Victor Davis Hanson // National Review
The Left sees Donald Trump’s comportment, rallies, and tweets as a new low in presidential behavior that justifies extraordinary countermeasures. But Trump’s personal characteristics are idiosyncratic and may or may not become institutionalized by subsequent presidents. And it is not as if liberal icons such as FDR, LBJ, JFK, and Bill Clinton suddenly became saintly in office.
What is far scarier is the reaction to Trump, in both the constitutional and political sense. What follows are likely the new norms for the next generation of presidents, and they will probably be equally applied to Democrats who implemented them in the Trump era.
1) Private presidential phone calls with foreign leaders will be leaked and printed in the major media. The point will be not so much to air breaking news as to embarrass the president or to use such disclosures to stymie his foreign policy. Those who leak such information will be canonized as part of a “resistance.” Prominent officials in government will publish anonymous op-eds in the New York Times bragging about how they are daily undermining a new president’s administration.
Discussion (4)
Join the conversation. Logged in subscribers avoid the Captcha verification and get priority commenting approvals. No vulgarity, links, or code allowed.
I find your suggestion that the new politics will work both ways ridiculous. The statist fascism will only be directed one way, towards Republicans with impunity. If any Republican atempts anything similar to the left's tactics they will be burned at the steak, politically, by other Republicans. I find it unlikely that ANY Republican will have a brass pair to even atempt something like what the left has done. They are even so impotent they cant prosecute what the left has done.
Really enjoy your articles!
Always grateful for the pragmatic wisdom of your articles. I've been caused to wonder if what is really going on here, in the long view, is an effort by obstruction of executive powers to diminish the presidency to ceremonially status, and transfer the powers of the Executive to the House. In effect, this would bring an end to the constitutional system with its division of powers, and adopting a parliamentary, Westminster system of government, with powers in the hands of the Speaker/prime minister of the House. This would be accomplished by making presidents weak and ineffective, incapable of acting, having always to defer to the House, lest they be punished. The belief of the Democrat Party, with open borders, unlimited immigration, welfare state, etc must be that they would almost always be in power, and that in effect end Republican governance. Again, thank you for your intellectual honesty. I've spent enough time around universities to know how rare that can be.
Please don't ever stop doing what you're doing. You're a beacon of truth and common sense.