Halfway through President Trump's first term in office, the jury is still out on his effectiveness in his quest to "make America great again."
Trump has had some apparent successes: the confirmation of Supreme Court justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh, the opening of relations and denuclearization talks with North Korea, a national tax cut, and a simplified set of tax deductions.
...Until now, the fact that Trump is "not Hillary" has been enough. But it will not be enough forever. If the election of 2016 was the "Flight 93 Election" (as Michael Anton wrote in the Claremont Review of Books under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus), a vote for Trump was a no-brainer. Had Hillary stormed the cockpit and seized the controls, America as we understood it would have been finished. At this point in his presidency, it might be said that Trump wrestled control of the left seat and has succeeded in keeping the plane stable and level, but it is not clear that he knows how to land it (a possibility Anton admitted in his essay) ‐ and the terrorists are still beating on the cockpit door, trying to break it down.
He didn't implement, and doesn't appear to be trying, to make any changes in undermining totalitarians power base - their control of education system and public service |