“I have no worries” about Donald Trump’s presidency, the Dalai Lama said this week. Lacking the Dalai Lama’s spiritual serenity and cosmic confidence, we do have some worries. But we also have some hopes.
The worries are not trivial. They center around Donald Trump’s character, judgment, and temperament. They also have to do with many of his professed policies—in particular, his strong inclination to be friendly to Bashar al-Assad and Vladimir Putin abroad, and his plan to spend hundreds of billions of borrowed dollars on another bloated stimulus package at home. In these areas, Trump will be basically continuing failed policies of the Obama administration. They were wrong and ineffectual under a Democratic administration. There’s no reason to think they’ll be any more successful under a Republican one.
But there are grounds for hope as well.
There is the prospect of generally sound appointments to key cabinet positions, appointments whose policies will strengthen our military and intelligence services, recommit us to the rule of law, advance education reform, and liberate us from some of the tentacles of an overburdening welfare state and an overweening nanny state. There is the prospect, too, of the appointment of impressive Supreme Court justices and federal judges who will strengthen the Constitution. There is—somewhat paradoxically, after so bitter and divisive a campaign—the prospect of the development of a strengthened political center, independent of the Trump administration and the Democratic leadership, committed to liberal democracy against both the alt-right and what deserves to be called the alt-left.
So a couple of weeks into the Trump transition, we’d say: Beware of premature rejoicing. But also resist premature panic.
We go to press on the eve of Thanksgiving. As it happens we were rereading George Washington’s original Thanksgiving proclamation, which strikes us as especially worthy of reflection this year.
The father of our country urged that we acknowledge
Washington’s words surely remain as instructive now as they were eleven score and seven years ago.
