...Trump administration's ambassador to the UN. First woman to serve as Governor of South Carolina, and the second Indian-American governor in the country, after Bobby Jindal of Louisiana. At the age of 39, Haley was the youngest governor in the U.S., a distinction formerly held by Jindal. She is a Republican, which really grates on the Dems...is impressive. They are more likely than imagined alternatives to stop any more Iranian nonsense on the seas of the Persian Gulf, or tune out the periodic ultimatums of the Paleostinians, or take seriously the nuclear threats of
North Korea, or get tough when Putin deserves tough treatment‐and they have the will and, increasingly, the means to do what they say. The policy is to be ready for a fight, but neither to prompt nor to welcome one. For Trump, who values ratings and money most of all, wars can quickly lose viewers and cost too much.In sum, we are witnessing one of the great ironies of the modern age. Minorities who are not Trump supporters are doing better under Trump than any past president, liberal or conservative. Environmentalists who despise him know that America has become more effective than its green European critics in reducing carbon emissions, largely through the breakneck production of natural gas. Diplomats who loathe Trump find their good cop talk and soft power has more resonance once it is backed up by a better military, a better national security team, and an unpredictable commander-in-chief who might just be capable of doing anything at any time to anyone anywhere in the defense of American interests and illusory sovereignty.
NeverTrump legal scholars are perplexed that never has a Republican president appointed so many qualified judges and seen them confirmed so quickly. They wonder how that could be so, without at least one David Souter or Harriet Miers. They despair that it might become true that a president who enlists the best and brightest of the "you can’t dare do that" administrative state and the revolving Washington and New York diplomatic and financial elite, is a president who will be rendered inert.
How can things be getting concretely better than they were during the Obama years when expert opinion insists things are getting worse?
The simple answer is that for half the country Trump’s crudity trumps his cunning on the economy and foreign policy. That irony prompts the essential question of this presidency: could crudity have been the accelerant that pushed his agenda forward? And if so, what does that say about those who led us who were far less crude and far less competent‐and far less worried about the consequences of their policies upon those whom they rarely ever saw? Or rather what is crudity when mellifluousness did such damage? And what is morality when a lot of ruin was done by those who claimed by birth, education, reputation, ZIP code, or influence to be so much better than those they hurt?