From the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt:

We Can’t Afford to Keep Obama’s Policies or His Persona in the White House
A point or two to add to this morning’s column on the Kobayashi Maru choice that is Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump…
It’s a big risk to count on Hillary Clinton learning from the Obama administration’s mistakes. Perhaps the biggest reason for optimism is Bill Clinton’s surprisingly regular off-the-cuff statements hinting he thinks Obama has largely failed, too. He said at one stop, “Millions and millions and millions and millions of people look at that pretty picture of America [Obama] painted and they cannot find themselves in it to save their lives.” Then he said the country needed to “put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us” – later explaining he only meant the GOP opposition of this era. Then at an appearance in Philadelphia, he said, “Unlike when I became president, a lot of things are coming apart around the world now.”
But if Bill Clinton wants his wife to run against the status quo, so far she’s largely refusing. In fact, offered a renunciation of her husband’s policy on crime, policies that largely worked in the mid-1990s. Is there any reason to think a Hillary presidency would represent a big change from the Obama years?
There’s little reason to think Hillary Clinton is willing to really fight Democratic Party interest groups, even when they’re the driving force behind a good portion of the country’s problems. She’s never going to seriously challenge the Black Lives Matter narrative of racist cops murdering African-American youth with impunity. She’s never going to argue political correctness, speech codes, or runaway administrators are ruining higher education and churning out a generation that struggles to cope with the basic challenges of adulthood. She’s never going to argue that the border must be secure and that those who come here illegally must be deported.
But if Hillary Clinton offers an unspoken promise to continue the Obama policies, Trump will continue the Obama persona in the presidency.
Trump often pushes back against the Left, but he brings his own cult of personality to America’s public life. When it comes to criticism, his skin is as thin as Obama’s. The current president once warned a rebellious Democratic lawmaker, “Don’t think we’re not keeping score, brother.” Trump would be even more vindictive; as he said of Paul Ryan, “I’m sure I’m going to get along great with him, and if I don’t– he’s gonna have to pay a big price.”
If you thought Obama’s “I won” was an arrogant dismissal of those who disagreed or the need for consensus-building, wait until you see Trump in action.
Trump says Obama “led the way” on executive orders and seems to be eager to emulate the far-reaching, imperial interpretation of the president’s powers.
There’s little reason to think Trump would be any more respectful of the Constitution than Obama.
Obama, whose administration famously jailed a YouTube filmmaker after the Benghazi attacks, would be followed by a president who accused Pamela Geller of being a “publicity seeker” who needlessly “taunted” Muslims. (Trump detests political correctness for limiting his speech, not other people’s speech.) Obama revealed in interviews with Jeffrey Goldberg that thinks most other world leaders are foolish and midjudge their own self-interest; Trump thinks almost everyone around him is “stupid” (and demonstrates his confidence in this by telling them obvious lies). Trump is the one man on earth the Obama could call an egomaniac.
The redefinition of the presidency as a pop culture celebrity would only accelerate under Trump. It was shabby and cheap, watching the President of the United states give his first comments about an Islamist terrorist attack in Brussels to ESPN while watching a baseball game in Cuba, wearing shades.
Trump wouldn’t make that mistake, but he would probably continue as a ubiquitous presence on the non-political morning news shows, daytime chat shows like The View, evening cable shows, late-night shows like Jimmy Fallon… I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for a president who isn’t on my television, in non-news, non-political programming, seemingly all the time.