Im-Politic: Why I Voted for Trump

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Big Tech, Black Lives Matter, censorship, China, Conservative Populism, conservatives, Democrats, economic nationalism, election 2020, entertainment, environment, free expression, freedom of speech, George Floyd, Hollywood, Hunter Biden, Immigration, impeachment, industrial policy, Joe Biden, Josh Hawley, journalism, Mainstream Media, Marco Rubio, police killings, Populism, progressives, regulations, Republicans, Robert Reich, Russia-Gate, sanctions, Silicon Valley, social media, supply chains, tariffs, taxes, technology, Trade, trade war, Trump, Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Ukraine Scandal, Wall Street, wokeness

Given what 2020 has been like for most of the world (although I personally have little cause for complaint), and especially Washington Post coverage of endless early voting lines throughout the Maryland surburbs of the District of Columbia, I was expecting to wait for hours in bad weather to cast my ballot for President Trump. Still, I was certain that Election Day circumstances would be a complete mess, so hitting the polling place this week seemed the least bad option.

Hence my amazement that the worst case didn’t pan out – and that in fact, I was able to kill two birds with one stone. My plan was to check out the situation, including parking, at the University of Maryland site closest to my home on my way to the supermarket. But the scene was so quiet that I seized the day, masked up, and was able to feed my paper ballot into the recording machine within about ten minutes.

My Trump vote won’t be surprising to any RealityChek regulars or others who have been in touch with on or off social media in recent years. Still, it seems appropriate to explain why, especially since I haven’t yet spelled out some of the most important reasons.

Of course, the President’s positions on trade (including a China challenge that extends to technology and national security) and immigration have loomed large in my thinking, as has Mr. Trump’s America First-oriented (however unevenly) approach to foreign policy. (For newbies, see all the posts here under “[What’s Left of] Our Economy,” and “Our So-Called Foreign Policy,” and various freelance articles that are easily found on-line.). The Biden nomination has only strengthened my convictions on all these fronts, and not solely or mainly because of charges that the former Vice President has been on Beijing’s payroll, via his family, for years.

As I’ve reported, for decades he’s been a strong supporter of bipartisan policies that have greatly enriched and therefore strengthened this increasingly aggressive thug-ocracy. It’s true that he’s proposed to bring back stateside supply chains for critical products, like healthcare and defense-related goods, and has danced around the issue of lifting the Trump tariffs. But the Silicon Valley and Wall Street tycoons who have opened their wallets so wide for him are staunchly opposed to anything remotely resembling a decoupling of the U.S. and Chinese economies and especially technology bases

Therefore, I can easily imagine Biden soon starting to ease up on sanctions against Chinese tech companies – largely in response to tech industry executives who are happy to clamor for subsidies to bolster national competitiveness, but who fear losing markets and the huge sunk costs of their investments in China. I can just as easily imagine a Biden administration freeing up bilateral trade again for numerous reasons: in exchange for an empty promise by Beijing to get serious about fighting climate change; for a deal that would help keep progressive Democrats in line; or for an equally empty pledge to dial back its aggression in East Asia; or as an incentive to China to launch a new round of comprehensive negotiations aimed at reductions or elimination of Chinese trade barriers that can’t possibly be adequately verified. And a major reversion to dangerous pre-Trump China-coddling can by no means be ruled out.

Today, however, I’d like to focus on three subjects I haven’t dealt with as much that have reinforced my political choice.

First, and related to my views on trade and immigration, it’s occurred to me for several years now that between the Trump measures in these fields, and his tax and regulatory cuts, that the President has hit upon a combination of policies that could both ensure improved national economic and technological competitiveness, and build the bipartisan political support needed to achieve these goals.

No one has been more surprised than me about this possibility – which may be why I’ve-hesitated to write about it. For years before the Trump Era, I viewed more realistic trade policies in particular as the key to ensuring that U.S.-based businesses – and manufacturers in particular – could contribute the needed growth and jobs to the economy overall even under stringent (but necessary) regulatory regimes for the environment, workplace safety, and the like by removing the need for these companies to compete with imports from countries that ignored all these concerns (including imports coming from U.S.-owned factories in cheap labor pollution havens like China and Mexico).

I still think that this approach would work. Moreover, it contains lots for folks on the Left to like. But the Trump administration has chosen a different economic policy mix – high tariffs, tax and regulatory relief for business, and immigration restrictions that have tightened the labor market. And the strength of the pre-CCP Virus economy – including low unemployment and wage growth for lower-income workers and minorities – attests to its success.

