-By Warner Todd Huston
I hate to burst your bubble, America, but if Donald Trump were to become president we would not get a president who “blows up the system,” nor would we have a president who “does great things.” What we’d have is a do-nothing for four (or perhaps 8) years. But that may not be a bad thing.
One of the reasons many center right voters have become Trump supporters is because they expect he’ll upset the establishment’s apple cart and destroy their grip on power by “doing things” that will give power back to the people. I put “doing things” in quotes because not a single soul out there knows exactly what “things” he could do in order to achieve the destruction of the establishment.
And therein lies the trouble. Trump hasn’t laid out a realistic plan for anything. He just jumps on stage, rambles on and on spouting catch phrases and buzzwords all while offering no substance whatever. In this way he is exactly like our current failed president. When Obama first campaigned for office he was all full of well turned phrases, buzzwords, and airy claims but offered nothing by way of substance. He simply looked good and people just assumed he’d “do something” to rattle the status quo.
Where Trump differs from Obama is that Obama’s entire history prior to running showed he would be a stiff-necked, unbendable, anti-American in the White House. He was an extremist, socialist-styled, doctrinaire left-winger whose entire life previous to the White House proved he’d do his level best to tear down the U.S.A. But his airy rhetoric fooled millions of idiots who voted for him while ignoring his past.
While it is true all of Trump’s current center right supporters are ignoring his liberal past just as moderates ignored Obama’s, the difference between Obama and Trump is that Trump is no agenda-pushing, America-hating, leftist like Obama is. Trump is just a run-of-the-mill liberal without any doctrinaire communist passion behind his assumptions. Whereas Obama believes in his socialist doctrine at the very core of his being and feels the U.S. needs to be punished because of it all, Trump is just a guy who grew up being fed liberal pap and he accepts it at face value without ever having put any time and intellect into examining it all. Trump’s liberalism is just received wisdom spooned out at birth, not a cause to drive to fruition at any cost.
It seems clear that Trump won’t work specifically to undermine the Constitution, the law, and the American way of life as Obama has done. While a President Trump may end up hurting those great things here and there, at the very least it won’t be his goal to tear those things down like it has been Obama’s and like it would be the main purpose for the three Democrat candidates.
Trump is also a capitalist and, unlike Obama, Trump understands that the U.S.A. is great because of private capitalism, not despite it as Obama thinks.
So, in a President Trump we’d get a general liberal who has no left-wing cause to push but who is also a booster of capitalism.
In that respect, if Trump were to become president, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as terrible as if Bernie Sanders, Martin O’Malley, or Hillary Clinton were to win the White House.
But what would a President Trump do?
Probably not much of anything.
Wait, how can I say this, you ask? Isn’t Trump running around saying he’s gonna “build a wall” or “impose tariffs on China” or, well, any manner of claims?
Sure he is. But in reality he wouldn’t really have the power to unilaterally achieve too many of those things. He needs Congress to achieve them. And unlike Obama–whose presidency really has been transformative–a President Trump wouldn’t have Congress behind him.
The truth is, for much of Obama’s years in office he had a Congress that would give him just about anything he wanted. And then, when the GOP took over, he had a Congress that wouldn’t work too hard to stop him. So, Obama had pretty much a free hand to tear the country down just like he always dreamed of doing.
A President Trump, though, is another matter entirely. Initially he’ll face a Congress over which he has no pull at all. The Democrats won’t help him because he ran as a Republican and the Republicans won’t go too far to help him because he is not one of them and ran as an extreme outsider.
Then add the fact that Trump doesn’t know the first thing about the Constitution, the law, or how government works and you’ll get a guy who is great at bluster and crap-all at getting anything done.
Trump may know how to be a CEO and deliver orders to people he can fire if they don’t perform. But he knows zippo about building coalitions among politicians he can’t fire and who risk little by thumbing their noses at him.
In addition you have the war against the “establishment” aspect of Trump’s march to Washington. If he really is the anti-establishment candidate, once he gets to D.C. that same establishment–which will still be firmly in charge of the House and the Senate–will have no incentive at all to work with him.
After all, the GOP establishment has already proven it doesn’t care what the voters think and would be just as happy being in the minority and losing seats to maintain its control over the party.
In the end, a President Trump will be a loud mouthed, publicity-loving, do nothing.
One might think this would be a terrible thing. I’d contend it isn’t. The United States could use a break from arrogant politicians who have an agenda to push. If we can’t get a real conservative like Ted Cruz into the White House the next best thing would be a Donald “do-nothing” Trump to give us all a break from the destructive actions of agenda-driven presidential politics.
So, I say bring on President Donald Trump. We need a guy who will entertain us for four (or eight) years but will otherwise do very little in office.
Up with nothing. Vote Trump.
Still, a President Trump would mean more liberals on the Supreme Court. In fact, turning the SCOTUS blue could be one of a President Trump’s worst legacies.
In the end, if you are a conservative, or even a Republican, supporting Trump is a bad idea. But it isn’t the worst thing that could befall the country in this current political climate.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing news, opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that wrote articles on U.S. history for several American history magazines. Huston is a featured writer for Andrew Breitbart’s Breitbart News, and he appears on such sites as RightWingNews.com, CanadaFreePress.com, Wizbang.com, and many, many others. Huston has also appeared on Fox News, Fox Business Network, CNN, and many local TV shows as well as numerous talk radio shows throughout the country.
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