Harper and Manny Machado. Last week Harper signed a 13-year, $330 million contract with the Phillies, pushing him past Machado's 10-year, $300 million contract with the Padres.
Significant as these free-agent transactions in the business of sports have been, we also see forms of free agency in politics, foreign policy and international relations, and with much more sweeping consequences.
In professional sports, a free agent is a player who is eligible to sign with any club or team, usually the highest bidder.
The term has a variety of applications, not just limited to sports contracts. There are ample examples of free-agent behavior and actions by President Trump with two particularly salient illustrations from recent days. There was his declaration of a national emergency on the issue of the border wall. And the failed summit with North Korea and the fallout from that. There's also the cozy relationship with Saudi Arabia, even after the monstrous treatment of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, consistent with the Trump pattern of accepting assurances from foreign autocrats as solemn truth.
Interestingly, there was reference to free agents during that historic congressional hearing last week.
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, D-Fla., asked Trump's lawyer, Michael Cohen, if Trump operative Roger Stone was "a free agent reporting back to the president what he'd done, or was he an agent of the campaign acting on behalf of the president and with his apparent authority?" Cohen responded: "No, he was a free agent."
What is clear is that Trump himself prefers to operate as a free agent. He doesn't want to rely on U.S intelligence officials and those who are experienced or knowledgeable on a particular issue, instead following his own instincts.
If someone is described as a free agent, that suggests a person whose actions are not constrained by others. Trump clearly takes an expansive view of executive authority despite criticism of that perspective by his predecessor. Nor does he appear to give much weight to the constitutional separation of powers and the role of Congress.
Although Trump sails under the Republican flag, many who think of themselves as Republicans don't see the president as a real Republican, but as more of a free agent. (For that matter, some politically prominent "Democrats" are not strongly identified with the Democratic Party.)
The turmoil in Washington and the North Korea summit fiasco demonstrate the danger of free-agent action, both foreign and domestic. After the first Kim-Trump summit in Singapore last year, Trump proclaimed, "Everybody can now feel much safer than the day I took office. There is no longer a nuclear threat from North Korea." That assertion was widely viewed at home and abroad as considerably overstated. There was general agreement, however, that Trump pulling out of the recent Hanoi meetings was the right step. Dismantling North Korea's nuclear arsenal is unquestionably a worthy goal. However, the question is: Should Trump have been there in the first place? Experts warned that no amount of personal chemistry would compensate for inadequate preparation. He left empty-handed, apparently believing that his view of himself as a consummate dealmaker and chemistry with and "love" for the despotic tyrant would prevail and that Kim, the object of "rocket man" derision not long ago, was somehow pliable now.
What we do know about Kim is that he craves attention and being in the spotlight. Successful summits normally involve careful preparation by sherpas --knowledgeable aides who guide leaders through summits and work out details of agreements. The name (sherpas) derives from those in Tibet and Nepal who guide climbers to mountain summits. Trump, preferring to act as a solo summiteer, doesn't see the need for such assistance. To compound the collapse of the summit, there was the shameful dissembling in the case of Otto Warmbier, the young American who died in 2017 after being imprisoned and brutally treated in North Korea. Trump refused to blame Kim, saying Kim told him that he felt "badly" about what happened to Warmbier, adding that, "He (Kim) tells me that he didn't know about it and I will take him at his word."
Trump also has made clear his contempt for multilateral agreements, favoring his free-agent, go-it-alone approach, as seen in his opposition to or doubts about the Paris climate accords, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Iran deal, NATO, the European Union, UNESCO, etc.
The success and value of the big-time baseball free agents will be measured by their performance -- batting average, home runs, RBIs, team success, etc. The scorecard on Trump's free-agent approach may show some hits with his ardent supporters, but the strike outs and errors are adding up.
Commentary on 03/06/2019