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George Will: The Shabbiest U.S. President Ever Is An Inexpressibly Sad Specimen
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Core International
Oct 7, 2019, 4:37:08 PM10/7/19
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The shabbiest U.S. president ever is an inexpressibly sad specimen
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-a-misery-it-must-be-to-be-
donald-trump/2019/01/18/d0e05eea-1a82-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html
By George F. Will
Columnist
January 18 at 5:09 PM
Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an
incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed
to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which
is even worse.
If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that
is, the United States is nothing but an economy — then the state of the
union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the
party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the
nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment.
Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his
modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next
recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive.
The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable
trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning,
he said: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional
caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The
Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body
— will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does
not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lèse-majesté for the
Senate to express independent judgments.
And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a
president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional
Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Winston Churchill’s
observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position.
The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the
abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to
fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling
Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices —
completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP,
which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is
resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,”
markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc.
After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear
weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with
Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North
Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint
military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem
less dotty?
Opinion | Trump owns the Republican Party, and there's no going back
President Trump has irreversibly changed the Republican Party. The upheaval
might seem unusual, but political transformations crop up throughout U.S.
history. (Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz, Robert Gebelhoff/The Washington
Post)
By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial
vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level
of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to
someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For
most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper,
always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings
in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic
feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a
four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny
thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them.
Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost
inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of
being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect
self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional
life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working
in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike
ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion —
concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must
interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a
kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.
Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good
brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure
himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely
contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous
fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive
as his indifference to expanding their numbers.
Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of
boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our
first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean
Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells
asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-a-misery-it-must-be-to-be-
donald-trump/2019/01/18/d0e05eea-1a82-11e9-8813-cb9dec761e73_story.html
By George F. Will
Columnist
January 18 at 5:09 PM
Half or a quarter of the way through this interesting experiment with an
incessantly splenetic presidency, much of the nation has become accustomed
to daily mortifications. Or has lost its capacity for embarrassment, which
is even worse.
If the country’s condition is calibrated simply by economic data — if, that
is, the United States is nothing but an economy — then the state of the
union is good. Except that after two years of unified government under the
party that formerly claimed to care about fiscal facts and rectitude, the
nation faces a $1 trillion deficit during brisk growth and full employment.
Unless the president has forever banished business cycles — if he has, his
modesty would not have prevented him from mentioning it — the next
recession will begin with gargantuan deficits, which will be instructive.
The president has kept his promise not to address the unsustainable
trajectory of the entitlement state (about the coming unpleasant reckoning,
he said: “Yeah, but I won’t be here”), and his party’s congressional
caucuses have elevated subservience to him into a political philosophy. The
Republican-controlled Senate — the world’s most overrated deliberative body
— will not deliberate about, much less pass, legislation the president does
not favor. The evident theory is that it would be lèse-majesté for the
Senate to express independent judgments.
And that senatorial dignity is too brittle to survive the disapproval of a
president not famous for familiarity with actual policies. Congressional
Republicans have their ears to the ground — never mind Winston Churchill’s
observation that it is difficult to look up to anyone in that position.
The president’s most consequential exercise of power has been the
abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, opening the way for China to
fill the void of U.S. involvement. His protectionism — government telling
Americans what they can consume, in what quantities and at what prices —
completes his extinguishing of the limited-government pretenses of the GOP,
which needs an entirely new vocabulary. Pending that, the party is
resorting to crybaby conservatism: We are being victimized by “elites,”
markets, Wall Street, foreigners, etc.
After 30 years of U.S. diplomatic futility regarding North Korea’s nuclear
weapons program, the artist of the deal spent a few hours in Singapore with
Kim Jong Un, then tweeted: “There is no longer a nuclear threat from North
Korea.” What price will the president pay — easing sanctions? ending joint
military exercises with South Korea? — in attempts to make his tweet seem
less dotty?
Opinion | Trump owns the Republican Party, and there's no going back
President Trump has irreversibly changed the Republican Party. The upheaval
might seem unusual, but political transformations crop up throughout U.S.
history. (Adriana Usero, Danielle Kunitz, Robert Gebelhoff/The Washington
Post)
By his comportment, the president benefits his media detractors with serial
vindications of their disparagements. They, however, have sunk to his level
of insufferable self-satisfaction by preening about their superiority to
someone they consider morally horrifying and intellectually cretinous. For
most Americans, President Trump’s expostulations are audible wallpaper,
always there but not really noticed. Still, the ubiquity of his outpourings
in the media’s outpourings gives American life its current claustrophobic
feel. This results from many journalists considering him an excuse for a
four-year sabbatical from thinking about anything other than the shiny
thing that mesmerizes them by dangling himself in front of them.
Dislike of him should be tempered by this consideration: He is an almost
inexpressibly sad specimen. It must be misery to awaken to another day of
being Donald Trump. He seems to have as many friends as his pluperfect
self-centeredness allows, and as he has earned in an entirely transactional
life. His historical ignorance deprives him of the satisfaction of working
in a house where much magnificent history has been made. His childlike
ignorance — preserved by a lifetime of single-minded self-promotion —
concerning governance and economics guarantees that whenever he must
interact with experienced and accomplished people, he is as bewildered as a
kindergartener at a seminar on string theory.
Which is why this fountain of self-refuting boasts (“I have a very good
brain”) lies so much. He does so less to deceive anyone than to reassure
himself. And as balm for his base, which remains oblivious to his likely
contempt for them as sheep who can be effortlessly gulled by preposterous
fictions. The tungsten strength of his supporters’ loyalty is as impressive
as his indifference to expanding their numbers.
Either the electorate, bored with a menu of faintly variant servings of
boorishness, or the 22nd Amendment will end this, our shabbiest but not our
first shabby presidency. As Mark Twain and fellow novelist William Dean
Howells stepped outside together one morning, a downpour began and Howells
asked, “Do you think it will stop?” Twain replied, “It always has.”
PhantomView
Oct 7, 2019, 9:52:22 PM10/7/19
to
George Will has increasingly revealed himself as
a closet RINO. Apparently he wanted some sort
of traditional 'conservative' philosopher-king, but
got Get-'er-Done TRUMP instead and it drove
him bonkers.
Feel free to use his columns to line your
birdcage.
"Traditional conservatism" was fine, in the 1950s,
but the world has moved on and we needed
something that was not the reincarnation of
William F. Buckley. The MAGA right was the
answer. They will NOT be taking tea and
crumpets with Will.
a closet RINO. Apparently he wanted some sort
of traditional 'conservative' philosopher-king, but
got Get-'er-Done TRUMP instead and it drove
him bonkers.
Feel free to use his columns to line your
birdcage.
"Traditional conservatism" was fine, in the 1950s,
but the world has moved on and we needed
something that was not the reincarnation of
William F. Buckley. The MAGA right was the
answer. They will NOT be taking tea and
crumpets with Will.
Gronk
Oct 8, 2019, 12:31:08 AM10/8/19
to
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