Victor Davis Hanson // American Greatness
Donald Trump in 2016 did not only run against the planted rumors of the fake Steele dossier, 90 percent negative media coverage, his own boisterous past, and the “Access Hollywood” tape. He also was campaigning against Hillary Clinton—and the nation’s quarter-century weariness with the Clinton scandals, crimes, money-grubbing, and hypocrisies.
For a quarter of the country, independents especially, a vote for Trump was not a referendum on a Democrat or Republican, or even love or hate for Donald Trump, but rather reflected a “Never Hillary” desire to be done with the very name Clinton.
So, too, in 2020 Trump will not be running only on his own record, or even his person but also against a living and breathing alternative candidate, one that both offers a precise antithetical agenda and displays a concrete personage.
Considering all of that, during the last week, Trump has been given great gifts in a way no one might have imaged just a month ago.
President Obama just said this about Donald Trump’s disparagement of the last seven years: “In the echo chamber that is presidential politics, everything is dark and everything is terrible.” Presidential candidates “don’t seem to offer many solutions for the disasters that they perceive, but they’re quick to tell you who to blame . . . I’m here to say there’s nothing particularly patriotic or American about talking down America, especially when we stand as one of the few sources of economic strength in the world.” In 2008 candidate Obama, then in Trump’s current contender position, said this about a lame-duck sitting president, while more or less kept talking down both America and its then-current government for most of the campaign: The problem is, is that the way Bush has done it over the last eight years is to take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children, driving up our national debt from $5 trillion for the first 42 presidents — No. 43 added $4 trillion by his lonesome, so that we now have over $9 trillion of debt that we are going to have to pay back — $30,000 for every man, woman and child. That’s irresponsible. It’s unpatriotic. In Obama’s world, when you attack a sitting president, you do so on grounds that he is unpatriotic; when you are a sitting president you defend yourself from those who do what you did, also on grounds they are unpatriotic. In Obama’s alternate universe, adding $4 trillion is unpatriotic and irresponsible, but adding $9 trillion “by his lonesome” is exactly what? And if Obama as a senator voted to shut down the government over that accruing $4 trillion, what should do the Senate do about double that amount?
![Yeah, I kind of love this guy —->@unsavoryagents [1] Ha ha #LosAngeles [2] violent crime up 26% wake up! #SanctuaryCity [3] pic.twitter.com/4TtvwVWY5C [4] — RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) July 10, 2015 [5]](https://i0.wp.com/victorhanson.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/CJkKxzAUsAA7wnC.jpg?resize=485%2C365&ssl=1)