Even a preposterous second-place president afflicted with megalomania and narcissism can get a policy or action right.
And even a normally extremist junior U.S. senator can make a solid point in a guest op-ed column in the New York Times.
When those rarities arise, one generally disdainful of the preposterous second-place president and the extremist junior U.S. senator must acknowledge those glimpses of rightness.
He needs to be grateful for them. He needs to separate the politician and general philosophy from the specific policy or action.
Many can't seem to fashion that kind of separation. I have heard from some. Their inability raises the specter of a country that can't achieve a reasoning majority because of ad hominem obsessions.
Some are peeved that I said on social media what I'm saying here: The preposterous second-place president seems to have taken solid counsel from the generals surrounding him and made--in the missile attack on a Syrian airstrip in retaliation for Bashar al-Assad's use of chemical weapons against his own country's children--the right decision militarily, strategically and morally.
Beyond that, U.S. Sen. Tom Cotton's op-ed contribution to the Times on Saturday provided solidly supportable analysis that President Donald Trump's quick and decisive action repaired damage to America's international credibility caused by former President Barack Obama's drawing a red line on Syria's use of chemical weapons and then not enforcing it.
Obama made two egregious errors in eight years. One was saying any American with a health-insurance policy he liked would be able to keep it under the Affordable Care Act.
The bigger one was warning a criminal despot of a specific consequence for a specific inhumane action, then backing down.
Cotton, to his credit, had ventured to the Obama White House to work on planning the retaliation in Syria that never was. That bipartisan adherence to principle-over-person gave him some authority to write as he wrote Saturday in the Times.
Obama can be an infinitely better and more admirable man than Trump, but, in the matter of sending a strong American message to a monster who commits atrocities against his own children, Obama could have been horribly vacillating and failed while Trump could be appropriately decisive and successful.
The American people ought to be able to execute the adult mental flexibility of binary thankfulness--for a good man as their leader for eight years, and for one occasion of an appropriate and better foreign-policy action by his otherwise much-lesser successor.
Those who insist on making their specific judgments only in the context of their general regard for a person might consider this major coincidence: On the afternoon before Trump's evening bombing, Hillary Clinton sat on a stage to be interviewed by Times columnist Nicholas Kristof. Among the things she said was that, because of Assad's use of chemical weapons, we should bomb his airstrips.
She was right. Trump was right. Cotton had a point. It's not so hard to say.
The rightness of the action militarily was that it was restrained and relevant--proportional, they call it--in reducing Assad's ability to repeat the horrific act by damaging his main launch pad for chemical weapons.
The rightness strategically was that it sent a message that America would presume to act and lead and that Assad's behavior would not be tolerated.
The rightness morally is evident. It might save innocent lives, especially those of children.
The anti-Trump people say that, if this preposterous second-place president really cared about Syrians on a moral basis, then he would not have issued an executive order barring their acceptance as refugees.
It's a great point about the man. But it's a different specific issue from the policy action at hand.
The anti-Trump people allege that this was a wag-the-dog attack as evidenced by the fact that we tipped off the Russians that we were launching it, and that, presumably, the Russians then tipped off their ally, Assad.
But we weren't scheming for a sneak attack to take lives. We were seeking an appropriately measured action, narrowly targeted, to send a message. Giving the Russians a heads-up about bombing an area where they might have equipment or personnel was not only advisable, but essential.
Anti-Trump people say this president is devoid of abiding principles or views and is apt to change his mind tomorrow and undo what he staggered around and got right today. But I'm not predicting tomorrow. I'm analyzing the change of mind Trump executed Wednesday and the resulting decision he made Thursday.
Anti-Trump people say this president only ordered the bombing to deflect his emerging Russian scandal and improve his abysmal approval ratings.
Maybe. But this specific column is about the problem schoolkid whose latest report card shows an "F" in citizenship but a "B-plus" in Syrian bombing. A good teacher wouldn't arbitrarily reduce the "B-plus" because of the "F."
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, was inducted into the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame in 2014. Email him at jbrummett@arkansasonline.com. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 04/11/2017