A Trump victory, as I see it, would result in a continuation of this approach. Even better, the President’s renewed political strength, buoyed by support from more economically forward-looking Republicans and conservatives like Senators Marco Rubio of Florida and Josh Hawley of Missouri, could bring needed additions to this approach – notably, more family-friendly tax and regulatory policies (including childcare expense breaks and more generous mandatory family leave), and more ambitious industrial policies that would work in tandem with tariffs and sanctions to beat back the China technology and national security threat.

Moreover, a big obstacle to this type of right-of-center (or centrist) conservative populism and economic nationalism would be removed – the President’s need throughout the last four years to support the stances of the conventional conservatives that are still numerous in Congress in order to ensure their support against impeachment efforts.

My second generally undisclosed (here) reason for voting Trump has to do with Democrats and other Trump opponents (although I’ve made this point repeatedly on Facebook to Never Trumper friends and others). Since Mr. Trump first announced his candidacy for the White House back in 2015, I’ve argued that Americans seeking to defeat him for whatever reason needed to come up with viable responses to the economic and social grievances that gave him a platform and a huge political base. Once he won the presidency, it became even more important for his adversaries to learn the right lessons.

Nothing could be clearer, however, than their refusal to get with a fundamentally new substantive program with nationally unifying appeal. As just indicated, conventional Republicans and conservatives capitalized on their role in impeachment politics to push their longstanding but ever more obsolete (given the President’s overwhelming popularity among Republican voters) quasi-libertarian agenda, at least on domestic policy.

As for Democrats and liberals, in conjunction with the outgoing Obama administration, the countless haters in the intelligence community and elsewhere in the permanent bureaucracy, and the establishment conservatives Mr. Trump needed to staff much of his administration, they concentrated on ousting an elected President they considered illegitimate, and wasted more than three precious years of the nation’s time. And when they weren’t pushing a series of charges that deserve the titles “Russia Hoax” and “Ukraine Hoax,” the Democrats and liberals were embracing ever more extreme Left stances as scornful of working class priorities as their defeated 2016 candidate’s description of many Trump voters as “deplorables.”

I see no reason to expect any of these factions to change if they defeat the President this time around. And this forecast leads me to my third and perhaps most important reason for voting Trump. As has been painfully obvious especially since George Floyd’s unacceptable death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers, the type of arrogance, sanctimony and – more crucially – intolerance that has come to permeate Democratic, liberal, and progressive ranks has now spread widely into Wall Street and the Big Business Sector.

To all Americans genuinely devoted to representative and accountable government, and to the individual liberties and vigorous competition of ideas and that’s their fundamental foundation, the results have been (or should be) nothing less than terrifying. Along with higher education, the Mainstream Media, Big Tech, and the entertainment and sports industries, the nation’s corporate establishment now lines up squarely behind the idea that pushing particular political, economic, social, and cultural ideas and suppressing others has become so paramount that schooling should turn into propaganda, that news reporting should abandon even the goal of objectivity, that companies should enforce party lines in the workplace and agitate for them in advertising and sponsorship practices, and that free expression itself needed a major rethink.

And oh yes: Bring on a government-run “Truth and Reconciliation Commission” to investigate – and maybe prosecute – crimes and other instances of “wrongdoing” by the President, by (any?) officials in his administration. For good measure, add every “politician, executive, and media mogul whose greed and cowardice enabled” the Trump “catastrophe,” as former Clinton administration Labor Secretary Robert Reich has demanded. Along with a Scarlet Letter, or worse, for everyone who’s expressed any contrary opinion in the conventional or new media? Or in conversation with vigilant friends or family?

That Truth Commission idea is still pretty fringe-y. So far. But not too long ago, many of the developments described above were, too. And my chief worry is that if Mr. Trump loses, there will be no major national institution with any inclination or power to resist this authoritarian tide.

It’s reasonable to suppose that more traditional beliefs about free expression are so deeply ingrained in the national character that eventually they’ll reassert themselves. Pure self-interest will probably help, too. In this vein, it was interesting to note that Walmart, which has not only proclaimed its belief that “Black Lives Matter,” but promised to spend $100 million on a “center for racial equality” just saw one of its Philadelphia stores ransacked by looters during the unrest that has followed a controversial police shooting.

