The unlikely 2016 election of
Donald Trump—the first president without either prior political or military
office—was a repudiation of the American “aristocracy.” By “rule of the best” I
mean the ancien régime was no longer understood to suggest
wealth and birth (alone), but instead envisioned itself as a supposed national
meritocracy of those with proper degrees, and long service in the top
hierarchies of government, media, blue-chip law firms, Wall Street, high tech,
and academia.
The 2016
election and refutation of the ruling class did not signal that those without
such educations and qualifications were de facto better suited
to direct the country. Instead, the lesson was that the past record of
governance and the current stature of our assumed best and brightest certainly
did not justify their reputations or authority, much less their outsized
self-regard. In short, instead of being a meritocracy, they amount to a
mediocracy, neither great nor awful, but mostly mediocre.
This
mediocracy is akin to late 4th-century B.C. Athenian politicians, the last
generation of the Roman Republic, the late 18th-century French aristocracy, or
the British bipartisan elite of the mid-1930s—their reputations relying on the
greater wisdom and accomplishment of an earlier generation, while they remain
convinced that their own credentials and titles are synonymous with
achievement, and clueless about radical political, economic, military, and
social upheavals right under their noses.
Remember
the “new normal”? Our economic czars had simply decided anemic economic growth
was the best Americans could expect and that 3 percent annualized GDP growth
was out of the realm of possibility. Big government incompetence combined with
Wall Street buccaneerism had almost melted down the economy in 2008. Recent
presidents had doubled the debt—twice.
Few could
explain how recent agreements such as the Paris Climate Accord or Iran deal
could ever have achieved their stated aims, much less were in America’s
interest. War planners had not translated interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq,
and Libya into strategic advantage—much less lasting victory—and never offered
reasons to be in such places that appealed to half the country.
Our ruling
classes either could not or would not defend American traditions and
civilization in our colleges, in our government, and in our popular culture—and
they were increasingly accepting of the globalist consensus that America had a
flawed past requiring some sort of reparatory future.
Our
leadership accepted a world in which America’s misdemeanors were the source of
global outrage, while China’s felonies were largely exempt from criticism.
China’s global hegemony was seen as assumed and fated. Efforts to derail it
were near inane or retrograde.
Most
Americans figured that those who lectured them on television, in op-eds, and
throughout popular culture about guns, open borders, green mandates, fossil
fuels, and the public schools, had the money, desire, and clout to live in
desirable neighborhoods, sometimes behind walls, with ample taste for fine
cars, jet trips, and private academies for their children.
Earned Hypocrisies?
The charge of hypocrisy against the elite was considered
juvenile—given that exemptions were needed for the ruling class to serve us all
the better.
How could
Al Gore save us from our carbon emissions without his private jet? How could
Nancy Pelosi craft drastic climate change legislation without flying to a Kona
resort over the holidays?
How could
Eric Holder stop prejudice without a jet junket to the Belmont Stakes with his
kids? How could our Malibu elite nobly sermonize about their loyal gardeners
and dutiful maids without walled estates?
How could
Silicon Valley wizards pontificate about the evils of charter schools and the
need for teacher unions, without private academies for their own? And how
exactly could the heads of our intelligence agencies and justice department
officials track down the crimes of Donald Trump without committing greater ones
themselves?
Much of the
Trump agenda, although nominally embraced by the Republican Party after the
July 2016 convention, was largely crafted in antithesis to the bipartisan
status quo that either could not or would not end illegal immigration, secure
the border, call China out on warping world trade, seek greater reciprocity
with allies, curtail optional military interventions, massively deregulate,
expand fossil fuel production, and return the federal judiciary to a
constitutional and constructionist framework.
If such a
nontraditional agenda had been advanced by an “acceptable” outsider or
billionaire such as Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, or Michael Bloomberg, it would
have been seen as eccentric but nevertheless not blasphemous. However, Donald
Trump advertised himself as a renegade whose own notorious apostasy was
inseparable from his message, and who felt no allegiance to the political
protocols and customs that had prepped past presidents. Trump’s often crude
demeanor at times seemed to suggest that he was not just interested in revoking
the results of status quo policymaking, but the very premises of the status quo
itself.
