Yeah, character is the deciding factor
A country can't even have solid policy without it
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I truly don’t understand how anyone who accurately sized up Donald Trump from the get-go can change his or her mind, especially at this late date.
Today’s specific catalyst for this thought is two current pieces at National Review, both by editor Rich Lowry. Lowry’s been at the NR helm for a while and oversaw the January 2016 issue entirely devoted to essays by prominent conservatives opposed to the Very Stable Genius. The editorial that kicks off the issue succinctly covers the gamut of objections that follow. And, while specific issues and events have morphed in the decade since, the piece accurately points out Trumpian reactions to them that apply today:
On foreign policy, Trump is a nationalist at sea. Sometimes he wants to let Russia fight ISIS, and at others he wants to “bomb the sh**” out of it. He is fixated on stealing Iraq’s oil and casually suggested a few weeks ago a war crime — killing terrorists’ families — as a tactic in the war on terror. For someone who wants to project strength, he has an astonishing weakness for flattery, falling for Vladimir Putin after a few coquettish bats of the eyelashes from the Russian thug. All in all, Trump knows approximately as much about national security as he does about the nuclear triad — which is to say, almost nothing.
Indeed, Trump’s politics are those of an averagely well-informed businessman: Washington is full of problems; I am a problem-solver; let me at them. But if you have no familiarity with the relevant details and the levers of power, and no clear principles to guide you, you will, like most tenderfeet, get rolled. Especially if you are, at least by all outward indications, the most poll-obsessed politician in all of American history. Trump has shown no interest in limiting government, in reforming entitlements, or in the Constitution. He floats the idea of massive new taxes on imported goods and threatens to retaliate against companies that do too much manufacturing overseas for his taste. His obsession is with “winning,” regardless of the means — a spirit that is anathema to the ordered liberty that conservatives hold dear and that depends for its preservation on limits on government power. The Tea Party represented a revival of an understanding of American greatness in these terms, an understanding to which Trump is tone-deaf at best and implicitly hostile at worst. He appears to believe that the administrative state merely needs a new master, rather than a new dispensation that cuts it down to size and curtails its power.
Boomity.
So what explains Lowry’s gush-fest today about where Trump will rank among US presidents?
Donald Trump is one of the most indomitable figures in the history of our politics. No matter how much he’s mocked or hated, no matter how intense the controversy or how impossible the fix, no matter how dramatic the situation, he never breaks or loses his sense of command.
The ever-ebullient Teddy Roosevelt, who once gave a speech from shot-through notes immediately after an assassination attempt, might tip his cap. (TR takes the cake for badassery in the face of a threat to his life, given that he delivered that 1912 campaign speech while bleeding and with the bullet still lodged in his chest.)
A fundamental part of the Trump ethos is, as he said right after the dinner attack when everything was still confused, “Let the show go on.” For him, the show must never stop, and he’s always at the center of it.
This is one reason that he had the instinct to pump his fist in the air in Butler, Pa., after he’d been bloodied and nearly killed by an assassin’s bullet, demonstrating fight and lack of fear in an instantly iconic moment.
Anyone inclined to dismiss this trait as that of a mere entertainer should consider how showmanship has always had an outsized role in high-level politics; FDR referred to himself, in a positive way, as one of the top actors in the country.
Trump’s belief that he’s always going to prevail, and that if he doesn’t, he’ll find a workaround, gives him an invincible self-confidence. It doesn’t mean that he won’t retreat if necessary, but whether he’s being firm or flexible, he’s equally upbeat and assured about his position.
He couples this with a hyperactive energy.
Just look at Washington, D.C. He’s deployed the National Guard to fight crime, cleaned up homeless encampments and public parks, vowed to make the grass look greener and the water in the Reflecting Pool look bluer, hosted a military parade, brought the coming attractions of an IndyCar race and an enormous fair on the National Mall, started construction of a massive new White House ballroom, and stated his intention to build a 250-foot triumphal arch.
His omnipresence, ambition, and willingness to exercise power across two presidencies — spanning twelve years with the Biden interregnum — are going to make him one of the most dominant figures in American political history, up there with the likes of Reagan, FDR, and TR in the modern era.
Lowry’s other piece that’s up today is about former VSG enthusiasts who now vehemently oppose him. The focus is on Tucker Carlson and Sohrab Ahmari, but there are some other recent examples of figures who have done that particular 180.
I’m not so interested in those, though. I suspect that their turnabouts have a lot to do with grift, or at least the assumption that they’ll get a pass for such a radical change of position because they’re established media stars or former legislators.
