OPINION

Giving the president up for Lent

I would like to give up this president for Lent.

You'd think that would be an easy thing to do, for so much competes for our attention. Just down the street our legislators are busy shaming themselves, baseball is on its way, and I'm intrigued on how this DeMarcus Cousins/Anthony Davis experiment might work out in New Orleans. Have you heard the new Shinyribs album?

Besides, President Donald J. Trump delivered a simmered-down, wholly conventional speech last week which won him a degree of praise simply because he sounded out the words correctly and didn't go off book and call the FBI a den of Nazis. Even considering the revelations about his attorney general that surfaced as I sat down to write this column, you'd have to say he had one of his better weeks as president.

But I really want people to know where I stand here. I accept that Trump is our president. You don't have to win a majority of the popular vote to win a national election. And I understand why this is so, and I'm not sure I'd be in favor of changing the way we elect presidents. While we can argue that the Electoral College was designed as a firewall to prevent a celebrity from demagogue-ing his way into high office, the fact is Trump beat the system. He beat all those Republicans and that woman. America, you made your crazy choice.

And my problems with Trump have never really been about his politics--if you wanted to be kind you could call him a pragmatist. My problems with him are about the kind of life he has lived, the people he has hurt, and his blithe indifference to anything other than self-aggrandizement and gratification. I object to our president's lack of soul and don't think we should reward selfish and rude people with our votes. (And yes, the choice might have been difficult for some. But it wasn't difficult for me.)

On the other hand, if Trump were to behave and not take advantage of every opportunity to enrich himself and his family, he might make a perfectly competent president. If he was aware of his own limitations and humbly took the best advice he could get, he probably could manage the job fine. There are things he hasn't screwed up, such as his appointments of defense secretary Jim Mattis and national security adviser H.R. McMaster. I think Neil Gorsuch is a fine candidate for the Supreme Court (though I wouldn't blame Democrats who oppose any Trump nominee on the grounds that the slot he's filling should have been filled by the previous administration).

There's little potential for gain in writing about every misstep the administration makes--every administration makes mistakes--and I sincerely do not want to see the America economy tank or our national security to be compromised. But it is worrisome that he seems so susceptible to fringe "thinkers" like Steve Bannon and Seb Gorka, both of whom seem more self-impressed than coherent. (Is it a cheap shot to point out that "deconstruction" isn't the same thing as "dismantling"?) Still, in the end, Trump may adapt to whatever he perceives popular opinion to be, the insurgent belligerence of his alpha male advisers (none of whom seems likely to have ever been among the first chosen for pickup basketball) notwithstanding.

While the bullying appeals to a certain kind of core Trump supporter--those that Hillary Clinton unfortunately but rightly referred to as "deplorables"--it's a dubious political strategy. Most Trump supporters saw him as the lesser evil, and many of them have expressed some amount of buyer's remorse since the election. While a few of these voters probably enjoy Trump's sparring with the media, they're probably more concerned with the promises he made (before he realized how complicated it might be) to make health-care insurance cheaper, better and available to everyone. (Those promises may make it difficult for Republicans in Congress to dismantle the Affordable Care Act;despite their rhetoric, it seems more likely that they'll tweak and re-brand it.)

And while Republican regulars in Congress like Paul Ryan and French Hill appear to stand ready to protect this administration so long as they perceive it as useful for advancing their agenda, as soon as Trump becomes a liability they'll start to put some daylight between themselves and him. Attacks on trading partners and tariff wars seem more likely to stifle growth than stimulate it, and a draconian crackdown on immigrants sounds more reasonable when directed at mythical Mexican rapists than at one's neighbors.

This distancing is already happening; Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself from overseeing an investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and the Russian government. The "nothing to see here, move along" strategy probably won't hold because, while elected officials may be reluctant to probe that particular hornet's nest, the intelligence community and the press have no reason not to pursue the truth.

And there may be something to this Russian business. Hearsay based on exchanges with friends well-placed to hear intelligence community gossip indicates there's something there. Some of it sounds like it's straight out of an episode of The Americans. And some of what they've told has ended up on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.

If I were Sergey Kislyak, I'd be careful around umbrellas.

And if were this president, I'd give up Twitter for Lent.

pmartin@arkansasonline.com

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Editorial on 03/05/2017

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