The Post-Trumpism Presidency Begins

By Jonah Goldberg

Saturday, April 15, 2017

Since I literally just finished my column for today, also written in the past, I suppose I should start with what’s on my mind.

In the wake of Trump’s dizzying array of reversals on various policy stances, I wrote about how the phrase “Let Reagan be Reagan” has essentially the opposite meaning of “Let Trump be Trump.” I conclude (Spoiler alert):

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.”

I was inspired by a conversation I had with Ramesh about this excellent column, which deals with the same topic.

“In 2016,” Ramesh begins, “we found out that conservative elites didn’t speak for Republican voters.” The think-tank crowd wanted entitlement reform and likes free trade. The rank and file, not so much.

Trump’s elite supporters in talk radio, TV news, and elsewhere convinced themselves that just because the “people” rejected one coherent ideological program that meant they embraced another coherent ideological program called “Trumpism,” “America First,” or “nationalism.” Ramesh writes:

Intellectuals, whether they are for or against Trump, want to construct an “ism” into which they can fit his politics: an “ism” that includes opposition to free trade, mass immigration, foreign interventions that aren’t necessitated by attacks on us, and entitlement reform. But Trumpism doesn’t exist. The president has tendencies and impulses, some of which conflict with one another, rather than a political philosophy.

But here’s the key point — “the people” don’t have a coherent “ism” either. This is especially true on foreign policy. Again, Ramesh:

An adviser to President George W. Bush once remarked to me that a lot of people thought Republicans backed Bush because of the Iraq war, when in reality Republicans backed the Iraq war because of Bush. In the absence of detailed and deep convictions on a foreign-policy issue, voters will side with the politicians whose side they usually take.

Trump’s strike on Syria was breathtakingly hypocritical. It was also the right thing to do (I think). But the relevant point is that it was popular.

Suddenly, true believers in a Trumpism-that-doesn’t-exist are in a similar predicament many of us were in during the election. They’re condemning Trump for breaking their (hastily minted) orthodoxy of True Trumpism. More vexing, they’re discovering that Trump’s popularity isn’t all that connected to his program. This is partly because of his cult of personality and partly because a lot of people are simply invested in his presidencyfor a slew of patriotic, partisan, and personal reasons.

The Oxygen-Sucking Stupidity of Trump Derangement Syndrome

I should also say that the persistence of liberal Trump Derangement Syndrome is a big part of the defend-Trump-no-matter-what dynamic. Because the mainstream media and the Democrats are so unhinged in their criticisms of Trump, they give no room for thoughtful criticism. Lots of normal Trump voters are frustrated with his presidency so far. But the partisan inanity of Trump’s left-wing critics makes it difficult not to run to his defense.

Take, for example, Sean Spicer’s “Not even Hitler” gaffe. I made fun of the guy, because the statement was so painfully dumb. (I like to imagine a homunculus Spicer in the control room in his head completely freaking out as he loses control of Spicer’s speech center. “I’ve got no brakes! I got no brakes!!”) But liberals had to take it straight to eleven, by calling Spicer a Holocaust denier and an anti-Semite. C’mon. Some even claimed the statement was a deliberate attempt to signal . . . something.

This reminds me of one of my biggest gripes about Bush Derangement Syndrome. His critics would simultaneously argue that Bush was a blithering idiot, but also an evil mastermind who orchestrated all manner of devilishly clever conspiracies. Pick one. You can’t say Sean Spicer is a buffoon, but that he’s also a brilliantly cynical dog-whistler who went in to the pressroom with a plan to throw rhetorical bones to the alt-right.

The Dilemma

Anyway, where was I? Oh, right, I’m not saying Trump could have gotten away with nominating a liberal to the Supreme Court or that if he came out overnight as a pro-choicer that the base would have gone with him. But Trump fulfilled his core mandate the day he was sworn-in: He promised not to be Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama. He could have hung a “Mission Accomplished” banner over the inaugural balcony.

The conservative ideologues and intellectuals on both sides of the Trump question face the very same dilemma. Trump is no more bound to the fantasy of True Trumpism than he is to Goldwaterite conservatism. He’s a free agent who literally brags about the fact that he’s comfortable making it up as he goes.

In the first G-File after the election, I predicted: “If Trump is going to be a successful president — and I hope he is one — he will have to start disappointing his biggest fans.” In the case of Coulter & Co. I was right. But for a lot of his rank-and-file supporters, it’s more complicated. They’re invested in Trump first and Trumpism second, if at all. Or, they simply define Trumpism as whatever makes Trump look like a winner. The danger, as I’ve been writing for two years now, is that Trump could end up redefining conservatism, not necessarily as some version of Buchanan-Bannon nationalism (though that was always a concern), but as “whatever Trump does.”

The first empirical data is already coming in. Rank-and-file Republicans tend to think that conservatism is correlated to support for Trump. But the anecdotal data has been all over the place for years now. For instance, when it was announced Wednesday that Bret Stephens was leaving the Wall Street Journal for the New York Times, Twitter lit up with people saying, in effect, “good riddance, you liberal.” Of course, this assessment wasn’t based on anything other than the fact that Stephens — a fairly solid conservative — is one of the most ardent critics of Donald Trump.

Trump isn’t an ideological or philosophical conservative. He has no ideology or philosophy, rightly understood. This was obvious from the beginning and, contra Mike Allen, some of us saw it from day one. That doesn’t mean he can’t be a good president or have a politically successful presidency. But it will be difficult for an array of reasons both psychological and political. There’s lots of talk in Washington about how to fix the White House staff in order to properly constrain, channel, or direct Trump to victory. Good luck with that. I have zero confidence that Trump will reliably and consistently trade opportunities for political success — “wins” — for conservative victories over time. I also never bought that he was a particularly good manager. His presidency so far gives me no reason to rethink that.

I do have hope though.

And that hope rests, as I said last week, on conservatives restricting his range of possible political options solely to conservative policies. The last best hope for a successful Trump presidency rests not in Trump’s alleged brilliance and gift for “winning” and “deals” but in conservatives in Congress defining what counts as a win in the realm of the possible and then nudging, coaxing, flattering, or tricking him in that direction.