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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
I told you so.
Now that’s just mean.
Nice post man. I’ve actually grown more bothered by his persona and avoid all non scripted items. I’ve seen too many narcissists to really like them.
My admiration for his accomplishments , or his peeps accomplishments , has grown immensely.
I cant fathom not enjoying all this winning. My goodness The Winning
I’d vote for him again and not as an anti vote but as a vote for someone whose best interests relatively coincide with mine.
I’m… Close. Trump the known quantity is likely to be much better than anything else on the menu though. So, there’s that.
I voted for Trump the first time because I threw my vote in the 1980 election away on John Anderson. (I could not stand Carter, but being young and stupid figured Reagan wasn’t Presidential.) By 2016, I knew better, and in a contest that was realistically only between the criminal Clinton and Donald Trump I reluctantly voted for Trump as the lesser of two evils.
Failing a major melt down between 2018 and 2020 I will willingly vote for Trump for the same reason I willingly voted for Reagan in 1980 – because my judgement about the man in the previous election had been stunningly wrong.
In another post we got to fussing a bit; people making claims about President Trump that there’s no way they’d know unless they’d spent time with him personally.
There were two Ricochet podcasts that made me feel great about the vote I had already decided to make for DT: Larry Arndt and Larry Kudlow. Both knew him well and couldn’t be described as sycophants.
I know there were others who also knew him who were not as praising, but the two Larrys sealed the deal for me.
Here’s to all the winning and to another great year.
Dude if something better in your mind comes along I’ll listen to you. Promise.
I listened 18 months ago to you and while I disagreed it was obvious to me you’d thought through your opinions.
I hope our president keeps growing with the job. It’s better for our country that way. Time will tell.
It’s hard enough to be right all the time. I also gotta be nice?
This is great. Wish I’d written it.
I hope it’s not just me that realizes Trump is the tornado, not the junk.
On the day of the election, I headed to the booth telling my boss I’d be choosing between a witch and a pig. I chose the pig, because, I reasoned a pig might be redeemable. A witch, probably not so much.
Then there’s this little gem from the book of Proverbs:
The King’s heart in Adonai’s hand, He directs it where He pleases.
Might be just me, but that sounds an awful lot like some guy urinating in the woods. I find an odd comfort in that image.
I. Agree.
And pray that G-d continues to wield the hammer who is Trump.
Signed
a former skeptic
I think he did contribute to it by not supporting the candidate who was neither Luther Strange nor Roy Moore when there was another more palatable option than either Strange or Moore on the table. And this loss was not due to the competence or skill of the Democrat but ineptitude of the Moore campaign and its supporters in the Alabama Republican Party.
Note on Edit: Sorry about the lack of clarity there. Writing in haste caught me again.
And Majestyk, you fellow former anti-Trumper: Thanks. This is an excellent summary.
I will happily vote for him again. Dude made watching politics fun again.
What is greatest in life?
To crush the Democrats, to see their acolytes driven before you and to hear the lamentations of their media.
Hie thee to a meme generator.
I completely agree with this, though I’m less sanguine than you are on the first year of Trump’s foreign policy (which I see as not disastrous, but not exactly triumphant either), and I’m somewhat unimpressed by what has been accomplished vs. what could have been if the man could get out of his own way. In other words, I’m open to the idea that I might post the “mea culpa, Trump was great” at the end of his first term, but right now I prefer to watch and wait.* That said, the “resistance” is beyond annoying and completely out of touch with reality.
*For what it’s worth, while I duck the eggs being thrown at me, I said the same thing about the last two presidents, not just Trump.
Well said. I don’t think getting him wrong deserves egg in the face. He made no conservative sounds and many with echos of progressivism. I suppose relief then surprise then applause are the reasons we roll with his faux pas narcissisma.
Outstanding post Majestyk. One of the best I’ve ever read on Ricochet concerning politics.
It’s not easy. I only make it look easy.
Yeah, after I wrote it I realized I mixed it up. But still, a tornado full of junk equates to a mindless destructive force that somehow results in all this winning because of all the smarter and more established people controlling it…
We can’t allow it to ever be that Trump may actually have some talent at this? That he might actually have an understanding of today’s main stream and social media that allows him to master it in ways we have never seen before? Or that his experience as a successful business leader may even equate to a knack for management of huge organizations?
No, he’s a mindless whirlwind that just got lucky by having smarter people around to decide where the junk falls.
I hope others can see the parallel to how they treated Reagan. He was a doddering old dolt that could barely keep his eyes open, or remember what room he was in. Yet somehow he kept saying things that turned out to be right! He managed to put together a team that, dare I say it, made America great again! (morning in America we called it then).
