A Historian Puts the Trump Presidency in Prospective

By

       M. Richard Maxson

      Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow in military history at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and professor emeritus of classics at California State University, Fresno. The author of more than two dozen well-received books. His insight into politics and the forces behind the politicians which are the actual rulers of America are crystal clear.

• On the election of Donald Trump:

      “Trump was greeted by the Washington media and intellectual establishment as if he were the first beast in the book of Revelation, who arose “out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. Never before in the history of the presidency,” Hanson writes, “had a commander in chief earned the antipathy of the vast majority of the media, much of the career establishments of both political parties, the majority of the holders of the nation’s accumulated personal wealth, and the permanent federal bureaucracy. The deep state and media despised him “because they were often one and the same thing.”

      “Besides the Washington press and pundit corps, Donald Trump faced this 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: “Although 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 — an administrative state within the Constitution’s United States.” The power of the deep state is twofold: it has the unlimited resources of government at its call in any fight against individuals. And it knew how government worked and could be manipulated.”

• On why the Deep State hates Donald Trump:

      He is a disrupter - “Trump was not so much critical as ignorant of the deep state’s rules and its supposed sterling record of stable governance. Trump proved willing to fire lifelong public servants. He ignored sober and judicious advice from Washington “wise men.” He appointed “crazy” outsiders (rather than the same old faces) skeptical of establishment institutions. Because Trump ran against Democrats, the Republican establishment, and the deep state, in victory he had few Washington insiders left to pick from. He purged high government of its progressive activists. And he embraced deep-state heresies and blasphemies such as considering tariffs, questioning NATO, doubting the efficacy of NAFTA, whining about federal judges, and jawboning interest rates. And he also left vacant key offices on the theory that one less deep-state voice was one less critic, and one less obstacle to undoing the Obama record.”

• On why the Washington elite despise him:

      “Trump doesn't have the credentials. The last few presidents have come from Harvard or Yale Law schools or their business schools and if Trump succeeds without that resume and it's a commentary on the people who failed to win it. That's one thing he doesn't need them he doesn't consult them are all your he doesn't call and a wise man of Washington or New York or Ex- presidents. He just barrels ahead.”

• On why members of his own party despise him:

      “The Republicans especially and never Trump people say this cannot happen because we have not been advising or him. He's not listening to our commentary on television, or whatever. We are not going into the oval office he's not reading our Op-Eds. It's a frightening thing on his success because it's a referendum on the status quo.”

• On his chances for re-election:

      “First, to be reelected he must pound on the economics, the economics, the economics. and he's going to have to put it more on a moral terms that what ever you think of his commentaries, his presidency has changed the lives of millions of Americans who have jobs and higher wages.”

    “Second, he has to emphasize that this is not the Democratic party that we have known through the years. This is a party of infanticide, reparations, sanctuary cities, a 16 year old vote, and Socialism. The fact that only Trump is the only one standing between you and a socialist agenda and that's going to be a powerful argument.”

      “At the end of two years, this base of support for Trump remains solid. This is in part, Hanson notes, due to Trump’s recognition that “the America ‘era’ was not ending, but at that time enjoying the strongest GDP growth, job reports, energy production, business and consumer confidence, and foreign policy successes in fifteen years. The latest figures show that this administration’s economic policies have resulted in the highest number of job openings ever recorded in the United States, with more women and minorities employed than ever before.”

      Henry Kissinger, quoted by Hanson, best sums up what Donald Trump may come to represent: “I think Trump may be one of those figures in history who appears from time to time to mark the end of an era and to force it to give up its old pretense.” We can only hope that he is right. While Washington’s political theater continues, the country waits, and waits, and waits for elected Congressional officials to do their jobs - the business of the country.