It is easy
to suggest that much of the unprecedented hatred shown Trump is the poisoned
fruit of his alleged toxic persona. And yet it is hard to calibrate whether any
president has faced, from the moment of his election, the level of venom shown
Trump by both political parties, and by the elite media, and the centers of
progressivism on Wall Street, in Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Washington, and New
York.
A country
that once banned for life a clown from a state fair for wearing in puerile
fashion a Barack Obama mask now ritually talks of impeaching, committing to an
institution, overthrowing, or beating, burning, decapitating, blowing up, and
shooting the elected president.
Certainly,
we have never seen anything like the constant anti-Trump media hatred, the
efforts since the election to remove Trump, in slow-motion coup style, by
seeking to warp the Electoral College, to invoke the 25th Amendment and the
Emoluments Clause, to unleash special counsel Robert Mueller with an unlimited
budget, a toadyish media, a team of partisan lawyers and investigators, and
prior help from the top echelons at the Obama Department of Justice, the FBI,
the National Security Council, and the CIA.
The
argument of these elites and their institutions has been not just that Trump is
incompetent or inexperienced, but that he is corrupt, perverse, treasonous,
criminally minded, and to such a degree that the results of the 2016 should be
overturned before the 2020 election. And such an end to Trump’s elected
governance is justified not merely by his toxic person, but also by the racist,
sexist, nativist, xenophobic Americans—the counterfeit half of the country—who
elected him.
A Case
Against Trump?
If these arguments of the American aristocracy were valid, we
would have to accept three arguments of the best and brightest:
1) There
is a clear moral, legal and popular prerogative to remove Trump.
Yet for all
the efforts of the professional politicians, the lockstep media, and the elite
academic, legal, and financial communities, there is neither a rational nor
legal basis to remove Trump. Instead, he enjoys about the general level of
support as did many past presidents at this juncture in their administrations.
He has survived his first midterm in better fashion than did either Bill
Clinton or Barack Obama who were both later easily reelected.
No one has
yet argued that the tenures of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, or Bill
Clinton—still enshrined in the progressive pantheon—were marked by less
crudity. The record of the Department of Veterans Affairs, Environmental
Protection Agency, General Services Administration, IRS, CIA, and FBI between
January 2009 and January 2017 does not qualify as “scandal free.”
It’s
unlikely Trump will be convicted of any crimes as outlined by the Mueller
collusion investigation. It is more likely he will prove to be the most
investigated, probed, and audited president in history. And even more likely,
top officials at the Justice Department, CIA, and FBI will be facing eventual
legal exposure for unethical and illegal efforts to damage the Trump candidacy,
transition, and presidency.
2) Trump
has failed.
For all the
perceived chaos and disorder in the Trump Administration, it certainly has so
far achieved a stronger economic record than did his predecessors, whether
adjudicated by GDP growth, unemployment, energy production, or deregulation.
Even a
shaky stock market is still much higher than it was when Trump took office.
Likewise, abroad, for all Trump’s supposed unpopularity, privately most
Americans and many so-called experts agree that the Iran Deal was fatally
flawed, the Paris Accord was a charade, the “Palestinian” problem was ossified,
a radically new policy toward China was overdue, the Pentagon needed to be
recalibrated, and old American partnerships were in dire need of recalibration
from NATO to NAFTA.
3) There
is a logical and systematic antithesis to Trumpism.
If so, will
either primary or general election candidates run on open borders being
preferable to secure ones? Eliminating ICE is better than maintaining it?
Defense cuts are necessary? Far more gun control? Medicare for all?
There is
too much American natural gas and oil production? The economy would be better
off with higher unemployment and slower growth? Food stamps need to be
increased not reduced by over 3 million recipients?
We are too
harsh on Iran and too accommodating of Israel? Taxes are too low, government
too small, and entitlements too few? Did Trump appoint too many unqualified
strict constructionist judges? Were John Bolton and Mike Pompeo incompetent?
Whom Are We
To Trust?
As we look to our celebrities, billionaires, intellectuals and
senior statesmen, a sort of American pantheon, do we to find sources of
reassurance in Hollywood, perhaps in the statements and behavior of the last
two years of Cher, Barbra Streisand, Robert De Niro, Johnny Depp, or Madonna?
Do the Oscars, Tonys, and Emmys showcase the expertise, competence, and
professionalism of our entertainers?