I doubt Trump will ever equal Reagan. That isn’t my point. But he, no more than Ronaldo Maximus, is not a dope who is just getting undue credit for others work and ideas. He has a vision and he has a talent. And he is doing more to bring back the policies and economic strength Reagan created than any president since. Or any Republican since.
So few of us are both brilliant and wise at the same time, Umbra. This is why you are my hero. (insert emoji laugh here)
I’m not singing Hosannas to Donald Trump. This is the same man who has done and said a raft of awful things, sends out bizarre Tweets and just this morning acts as if duly passed Sanctions on Russia aren’t going to be enforced.
Now, you can say that there’s a difference between what Trump says and what gets done and I would agree. The problem is, what’s the point of all of the stuff he says? That still strikes me as being… weird. I also think that the President could accomplish more than he has given message discipline. What if he could translate this raw understanding of what captivated the public into coherent messaging to go along with these achievements?
The sky would be the limit. Imagine Reagan’s communication skills paired with the gifts that Trump has in terms of Congress and a surging economy.
Yet, we go to war with the Trump we have rather than the one we wish we had. If he could close his trap and do more of the stuff that’s been done we’re going to be fine in November.
I will take no umbrage at anything in your post @majestyk. You have shown yourself, in my mind, to be an honorable and honest man. Very few avid supporters, such as myself, were with Trump from the moment he glided down that golden escalade. Although I must say that Melania took some breath from me. And truthfully, his demeaning debating posture towards his opponents during the campaign seemed childish. But it sure did work. As @drbastiat ‘s coach said, “We won didn’t we?” Of course it would have been a pyrrhic victory had he not done such a remarkable job in all the ways you have already stated, plus, probably a few more. And all of these accomplishes have been achieved in the face of the most vile and insidious opposition I have ever seen shoved at a President of the US in my 50 adult years. So welcome aboard and let’s keep truckin’ on. Hopefully we can get past immigration without getting snookered. But if so, it would be a first for any Republican. For some reason, much of it self inflicted, the Democrats always play Wimpy with the Republicans. “I’ll be happy to pay you tomorrow for a hamburger today.” The amnesty always comes, the security never arrives.
I think the Democrats finally overplayed their hand. We shall see.
So I guess this is the fault line between optimists and pessimists. If Trump is this tornado, one can look at the last year and say well they finally have a handle on this windstorm. The other way to look at it is that any minute they can lose their grip. We get the reports of the contemplation of firing Muller. Putting aside the legality and authority for it. The act would be a political s-storm of royal proportions (and rightly so). His advisers managed to avert him from this. The optimists look at it and say he can learn. The pessimists look at it and ask what about next time?
Is Trump then just one step away from really stepping in it? The past would seem to indicate no, but then again are all of these things piling up and at some point the pile will be to great to bear? Everything often seems fine until it isn’t then it can go bad real quick.
Well that is enough of my daily dose of pessimism.
Obviously, you agree. We can’t allow it. You are not singing any hosannas to this bizarre man who tweets and says awful things, no matter how much he achieves towards making America greater.
It’s personal. I get it. But I honestly do appreciate that you can admit that so far, his results have been nearly miraculous. It’s progress!
I don’t think it can be personal if I don’t know the man but I can see that his personal values and mine aren’t in sync. I’m almost certain that you and I would share that assessment and that you don’t conduct your private life in the same manner that he has.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t see eye-to-eye about getting things done, and the bottom line matters. That bottom line is what I’m looking at.
EDIT: I also believe I have conceded that he has some talents. Have I not conceded that he’s put people in the correct places and captured a huge piece of the public’s imagination? Those are crucially important, and Trump seems to have them in spades.
I would also like to point out that the subtext of Trump as a tornado is that this has been something of an advantage for him at times.
Nobody wants the Tornado to come down on them, and the Democrats have experienced what that’s like a couple of times now. When you behold its awesome, destructive power, that in itself can be a form of positive motivation.
Charles Bronson didn’t sweet talk those thugs in “Death Wish” but everybody was rooting for Chuck nonetheless.
Yes, I agree you have. As I say, you are making progress. But your complaints about Trump seem to be about personality traits, not policy. That is what I meant by ‘it’s personal’.
I don’t consider Trump a man of great moral virtue. I just prefer a man with moral failures that can put my country back on the right track over a paragon of virtue that gets run over by the socialist left. The American people voted for a fighter, not a pope.
If we can find another man like Reagan, who can combine personal virtue with the ability to stand firm and win, I’m all in. Till then, as you say, you go to war with the man you have. And you don’t look for every opportunity to denigrate him along the way. You don’t have to sing hosanna, but maybe don’t throw daggers, either?