The Trump Brexit Intersection

by Conrad Black (May 2015)

ostracize Trump would elicit Lyndon Johnson’s famous “frontlash,” in which those who objected to such cynicism would exceed the numbers of those who fell in with it. Neither candidate has withdrawn, even from any of the remaining primaries; it is an uneasy half-reach between candidates who bracket Trump in policy terms and are too appalled at each other to make a formal alliance. They are like two young teenagers playing “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” Most of the followers of both would probably rather have Trump than the other.

It is anachronistic for Jeb Bush to endorse Cruz, the candidate of government shutdown. Once again, the forces of Republican continuity have failed to grasp that most Republicans and most Americans want to defenestrate into the oblivion of fading memory all those even remotely responsible for the unspeakable sequence of blunders of the last 20 years.

This too, has backfired. Britain has no illusions about the decline of its influence in the last 75 years. But it remains a great and a proud nation. It will not be treated by this departing and, in foreign-policy terms, singularly inept American president like an obstreperous child trying to defer its bedtime. Any of the remaining presidential candidates except Sanders would be an improvement on the incumbent. None could be as transformative of America (to a semi-bankrupt laughing stock) as Obama has been. This creates a challenge and an opportunity for his successor. Donald Trump marked the occasion by announcing that he will bring back to the White House the bust of Winston Churchill that Obama finally manfully acknowledged that he had had removed. The United States has revived quickly from graver political influenzas than the one that now afflicts it, but not so often that anyone should be complacent about it.

First published in National Review.

 

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