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President Trump’s Annus Mirabilis
A lot of people ended up with egg on their faces in 2017. The events of 2016 left me wiping off no small amount of yolk as well. Sure, there are reasons why this happened, but in the final analysis, those on the winning side always get to point to the scoreboard and take comfort in the fact that even if it was ugly, victory was nonetheless had.
Out of a desire to make amends for having been wrong, I’ve avoided writing about politics for most of the year, deciding instead to write about subjects as diverse as UFOs and personal finance. So, in returning to writing about politics, my desire is to be scrupulously fair to all involved and I begin by asking: What hath this victory wrought? In my opinion, little less than a miracle.
For those of us who were deeply skeptical of Trump (I’m still awaiting my GOPe check for my steadfast opposition), we possessed a legitimate set of concerns based upon the President’s personal history, personality and lack of conservative bona fides which led to our opposition. To the extent that our worst fears weren’t realized, this is an incredibly welcome relief and cause for rejoicing at having been wrong.
Beginning with the nomination of Associate Justice Gorsuch, and assessing the rest of the year’s policy outcomes, the President has either exceeded or met only his most avid supporters’ wildest dreams. On the topics of taxes, deregulation, welfare reform and other Federal Judgeships, the Administration has similarly impressed all but the hardest-nosed Trump skeptics, while only indulging in the most minimal bits of damaging policymaking, as in the case of TPP.
Withdrawing us from UNESCO and the Paris Accords, convincing the UN to place increasingly onerous sanctions on the North Koreans, removing the handcuffs from the military and allowing them to annihilate ISIS … I could go on endlessly. What’s even more extraordinary is the effect that the Trump administration has had on the Left. What do I mean?
As a general rule, the Left and Democrats, in particular, tend to be better than Republicans at the game of politics. Why is that? It’s what they do for fun. On average, Republicans have jobs or families and spend their weekends on projects at their homes or attending their kids’ various extracurricular activities. The left, who tend to be single, students, or are otherwise well-enough off to be bored on weekends attend protests on nice Saturdays … this they do for amusement. So, you’d think that people with so much leisure time on their hands would spend it honing a message which is sure to defeat the loathsome President Trump and his Vichy Republican collaborators in the upcoming midterm elections. But you’d be wrong.
Instead of reforming and moderating their party — which has stood at an historic ebb following its hollowing out at the hands of Barack Obama — the Democrats have decided to double down on the policies which have put them in these dire straits. To witness the normally canny (yet still putrescent) Sen. Chuck Schumer drive his party into a political box canyon for the sake of non-citizens by shutting down the Government and Xavier Becerra (Attorney General of California) openly attempt to nullify Federal immigration law by criminalizing its enforcement makes one think that President Trump’s seemingly flailing madness has had either the intentional or unintentional effect of making his enemies clinically insane.
Of course, the hardest thing to know about is the future, given that it hasn’t happened yet and logic dictates (if for no other reason than the tide of history) that the Democrats stand to pick up a number of seats in the House and even perhaps the Senate in 2018. Yet, what stays the hand of my prediction in this regard is the fact that with so many other unprecedented occurrences, what’s to rule out another unprecedented set of circumstances? Seemingly nothing at this point.
Even one of the gravest threats to this annus mirabilis — the Robert Mueller special prosecution — has only generated indictments for matters unrelated to the underlying issue and uncovered a process crime or two. This is bad, but hardly the stuff of Robert Ludlum or John LeCarre’s espionage-laden imaginations. I will go out on a limb here and say that short of Trump crossing himself up in a deposition, there’s simply no “there” there, given that if there were, a responsible prosecutor with knowledge that the President had sold the office to a foreign power would practically be required to approach the congressional leadership and Vice President in order to see that this ghastly traitor was promptly turfed out of the White House. Mueller’s lack of action in this regard is telling in and of itself.
