Performance versus Personality

 

 Performance versus Personality

Published in Marietta Daily Journal (GA), Nov. 19, 2022

How often have the pundits been wrong about Donald Trump? How many more times will they say that Trump can’t do this, that, or the other? Even National Review, the magazine responsible for helping me understand at age 16 what I really believed about politics, sociology, and government, has already given a big, loud “No!” to Trump’s candidacy for President. How many times do supposedly well-informed people have to be wrong before realizing they’re misreading the tea leaves?

            Mick Mulvaney, former acting White House Chief of Staff, says his old boss is the only Republican who can’t win the 2024 presidential election. Mike Pence says, “I honestly believe we’re going to have better choices.” The Wall Street Journal declares that “what we need is Trumpism without Trump,” thus giving approval to Trump’s governance but not his personality. Maybe half of a concession is better than none, but please, did it matter what George Patton’s personality was like?           

 Only a few days before Election Day,   newscasters and commentators from the left and the right were agreeing that red would flow everywhere by midnight of November 8th. Wrong again. Makes you wonder if we need pollsters, television – or columnists – to help us keep up with politics.

Leaving Trump’s personality for a moment, let’s examine his performance as President. Let’s see: energy security, deregulation, taxes, facing down smarty media celebrities (actually conquering the liberal media), defending Israel, standing up to Iran, achieving the Abraham Accords, appointing judges. Oh yes, judges!  Roe v. Wade was overturned all because a president with a sharp, salty tongue sided with those who believe abortion is barbaric and kept his promise to attend to it.

In his recently released book, “So Help Me God,” Mike Pence actually praises Trump. This honest man, despite the turbulent last few days of his relationship with the President, does not hesitate to give praise where it is due. Referencing his book on the Hugh Hewitt radio show, Pence declared that “around Donald Trump, the ground was level.” Pence was describing Trump’s high regard for working people and how, like FDR, Trump could aptly be called a traitor to his own social class. Like his outlier father, Trump trafficked with manual laborers.

Back to the WSJ columnist who suggested Trumpism without Trump. If that’s not an acknowledgement of Trump’s success in governing, what is? Yet, we are being asked – no, prodded and shamed – to disregard policy success because of a president’s personality.

If we boil down Trump’s policy agenda, we find two major themes. One was his claim that the American dream was becoming less and less a reality for the middle class generally and young adults particularly. Regulation and immigration were creating social immobility. The famous Black poet Langston Hughes addressed this reality: “A dream deferred is like a raisin in the sun. It festers like a sore and then it runs.” A billionaire who can see such a need in the body politic should be commended.

Trump’s second claim was that political corruption abounds. An effective phraseologist, he called his efforts for dealing with it “draining the swamp.” Perhaps the reason Republicans had not already dealt with the swamp is the fact that the swamp is a bipartisan habitat.

Trump’s presidency also brought to the fore two respectable words that have been sullied and dragged through the mud. Populism and nationalism have become no-no words. They are evil, the refuge of fascists, racists, and extreme right wingers. Or so say the swamp’s thought police and language police, and those who believe in drawing back from freedom of speech.

Populism is a political philosophy. Its adherents, populists, simply strive to recognize and appeal to ordinary people. The word actually means “of the people.” Since it echoes Lincoln’s noble line from his Gettysburg Address – “of the people, by the people, and for the people” – how did it become disdainful to so many? A partial answer is that the word does imply that a society contains at least two groups, the people and the elites who govern them. Remember, Hillary’s word for the populace was deplorables.

 Dubbed by radicals as patriotism taken to extremes, nationalism is nothing more than reasonable love of country. Trump unashamedly touted America while the political left openly showed their contempt for America. In his candidacy announcement Trump made it clear that nations must have borders, that gender insanity must be stopped, and that he is not about to ride off into the sunset.

Neither, I suspect, are the millions who have supported him from the start. I suspect this because all the pundits are saying the opposite and they have been wrong so often.

 

Roger Hines

November 17, 2022