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Contra Jonah II
On Dec. 27, Jonah Goldberg wrote a column at NR about President Donald Trump entitled Character is Destiny. I and many others responded to his piece when I wrote on Ricochet, Contra Jonah. My post generated 410 comments, more than any other post that I have written on Ricochet. I expected that Jonah would respond to his many critics. He chose a piece by Roger Kimball at American Greatness, Jonah Goldberg and Cardinal Newman, for his sample opponent. Jonah’s response piece is on NR, Obscuring the Issue of Trump’s Character. Below is a paragraph that occurs towards the end of Jonah’s piece.
Last, I should at least acknowledge that I have allowed Roger to move the goalposts. My argument was that Trump’s presidency will end poorly because character is destiny. Even if one were to credit Roger’s new, fairly Alinskyite definition of good character — the ends justify the means and therefore good character is defined by how well one achieves those ends — it wouldn’t nullify my point. Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality; his determination to shrink his political coalition; his refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences; his incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered; his relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism; his insistence on denigrating allies; his penchant for conspiracy theories and his unwavering pettiness: All of these things are reflections of his character, too. And they will have consequences for Trump, the GOP, the conservative movement, and the country. Roger can ignore or minimize these all he likes, but it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.
This summation paragraph gives us the heart of Jonah’s point of view, a list of the “crimes” that Jonah insists make Trump’s character unacceptable as President of the United States, and a final condemnation leaving no room for reevaluation.
- Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality
- Trump’s determination to shrink his political coalition
- Trump’s refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences
- Trump’s incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered
- Trump’s relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism
- Trump’s insistence on denigrating allies
- Trump’s penchant for conspiracy theories
- Trump’s unwavering pettiness
As Jonah says of Kimball:
Roger can ignore or minimize these all he likes, but it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.
First, I will attempt to address all of these one by one. Then, I hope I can shed some extra light on this whole debate.
(1) Trump’s inability to hold onto cabinet secretaries of quality
As I have mentioned before, it is fantastically unlikely that HRC would have put Nikki Haley at the UN Ambassador spot. Nor if HRC had put her there to allow her to directly challenge North Korea nor Iran nor demand that UN bias against Israel end. As it is fantastically unlikely that HRC would have put Mad Dog Mattis at Secretary of Defense. Nor if HRC put him there would she neither would have allowed Mattis to beat ISIS nor hit Syria nor reinforce the Baltics and Poland.
Trump didn’t run on this but that is what we got. I was thrilled by it. However, those who had been relentlessly attacking him didn’t for one minute lighten the drumbeat of their attack. We don’t know what motivated Trump in the first place because he didn’t consult us (luckily). He didn’t consult us when he fired these people either. This complaint is largely a garbled Republican Party foreign policy looking a gift horse in the mouth.
(2) Trump’s determination to shrink his political coalition
Trump was given by Gd a very thin political coalition that was just enough to win. Nobody in the Republican Party thought he could. The fantasy that by floating into the middle you can expand your coalition was disproven many times. Trump did poll higher with the black vote and Hispanic vote than others. The midterm loss had nothing to do with Trump. The upper echelon of the party had concentrated all of its effort on winning Senate seats, which it did. Unfortunately, it ignored the grassroots while doing this. The combination of no ground game and not confronting the growing threat of vote harvesting (the new Democratic machine ward healers) cost the Republicans the House. Trump can’t do everything. Too much of the rest of the party did nothing but complain about Trump. Jonah is doing exactly that here.
(3) Trump’s refusal to do the minimum due diligence to understand and thereby explain his policy preferences
This is an illusory problem that exists only for pundits like Jonah. Trump’s voters neither expected nor cared about wonkish policy statements. They knew viscerally that they had been dumped on by the elites and all they wanted was for someone to assure them that it would be different. Trump was very capable of sending this message. He has also been capable of delivering a good portion of that difference. This problem is not in Trump; this problem is in Jonah.
(4) Trump’s incapacity to let insults, real or perceived, go unanswered
The White House Press corps of 50 does not have a single registered Republican on it. Hollywood is so biased that conservatives have been blacklisted for years. Academia that used to have a small contingent of conservative professors of eminent reputation has been subject to a Stalin-like purge. If the conservatives are still there, they are afraid to speak. In this environment, Trump innovated an offense against the incredible relentlessly biased attack on him. He ignored them and then smacked them with a tweet whenever he felt he needed to. Just taking it and saying nothing would have allowed this coalition of media bias to perform the Goebbels “big lie” and go unchallenged. However crude his tweeting, it broke up the Pravda-on-the-Hudson gang’s whole act.