Do the
recent statements of the elite marginalized—a LeBron James, Alice Walker, or
Tamika Mallory—remind us to reset our ethical bearings, or do they instead
suggest that intersectionality can at times exempt, rather than serve as an
impediment to, anti-Semitism? Has Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shown us superior
erudition and common sense?
Perhaps
Harvard, now facing allegations that it systematically discriminated on the
basis of race, can reassure us of progressive values in these tough times? Can
its first Native American professor Elizabeth Warren help us endure Trump? Or
maybe Google, Facebook and Twitter can show us the way to protect our civil
liberties, free expression, and non-partisanship?
Do the
heads of our major entertainment and news organizations, a Harvey Weinstein and
Les Moonves, offer sources of refuge in these supposedly dark Trump years? Have
trusted journals like The New Republic or Der
Spiegel been reliable beacons of truth?
Perhaps we
can look to the elite of the media, to the careers of Dan Rather, Brian
Williams, Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, or Mark Halperin, or stellar writers such
as Leon Wieseltier, Glenn Thrush, or Garrison Keillor to help us recover our
moral bearings. Could a wide array of our best intellectuals, politicians, and
activists help find our way home in in the age of Trump, perhaps truth tellers
such as Doris Kearns Goodwin, Al Franken, or Dianne Feinstein?
Could not
Joe Biden weigh in on the evils of plagiarism, Cory Booker cite the dangers of
fabulism, Harry Reid warn of racial stereotyping, or Kamala Harris on the
perils of religious bigotry?
Maybe the
elites of government will be our touchstones. Trump critic, James Comey, the
director of the FBI, has told Congress on 245 occasions during a single
appearance that he does not know or cannot remember the answers when asked
questions.
The cable
television critic and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
had lied under oath to Congress and fabulously claimed that the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt was largely secular.
John
Brennan, another cable television consultant and the former CIA head, has
trumped Clapper by lying twice to Congress. Brennan also claimed that jihad was
little more than a personal introspective religious journey. Are these
our watchtowers of sobriety in these dark times?
Both
Hillary and Bill Clinton, by education, careers, and service, are
advertisements of the ruling class. Yet, she was the godmother of the disastrous
Libyan incursion, knee-deep in scandal from cattlegate to Benghazi to Uranium
One, and hired a foreign national during the 2016 election to find dirt on her
political opponent through the paid services of foreign sources. Bill was
impeached and somehow ended up worth well over $100 million largely by selling
influence on the premise he and his spouse would one day be back in the White
House. The Clinton Foundation is synonymous with corruption.
So do the
most acerbic critics of Trump and iconic members of our aristocracy inspire
confidence?
Former
National Security advisor Susan Rice, to take just one recent example of a
prominent critic in the news, lied repeatedly about the Benghazi attacks, about
the Bowe Bergdahl swap (the Army deserter served, she said, “with honor
and distinction”), about the sordid details of buying back hostages central to
the Iran deal (“And we were very specific about the need not to link their fate
to that of the negotiations”), about the elimination of weapons of mass destruction
in Syria (“We were able to get the Syrian government to voluntarily and
verifiably give up its chemical-weapons stockpile,”) and about the unmasking of
names surveilled through FISA court warrants (“I know nothing about this”).
The point
of this tour of our elite is not to excuse Trump’s often retaliatory crassness
or bombast, but to remind us that our self-righteous anti- and pre-Trump
aristocracy was so often a mediocracy. It had assumed status and privilege
largely on suspect criteria. Its record abroad and at home inspired little
confidence. Doing mostly the opposite of what elite conventional wisdom
advocated since January 2017 has made the nation stronger, not weaker.
Strangest
of all, the elite’s furious venom directed at Trump, couched in ethical
pretense, has had the odd effect to remind the American people how unethical
and incompetent these people were, are, and likely will continue to be.
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Victor Davis Hanson is an American
military historian, columnist, former classics professor, and scholar of
ancient warfare. He was a professor of classics at California State University,
Fresno, and is currently the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow at
Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He has been a visiting professor at
Hillsdale College since 2004. Hanson was awarded the National Humanities Medal
in 2007 by President George W. Bush. Hanson is also a farmer (growing raisin
grapes on a family farm in Selma, California) and a critic of social trends
related to farming and agrarianism. He is the author most recently of The Second World
Wars: How the First Global Conflict was Fought and Won (Basic
Books).