But at best, tremendous damage can be done between now and “eventually.” At worst, the active backing of or acquiescence in this Woke agenda by America’s wealthiest, most influential forces for any significant timespan could produce lasting harm to the nation’s life.

As I’ve often said, if you asked me in 2015, “Of all the 300-plus million Americans, who would you like to become President?” my first answer wouldn’t have been “Donald J. Trump.” But no other national politician at that point displayed the gut-level awareness that nothing less than policy disruption was needed on many fronts, combined with the willingness to enter the arena and the ability to inspire mass support.

Nowadays, and possibly more important, he’s the only national leader willing and able to generate the kind of countervailing force needed not only to push back against Woke-ism, but to provide some semblance of the political pluralism – indeed, diversity – required by representative, accountable government. And so although much about the President’s personality led me to mentally held my nose at the polling place, I darkened the little circle next to his name on the ballot with no hesitation. And the case for Mr. Trump I just made of course means that I hope many of you either have done or will do the same.

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Im-Politic: Impeachment and the Mind of a Diplomat I

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Blob, House of Representatives, Im-Politics, impeachment, Trump, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, William B. Taylor

When the House of Representatives’ public impeachment hearings open this week, one of the star witnesses for the prosecution – and perhaps the star witness – is expected to be William B. Taylor, former chief U.S. envoy to Ukraine. His appeal to President Trump’s opponents is easy to understand, since he was both deeply involved with Ukraine policy when the alleged actions that ostensibly triggered Mr. Trump’s latest round of troubles took place, and since he’s compiled such an impressive record of service to America, especially as a decorated military veteran.

I haven’t yet made up my mind as to whether Taylor’s remarks at his October 22 closed door appearance before House investigators will seal or significantly strengthen the case for impeachment. (So far I’m leaning “No,” for reasons I’ll detail soon.) What is clear to me is that Taylor’s opening statement, and answers to questions from the Democrats and Republicans involved, put on full display a syndrome long common among America’s diplomatic corps (and broader foreign policy establishment) whose pervasiveness should disturb anyone who believes that the nation’s approach to world affairs should prioritize American interests.

The syndrome is called “Client-itis”. As the name suggests, it’s applied to foreign policy officials who fall in love with the countries they’re focused on, and who act as if their chief responsibility is championing that country’s interests in U.S. corridors of power, not vice versa. And last month, Taylor both came off as a prime example, and strongly suggested that his real beef with the President (and the real beef of the foreign policy Blob in general) concerns Mr. Trump’s doubts about Ukraine as a vital U.S. interest worth antagonizing Russia over, not about any supposed Trump improprieties.

Taylor’s Ukraine-philia emerged right off the bat in his prepared statement before the investigators: “While I have served in many places and in different capacities, I have a particular interest in and respect for the importance of our country’s relationship with Ukraine. Our national security demands that this relationship remain strong.”

But Taylor also eventually made clear that far more than cold strategic calculations underlay this view. As he explained, also at work was an “emotional piece,” that “is based on my time in Ukraine in 2006, 2009, when traveling around the country, I got to know Ukrainians and their frustrations and difficulties and those kind of things. And then coming back and seeing it now where they have the opportunity, they’ve got a young President, a young Prime Minister, a young Parliament, the Prime Minister is 35 years old. This new government has appealed to young people who are so idealistic, pro-West, pro-United States, pro-Europe, that I feel an emotional attachment, bond, connection to this country and these people.”

Is it possible that Taylor nonetheless was able to distinguish American from Ukrainian interests anyway, despite these strong feelings? Sure – but the closing passage of his statement justifies such strong doubts that it’s worth quoting in full:

“There are two Ukraine stories today, Mr. Chairman. The first is the one we are discussing this morning and that you have been hearing for the past 2 weeks. It’s a rancorous story about whistleblowers, Mr. Gjuliani, side channels, quid pro quos, corruption, interference in elections. In this story Ukraine is an object.

“But there’s another Ukraine story, a positive, bipartisan one. In this second story, Ukraine is the subject. This one is about young people in a young nation struggling to break free of its past, hopeful their new government will finally usher in a new Ukraine, proud of its independence from Russia, eager to join Western institutions and enjoy a more secure and prosperous life.

“This story describes a Nation developing an inclusive, democratic nationalism, not unlike what we in America, in our best moments, feel about our diverse country – less concerned about what language we speak; what religion, if any, we practice; where our parents and grandparents came from – more concerned about building a new country.”

