By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, April 14, 2017
Like a passenger on a sinking ship, the president has
been throwing one longstanding position after another overboard like so much
dead weight. His closest advisers, biggest boosters, and some members of his
family are at war with one another, in a pitched battle to steer the president
in their preferred direction. From balancing the budget to relations with
Russia, each faction thinks it’s fighting for the president’s true convictions
and the issues that got him elected. “Such incidents,” the New York Times put it, “indicate that the struggle for the
President’s mind between two camps, pragmatists and purists, has intensified.”
This might sound familiar. But that quote comes from 30
years ago. Then–New York Times
reporter Steven Roberts was writing about the great battle between the
Republican establishment types and the true-believing conservatives who’d been
with Reagan for decades.
The true believers had a rallying cry: “Let Reagan be
Reagan!”
The phrase harks back to the earliest years of Reagan’s
presidency. (It was actually inspired in part by an anti-Communist documentary
called “Let Poland Be Poland,” but that’s a story for another day.)
James Watt, Reagan’s first secretary of the interior,
said at a rally in 1982 that the solution to all the problems facing the
administration was simple. “As I pondered that question from the depths of my
soul, I felt these words,” Watt told the crowd. “Let Reagan be Reagan. Let
Reagan be Reagan.”
In the last week, Donald Trump has found himself in a
seemingly similar position. He has defenestrated large chunks of the agenda
that his biggest boosters insist got him elected. As Ann Coulter, author of In Trump We Trust, tweeted after the
Syria attack, “Those who wanted us meddling in the Middle East voted for other
candidates.”
Trump has embraced NATO, praised Federal Reserve
chairwoman Janet Yellen, scrapped his tax plan, backed off his vow to eliminate
the debt, reversed his claim that China is a “currency manipulator,” come out
in favor of the Export-Import Bank and lifted his freeze on federal hiring. He
also seems to have relegated his senior adviser and chief ideologist, Steve
Bannon, to a bit player, describing him as “a guy who works for me.”
I welcome most of these reversals, but it’s hard not to
sympathize with those who feel betrayed. They made a simple mistake: They
thought Trumpism was a coherent ideological program, akin to Reaganism. Indeed,
during the 2016 election cycle, a great number of prominent conservatives went
to remarkable lengths to compare Trump to Reagan. At times I feared the strain
might give some of my friends hernias.
The problem is that Trumpism is real, but it’s not an
ideology. It’s a state of mind. Or, to be more accurate, it’s a constantly
changing state of mind. Trump himself admits as much, saying that he won’t be
bound by ideology or doctrine, preferring “flexibility” not just on means, but
on ends.
This should have been obvious by the way people used the
phrase “Let Trump be Trump.” It’s usually used to scold the scolds who want
Trump to be more “presidential.” Corey Lewandowski, the onetime manager of the
Trump campaign, often told reporters he was the head of the “Let Trump be
Trump” faction in Trump’s inner circle. This meant not worrying about his
outrageous claims and indefensible insults against competitors, judges, the
media, etc.
In February, Fox
News Sunday host Chris Wallace interviewed Dan Scavino, the man who handles
the rhetorical nuclear football of this administration, Donald Trump’s Twitter
account. Wallace asked Scavino if he ever cautioned Trump against tweeting
something. “There’s been times, but not too often,” Scavino replied. But, he
added, “I’ve always believed, in being with the man from Day One, ‘Let Trump be
Trump.’”
When conservatives said “Let Reagan be Reagan,” they were
referring to a core philosophy that Reagan had developed over decades of study
and political combat. When people said “Let Trump be Trump,” they meant let
Trump’s id run free. The former was about staying true to an ideology, the
latter about giving free rein to a glandular style that refused to be locked
into a doctrine or even notions of consistency.
That’s why saying “Let Trump be Trump” is almost
literally the opposite of saying “Let Reagan be Reagan.”
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