In politics, few things go together as commonly as hubris paired with a total lack of self-awareness.
For a beautiful example, consider the following recent comments by Democrat House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, as reported by Fox News:
“The bigger problem, the thing people need to understand, is that he was utterly unprepared for this,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a New York Times story published this weekend about Trump’s daily routine. “It would be like you or me going into a room and being asked to perform brain surgery. When you have a lack of knowledge as great as his, it can be bewildering.”
Trump’s an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s doing. How original! This doesn’t mean much coming from Democrats, as “you’re stupid” has been one of their top lines of attack against every new Republican president since Ronald Reagan.
In Trump’s case, though, this one has even gotten traction in various corners of the Right — partly for petty (dare I say “tribal”) reasons such as the various biases and impulses animating #NeverTrump, but admittedly somewhat reinforced by the man’s newness to political office, frequently crude manner of speech, and apparent disinterest in the specifics of various policies.
And yet, despite the worst doomsday predictions of both Left and Right, how has Donald Trump’s first year in the White House turned out? Here’s a handy rundown from Roger Kimball at American Greatness:
But just think about these subjects: illegal immigration (down by more the 60 percent), energy (America is now the world’s biggest producer of energy), unemployment (4 and a bit percent), growth (3 percent for two quarters running), the market (up more than 5,000 points since November 2016), regulation (huge progress in turning back the counterproductive regulatory environment that has stymied American business), consumer confidence (the highest it’s been in a generation), the military (revitalized), taxes (a bracing if imperfect plan wending its way through Congress), Iran (declining to recertify a deal that paved the way for Iran to become a nuclear power).
Even Rich Lowry at the establishmentarian and infamously #NeverTrump National Review recently acknowledged that the Trump Administration’s accomplishments extend far beyond the appointment of Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court:
Other Excellent Judicial Picks … and a Tax Cut … and Major Deregulatory Actions … and Immigration Enforcement … and the End of the Individual Mandate … and a Roll Back of the HHS Mandate . . . and the reversal of the insane Title IX policy on campus . . . and an exit from the Paris Accords . . . and the avoidance of whatever Hillary would have wrought.
“Trump has governed so far as more of a Republican and conservative than I expected,” Lowry admitted. Indeed, of all the criticisms (real and imagined) to be leveled at the new president, the biggest substantive one would would seem to be that he’s sometimes too similar to previous Republican presidents.
Contrast this early record with what decades of “respectable, intelligent” presidents of both parties have given America:
– a federal debt above $20 trillion and climbing every second, enabled by a political culture that refuses to seriously entertain meaningful spending cuts or program reforms;
– the 2008 financial crisis that wreaked havoc with our economy;
– state governments mismanaged worse than floundering private companies, so hellbent on public employees voting more of the taxpayers’ money into their own pockets that they’re teetering on bankruptcy;
– a judiciary that has in many cases thrown away even the pretense of impartially upholding the Constitution, instead perpetuating legal fictions and openly writing subjective preference into rulings that run roughshod over individual rights, separation of powers, and the powers reserved to the states;
– a military infested with politicized officers and administrators who place radical ideologies and social experiments above the safety of American soldiers and effectiveness at protecting the homeland;
– a bureaucratic culture in which decisions affecting countless aspects of people’s lives are made with no recourse for the impacting, and nonexistent accountability for incompetence or even abuse of power to persecute political enemies and enrich political allies.
I could go on, but you get the idea.
While intelligence is essential for our leaders, their records prove that the political Smart Set is anything but. They may have formal knowledge, but that clearly isn’t enough when they lack guiding moral principles, the intellectual imagination to question the way things have always been done, and the courage of conviction necessary to defy the conventional wisdom of Washington DC — even when that means standing alone.
When all is said and done, proving the intellectual, moral, and political bankruptcy of both parties’ establishments may be Donald Trump’s greatest legacy.
from The Federalist Papers http://ift.tt/2jPe9Rw
via IFTTT Pelosi Calls Trump “Clueless;” Problem is “Smart People” Created a Disaster http://ift.tt/2jPe9Rw