Taylor returned to the strategic argument, but not for long, concluding his statement with “This second story, Mr. Chairman, is the one I would like to leave you with today.”

The problem is, however moving this description of the new Ukraine, none of these considerations mitigating for viewing that, or any, country as a “subject” – i.e., worth helping because of its alleged virtues – should be standing at the forefront of U.S. policymakers’ worldview. If such support can contribute to America’s freedom, security, and prosperity at costs and risks deemed acceptable by the American political system (meaning, ultimately, by voters), then their pursuit becomes entirely legitimate. But their intrinsic nature is secondary. That is, an “object” of U.S. interests is precisely what must remain first and foremost for the U.S. government and its officials when dealing with foreign countries and regions.

Taylor is absolutely correct in noting that aiding Ukraine has been a strongly supported bipartisan American policy goal. But as he and his Democratic questioners also made clear, Donald Trump wasn’t sure about Ukraine’s relation to America’s well-being at all. And Mr. Trump is not only the current Constitutionally elected President of the United States. He also ran – and won – on a platform that emphatically opposed a foreign policy made on Taylor-like bases.

That is, an “object” of U.S. interests is precisely how the President views Ukraine. And it’s a decision whose legitimacy Taylor has unquestionably overlooked. Let’s hope that in their impeachment proceedings, the House and Senate don’t.

In my next post:  Taylor’s testimony and the case for clearing Mr. Trump. 

(What’s Left of) Our Economy: What the Mini-Deal Says About Trump’s China Policy

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agriculture, business investment, censorship, China, decoupling, democracy, Democrats, election 2020, Elizabeth Warren, Hong Kong, Hong Kong protests, human rights, impeachment, Populism, Republicans, tariffs, Trade, trade talks, trade war, Trump, Uighurs, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, {What's Left of) Our Economy

The “Phase One” min-deal reached by the United States and China tamping down bilateral trade tensions for the moment, speaks volumes about the three major forces that are now driving President Trump’s China policy, and that will keep shaping it through the next U.S. election – though not always in consistent ways. They are:

>the President’s evident belief that his reelection hopes are being threatened mainly by revived impeachment threats but also by an economic slowdown that has unmistakably been influenced by the so-called trade war with China;

>his consequently increased need for political support from the establishment Republicans so numerous in Congress who have never boarded the Trump Tariff Train and who are worried about their own reelection chances next year; and

>Mr. Trump’s consistent (though generally unstated) belief that no matter how the formal trade talks proceed, America’s national security as well as economic interests require the U.S. economy to continue steadily decoupling from China’s.

The strength of the impeachment drive faced by the president is now indisputable. Some polls are even showing growing Republican support for not only impeachment by the House but removal by the Senate. Moreover, this political challenge comes at a time when the President’s strongest suit by far (at least according to polls) – his economic policy record – is looking somewhat weaker.

Few signs point to a recession breaking out by Election Day, much less during the preceding weeks or months. But growth has been slowing to levels that Mr. Trump himself has deemed unacceptable – in no small measure because they were the rates that prevailed for most of the Obama administration.

The tariff-heavy Trump trade policies hardly deserve all the blame. (See, e.g., this recent post.) But the failure of business investment to stay elevated following passage of major tax cuts for business is especially telling. It buttresses claims that both the President’s various sets of tariffs and the inconsistency with which they’ve been both threatened and applied have inhibited companies from approving big new expenditures on new factories and other facilities.

As a result, nothing that can reasonably be expected from Washington (in other words, ruling out a big infrastructure spending bill) is likelier to boost the economy more than a nerve-calming trade truce with China mainly featuring some Chinese market opening or re-opening (especially for agricultural products) in return for some U.S. tariff cuts, promises to refrain from new levies, or some some combination of such moves. At the least, such an agreement would in theory help growth maintain the momentum it has remaining.

A mini-deal along these lines would also please the Senate Republicans who might ultimately judge the President’s fate, and who generally have lagged far behind the GOP base in turning against pre-Trump China and broader trade policies. Moreover, as I’ve written, impeachment politics have greatly magnified their sway over Mr. Trump before. Despite his sky-high popularity with Republican voters, the President was heavily dependent on their political backing until this spring in order to neutralize any impeachment chances while his Russia ties were being investigated. That’s surely why his early policy initiatives were dominated by traditional Republican priorities, like tax cuts and repeal of former President Barack Obama’s healthcare overhaul, rather than by populist priorities like an infrastructure bill and the prompt imposition to tariffs.