(5) Trump’s relentless prevarication and insurmountable narcissism
Trump’s voters aren’t used to high diplomatic demeanor nor sophisticated or sophistic discourse. They want it plain so they can feel the message too. That Trump understood this and was content to always convey on the level that his audience could understand wasn’t narcissism but the reverse, immense self-control. In fact, it is narcissism to believe that a major politician can deliver a speech only for the political, intellectual elite. Again the problem isn’t in Trump; the problem is in Jonah.
(6) Trump’s insistence on denigrating allies
My father had a saying, “With a friend like that you don’t need an enemy.” Some so-called allies are undercutting you at every opportunity. Trump learned the hard way in the business world that these people can wreck your deal. His instincts in this are not only not deplorable but they have an uncanny way of being spot on.
(7) Trump’s penchant for conspiracy theories
Jonah has confused many of Trump’s supporters for Trump. Obviously, Trump’s experience in the business world made him a rather hard-headed assessor of the guy across the table from him. I don’t think Trump spends much time worrying about conspiracy theories. As the present news media is possessed by a need to manufacture false motives and difficulties in his administration, again the problem doesn’t seem to be in Trump but in those who must find a way to stop him.
(8) Trump’s unwavering pettiness
If you look closely at this list I think you will agree with me that Jonah has demonstrated his own unwavering pettiness. Trump meanwhile has produced 3+ percent growth, 3+ percent real wage growth, an American credible presence in foreign policy around the world so much so that haters of American power have begged him not to withdraw from one of his commitments, the end of Obamacare, the end of the Paris Accords, the end of the Iran Deal, the nomination and confirmation of truly conservative justices for the courts. In fact, Trump seems to be unwavering in his concern for the most significant things on his plate. It is Jonah’s list that appears petty even trivial in comparison.
Now as for those who are “not already believers,” I think that such people (as I might actually be classified as one of them) reading my rebuttal will be convinced. Those that aren’t should check their own biases.
Having adequately rebutted Jonah’s major concerns, I would like now to discuss a subject that I’m quite sure has not been discussed. That subject is the difference between Morality and Ethics. I will present Immanuel Kant’s conception of this rather than the Aristotelian Virtue Ethics version which is so prevalent. I think it will shed some light on the present discussion which has been rendering more heat than light in its present form.
Kant presents two separate formulas for Morality and Ethics. Duties of Virtue are for Morality and Duties of Right are for Ethics. Duties of Virtue are strictly concerned with an individual’s internal self-governance. They are created by an imperative that is concerned with Ends. Humanity should never be treated as a means but always as an end in itself. This includes the humanity of one’s own person. Duties of Right are strictly concerned with the governance of behavior in relation to others external to oneself. They are created by an imperative that is concerned with Right. It is Right (only in this way and no other) to coerce a coercer in such a way as to maximize the Freedom of all. Although there is Private Right without the existence of a government this Private Right is considered only provisional. Someone else can easily trample your Right. Thus, the second form of Right is Public Right. Here the formation of a government is justified solely to ensure Private Right. If the government does this then Private Right is considered conclusive. (There are more fundamentals but this will do for the purposes of this discussion)
Again, Morality is concerned solely with internal self-governance and Ethics is concerned solely with external relations between actors in the world to the extent of constructing a government to ensure their Right. If you have followed this argument (complete acceptance of this argument would require you to become a Kantian. I don’t expect that.) then you can see its relevance. We might be very critical of Trump when we are considering his personal behavior and at the same time find his capacity to coerce coercers to maximize the Freedom of all quite good. Thus on the scale of Virtue, he is lacking but on the scale of Right, he is awesome.
Let’s take the issue of sexual behavior as it will come up repeatedly anyway. Let’s compare Trump’s behavior and Clinton’s behavior not in relation to Morality but in relation to Right. Trump as a private citizen procured what amounts to a sophisticated prostitute for a one night stand. Clinton as President of the United States, in the Oval Office, had sex with an intern under his command for the extended period of a relationship. The naive intern has finally admitted that Clinton took complete advantage of her and severely damaged her life. The sophisticated prostitute has profited immensely from the relationship (as was her profession’s goal). At this point, the prostitute may have been harmed by her ambulance chasing lawyer but not Trump. In any event, the importance to Right is that this misbehavior took place outside of Trump’s role in government. Clinton’s misbehavior took place specifically while he was performing his role in government with someone who was employed by the government who was under his control.
