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Mr. Atlee taught us in high school English that any essay hoping to persuade must tackle head-on the other side’s strongest arguments. As in, granted, Trump’s a thug, but [insert superseding point]. Even absolving Hanson for writing before Michael Cohen’s testimony last week, which offered little we didn’t already know, and before Robert Mueller’s forthcoming report, he belly-flops first by ignoring Atlee’s Axiom vis-à-vis Trump’s policymaking.
The president, he writes, inherited failed establishment thinking that demanded a wrecking ball. Besides those overseas problems, Barack Obama presided over anemic economic growth that did nothing to help the “forgotten” white working class, broken and literally dying from opioids, suicide, poor health, and “open borders” through which illegal immigrants poured to compete for jobs. Now we have the Donald, supposedly engineering an economic boom and zealous in defending the southern boundary.
Really? Trump may have goosed some additional defense spending out of NATO, but Hanson ignores evidence that most foreign challenges he cites are either unresolved or in the process of being fumbled. An administration official admitted lack of progress in denuclearizing North Korea; in the case of Iran, Pat Buchanan, the prototype for Trump populism, supported the nukes deal Trump exited.Share
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