Once the Special Counsel and other investigations flopped for various reasons, Mr. Trump had a much freer hand. But because of the emergence of “UkraineGate,” for now, those days are over. Probes growing out of those events are certain to last for months. Therefore, continued, much less higher, tariffs on China that could further drag on the economy and further frustrate the rural constituencies so crucial to the President and many other Republicans seem out of the question.

The President is so hamstrung that he’s been unable to marshal greater public support for staying the tariff course even though China is antagonizing American public opinion with its harsh suppression of the Hong Kong protests and the Muslim Uighur minority, and with its heavy handed efforts to extend its censorship practices to the National Basketball Association and other U.S. businesses. And don’t forget: These developments have placed China in a much weaker position, too.  

One reason that the President hasn’t been able to capitalize could well be his reluctance to declare publicly the functional equivalent of economic war, or his intent to decouple – presumably because any such statements would prompt the Chinese to crack down even further on American companies even doing business in the PRC that have nothing to do with job and production offshoring aimed at serving the U.S. market from super-cheap and highly subsidized Chinese facilities, as opposed to serving Chinese customers. And that reasoning has been entirely understandable.

Much less understandable – the President’s insistence that a trade war with China would be easy to win and inflict no economic harm on Americans, rather than choosing to challenge his compatriots to endure some sacrifices in order to beat back a mortal threat to their national security as well as prosperity. No wonder public support for so-called hard-line policies remotely strong enough to offset the opposition and reservations of the Congressional Republicans and most Democratic politicians is nowhere to be seen.

And don’t doubt that the Chinese fully understand. Whatever problems they initially experienced in figuring Mr. Trump out, they surely have concluded that they’re best advised to play the waiting game on the broader and deeper so-called structural issues dividing the two countries (e.g., intellectual property theft, technology extortion, massive subsidies) until the President is replaced by a Democrat who’s much easier to deal with.

Indeed, the evidence for this conclusion is abundant. China issues have played a small role in the Democratic primary campaign so far – even when it comes to long-time critics of pre-Trump trade policies like Democratic Socialist Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren. One likely explanation: In recent years, Democratic voters and leaners have markedly flipped on those pre-Trump approaches, from deep dislike to general approval. This shift in public opinion (matched in part by a trade flip in the other direction among Republicans and leaners) may also warrant some Chinese confidence that even a President Warren might prove a more acceptable interlocutor than Mr. Trump.

Nonetheless, the formal talks are not the only track on which the Trump administration’s China trade policies are running. And the other track – featuring unilateral U.S. moves to restrict Chinese involvement in the American economy, and thereby foster decoupling – is much less controversial than the trade talks and especially the tariffs and tariff threats clearly required to spur any meaningful progress.

Highly revealing on this score (in terms of the importance attached in Washington to decoupling): Even as a high level Chinese delegation was jetting to Washington, the President approved actions against Chinese tech companies and Chinese officials that were justified by human rights concerns, but that in the first case clearly advanced decoupling. Just as revealing (in terms of possible Chinese acceptance of a more skeptical new bipartisan U.S. consensus on China policy): Despite the provocative timing, the Chinese didn’t turn around and head back home once they heard the announcement.

Reinforcing the new American consensus on decoupling has unmistakably been the growing realization by the U.S. corporate sector that its heavy bets on China have dangerously increased its vulnerability not only to the whims of American politics, but to a Chinese regime that’s turned out to be much less hospitable than expected. As a result, “Phase One” is not only a suspiciously convenient-looking term being used by the President to describe his new deal. It also looks suitable for describing where his administration’s overall China policy stands right now.     

Im-Politic: Why Former Ukraine Envoy Kurt Volker Really Matters

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America First, foreign policy establishment, globalism, Hunter Biden, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, John McCain, Kurt Volker, Russia, Trump, Ukraine, Ukraine Scandal, Vladimir Putin

Kurt Volker, who just resigned as special U.S. envoy to Ukraine, is testifying in closed session to Congress today, presumably to shed light on charges that President Trump improperly (and maybe impeach-ably) asked that country’s leader to investigate possible corruption by Democratic Presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

As much as I’d like to know what Volker says on this score, I worry that neither the lawmakers questioning him nor America’s supposedly watchdog Mainstream Media will examine an issue that’s at least as important: Why on earth did the Trump administration hire Volker in the first place? Because the likeliest answer will provide more evidence about an immense flaw in Mr. Trump’s foreign policy, and a consequent, neglected danger to American democracy, that shows no sign of ending any time soon.