Clinton’s behavior suggests malfeasance in his ability to govern while Trump’s does not. In fact, Jack Kennedy’s behavior while in office which probably contributed to the suicide of Marilyn Monroe is far more problematic in terms of governance (Ethics, Right) than Trump’s with Stormy. Stormy may have found it strange to be paid to keep quiet about sex when she was used to being paid to have her sexual life presented in theaters across the nation but I don’t think this constitutes abuse. Clinton was highly abusive and there can be no argument about this. This does not excuse Trump for sins against Virtue. However, it is relevant to society’s response. The case against Clinton was serious. The case against Trump is absurd. Clinton’s abuse of another’s Right should be met with coercing a coercer in such a way as to maximize the Freedom of all. Trump’s abuse of his own Virtue can only be met by repentance and that would be between himself and Gd.
Perhaps this Kantian analysis will help some of us sort out their feeling about current issues. However, I suspect that some of us are so deeply invested in their position that they don’t want any sorting out. When they project their closed mindset outward they are convinced that “it will not persuade anyone who isn’t already a believer.” I don’t agree.
Published in General
Trump’s sexual peccadillos don’t corrupt the nation. Bad policies and corrupt practices do corrupt the national character. That’s the kind of character we ought to focus on in our politicians.
Perhaps my memory is incorrect but I seem to remember that back before the election, one of Jonah’s objections to Trump was that he couldn’t possibly win.
Except, read and view his amazing foreign policy speeches, setting markers down in his first year to protect our interests and our allies, who had been disrespected and abandoned by President Obama.
See @bossmongo‘s Ain’t No Rest for the Wicked for a flavor of the possibilities in our own country in our own time.
Probably my single biggest problem with Jonah in these areas is when he talks about how comparing Trump to Hillary is irrelevant because “the election is over.” As I’ve pointed out before, back in Nov. 2016, “the primaries were over.” There was no valid way to vote then for other-than-Trump. Cruz, Rubio, etc, were no longer on the ballot. And what still strikes me as a holier-than-thou attitude on Jonah’s part, to not vote at all (I don’t find his “my vote didn’t matter anyway” plea to be convincing) would have meant President HRC. How he can then claim that that’s not what he would have “preferred,” defies logic. To paraphrase, all that is required for the triumph of evil (HRC) is for good men to not vote for Trump.
I’ve said before, and still believe today, that if Hillary hadn’t been running – and basically had the primaries rigged in advance due to “super-delegates” etc – Trump might well have run as a Democrat. But he would have run as a much more conservative Democrat and he would have been blown out very early on. For the same reason that other past Democrats couldn’t get past Square 1 now in the primaries. Pro-Life/Anti-Tax JFK for example.
So I can easily argue that we’re fortunate Trump wound up running as a Republican.
The problem here is that Clinton opposed welfare reform, vetoing the bill at least twice as I recall, before then signing it and acting like it was his idea all along.
The problem here – but not caused by Trump – is the people like Jonah who sometime can’t seem to utter a single sentence without referring to Trump as “loathsome.” When that’s repeated constantly it can’t help but get tied into what he DOES too, so that he didn’t just make 2 Supreme Court nominees, he made 2 LOATHSOME Supreme Court nominees.
Especially when so many conservatives can’t seem to think of much to say about him other than “loathsome.”
Listening to Jonah’s podcasts, he has equal or possibly even higher disdain for John Kasich as he has for Donald Trump, which in part is why he falls on the other side of the fence from his friend Bill Kristol, in that he’s not willing to sacrifice his own long-held ideological beliefs simply because they align at a given moment with what Trump is doing. It makes his criticisms of Trump carry more weight, even if they’re not easy to listen to for many people.
My general rule is to like any conservative who supports Trump but critiques him sometimes, or who opposes Trump but sometimes admits he got something right. Goldberg does alright by this standard, although not at as well as Shapiro.
Yes, that’s what I was thinking. I remember a few really good speeches. I was in attendance for his speech in Warsaw and it was great. It went down very very well with everyone.
