Trump seems to have upped his game since the election. No longer satisfied with saying, or doing, something offensive/outrageous/treasonous/impeachable (per the mainstream media's criteria) every week or so, he's now committing some sort of outrage not just daily, or hourly, but every five minutes! CNN can hardly keep up, even with 24 hours per day to work with. He's accused, tried, and convicted before even getting out of bed in the morning. (No word yet on whether he “tweets” from bed or from some other venue.) He is, in short, acting like someone who has nothing to lose – and that may well be. He is already fated to acquire lame-duck status the minute the next Congress is sworn in... but the easy impeachment that the Democrats have dreamed of for two years – their version of “visions of sugarplums” – may be out of reach. Not that he couldn't be impeached, but would the impeachment succeed? And that all hinges on whether certain Republican members of the Senate are willing to follow in Susan Collins' footsteps – and who's going to bet one way or the other on that? Or they might feel that they are serving their party by betraying Trump, that being a better bet politically than serving Trump by betraying their party. There's no doubt about it; Trump has become a “long national nightmare” for the Republicans, who are never quite sure, on any given day, who to side with – Trump or the Republican mainstream (including the “never Trumpers”, who are holding their cards close to their chest these days).
So yes, the second half of Trump's
administration, if it's even a half, promises to be a snooze fest in
terms of legislation (and executive orders not immediately struck
down by the judiciary – the 9th Circuit being on 24-hour
alert these days). And that may not be enough to satisfy a guy who
brought his up-all-night, hyperactive, aggressive style down from New
York City to sleepy, complacent, ossified Washington. Never has a
man so blatantly “northeastern” had to deal with a vast array of
opponents who are so “southern” – if not in the literal sense
then in the sense of being satisfied with zero performance and
maximum pay and benefits. The incompatibility has been there from
the start, and it has only gotten worse over time. And make no
mistake, the Republicans who have “come around” and grudgingly
support Trump's initiatives have only done so for purely political
reasons; they will turn on him in a New York minute (OK, a DC minute)
if they think it's in their interests to do so.
No, Trump has been an alien life form
in Washington from the beginning – they don't understand him, and I
suspect he doesn't understand them either, at least not fully,
although he's pretty good at making them jump. But the fact remains
that he's not going to get a lot done between January 2019 and
January 2021, and I suspect he knows it, and I also suspect he's
thinking about what to do to fill up his time during those two years.
(How much golf can you play in any given day?) And if he's smart
(as I believe he is) he's also starting to get real about the chances
of being re-nominated in 2020. And if he's already written that off
as a possibility, it's less surprising that he's becoming more
bare-knuckled than before. He hung in there on behalf of the
Republican candidates who were interested in his support for the 2018
mid-terms, but now that those are accomplished (except for a few
freakish exceptions in Florida and Georgia) he's able to reset his
priorities (with or without Hillary's “reset” button). (And BTW,
didn't I see that for sale on eBay the other day?)
So what to do? Well, he can continue
to bait the mainstream media, the way one baits a cat with a laser
pointer (that's Rush Limbaugh's metaphor). And he can – not a
trivial consideration – allow the Mueller investigation to drag on,
right up to January 2021, and thus continue to expose the utter moral
bankruptcy and corruption of the opposition. This could, in fact, be his
greatest long-term gift to the electorate. Long after the waters
have converged and settled over all memory of his economic and
diplomatic accomplishments, the abomination that is the Mueller
investigation will remain a blotch on our history as a nation – and
rightly so. At least there was a grain of truth – and perhaps more
than a grain – to the Nixon (as senator) and McCarthy
investigations, despite insurmountable stylistic difficulties; the
Mueller farce will, in all probability, be remembered as the time
when sheer fantasy, hysteria, and political interest took over large
portions of the executive branch, particularly the FBI, the Justice
Department, and the CIA. It would be hard to imagine anything more
noteworthy from a historical point of view, and one can only hope
that that the madness indeed comes to an end in January of 2021, and
does not persist, as a chronic and fatal ailment, unto the end, for
all intents and purposes, of the Republic.
To add a side note, based on one of the
current Internet memes – namely the notion that Trump is using his
position to enrich himself and his family. I've always said that the
best person to elect to the presidency is someone who is already so
rich that they can't be bribed – and I think Trump fits that
description. If he had wanted to continue to make the big bucks, he
would have stayed in New York, and ditto the rest of his family.
They're probably giving up millions, if not billions, by mucking
about in the fetid swamps of the Potomac – and yet there they are.
And no, I can't figure it out either. Of course, if they were
Democrats the answer would be that they merely want to serve their
country, and selfish considerations don't come into play. (Right –
tell it to the Clinton Family Foundation.)
So... where does this leave us? There
are subtle signs that Trump may have already given up on 2020,
despite all overt activities and claims otherwise. And yet I don't
see him bailing out at any time prior to that; totally not his style.
Even if he drops out in 2020, he'll no doubt declare victory –
kind of like what we did when we left Korea in a stalemate.
But who knows, maybe he thinks he can
get something done over the next two years after all; judicial
appointments come to mind, as do military ventures which don't
require the approval of Congress (which means pretty much all of
them). If he bailed now it would leave the presidency in the hands
of the saintly, white-haired Mike Pence, which would certainly give
the Evangelicals cause for rejoicing (Israel is already perfectly
happy with Trump). And Pence might well get nominated in 2020 –
and he might well lose, for the same reason Ford, Mondale, and Gore
lost; they were still infested with too many “cooties” from their
previous bosses.
It's hard to imagine American politics
being any more bizarre or grotesque than it is right now – but, as
I said, we have 2 more years of Trump to go, and I suspect he has
weapons he hasn't tried out yet. In any case, fatigue is setting in
(for the citizenry, not him), and the question in 2020 will be, do we
vote for one of the seemingly endless parade of colorless, boring
Republican candidates – you know, the ones Trump managed to knock
off, one by one, in 2016 -- or do we take a walk on the other wild
side and vote for the likes of Bernie again, or maybe Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez? She is at least the voice of youth, whereas Bernie is
stuck somewhere back in the 1960s with the rest of the
Birkenstock/NPR/New Yorker crowd. Sometimes I think that the best
way to deal with the fear of what the younger generation will “do
to the country” is to just turn it over to them and see what
happens. I mean, why wait until they're old enough to have sold out?
