By Jonah Goldberg
Wednesday, October 19, 2016
Sometimes you can’t just plan for the ball; you have to
plan for the hangover, too. No matter how 2016 ends, there will be a headache
that haunts the country for years to come.
Let’s start with the most obvious but less likely
scenario: Donald Trump wins the presidency in perhaps the biggest black swan
event in the history of American politics. Whether you think Trump’s presidency
would be an unfolding disaster of biblical proportions (“The Potomac! It’s
turned to blood!”), or the unfolding of a biblical prophecy to save America
(“The Winning! So. Much. Winning!”), or something in between, no one can deny
the enormous change it would represent, and the hostility and fear it would
likely elicit from various institutions and constituencies, particularly the
news media, but also Hollywood, higher education, our NATO allies, unions,
left-wing activists, and perhaps even Wall Street, the Pentagon, and much of
the federal bureaucracy.
Fortunately, Donald Trump has the Lincolnesque qualities
of political subtlety, magnanimity, and foresight to quell any such misgivings.
There’s no need to dwell on that scenario right now, as
Trump seems poised for the worst showing by a GOP nominee since Barry
Goldwater’s drubbing in 1964. But a Trump defeat may carry quite a wallop as
well. Over the last few days, as he’s begun to realize that he’s self-sabotaged
a winnable race, Trump has taken to claiming that any loss will be the result
of a “rigged election.” When his surrogates, including running mate Mike Pence,
Rudy Giuliani, and Newt Gingrich, insisted Trump was merely complaining about
hostile media coverage, Trump ran to Twitter to insist that, no, no, many
“polling places” are rigged too. Trump never misses an opportunity to humiliate
those who would try to save him from himself.
Trump’s strategy makes no sense in terms of cobbling
together a winning electoral coalition, but it is a cynically savvy way of
locking in market share for what may be his next venture: a media empire
designed to fan the flames of cynicism, paranoia, and alienation for the
populist forces fueling his presidential bid. If that happens, one can expect
the feuding on the right to continue well into 2017 and beyond.
And even if Trump shows a level of graciousness in defeat
that is hard to fathom right now, the hard feelings on the right will endure
for a long time to come.
All of this has gotten a lot more attention than the
equally inevitable headaches a Clinton victory will entail.
During the Cold War, the Russians mastered the use of
slow-acting poisons to kill victims long after they were stabbed with an
umbrella tip. Fittingly, the WikiLeaks e-mails may act like ricin or anthrax,
wreaking havoc on Clinton’s presidency long after they’re released. In a normal
election year with a normal GOP nominee, the WikiLeaks revelations might prove
fatal to Clinton’s candidacy. Instead, it seems almost a sure thing that they
will poison Clinton’s presidency for years to come. The allegations of
pay-for-play between her foundation and the State Department, her speeches to
Wall Street, the animosity of some of her closest advisers for Catholics: All
of these things will have a long half-life. As will her manifest lies about the
use of her private server.
The populist Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic party
has been given ample evidence to support their suspicions of Clinton as a
conniving and cynical politician. The populist Trump wing of the Republican
party — and large swaths of the rest of it — is already locked into the belief
that Clinton is a singularly nefarious force in our politics. If elected, she
will have fulfilled the only mandate that unites large numbers of voters: She’s
not Trump. (Nearly a third of her voters say that is the No. 1 reason they are
voting for her.)
Right now, and for the foreseeable future, America is
being torn asunder by populist passions on the left and right that lead people
to distrust nearly every major institution in this country.
Fortunately, Hillary Clinton has the Lincolnesque
qualities of political subtlety, magnanimity, and foresight to quell any such
misgivings, right?
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