Who’s asking him to sacrifice long-held ideological beliefs?
The Kristol/Boot/Rubin/Will wing of D.C. Punditland has done that, on various subjects such as the Iran deal, tax cuts, moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, voting straight Democrat in the recent election, or scolding Trump on touting Border Patrol agents’ support for the wall while that nice Mrs. Pelosi was having her wonderful swearing-in ceremony, as Kristol did on CNN last week (Bill was also an early supporter of the week delay on the Kavanaugh vote, but AFAIK, didn’t go the full Murkowski and decide #i’mwithher, so Brownie point there).
So there is a gradient in the #NeverTrump camp of 2016, between people who have fully come to accept the situation (I’d put someone like Brit Hume in that category) and someone like Max Boot, who wrote a book pretty much demanding that any conservative with any sense of decency must become a liberal because Trump (Boot’s Newspeak in his interview with Andrew Klavan on Hillary Clinton and other topics was pretty amazing, and not in a good way). Jonah hasn’t taken that bait and advocated for any of the above positions because Trump gave them cooties, so while his snark and arguments can get annoying at times, they remain worth hearing out.
Chris,
The odds of HRC or any current likely Democrat candidate for 2020 making the Warsaw speech, are about infinite to one against. This must go into anyone’s political calculus when evaluating what is going on. We have a relentless din from the sophisticated left about the horror of Putin and his terrible threat. The most obvious way to stand up to him. The way that Putin himself will most be chagrined by is Trump in Warsaw. Trump strengthened NATO, he strengthened the Poles, he strengthened the Baltics, and he strengthened the Ukrainians. Meanwhile, the French & German cabal that makes up the EU won’t make their 2%GDP commitment for NATO. That 2%GDP money would be spent on their own Armed Forces in their own country for their own defense against Putin.
Trump makes solid sense and follows through on good policy. Meanwhile, propaganda peddlers denounce him and then cry their crocodile tears about Putin. Give me a break.
Regards,
Jim
I thought I was the only one who noticed that.
I recognize that there is a real dilemma. If you are a pundit, how does one’s personal discomfort with Trump the man remain contrasted with a more general comfort with Trump policies? In our hyper-partisan moment nuance is lost, things become binary.
The question is not (in my view) whether we are in a binary moment, but how do we get out of it without caving to progressivism? Progressivism does not deal, it accretes — faster or more slowly as circumstances dictate. It recedes only in abject defeat.
I think the “Republican” critics of Trump do not see this as a binary moment, otherwise they are truly venal. I do not see how those that see this as binary can persuade those that don’t, and vice versa. I don’t have a strategy, I have a hope. And I am hopeful we can muddle through somehow.
I do know that the triumph of progressivism will doom us all. So against that I pick the strongest weapon available. And I do not want to blunt it, weaken it, or do anything that puts the contest with progressivism in jeopardy. If it takes a flawed man to be our champion, so be it.
Here is the text of Trump’s speech in Poland, and to the people of Western Civilization:
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-people-poland/
Here is an excerpt:
We have to remember that our defense is not just a commitment of money, it is a commitment of will. Because as the Polish experience reminds us, the defense of the West ultimately rests not only on means but also on the will of its people to prevail and be successful and get what you have to have. The fundamental question of our time is whether the West has the will to survive. Do we have the confidence in our values to defend them at any cost? Do we have enough respect for our citizens to protect our borders? Do we have the desire and the courage to preserve our civilization in the face of those who would subvert and destroy it? (Applause.)
We can have the largest economies and the most lethal weapons anywhere on Earth, but if we do not have strong families and strong values, then we will be weak and we will not survive.
Others have noted that if Mitt Romney doesn’t like Trump’s style as president, one of the main people to blame is Mitt Romney, not simply for losing in 2012, but losing after failing to fight back on the debate stage against Candy Crowley’s false claims on Benghazi.
The Axil of Evil speech was lame. But the Berlin Wall speech was a winner. I just can’t imagine Trump ever delivering anything close to a Berlin Wall speech. Then again, I don’t have to imagine. Thanks for the reminder.
I never forgave Romney for failing to fight back; after 2012 I gave up completely on the Republican establishment and their chattering class who all got rich whether their candidate won or lost. And who, as I understand it, after hours drink cocktails in the Hamptons with their erstwhile adversaries. All very cordial and civilized, Mr. Goldberg. But how does that help the middle class?
