It has been ten days.
The campaign signs that haven’t already been gathered — discolored as the lawns whereon they wobble in the autumnal wind — are now litter. Partisan astronomers have taken a brief break from the speculation of rising, and shooting, political stars. You’re no longer bothered by pairs of inquisitive strangers in matching vests (“Are you registered?”).
Some poor souls must count the last of the ballots still, but may the rest of us finally, mercifully, leave the campaign season behind? It’ll return soon enough, at any rate.
We’ve had our say, and so has everybody else, about the former president’s paradoxically moderating effect on this election’s outcomes. This great political agon of our time was for the most part — despite the apocalyptic lead-up — a mild and bloodless scuffle. (Exaggeration is part of the American culture and political lexicon — this is not a complaint, just a note — and we’ll be back to fight for the “soul of the nation” and the “fate of democracy” again next season.)
For now, if the conservative intellectual class sincerely wants voters to move on from Trump, it needs to allow them to do so: Refuse to make his reanimated presidential campaign the central debate of contemporary conservatism, especially as we’re confronted with burning philosophical and policy questions.
Trump has given life and meaning to a lot of people.
Forget the white working class that was temporarily enamored of him. An entire subspecies of professional politicos owes its existence to the old boy. By resuscitating demand — and lowering the standards — for witless, careerist punditry, he created a habitat for an ageing class of anti-talented journalists and formerly zestful partisans. (Some condolence is warranted — what would become of, say, the Lincoln Project without him?)
The perverse incentive to keep Trump present enough and controversial enough to be relevant — to keep him, at any cost, as a viable subject for commentary — is fulminant as ever.
Merrick Garland’s favorite classified-documents collector will move to the periphery partly as a matter of course and time — Fox News cut its transmission of Trump’s candidacy-announcement speech presumably because he doesn’t sell as he once did — but this can be expedited. For example, the November 16 issue of the New York Post had its lovely little editorial regarding the announcement perfectly placed: in the margin of the 26th page.
I know what you’re thinking. Why talk about Trump and electoral campaigns to argue that we should stop talking about Trump and electoral campaigns? There’s no contradiction here, but there is a truth worth repeating: We bestow value upon issues when we choose to argue about them — freedom of expression and of religion and of commerce, the equal application of the law, foreign and security policy: These are worthy of our attention and exertion.
Some Trumpian policies are still relevant and worthy of discussion, too (as are, for instance, Gaullist and Reaganite ones — not that their namesakes are comparable), even after their originator’s political expiry date. But they are substantive only qua debates about policy, and not about the personality with whom those policies were first associated.
The postelection postmortems, autopsies, and political obituaries will keep coming, but let’s get a move on and be done with our adieus: and turn to what matters.