President-Elect Trump held a dignified, upbeat meeting with President Obama today; various choices for staffing the new Administration were floated, some excellent and some appalling; and Trump took to Twitter again tonight to complain that protests against him were “unfair!”
Increasingly, watching this whole thing unfold, I feel like America is the defendants in My Cousin Vinnie, our lives and liberties depending on a swaggering, fast-talking impostor with a thick New York accent who has only the vaguest idea what he’s doing. The theme of a well-meaning amateur or impostor, maybe due to a petty scam or a mistaken identity, getting asked to play along with the hoax and save the day, is a venerable plotline in Hollywood, and Americans are accustomed to rooting for it. Trump, I think, never actually expected to become the President, and probably wants to do a good job at it, by his own lights. Watching Trump try to get this right will be the ultimate reality show. Let’s hope it ends well.