I don’t listen to anyone, anymore, who constantly harps on how bad HRC would have been but consider themselves oh so virtuous for not voting for Trump. They left us to do the dirty work and we did.
Romney’s 2012 Election Day shock that he didn’t win, combined with the tin-eared timing of last week’s op-ed, showed that he at the very least is a sucker for any proper advisor who strokes his ego and blows smoke up his keister in the proper manner. I don’t doubt he wanted to win in 2012, but seemingly never went through any introspection that stuck as to why he may have lost and what the GOP base perceives as the reason he lost (there’s no way to prove that had Mitt told Candy on the stage she was full of poo on her Benghazi claim that he would have won — attacking Crowley would have been lumped in with the media’s ‘Binders Full of Women’ attack and Romney would have had to have been willing to fight against that for the next two months. But his giving in at the first sign of pressure was a major tipping point in getting Trump the nomination, and Romney would help his own cause if he were to admit his own culpability in the Trump phenomenon).
Afternoon and thanks Clifford and codr,
The Warsaw speech was super, I would have been cheering Donald. And Trump can give good speeches. So the response to @concretevol where he wished Trump would give some policy speeches to help build a broader base, a base who would be reassured by knowing the foundations upon which the policies are being made, and to help give clear and accountable direction to his policies, is one of agreement. I too wish Trump wold give a series of domestic speeches like the Warsaw speech. He has already created this CEO persona and some policy speeches would garner a lot of attention by the press, because it would seem so out of character. The press in trying to pick apart and discredit the details, sleuth out the author, find counter examples would give the speech a long media run. Trump could tweet his fake news to their responses and lengthen the media coverage. So Concretevol, do you know anyone who has done concrete work for Trump, maybe they could offer your suggestion.
Jim, my work puts me in regular contact with Polish military and government officials, and semi-regular contact with many other NATO allies, especially in the region (my company’s name is actually Allies). I laugh every time I see something in the media or on social media criticizing President Trump for messing up our relations with NATO allies. He’s far more popular and trusted than President Obama was with the people I deal with. You would never know it from the headlines but at the NATO Summit last July, just about everyone came down on President Trump’s side rather than Merkel. Nord Stream 2 is a much bigger threat to NATO unity than anything President Trump has said.
Agreed and great points. And it’s even worse when we had 8 years of Bush shrugging and mumbling “it’s just politics” trying to defend the sacred institution of the Presidency for his dad, and a string of Bush descendants – as we subsequently saw, and many Republicans had clearly pointed this problem out, yet even in that environment, Mitt chose to demure.
Bush won in 1994 as governor of Texas basically by campaigning on the same four key talking points over and over, and pretty much ignoring the media’s attempts to get him off message, because of what the media had done to his dad during the 1992 campaign. The idea was to give them no sound bytes to distort, but the mistake was thinking what worked in Texas would work over eight years in Washington — if you don’t forcefully state your case, the partisan media there will simply make shirt up.
Chris,
This is a testament to the total doctrinaire intransigence of the EU. How easy it would be to compromise on the migrant policy. Make their 2% GDP to NATO. Then democratize the superstate. The parliament should have the power to legislate. The executive should have some form of direct election.
Instead, they demonize their own people as “populist proto-fascists”, import un-assimilable migrants who commit crimes and acts of terror, and then castigate properly elected heads of state. They act as if their bureaucracy has been crowned Absolute Monarch of Europe.
It won’t last.
Regards,
Jim
I believe President Trump is on his way to a huge domestic speech, rolling out an all-agency effort to fulfill another promise, this one to black America. See his appearances, giving his stamp of importance, on reviving programs to get gang-members off the streets and on first efforts to give economically distressed areas breaks from the regulatory and tax cages.
Quite so. That’s perhaps the most annoying part of Jonah’s anti-Trump schtick. Whenever Jonah expresses approval of something Trump does, I feel like yelling “No thanks to YOU!”
The most immediately annoying part, anyway. The longer-term issue is that continuing to throw “loathsome” etc at Trump, seems like it could only help a Democrat win in 2020. And perhaps flipping the Senate. For someone who often speaks – and writes in his books – about the power of words and how western civilization was basically “talked into existence” and warns it can also be “talked out of existence,” Jonah seems remarkably tone-deaf himself in that regard.
THey want someone else to get their hands dirty.