{"id":11680,"date":"2019-02-21T11:52:22","date_gmt":"2019-02-21T19:52:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=11680"},"modified":"2019-02-21T11:52:28","modified_gmt":"2019-02-21T19:52:28","slug":"survival-at-the-white-house","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/survival-at-the-white-house\/","title":{"rendered":"Survival at the White House"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>No one in Washington called Donald J. Trump a \u201cgod\u201d (as journalist Evan Thomas in 2009 had suggested of Obama) when he arrived in January 2017. No one felt nerve impulses in his leg when Trump talked, as journalist Chris Matthews once remarked had happened to him after hearing an Obama speech. And no newsman or pundit cared how crisply creased were Trump\u2019s pants, at least in the manner that&nbsp;<em>New York Times<\/em>&nbsp;columnist David Brooks had once praised Obama\u2019s sartorial preciseness. Instead, Trump was greeted by the Washington media and intellectual establishment as if he were the first beast in the Book of Revelation, who arose \u201cout of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Besides the Washington press and pundit corps, Donald Trump faced a third and more formidable opponent: the culture of permanent and senior employees of the federal and state governments, and the political appointees in Washington who revolve in and out from business, think tanks, lobbying firms, universities, and the media. Or as the legal scholar of the administrative state Philip Hamburger put it: \u201cAlthough the United States remains a republic, administrative power creates within it a very different sort of government. The result is a state within the state \u2014 an administrative state within the Constitution\u2019s United States.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Since the U.S. post-war era, the growth of American state and federal government has been enormous. By 2017, there were nearly 3 million civilian federal workers, and another 1.3 million Americans in the uniformed military. Over 22 million local, state, and federal workers had made government the largest employment sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nationalreview.com\/magazine\/2019\/03\/11\/survival-at-the-white-house\/\">Read the full article here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review No one in Washington called Donald J. Trump a \u201cgod\u201d (as journalist Evan Thomas in 2009 had suggested of Obama) when he arrived in January 2017. No one felt nerve impulses in his leg when Trump talked, as journalist Chris Matthews once remarked had happened to him after hearing [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1161,1],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-32o","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":11709,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/enter-the-disrupter\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":0},"title":"Enter the Disrupter","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 7, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review No one in Washington called Donald J. Trump a \u201cgod\u201d (as journalist Evan Thomas in 2009 had suggested of Obama) when he arrived in January 2017. No one felt nerve impulses in his leg when Trump talked, as journalist Chris Matthews once remarked had\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11178,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-trump-land-mine\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":1},"title":"The Trump Land Mine","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review After the 2016 election, the so-called deep state was confident that it had the power easily to either stop, remove, or delegitimize the outlier Donald Trump and his presidency. Give it credit, the Washington apparat quite imaginatively pulled out all the stops: implanting Obama\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11845,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/federal-rats-are-fleeing-the-sinking-collusion-ship\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":2},"title":"Federal Rats Are Fleeing the Sinking Collusion Ship","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 26, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ American Greatness The entire Trump-Russia collusion narrative was always implausible. One, the Washington swamp of fixers such as Paul Manafort and John and Tony Podesta was mostly bipartisan and predated Trump. Two, the Trump administration\u2019s Russia policies were far tougher on Vladimir Putin than were those\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10194,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/regime-change-by-any-other-name\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":3},"title":"Regime Change by Any Other Name?","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 23, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Truth or consequences? Obama skated for far worse misdeeds. Election machines in three states were not hacked to give Donald Trump the election. There was never a serious post-election movement of electors to defy their constitutional duties and vote for Hillary Clinton. Nor, once Trump was\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Putin&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Putin","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/putin\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":11224,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-bad-iranian-deal-was-always-going-to-get-worse\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":4},"title":"The Bad Iranian Deal Was Always Going to Get Worse","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review The more we learn about it \u2014 as Iranian and Obama-administration deceptions are uncovered \u2014 the more we know it was a disaster from the start. When Donald Trump withdrew from the so-called Iran deal in early May, almost all conventional wisdom in Washington\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Donald Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Donald Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/donald-trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9426,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-nine-lives-of-donald-j-trump\/","url_meta":{"origin":11680,"position":5},"title":"The Nine Lives of Donald J. Trump","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00a0 Whatever his faults, a Trump victory is preferable for the Republic. By Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Seasoned Republican political handlers serially attack Donald Trump and his campaign as amateurish, incompetent, and incoherent. The media somehow outdid their propaganda work for Barack Obama and have signed on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Trump&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Trump","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/trump\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11682,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11680\/revisions\/11682"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}