Are there downsides to what’s been going on? Absolutely. The President remains precisely what we skeptics said about him. He is petty, narcissistic, and a moral cipher. He is the sort of man who carried on trysts with porn stars to low-level applause while his recently pregnant wife remained at home with their infant child. By attaching themselves to his coattails, and being dragged wherever he has gone, whatever dignity or respect the “moral majority” fakirs like Jerry Falwell, Jr. once had in this country has been rendered sharny for a generation. It remains to be seen whether this will be a net positive or negative, and seems like a small price to pay for the gains made.
Sometimes dirty jobs require a hatchet man, and the President’s hands (tiny or otherwise) would be better described at this point as two-headed axes.
The President remains mercurial; a man with a pen, a smartphone and a Twitter account, who is just as likely to cut down his allies on the backswing and members of his Administration as he is to appoint a Strict Constructionist to the Federal Bench. Whether that is the result of outsourcing the hard work or his own initiative … at this point, I don’t care. I’m not tired of all the winning yet, and here’s to another year of miracles.
Published in General
Superb post. Thank you for it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAryFIuRxmQ
Back in college I said to one of my coaches after a game, “Man, that was an ugly win.”
He responded, “What the He!! is an ugly win?”
Me: “Ah. Good point, coach.”
I think he was partly being a smart aleck, but I also suspect that he really honestly didn’t understand my point. We came to win, and we won, and he’s happy. That’s it.
You can learn a lot from sports.
The continued existence of Obamacare is the largest black eye from an otherwise excellent first year.
Great article, Majestyk.
Yes, but that is the Senate’s fault. There are some Senators I would like to stake out over a fire-ant hill for failing to kill Obamacare. I believe Obamacare to be a contributory factor in my wife’s death from cancer.
O-Care was taken on too soon. Yes, conservatives really, really wanted it gone. But Trump was too inexperienced in handling Congress and Congress was too used to Obama.
O-Care can and should be brought up again. But Congress especially the Senate needs to be much more onboard.
Congratulations on a generally fair and reasonable re assessment of your previous position. I don’t want to distract from your ‘conversion’, but there are two points you made I didn’t think quite fit…
While I get the snark laden joke, you don’t have to get paid by the GOPe to be a supporter any more than you have to be paid by Trump to be a supporter. The point of labeling a certain political group as GOPe was not to say nobody really believed in the establishment position, so they must have been on the payroll. Just that it was a group that shared the establishment’s opinion. I know, many just deny there is any such thing as the GOPe. Is that really still in question after a year of Republican resistance to the Republican president?
I don’t know that is a proven fact, do you? Or is the rumor in the press plenty for you for this president? Don’t mistake, I’m not saying it didn’t happen. I just don’t know, and I’m not taking the press or the porn star’s word for it.
That aside, I applaud your ability to see past your initial reluctance and see how much good this president is doing in spite of unparalleled resistance from both sides.
Obligatory Disclaimer: I was a Cruz guy in the primaries. Only went Trump after he won the nomination. Until recently, I wondered if Cruz would have been better, had he won. I don’t think now he would have. Trump, through his unconventional and rash style has exposed so much more corruption and laid bare so much more hypocrisy than I think any traditional politician could have. Even if it proves his eventual undoing politically, he brought us farther down the path than we would have gotten with anyone else.
Trump is a berserk. The unfortunate reality of this is that much like a tornado, you never know when or where it’s going to touch down. You merely hope that you’re not in the trailer park when the skies turn threatening.
I also do not recant my criticisms of Trump re: the possibility of facing large electoral losses. It’s only natural that there would be some reversion to the mean in terms of the dominance of the GOP at the state house level, but we can’t afford to have Trump be a millstone around the necks of the party, or all of this will have been for naught.
That said, the people around Trump seem finally to have been capable of getting their arms around this and are driving the tornado in the correct direction. I don’t expect a 747 to be spontaneously constructed from junk that it sucks up… but this has been better than I think anybody could have reasonably hoped for.
First, I absolutely believe you. I’ve had some cases that could have gone differently if we were still in our previous system.
Second, I’m so sorry. Some things, you can’t get back. Even if you fix the problem later.
