PERSPECTIVE FROM THE 19TH HOLE: This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf. Out of college, my first job was a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon and I went on from there to practice writing in all of my professional positions, including as a Congressional press secretary in Washington, D.C., an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, and a private sector lobbyist. This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.
Every morning I read the Wall Street Journal for at least two reasons: First, the writing is of high quality, a distinction in this era of bad writing in newspapers; and, second, almost inevitably, I find new thought-provoking ideas.
As you might imagine, many of the quotes that appear below deal with one Donald Trump, who continues, by bluster and name-calling, to confound political analysts and threaten the very future of sound political discourse.
Bret Stephens, December 15 column
The central foreign policy challenge facing the next president is how to re-establish American credibility with friends who no longer trust us and enemies who no longer fear us.
William McGurn, December 15 column
Instead of whining about Mr. Trump’s support and the stupidity of his followers, here’s to the Republican contender with the wit to try to take that support away from Mr. Trump by offering Mr. Trump’s voters a clear, strong and superior alternative.
Charles Krauthammer, December 10
Brilliant. And very economical. That is, if you think that bloodthirsty terrorists — “people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life,” as Trump describes them — will feel honor-bound to tell the truth to an infidel customs officer. They kill wantonly but, like George Washington, cannot tell a lie. On this logic hinges the great Maginot Line with which Trump will protect America from jihad. I decline to join the chorus denouncing the Trump proposal as offensive and un-American. That’s too obvious. What I can’t get over is its sheer absurdity.
Gerald Seib, December 16
The exchanges in many ways captured the tenor of the entire Republican race to date. Candidates such as Mr. Bush have struggled to offer conventional answers in an unconventional year. Mr. Trump, meantime, offers little of the conventional formulas or multi-point plans that once were campaign staples, focusing instead on simply offering himself as the plan of action.
Karl Rove, December 17
“The U.S. would be heading further in this direction if Hillary Clinton becomes president. This might sound outlandish, but consider that President Obama has repeatedly taken unconstitutional actions and sabotaged the separation of powers. “What the president is suggesting,” Georgetown law professor Jonathan Turley said regarding Mr. Obama’s executive order on immigration, “is tearing at the very fabric of the Constitution.
“A Clinton presidency would ratify the new post-Constitutional order. Mrs. Clinton explicitly says that she will disregard the separation of powers and assume the legislative branch’s prerogative.”
Peggy Noonan, December 18
The Democrats in that time had two debates, with little fanfare, with a vibe of “please don’t watch.” It was less like public officials running for president than people in the witness protection program accidentally strolling onto a stage. In the second debate the stage was almost empty—front-runner Hillary Clinton, an aged Vermont socialist with Einstein hair, and a fit young heartthrob with nothing to lose and nothing to say.
Also, Peggy Noonan, December 18
What a year of wonders. For a good portion of it there were three Republican presidential candidates who, if you added up their polling numbers, had the support of more than half the voters—and they had never, not one of them, won a political office in their lives. On-the-ground Republicans surveying the past 15 years of unwon wars, great recession, feeble recovery and a world on fire, thought: “Who gave us this world? The professional political class. So it’s time to reach outside politics and consider other kinds of experience and attainment.”
Another wonder: The political parties swapped their longtime roles, styles and ways of being. The Democrats became the party of primogeniture, the Republicans of rebellion. The Democrats were once alive, chaotic and brawling, the Republicans staid and orderly. Not anymore. It is the Democrats who are accepting a coronation, the Republicans who said no to ancestral claims. The deflation of Jeb Bush is a huge story. With his failure to rise, the consultant class and shock-and-awe fundraising took it on the chin. Jeb was not the answer to any question the base was asking.
Holman Jenkins, December 19
Our guess is that Mr. Trump has always planned on being satisfied with making a splash and ventilating his high opinion of himself. He will rightly be able to claim that he gave neglected voters a voice and transformed the debate. Notice that he manages to maintain his jolly equanimity even when being vilified. He is not grimly “on a mission” as so many candidates are whose self-image is wrapped up in electoral success.
