It was momentous, an achievement beyond belief: The inevitable election of Hillary Clinton as president had been averted, leftism was down on its knees and the issue was whether President Donald Trump could follow through. A year has passed, and he absolutely has. But a question lingers.
This is no longer America, or is it?
Trump is kooky, after all, and someone who has given fresh meaning to the clich? of being one’s own worst enemy. By way of alienation, he is rife with insults, vulgarity, juvenilia and narcissism. He has given us a disgraceful White House reality show, and, by way of supposed rescue, we’ve had some politicians, bureaucrats and others behaving just as bad in different ways, dropping every pretense of old standards or honesty to fulfill impeachment ambitions.
Even being a successful president when everyone is cooing sweet tunes in one’s direction is tough. Crazy Trump has been successful when the cooing has been replaced by cursing, and the biggie, of course, was getting Neil Gorsuch on the Supreme Court. The issue here was not so much rounding up the votes – the GOP Senate majority had them – but picking a man of solid integrity, deep intellect and, astonishingly enough in this day and age, respect for the Constitution.
The court long ago began discovering rights where there were none while rewriting American culture. Progressive justices have tended to see the Constitution as a weary, old, out-of-tune document. Yes, it could be brought up to date by amendments, but legitimacy of that kind didn’t happen often. So they resorted to their own moral intuitions, using obscure legalese to explain how their decisions somehow related to hints of broad principles maybe in the document that they were slowly destroying.