The Trump Trend: Up, Down, or Sideways?
By P.J. O'Rourke
Is America going to get a "Trump Bump"? Or is our country headed for the "Trump Dump"? Will Donald Trump be a good president? Will Donald Trump be a bad president?
One person who has almost no control over the answers to these questions is... Donald Trump.
Porter says "politics don't matter." I protest. I'm a political commentator. If politics don't matter, that makes me chief pig herder in Mecca.
I protest what Porter says... But I don't disagree.
America is shaped by trends that are much larger than a presidency. Who the president of the United States is at any given moment matters less than what pundits and media mavens think.
The president may be ignorant or smart, foolish or cunning (and Trump is all four of those things), but the big trends continue to march inexorably along their trajectory.
Thomas Jefferson is rightly considered one of America's most brilliant presidents. And his Louisiana Purchase is rightly considered a brilliant diplomatic stroke. It added an 828,000-square-mile territory to the United States at the cost (in 2016 dollars) of $0.42 an acre.
But consider the trends of 1803. America's population was increasing rapidly. The people needed more land to settle. French military power in North America was diminishing to the point of being laughable. "Louisiana" would have become part of America anyway, at a cost of $0.00 per acre... and sooner, not later.
The same is true for the rest of America's "Manifest Destiny." James K. Polk is a little-remembered American president. His 1846 war against Mexico was opposed by America's elite thinkers, including Henry David Thoreau, former president John Quincy Adams, and then-congressman Abraham Lincoln.
But America was growing not only in population, but in economic strength and vision. Mexico was collapsing into chaos. Nothing that Thoreau, Adams, or Lincoln could have done – or that Polk could have not done – would have kept Texas, the Far West, and California out of American hands.
Keeping the region out of American hands would have impossible after 1849, when America's economic strength got a vision of the California gold rush.
Speaking of Lincoln, we see him as America's greatest president. And he was great, but so was the occasion of his greatness.
Slavery had always been incompatible with American ideals. By the middle of the 19th century, abhorrence at its practice had become an irresistible force. The North was going to fight the South. And the North had all the big trends in population, manufacturing, and moral decency on its side. The North was going to win. And the victory would make somebody look great.
Good leadership can help foster good trends. But trends – good or bad – don't necessarily need leaders. The last third of the 19th century was one of the most rapid periods of economic growth in U.S. history. Per-capita gross domestic product doubled. But consider the men who held the office of chief executive during this amazing business boom: Ulysses S. Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley. They were a mixture of incompetents and nonentities.
Franklin D. Roosevelt is hailed for having taken action against the Great Depression and fighting the Axis powers. But what choice did he have?
When the country is in the midst of a disaster, the president has to at least look like he's doing something. (Take note, George W. Bush... in case you ever have to be president again during a Hurricane Katrina.) But in fact, strong evidence suggests that most of what FDR did about the Depression was busywork, and his policies may have prolonged the economic slump.
Then the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. Was FDR just going to sit around smoking cigarettes and petting his dog Fala?
World War II was won in large part due to trends that were beyond FDR's control. Mostly, it was won by trends in idiocy – Hitler's moronic invasion of Russia and Tojo's nitwit incomprehension of America's material might.
Liberals argue that Trump was swept into office by a trend in idiocy. I don't know about that. What would you call the trend if it had swept Hillary into office?
Actually, no one was "swept into office." In the most hotly contested presidential election in living memory, voter turnout was only about 58%. This trend has been going on for a while. Voter turnout in presidential elections fell below 60% in 1972 and has never recovered. I call it the "Porter Trend." Approximately 97 million Americans who were eligible to vote decided it doesn't matter who's president.
Now that's a trend every president should take into account.
What other big trends will President Trump need to cope with? I'll get back to that question. But not until I write my Thanksgiving "Things to Be Thankful For" column. It will begin with giving thanks that this election is over.
Regards,
P.J. O'Rourke