America Has Survived Worse Than Donald Trump

The United States of America was founded in the midst of a bloody revolution, fighting a war against the most powerful nation on Earth. Thirty years later, that same enemy was boarding American ships, bombarding a major port city, and burning the nation’s capital to the ground. And fifty years after that, over half a million people died in a brutal civil war, the political and economic effects of which continued to haunt America for decades.

The point is that the United States has faced many struggles in its two centuries of existence, from wars the likes of which the planet had never seen before, to economic collapse, the threat of nuclear war, and a succession of power-hungry politicians. Through it all, the country has made it through battered but alive, and ultimately stronger than before. When compared with these seismic historical events, the election of Donald Trump as President can hardly be deemed a mortal threat to the survival of the country, even if you disagree with his every policy proposal and despise the man personally.

The rhetoric of many on the Left has become increasingly hysterical, and it is no longer uncommon for them to suggest that the end of the United States as we know it is at hand (see, for instance, the many liberal reviews of The Handmaid’s Tale). But it is ridiculous. Is Trump a different sort of president from what we’ve seen before? Absolutely. But to suggest that he and the Russians are engaged in some sort of secret plot to bring about Russian world domination is at least as stupid as suggesting that the Bush administration orchestrated 9/11.

There are many valid criticisms of this White House. It has lurched from one crisis to the next with no sense of greater purpose. Trump himself has routinely shot himself in the foot, threatening to derail the entire Republican agenda, and if he can’t get a handle on these (avoidable) crises soon, my past suggestion stands—though the hurricane of bad news that was the past couple weeks seems to have subsided somewhat, at least for now. But the available evidence suggests less a nefarious plot to destroy the country than simple incompetence.

Of course, a full investigation could lead to a different conclusion, which is why such an investigation, led by a special prosecutor, is necessary. But at present, deranged talk of treason and the impending end of civilization does nothing to further the very serious conversations about classified information and the firing of James Comey.

Evaluating Trump, 100 Days In

I’ve never been a fan of the narrative, espoused by so many in the media, that the “first one hundred days” of a President’s term is in any way meaningful or an accurate reflection on the success of his presidency. Is it fair to judge a President as a failure for not achieving anything of significance in the first hundred days, but instead using that time to negotiate and plan, and set up a great milestone on day 150? The entire concept reeks more of liberal FDR-worship than any meaningful attempt to quantify the success of a presidency.

That being said, Trump has now been in office for just over 100 days, and now’s as good a time as any to check in on his successes and failures—remembering that a lot can still happen in the 3 ½ years left in his term.

Unfortunately for Trump, the two highlights of his first hundred days that first come to mind are the travel ban (suspended by a federal judge on legal grounds) and the Obamacare replacement bill (pulled from the floor due to lack of votes, though negotiations are ongoing). Though many will disagree with me, I had little concern with either the original or revised travel ban orders (though implementation was a different matter entirely), and the suspension is really not Trump’s fault. The Obamacare bill, on the other hand, was terrible from the beginning, and blame for that debacle must rest with the President at least partially, for embracing it so fully, rushing the process, and attempting to bully conservative skeptics into taking his side.

Those have been perhaps the most high-profile events of Trump’s time in office so far, and it would be easy to write a summary of his first hundred days focusing entirely on those two misfires. But to do so would not be fair to Trump or his administration, and ignore several conservative policy successes. Let us not forget that on his first weekend in office, Trump restored the Mexico City Policy, barring federal funding of groups that promote abortions internationally (such as the International Planned Parenthood Federation). He has assumed a tougher posture in dealings with North Korea, Syria, Iran, and (surprisingly) Russia than Barack Obama ever did, and backed up talk with action. And his recently released preliminary budget is everything Obama’s attempts weren’t: namely, fiscally sane and small government-friendly.

When Trump said during the campaign that he would “surround himself with good people”, I and others mocked him and wondered how much he would actually listen to those “good people”. But he has, in fact, surrounded himself with a truly stellar Cabinet and military advisors (I have my differences with a couple, but on the whole a conservative could not hope for a more knowledgeable and principled group of people), and just as surprising seems to actually be listening to them, at least most of the time.

President Trump still has a ways to go, but overall his time in office is off to a promising start. If he keeps the momentum going, signs an Obamacare replacement bill that actually repeals Obamacare, and maybe tones down the tweets just a bit (I say that reluctantly; I’ve come to enjoy reading them), he’ll have the makings of a great first year.