President Trump, after all, campaigned promising to disrupt and transform American foreign policy. Out would be what he condemned as a globalist strategy that inevitably led to Forever Wars in places like the Middle East, and benefited only the country’s elites. In would be an “America First” approach he claimed would serve the entire nation’s interests.

As I’ve explained, the President’s foreign policy record in office has been mixed, but America First elements have definitely been introduced. And one of the biggest examples is policy toward Russia – whether you believe Mr. Trump has been motivated by a conspiracy with Russia strongman Vladimir Putin to fix the 2016 election, or by a sincere determination to deal realistically with a major (and nuclear-armed) military power.

And one of the biggest pre-Trump U.S.-Russia sticking points had been Ukraine – whose independence (including the freedom to tilt toward the West if it wishes) globalist U.S. Presidents have tried to maintain, against Moscow’s designs, but which Russia believes belongs squarely within its sphere of influence.

I’ve previously argued against antagonizing Russia over Ukraine because the latter’s fate was never viewed as a vital U.S. interest even during the Cold War. The idea that it’s become more important now makes no sense at all from an American standpoint. Worse, the United States plainly lacks anything close to the military capability to help Ukraine decisively (just look at a map if you don’t already understand why). So policies like arming the country to the hilt, and encouraging the idea that it can resist Russian hegemony militarily, look suspiciously like virtue-signaling exercises to “fight to the last Ukrainian.” Vastly preferable for all concerned, as I see it, is something like the deal I first outlined here.

The President has said little explicitly on the subject, but his reluctance as early as the 2016 campaign to go all-in on Ukraine arms aid indicates he’s open to such thinking (again, whatever his motives).

Which is why the Kurt Volker appointment was so bizarre. For Volker has long supported a hard-line anti-Russia approach to Ukraine. In fact, he was such a strong backer of military aid (and a “military solution” to the ongoing crisis) that he viewed former President Barack Obama’s Ukraine policy as needlessly spineless. Indeed, Volker is a protege of the late Arizona Republican Senator John McCain – one of the most prominent of the Ukraine-Russia hawks, and a leading Trump critic on foreign policy and many other issues – and in 2012 became head of a new institute created at Arizona State University to promote such ideas. (That’s why the school’s student newspaper broke the story of his resignation from the Trump administration late last month.)

Neither Volker’s views nor his affiliation with McCain is the slightest bit improper. (His work for defense contractors who would profit handsomely from Ukraine arms sales? That’s another matter altogether.) What is downright weird – and troubling for two reasons – is Volker’s decision to take a job with Mr. Trump’s State Department.

The first reason has to do with whose agenda Volker was serving – the elected Mr. Trump’s, or the globalist foreign policy establishment in which he worked for three decades. Given all the evidence that’s emerged throughout the Trump administration of bureaucrats and even Trump appointees committing acts of “resistance”. (See here for numerous examples, along with this unprecedentedly anonymous New York Times op-ed.) Given Volker’s ties to McCain, and given the way the so-called Ukraine scandal has so suddenly become a threat to Mr. Trump’s presidency, it’s vital to know whether Volker was one of these subversives.

If anything, the second reason is more depressing. For Volker’s appointment in the first place once again reveals a chronic weakness of the Trump administration and “Trump-ism” that will take many years to address even if the President and his supporters started right now: Mr. Trump entered office well before he or like-minded individuals paid any attention to the task of developing a group of skilled policymakers and analysts capable of staffing an administration both competently and loyally. As a result, the President had no choice but to fill any number of key posts with figures who, even when Republican and/or conservative, were far from America Firsters.

Not that this situation excuses the resistance that so many of these officials have mounted. But until those with Trump-ian leanings and the needed resources start creating the institutions needed to give these ideas scale and staying power, conservative nationalism, or nationalist populism, or whatever you want to call it, may wind up as a flash in the pan. Moreover, even if its adherents can keep the presidency, the clandestine bureaucratic revolt that’s been waged for three years, with all its dangers to accountable, democratic government, is only likely to worsen. And you should worry about that even if you’re a Never Trump-er.