Third, I think it’s important for the population at large to view Obamacare not as a financial matter or some sort of tax law, but a very human matter. Giving the responsibility for your life over to the DMV is crazy, and it should be summarily dismissed as such. We’re not debating allocation of resources here. We’re talking about who lives and who dies. I don’t want Obama, or Trump, or whoever comes next to have any say if I live or die.
This is insane. I can’t believe that otherwise intelligent people are sitting around conference tables somewhere discussing it as if it could be managed better with improved IT, or something. This is simply insane.
One last thought: If Obama had run for a third term, he would have won. Think about that for a second…
Tell me, do you ever see Graham or McConnell or McCain or Flake etc. as millstones around the necks of the party that might result in large electoral losses?
Yes, but only within their sphere of influence.
None of them is the President of the United States with all of the associated accouterments. There is a decided difference in the scale of their visibility. 8 out of 10 people couldn’t tell you who any of those guys are, but the same 8 out of 10 know precisely who Donald J. Trump is.
Or perhaps Trump took the GOP Congress-critters at their word when for years they campaigned on being ready to “repeal and replace Obamacare” as soon as the Republicans took the White House. After all, they had seven years to put together a plan that all factions could get behind.
I’m willing to cut them a bit of slack on that deal.
The trouble is that the tendrils of O-care had already begun to wind around the hearts of the people it was intended to lure, and those people get to vote as well. Keep in mind that the Insurance Companies were in favor of Obamacare because it basically walled off the private insurance market and gave them a virtual monopoly power.
That’s a lot of concentrated interest to overcome with the general, diffused one that we have.
I am not so much disagreeing with you as pointing out the difficulty here. It is not uncommon for Presidents to suffer set back in their first mid-term election. The difficulty is figuring out, to the extent that there are losses of seats, how much is normal (would have happened to a President Cruz, Walker or Rubio) and how much is Trump as a millstone. Alabama also once again reinforced the idea that candidate quality does matter. A Pro-Trump state has a democrat Senator, Trump did not cause that.
I agree. One reason (IMHO) that the “repeal and don’t replace” approach was wrong is that we could not go back to the status quo ante, because O-care intentionally destroyed it.
I don’t cut them slack though. I guess I for one was naive in believing that the Congress was ready to go with an agreed plan (again, seven years). I won’t make that mistake again.
Rereading that it strikes me. You don’t actually give Trump ( the junk sucked up by a tornado) any credit for the positives you describe in the post, it is to be directly attributed to the ‘people around Trump getting their arms around him and driving him in the correct direction’. They, and not Trump, turned the junk that is Trump in something better than you ever expected. I guess you weren’t really wrong at all about Trump, you just didn’t foresee that he could be ‘used’ in such a positive manner by more… established handlers.
Making your wiping of facial yolk passive aggressive praise at best, now that you explain it.
Welcome back to the fight. This time I know our side will win . j/k
The best-laid plans do not survive contact with the enemy. As it is in war, so it is in politics.
I credit Trump for putting the correct pieces in place. I absolutely credit Trump for outsourcing of the selection of judges to the Federalist Society. I give Trump immense credit for the appointment of Nikki Haley to being the UN ambassador.
There are plenty of things which I grant Trump credit for… but the same hand which giveth hath taken away at times as well.
A fair appraisal of the situation demands that credit be given where it’s due and constructive criticism on what could stand improvement. Is that reasonable?
Nice to see someone else who sees the entire picture. Good post.
sure, as long a you keep it in the context of
If, as you start out the post, you believe that your initial position on Trump has left you with egg on your face, maybe you should temper some of your current reluctance to admit that maybe, just maybe, Trump was the right man at the right time?
It hardly appears that a position of ‘Meh, Trump is still not worthy, I just didn’t think he could be controlled by those who are actually capable’ tracks with giving credit where credit is due.
Did Reagan deserve credit for things he did if his advisors advised him to do it?
I am one of those weird people that would like to see others avoiding having to suffer what I had to suffer. Fix the thing so others don’t have to go through what I did.
Again, it was contributory. It wasn’t the only thing responsible. I will never know if she would have survived absent Obamacare. She would have had a better chance. Improvements in cancer treatment slowed dramatically after 2008. Plus a lot of the treatments she received were delayed because of Obamacare bureaucracy.