We could be wrong but the Trump effort is probably self-liquidating. Expect a glorious, “I’ve got better things to do than hang around with you losers” exit just about the time he would have to start spending real money to keep going.
Dave Shiflett (the ghost writer for Donald Trump’s first book), December 22
Instead he rolls merrily along, like fortune’s child, bolstered by terrorist fear and political competitors variously seen as pathological liars, empty suits or the butt-ends of political dynasties. He is also the default candidate for all who have grown weary of culture cops and bureaucratic bullies. For a real-estate guy, he seems to have the political game figured out pretty well.
Bret Stephens, December 22
We also want to turn the Republican Party into a gated community. So much nicer that way. If the lesson of Mitt Romney’s predictable loss in 2012 was that it’s bad politics to tell America’s fastest-growing ethnic group that some of their relatives should self-deport, or to castigate 47% of the country as a bunch of moochers—well, so what? Abraham Lincoln once said “If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend.” What. Ever. Now the party of Lincoln has as its front-runner an insult machine whose political business is to tell Mexicans, Muslims, physically impaired journalists, astute Jewish negotiators and others who cross his sullen gaze that he has no use for them or their political correctness.
And while we’re building a wall around our party, let’s also take the opportunity to throw out a few impostors in our midst. Like that hack, George Will. Or John Boehner, Eric Cantor, Mitch McConnell, Jeb Bush and every other Republican In Name Only. Or Marco Rubio who didn’t chicken out on immigration reform quite as quickly or convincingly as Ted Cruz did. Or the Republican “Establishment” and “elite”—like the editorial board of this newspaper—who want to flood the country with cheap foreign labor so they can enrich their Wall Street pals.
All of them must be humbled, re-educated or thrown out, like old-time cadres with suspected bourgeois tendencies. How else will real Americans get a hearing and find their voice? What’s a lost election cycle or two when the soul of movement conservatism is at stake?
As for what the soul of that movement is supposed to be, we can figure that out later. Donald Trump is a candidate of impulses, not ideas. (If you can hire people to write your books you can also hire them to do your thinking.) This doesn’t seem to have perturbed his supporters in the slightest. Mr. Cruz is happy to be on any side of an issue so long as he can paint himself as a “real Republican”—the implicit goal here being the automatic excommunication of anyone who disagrees with him. Naturally, he’s rising.
Karl Rove, December 24
President Harry Truman, by contrast, thought decades ahead. The haberdasher from Missouri reformed the government to meet new challenges after World War II and created international structures that helped contain America’s adversaries and win the Cold War. Mr. Obama’s vision is limited to the coming months, to the next quarter, to the end of his term. Whenever events undermine his view of the world, he has the habit of retreating to an alternate reality. Mr. Obama is a man with an uncommonly rigid, anti-empirical mind.
George Will, December 26
If you look beyond Donald Trump’s comprehensive unpleasantness — is there a disagreeable human trait he does not have? — you might see this: He is a fundamentally sad figure. His compulsive boasting is evidence of insecurity. His unassuageable neediness suggests an aching hunger for others’ approval to ratify his self-admiration. His incessant announcements of his self-esteem indicate that he is not self-persuaded. Now, panting with a puppy’s insatiable eagerness to be petted, Trump has reveled in the approval of Vladimir Putin, murderer and war criminal.
In 2016, a Trump nomination would not just mean another Democratic presidency. It would mean the loss of what Taft and then Goldwater made possible — a conservative party as a constant presence in American politics.
It is possible Trump will not win any primary, and that by the middle of March our long national embarrassment will be over. But this avatar of unfettered government and executive authoritarianism has mesmerized a large portion of Republicans for six months. The larger portion should understand this:
One hundred and four years of history is in the balance. If Trump is the Republican nominee in 2016, there might not be a conservative party in 2020 either.