Enraged at the failures and faults of the political class, which has promised so much and delivered so little, voters are turning to unusual candidates — socialists, surgeons and billionaire blowhards — in the hopes that they can come through for them and their country where mere politicians have failed. But what if one wins, and doesn’t improve things, but makes them still worse than before?
This is exactly what’s likely to happen if Donald Trump becomes president. His detractors admit he has gotten very far on his gift for describing the source of the problems, without explaining with any coherence what he is intending to do. “Trump has done a good job of articulating much of what’s wrong in this country,” says Ben Sasse, who’s been touring the country campaigning against him. “A lot of people supporting Trump confuse his diagnosis of problems with a diagnosis of the solution,” says Eric Erickson. “The people who are impressed with Trump and the people who are horrified by him talk past each other, because the former … emphasize his diagnosis and the latter his prescriptions,” says Yuval Levin. “His fans like the way he calls out the blindness or weakness,” while critics focus on his solutions to them, which cannot be said to exist. “The alternative is himself, rather than any clear or principled vision of government… His strength is his diagnosis of a rot in the core … his weakness is what he proposes to do about it … which strikes [one] as likely to make things far worse.”
Trump’s explanations as to how he’ll restore our lost greatness is that he’ll appoint the “best people” (who are they?); that it will be “great” (but how will we get there?); and that we will “totally love” what will happen, because we’ll be “winning so much.” But “winnin”‘ in real life (such as on D-Day) requires experience, expertise and the coordination of large complex forces which The Art of the Deal do not touch. His tendency to rage, spew or stalk out in a snit upon any or no provocation whatever may not play well in a job that comes pre-equipped with institutional restrictions (the separation of powers), an entrenched and obdurate opposite party (whose duty is often to fight with the president); and the provocations and perils of foreign relations, where one has to strike the right note with some very bad actors, and faux pas can lead to a war.
Trump’s views of his constitutional powers seem to stem from the President Obama school of imperial government that has done so much damage (and enraged so many members of Trump’s nominal party.) “We have a front-runner right now who literally says things like: When I’m elected … I’ll be able to do whatever I want,” Sasse continues. “We should unpack what this means … Trump has done a good job of articulating what’s wrong in this country … but there’s a difference between diagnosis and proposed solution … what we do to make America great again is unite around … a belief in limited government. We don’t unite around the ego of one guy.”
United around the ego of Trump, his fans keep on dreaming. But if he’s elected and has to deliver, the time to get real will arrive. What if it turns out that he HAS no solutions? What if it’s not “great,” and we don’t begin winning? Rebelling against the elites is one thing, but rebelling against the insurgents themselves is a whole other matter. What will they do with their lost aspirations? And where will they go with their rage?
Noemie Emery, a Washington Examiner columnist, is a contributing editor to The Weekly Standard and author of “Great Expectations: The Troubled Lives of Political Families.”