The Status Quo Can't Last Forever

The election of Donald Trump as President of the United States, against all the odds, brought home a reality that was already becoming apparent: the world is changing, and the old order of the past sixty years cannot last forever. The 2016 election has not been the only indicator: Brexit and the rise of Marine Le Pen in France are two others, which most prominently demonstrate the continuing populist surge across the West. Even the Arab Spring of several years ago could, in hindsight, be seen as a early sign of the dissatisfaction with the established order sweeping the globe.

North Korea seems to grow more belligerent by the day, faced by a United States no longer satisfied with détente and endless rounds of failed negotiations and sanctions which seem to do little good. Iran, too, seeks to become a regional power, spreading their influence in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen. The movement of greater European integration, begun after the Second World War, is stalled, and perhaps is in full retreat already, depending on one’s point of view. Meanwhile, Vladimir Putin seeks both to cement his own power, and return Russia to the imagined glory of the old Soviet Union. And the time of Venezuela’s “Socialism of the 21^st Century” may be reaching its inevitable conclusion.

It is a tangible truth, so much so that one can almost feel it in the air: the second decade of the 21^st century is a time of great, unprecedented change, the past two years especially so. The old order is gradually giving way to something new. What ends up replacing it will not become clear for a long time yet, but its shape is slowly emerging.

All the issues we increasingly struggle with today—from North Korea to immigration and globalization, all the way to the exploding national debt—will be affected by this change. The current, decades-old balance of power in the Korean Peninsula cannot last in perpetuity. Neither can America’s current rate of borrowing and spending. Neither can the European struggle between integrationists and nationalists, and the centralization of power in Brussels. Changes across the world have been gestating for a long time, and many are finally coming to a head.

Change is in the air.

Policy Spotlight: Space Exploration

When you ask voters of all parties and ideologies for a list of the policy areas most important to them, chances are that “space exploration” won’t make the cut. National security, the economy, jobs—all common answers. But even climate change, which regularly gets scorn for how few people in the general population rate it as a top concern, at least gets listed in surveys. To my knowledge, space policy isn’t so lucky; respondents naming that option will likely have their answer lumped into the category of “other”.

But people should care. Space exploration, and the various complications involved, may not be immediate concerns like the unemployment rate or GDP growth, but they are issues looming on the horizon. Meteors of the kind that wiped out the dinosaurs are an ever-present danger, and could easily wipe out humanity. The Yellowstone supervolcano, too, could erupt at any time, and the explosion, though it might not wipe out all human life on the planet, would put a major damper on things, especially here in North America. Statistically, every year humanity spends concentrated on a single planet, the risk of some kind of species-ending event increases exponentially.

So space exploration is far more than simply a luxury for scientists and those who want to build their vacation home on Mars. Our survival may someday depend on it. And while I wouldn’t prioritize funding for space elevators over modernizing the aging Navy fleet, I would consider both to be in the national interest and of high priority (generally speaking).

Which brings us to the appropriate level of government involvement in space exploration. The natural conservative response to space policy should be obvious: Little if any direct government involvement or subsidies, with innovations and explorations led by private enterprises, and the success or failure of those attempts determined by the free market. And that strategy is, overall, a good one. But there is a role for the federal government to play, especially at this early stage.

The current status of the space program exhibits the importance of both the privatization of some key functions of space travel, as well as some government involvement, at least in a limited capacity. SpaceX is the most famous company currently involved in the private space exploration business, and its successes and failures offer opportunities for both innovation and the rise of alternative companies, should SpaceX continue to struggle with explosions and malfunctions of its rockets on the launchpad.

But those same difficulties also prove that, for now, the government has an active role to play—NASA, since the retirement of the Space Shuttle program and the cancellation of its successor program Constellation, has had to rely entirely on Russia to transport astronauts, as well as for most missions to resupply the space station. This, obviously, is both risky and embarrassing for the nation that was the first to land a man on the moon.

Space exploration and development is such a gigantic undertaking that government missions, as well as grants to private companies, are almost essential to begin the process if we are ever to establish any sort of colony on the Moon or Mars, let alone leave the Solar System. Such projects are far beyond what even the largest space-related companies could achieve by themselves.

