Trump's opportunity

Victor Davis Hanson notes in National Review,

Derangement Syndrome is a more apt clinical diagnosis for the Right’s hatred of Trump than it was for the Left’s loathing of Bush.

His latest pivot may be too late, but it certainly hit the right notes by presenting his populist themes — unwise trade deals, defense cuts, inner-city violence, attacks against police, illegal immigration, the war on coal, big-government regulations, and boutique environmentalism — as symptomatic of elite neglect not just of the white working class but of minorities as well, upon whom liberal policy falls most heavily. By curbing his personal invective and focusing on Obama’s incompetence and Clinton’s corruption, Trump may succeed in allowing 4 or 5 percent of the missing Republicans and independents to return and vote for him without incurring social disdain.

About every three weeks, terrorists butcher innocents in one or another Western country, usually screaming “Allahu Akbar” during their victims’ death throes. These terrorists have often been watched but otherwise left alone by intelligence agencies. Liberal pieties follow, along with warnings to the public about their prejudices, rather than admonitions to radical Islamists to stop their killing. The ensuing public backlash does not mesh with the Obama–Clinton narrative that the killings were mere workplace violence, a generic form of “violent extremism,” or had “nothing to do with Islam.” Like Jimmy Carter, with his infamous inability to frame the Iranian hostage crisis, so too the latest manifestation of Hillary Clinton is simply unable to identify the origin, nature, and extent of the terrorist threat — much less offer a solution.

In the same vein, with 11 million illegal aliens in the U.S., almost daily we hear a news report of yet another illegal-alien felony, or a new sanctuary city, or an effort by the “undocumented” to get the vote out — none of which enhances open-borders Hillary.

Many of us have been saying for a year now that the last six months of the Obama administration will likely be the most dangerous interlude since the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 or the Carter meltdown of 1980. Restive aggressors abroad have long concluded that Obama is conflicted about American morality, power, and responsibility. After his faux deadlines, redlines, and step-over lines, his apologies, his mythographical speeches, and his deer-in-the-headlights reactions to overseas challenges, he appears to foreign opportunists to be indifferent to the consequences of American laxity and lead-from-behind withdrawal.

Putin is now massing troops near Ukraine. Iran is absorbing Iraq and Syria. China has carved out a thalassocracy in the South China Sea. Tensions will only rise in these areas in the next 90 days, to the point of either outright war or more insidious and humiliating withdrawals from U.S. interests and allies. Either scenario favors Trump’s Jacksonian bluster.

Hillary Clinton has lied about her e-mails, her personal server, and the supposed firewall between her and the Clinton Foundation. She has lied about almost every detail of her tenure as secretary of state, from the killings in Benghazi to her knowledge of sending and receiving classified material. We are back to the cattle-future lying of 1979, when Hillary was said to have had a 31-trillion-to-one chance of telling the truth about her hundred-fold profit.

The problem with chronic lying is that finally the liar reaches a combustible state, one in which she cannot lie any more without contradicting a particular prior lie and yet cannot tell the truth without contradicting all prior lies. To keep them straight, one needs an amoral photographic memory. Hillary Clinton has the requisite shamelessness, but (unlike Bill) not the animal cunning to pull off such serial prevarication. In her latest fabrication that has begrudgingly come to light, Hillary had blamed Colin Powell (who never set up a private server as secretary of state) as the supposed felonious model that prompted her to break the law.

So expect more lies about hacked e-mail from the Clinton Foundation, Hillary’s deleted e-mail accounts, the DNC records, or some as yet unknown private communication about every 48 hours until November. If Trump’s fantasies are the bluster, narcissism, and adolescence of a real-estate and show-biz wheeler-dealer, Clinton’s lies are the steely-eyed and deliberate work of a long-time sociopathic prevaricator who destroys all those around her who weave the webs of her deceit.

Yet Trump so far can get close to Clinton, but not 3 to 4 points ahead. To do that would require continued zeal, but also a complete end to his personal invective against irrelevant third parties — and an ability to raise a lot of money quickly and get his message out in a multimedia campaign.

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