Changing things

Victor Davis Hanson, whom I wish were selected as a top advisor to the president, writes,

If Trump shows that his actions are a reaction to past extremes, his changes will win public support.

...The classical message is that to effect change, the agent must first anticipate from where and why furious opposition will arise — and then how best to preempt it and turn it against the opponent. Key to the strategy of change is to remind citizens that the present action is a corrective of past extremism, a move to the center not to the opposite pole, and must be understood as reluctantly reactive, not gratuitously revolutionary.

Such forethought is not a sign of timidity or backtracking, but rather the catalyst necessary to make change even more rapid and effective.

Take Trump’s immigration stay. In large part, it was an extension of prior temporary policies enacted by both Presidents Bush and Obama. It was also a proper correction of Trump’s own unwise and ill-fated campaign pledge to temporarily ban Muslims rather than take a pause to vet all immigrants from war-torn nations in the Middle East.

Who would oppose such a temporary halt? Obviously Democrats, on the principle that the issue might gain political traction so that they could tar Trump as an uncouth racist and xenophobe, and in general as reckless, incompetent, and confused.
Obviously, the Left in general sees almost any restriction on immigration as antithetical to its larger project of a borderless society run by elites such as themselves. Obviously Republican establishmentarians fear any media meme suggesting that they are complicit in an illiberal enterprise.

...the Left is gambling that each outrage is a small nick to the capillaries of the Trump administration — after a few months the total blood loss will match the fatal damage of an aneurysm. The result will then be such a loss of public credibility that the Trump administration will become paralyzed (think Watergate, Iran-Contra, or the furor over Iraq), or so deterred that it will shift course and fall into line.

Trump needs to carefully consider the full effect of executive orders and the certain reactions against them to the second and third degree — not because he should cease issuing them (so far the orders have almost all been inspired), but to ensure that they are effective and understood. In this way, they may win rather than lose public support, especially if the relevant cabinet secretaries are on board and out front with the media. In other words, only by taking actions deliberately and with forethought can he bring about not so much change as a long-overdue return to sanity.

Read more here.