The level of government support could, indeed should, be gradually scaled back as technologies and the ability of private entities to venture into space improve (as well as profitability—the simple fact is that such research & development would only cost many companies money, and therefore most have little incentive to proceed). And by refocusing NASA’s mission on space exploration and study specifically, and away from liberal objects of interest such as climate change, such an investment need not be as dramatic and costly as it sounds.

Space exploration is in both the national strategic interest (location of resources) and in the interest of humanity as a whole. But the current U.S. space policy has stagnated and degraded to the point where we can no longer even send an astronaut into Earth orbit without help from the Russians. Something has to change, and fast.

Secretary of State: Trump Skips Two Experienced Diplomats, Picks Russia-Loving CEO

Trump has made some excellent choices for his Cabinet so far. Nikki Haley for U.N. Ambassador? Awesome. Betsy DeVos for Education Secretary? Superb. James Mattis for Defense Secretary? Stellar. And just this week, word came that he will choose former Texas governor Rick Perry as Energy Secretary, another great choice to flesh out an already qualified and conservative circle of advisers.

And then, just as we’re all becoming slightly giddy at just how well the new Cabinet is shaping up, Trump goes and picks ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department.

In short, Tillerson is a bad choice and should be denied Senate confirmation. Bad for conservatives, who were hoping for a full-spectrum constitutional conservative and instead get a man who supports a carbon tax and whose company has given money to Planned Parenthood. And bad for America, who needs someone who will boldly stand for American interests and human rights around the world, and will instead be offered someone who was awarded the Russian Order of Friendship and opposes Western sanctions over the invasion of Crimea.

And by getting the nomination, Tillerson beat out both Mitt Romney and John Bolton, two men who would have been trusted to deal forcefully with both Russia and other American adversaries around the world.

Several Republican senators have already hinted that they will oppose Tillerson during Senate confirmation proceedings. The Left, too, will almost certainly oppose him based on his resume as a “Big Oil CEO”, but this is one of the rare instances where the goals of Right and Left are the same, despite their differing reasons.

Rex Tillerson should get a fair hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, once the nomination is made official, as should all presidential nominees. But in the end, he should never be allowed inside the State Department in any official capacity.

The Russian Threat

It’s like something out of a dystopian, Cold War-era novel—two major American presidential candidates, either of whom have a realistic chance at becoming the leader of the free world, and both are indebted to Russia.

On one side, there is Donald Trump, a candidate who seems unable to go more than a few weeks at a time without heaping lavish praise upon Vladimir Putin as a “strong leader”, praise that may in fact be the most consistent policy issue of the entire campaign. And the lovefest goes beyond mere words—the hiring of former campaign chairman Paul Manafort being the most notable example. Manafort, of course, had extraordinarily close ties to pro-Russian elements in Ukraine, and worked closely with pro-Russian former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych for a decade. Other ties between Russia and Trump exist, as well, including evidence that Russia has significant investments in the Trump Organization—something confirmed by Donald Trump, Jr. in 2008. And, of course, Trump’s frequent questioning of the importance of the NATO alliance.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton attempts to portray herself as the Mitt Romney of the 2016 election, calling out Trump on his Russian ties and openly discussing the likely role Russian hackers had in the DNC leak from earlier this summer. But she herself has a multitude of troublingly close ties to the Kremlin, if never going so far as to openly praise Putin himself. She has been an active participant in Barack Obama’s open appeasement of Russia over much of the past eight years, from the Russian “reset” to the toothless response to the Russian seizure of Crimea and intervention in eastern Ukraine.

Moreover, shady connections between the State Department, the Clinton Foundation, and Russia in the Uranium One deal, as well as other instances, discredit Clinton as being any sort of strong voice against Putin’s continued powermongering.

The simple fact is that in this bizarre election, a little more than two decades after the end of the Cold War, both major party candidates will likely seek to further appease Russia if elected. It is a certainty that Putin will attempt to further expand his influence in the Middle East, sow further discord in Ukraine, and tighten his grip on Crimea, and neither Trump nor Clinton will effectively challenge him on those scores. Should Putin, emboldened, begin to look further abroad, to say the NATO allied Baltic nations, there is no guarantee that either Trump or Clinton would stand firmly with our allies there as well. In this respect, both will only continue and expand on the Obama legacy.