Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

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Once upon a time, American political parties had relatively detailed platforms. Then Jared Kushner came along, and decided he could replacethe Republican Partystraditional document with a one-page placard, small enough to fit into peoples pockets.A month later, that project was scrapped in favor of just using the partys2016 platform. Verbatim. Great! Except that document was filled with all sorts of harsh criticisms of the current administration (that is,Barack Obamas). Even so,that was the official-ish position for a couple of months. Until

The Republican platform committee met on Sunday and decidedthat there wouldnt be any platform at all they were good with whatever President Donald Trump wanted. Which everyone had good fun with for a while, until later Sunday when whatTrump wanted turned out to be50 bullet points.

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The resultingplanhas the feel of somethingthat was slapped together in 20 minutes or so.So Trump is supposedly going to produce 10 million new jobs in 10 months, but theres nothing really, nothing at all about how to fulfill that promise. Same with a million new small businesses.The presidentplans to Build the Worlds Greatest Infrastructure System, which soundsnice, butgiven that hes been promising the same thingfor almost four years and hasnt yet sent a bill to Capitol Hill, some might find it hard to take it seriously. Wipe Out Global Terrorists also seems ambitious, but the plan contains nothing about how it would be donein practice or how it squareswith the promise to Stop Endless Wars and Bring Our Troops Home.

Meanwhile, there are some notableomissions. Nothing about eliminating Obamacare (or, for that matter, about Trumps promised replacement thats always two weeks away). Nothing about supporting U.S. allies not even Israel. Nothing about abortion. Or guns. Nothing about the payroll-tax holiday Trump has been talking about over the past few weeks, or his efforts to restore full deductibility for dining and entertainment expenses.

Its not clear what happens next. One possibility is that the50 bullet points keep getting revised to appease various party groups until they eventually looklike the platform theyweresupposed to replace. Another is that those groups would bewilling to go along with this version since its not an official statement of the party but wont be circulating anything like itto their members.

Again, the whole thingsounds like a last-minute attempt to avoid being ridiculed for not having any second-term agenda without actually doing the work of coming up with a second-term agenda. Which is pretty much what Im expecting of the Republican Convention. Maybe theyll surprise me! But everything thats been reportedso far suggests that the event isbeing thrown together at the last minute, with Trump himself constantly changing what he wants and the organizers having to tear up their plans and start over.

To be sure: Hardly any voters watchmuch more than the major speakers (who this year appear to mostly be Trumps family), and those who do are almost all enthusiastic partisanswho arent going to care if the product looks a big ragged. Still, it would be nice to see some evidence that the president and his partyactually had some sort of policy agenda. After all, they want to govern. Dont they?

1. Brian F. Schaffner, Jesse H. Rhodes and Raymond J. La Raja on political polarization and the suburbs.

2. Seth Masket onthe Democrats and empathy.

3. Sarah Bush and Lauren Prather at the Monkey Cage on public opinion about foreign interference in U.S. elections.

4. Harold Pollack on what the pandemic shows us about public health.

5. Nathaniel Rakich and Meredith Conroy on progressive groups and Democratic primaries.

6. James Fallows on the Democratic convention.

7. Carl Hulse on what virtual conventions leave behind which is why I expect future conventions to be a combination of the old and the new.

8. And Julian Sanchez on the cruelty of playing along with false conspiracy theories.

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This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

To contact the author of this story:Jonathan Bernstein at jbernstein62@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story:Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics and policy. He taught political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio and DePauw University and wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

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Trumps Platform Doesnt Bother With the Details - Bloomberg