I take my cue from Peter Robinson about that and I’ll say that the Gipper’s personal preferences overrode his advisers on more than one important situation.
If you want my unqualified support for Trump, this is unlikely to happen. But: take solace in the fact that nobody gets my unqualified support except for my Wife and Kids.
I don’t think Trump is Cincinnatus, but he’s hardly Nero and the left’s collective aneurysm that he is is disgusting and even less civilized than Trump.
Trump is what he is. He’s turned out better than anybody could have had reason to hope for – yes, even the rosiest prognosticators should not have had this in mind – and that alone is reason enough for a collective exhalation of relief.
Maj, thank you for this post. Excellent assessment. I appreciate it from someone who was even more skeptical of Trump than I was. I’m not tired of the winning, either.
I’m seeing some interesting moves in the culture, most notably from an unexpected source — professors of psychology. Jordan Peterson and Jonathan Haidt have become sensations. More people seem to be recognizing serious problems in the Social Justice Warrior Left.
I have a specific question for you. What is your assessment of the immigration issue? You mention this briefly (with your glee at watching “Schumer drive his party into a political box canyon for the sake of non-citizens by shutting down the Government”). Can you expand on this? Do you think that Trump’s immigration policies, and related political tactics, could bring significant numbers of voters over to the Republican side in November?
My general outlook is that victories on immigration will be the main political success of 2018, translating into modest gains in the election (from this issue — I don’t predict that this alone will overcome the current Dem advantage in pre-election polls). I expect that the 2018 election outcome will be largely driven by the economy. If we have economic growth of 3% or more, I expect a solid Republican hold in both houses of Congress, and perhaps even gains in the Senate.
I see three possible wildcards in 2018. One is a serious international problem, maybe involving North Korea, with unpredictable effect on the election. One is serious unrest, perhaps on campus or perhaps in response to another Ferguson-like incident, which would reveal the hysteria of the SJW Left and drive voters toward the Republicans. One is a significant scandal in the Trump administration, which would obviously help the Dems.
There are multiple strands at work here. First is the fact that the American electorate is schizophrenic about this. They both want the border enforced and they want the so-called dreamers to be treated fairly. In that sense, I think it’s possible that the Overton Window on immigration may have cracked open a bit wider.
The public is motivated to get the issue of the Dreamers off the table. The Democrats on the other hand are not. They desperately want this as an issue to beat Republicans over the head with in the election and the loss of that issue will severely damage their claims to Republican intransigence and cruelty. The fact that Schumer blinked indicates that they know they went not merely one, but a couple of bridges too far on their opposition. I mean, how long can they not take yes for an answer? Ultimately, I think the President and the Republicans backed the Dems into the corner and they found out what the price for surrender was and now, they’ll probably get the border wall and security enhancements in exchange for legalization of the Dreamers, the ending of the Diversity Lottery and moving towards a Merit Immigration system.
Legalization – not citizenship. I could be wrong, and the President could big-foot his way in here and scuttle any sort of deal that would accomplish one of his big promises in exchange for a piddling cost, which I hope he doesn’t do.
Will this drive a lot of voters in 2018? I don’t know. Clearly, Trump’s rhetoric about the wall left an impact on the electorate that was hard to track, so it remains to be seen if that promise being paid off will sate those people or cause them to want seconds.
Me in 2016: “Great! Just what the country needs, another Nelson Rockefeller!”
I’ve never been happier about being wrong!
Then he only deserves credit for those instances where he overrode his advisors, not those where they agreed?
Can we all agree that the Presidency at this point is a job which is far too large for any one person to handle unassisted? I think it has been for some time, and I wouldn’t deny anybody credit where it’s due when things go well. Competent managers put people in the right position to present them with the best options. There have been some fits and starts in that regard with Trump, but I think he, like Reagan, deserves credit for surrounding himself with people who would present him with good choices.
I’d go further. I’d say that the first job of every President, starting with Washington, has been to pick his management team.
Our prez has certainly gained from the soft Trumpery of low expectations.