Have you missed me? I’ve been away for a week traveling across Tennessee, Kentucky, and Indiana. I promise to report on what I discovered, if only to ensure that my vacation is tax-deductible.
Here are some quick observations on what’s going on right now:
Peggy Noonan, as she sometimes does, cut to the chase. Trump has no “second act” during which he starts to act presidential. I won’t go as far as to say he imploded.
Now Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield, the world’s leading expert on manliness and moral virtue, explained to us that Trump is “not a gentleman.” He didn’t mean that observation to be a decisive reason not to vote for him. Harvey was, more or less, describing Trump’s “brand.”
Trump may or may not be a gentleman in his private life. We can see, in fact, that sometimes he is. Some women speak well of him. And the impressive adults that his children have become have many of the qualities of ladies and gentleman, thanks, in part, to their caring dad.
What’s wrong with gentlemen in public life? That’s Trump’s real question. They’re losers! McCain and Romney: nice guys who looked good in going down in flames. McCain, in particular, is a loser Southern Stoic.
And no gentleman, such as Jeb “low energy” Bush, could be any match for Hillary Clinton or ISIS or Silicon Valley oligarchs or emasculating political correctness.
The bottom line: Could Trump focus on the “I will win for America and Americans by all means necessary” theme he would, in fact, be winning. If I believed he could defeat ISIS fast, I might, in fact, vote for him.
Trump’s “not a gentleman” brand does encourage ordinary Americans to cast aside the impulse control associated with manners and morals. ”Being honest” becomes being “brutally honest.” And not even that, in Trump’s case. For him, words are weapons, and you say what you please to get your way at the moment.
So “not a gentleman,” in Trump’s case, too often means a kind of self-obsession that has nothing to do with America. Instead of being a jerk for America, Trump seems pretty much like a jerk for whom life is one personal grudge match after another.
Trump seems to be suffering from “Irish Alzheimer’s.” He forgets everything but his grudges.
Things wouldn’t get better if Trump dropped out. The Democrats, as Peter Spiliakos so astutely explained, would immediately fill us with “Trump nostalgia,” based on his “New York values.” They would tell us, in effect, that Trump is a moderate Democrat when it comes to the social issues, particularly women’s and gay rights, trade, entitlements, unions, and even foreign policy (with the exception of immigration). As the Wall Street Journal has pointed out, both of our parties right now are becoming more hostile to free trade and Wall Street, and support has plummeted for “growth” Republicans and the array of positions associated with the Tea Party.
So the deeper problem the Republicans have is that not just the conservative brand but the conservative reality has become as fractured as Yuval Levin’s republic. More on that soon.