Some folks want to keep these discussions on the level of policy. Okay, let’s talk a little policy.
Europe - and Canada - have awakened to the great Western divorce. Donald Tusk, Georgia Meloni, Emmanuel Macron, Keir Starmer, Alexander Stubb, Friederich Merz, Kaja Kallas and, of course, Volodymyr Zelensky understand that this is no momentary hiccup, but rather a long-lasting schism. These people are serious about forging a security architecture that doesn’t depend on a United States that has abnegated its national character.
Iran and the US are still blockading the Strait of Hormuz, and the world is experiencing a full-blown oil crisis as a result.
Japan, under prime minister Sanae Takaichi, is revamping its security strategy:
Addressing the meeting of experts on Monday, Takaichi said Japan “must proactively pursue a fundamental strengthening of our defence capabilities”.
She called on the country to learn from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the situation in the Middle East to advance its response to new forms of warfare and “prepare for long-term conflicts”.
But enough of that. I want to discuss the main thing that ought to have disqualified the VSG from the day he descended the gold escalator.
I won’t exhaustively list every aspect of the character question. I’ve done that here, here, here, here and here, for starters.
But let’s do run through some of the most prominent greatest hits.
His sexual history - three marriages, all undermined by cheating, the Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal affairs, the civil court that found him liable for sexual abuse of E. Jean Carroll, the Billy Bush and Howard Stern interviews, his willingness to appear on the cover of Playboy, and, of course, his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein.
The remark about having hated all his political opponents, the glad-he’s-dead response to Robert Mueller’s death, the slandering of Ted and Heidi Cruz in a National Enquirer story, calling Charles Krauthammer a “dummy” and “overrated clown,” the attempt to bully Jerome Powell out of his chairman role at the Federal Reserve, the leaving of Mike Pence to the Capitol-storming crowd on January 6, 2021, and the election denial that led up to that moment.
The poop video, the Gaza-as-resort-paradise video, complete with a gold Trump statue on a main boulevard, the calendars, the new passport cover, the ballroom plans (that include, yes, another gold statue), the presidential library plans (a high-rise hotel in Miami), the vulgarization of the Oval Office, the addition of his name to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the US Institute of Peace.
Endless merch hawking while in office, everything from commemorative coins to crypto currency to guitars. the huge banner featuring his trademark scowl that hung from the front of the Department of Labor Building,
That this can be associated in any way with conservatism is the end product of the conflation that has been pushed by both the Left and Trumpists. Each cam p has its own reasons. Leftists want to strengthen the association between the VSG phenomenon and conservatism in the voting public’s minds to strive for the Right’s defeat. Trumpists use it to mock and indeed stomp into the dust actual conservatives so that sound ideas about economics, foreign policy, culture, and, indeed, character are jettisoned from the landscape.
And here’s where the Narrow Sliver of Terrain gets real narrow: I still refuse to sign on to the Bulwark-type position that an alliance with leftists is a viable answer. Um, no. I am as glad I didn’t vote for Kamala Harris as I am that I didn’t vote for the VSG.
Something fundamental has changed since we shifted our Overton Window regarding character. Hypocrisy, being the tribute that vice pays to virtue, permitted John F. Kennedy to credibly conduct himself as a statesman and gentlemen in public, find the resolve to navigate the Cuban missile crisis, and display a level head regarding income tax policy.
Other examples abound. The point is that there was a broad common understanding of what bringing humanity and dignity to one’s work, especially in the public sphere, and finding violations of it to be unacceptable.
Say what you will about Britain - and it has enormous problems - but its current king, in his speech to Congress, pointed up a stark contrast between the aforementioned humanity and dignity a seasoned leader summons for the occasion and the sludge that regularly spews forth from post-American “leadership.”
Look, a great number of writers whom I know from being fellow contributors to various publications continue to call balls and strikes. Good Trump, bad Trump.
I’m sorry, but reread the portion of this post in which I enumerate a plethora of reasons why Donald Trump is outside the pale.
He is so unfit, he’s exacerbating every factor that has been eroding actual American greatness for some time. He feeds on our national acceptance of his nastiness and solipsism.
Along with Charles III, let me point to another figure who reminds us of a time when character counted. The Ben Sasse 60 Minutes interview permits us to re-examine what it is we find admirable.
For those who ask why we can’t have a public sphere full of such people, I would nod and say that there is no more pressing question in post-America today.