“I can say what this [2016
Presidential] election will most assuredly be, at least on the Republican side:
anything but boring. On the Democratic side Hillary Clinton may wind up debating
herself on an empty stage with good lighting. But Republicans will have Scott
Walker, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Marco
Rubio and probably John Kasich duking it out. Add Carly Fiorina, and some
others….What a heck of a fight this will be.” —Pulitzer Prize-winning
conservative columnist—and former Presidential speechwriter—Peggy Noonan, “The
Too-Smooth Cruz,” The Wall Street Journal, Mar. 28-29, 2015
For some reason I don’t
recall now, I clipped out the page where Ms. Noonan’s article was originally
printed, put it aside, and then found it by chance only a week or so ago. As
soon as I re-read this quote, I burst out laughing.
There’s an obvious name
missing here—indeed in the entire article. I suppose you could say that Ms.
Noonan did anticipate a candidate coming out of nowhere and making at least a
momentary splash when she used that phrase “and some others,” as if recalling
Herman Cain (remember him) from 2012. But that really would be stretching
things, wouldn’t it?
Many of my friends on the
liberal side of the spectrum will chortle at Ms. Noonan’s lack of foresight
about the 2016 election. But I don’t offer this to ridicule her.
(Indeed, she warned early
on that Donald Trump’s chances that year should not be airily dismissed, and
she’s endured more than her share of brickbrats from him and the MAGA faithful
since then for her periodic attacks on him—perhaps most memorably, in a direct hit on his emphasis on his “strength,” assailing his “whiny, weepy
and self-pitying” character.)
No, I put this out there
to illustrate that the Washington establishment that Ms. Noonan joined in the
Reagan administration is much like how Oscar-winning screenwriter William
Goldman described Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything...... Not one person… knows
for a certainty what's going to work. Every time out it's a guess and, if
you're lucky, an educated one.”
It’s safe to say that,
unlike what Ms. Noonan expected, Bernie Sanders gave Hillary Clinton an
unexpectedly tough time in the Democratic primaries.
But this is what’s really
wild: Trump beat 16 rivals for the GOP nomination that year, including
those Ms. Noonan praised, in a case of being overly charitable, for
being “serious talents with big accomplishments.”
Well, grant her this:
nearly all of those 16 possessed governmental and/or national security experience
that the eventual nominee conspicuously lacked.
And all but one—retired
neurosurgeon Ben Carson—had been answerable to the public, either voters or (in
the case of Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina) shareholders in her company.
Instead, GOP primary
voters embraced a private-company executive with no financial
transparency and no board of directors that could remotely question his
plans.
This year, 91 criminal counts
on four indictments, not to mention two adverse decisions in civil courts, did
nothing to dent Republican faith in Trump’s candidacy.
Yet, even with a field significantly
narrower than the divided one he conquered eight years ago, he still romped through
the primaries.
Nothing like this has
ever been remotely seen in the history of Presidential campaigning. No other
candidate would be so shameless in defying scandal. No other electorate has
ever ignored at such a high level the weight of so much evidence of bad faith, corruption, and basic lack of character.
To adapt a phrase from
one of his scorned rivals, “low-energy Jeb” Bush, the former reality-show host did
become “the chaos President.”
Famous not for being a
great business executive but for playing one on TV, Trump was anything but the
proverbial “dark horse” candidate.
But he became (to borrow a phrase from the
field of finance) “the black-swan” candidate—one elected through a series of
unexpected, even close to unknowable, events.
That black-swan candidate
found his rock-solid base—and is now slated to be a Presidential nominee for
the third time—in a contingent that conservative Peter Wehner, in a New York Times
opinion piece, termed “Fifth Avenue Republicans”—diehards who would
support Trump even if, as he boasted back in 2016, he shot someone on that tony New York street.
We can’t begin to tell
what this year’s events will be, especially now. That’s why polls are as good
as useless at this point.
That’s also why
maintaining vigilance about threats to democracy can be so frustrating. But, as
Shakespeare would say, “the readiness is all.”
In one sense, Ms. Noonan
was right: the 2016 GOP race, with Trump insulting rivals, lashing out at
anyone remotely critical of him, and circulating falsehoods almost as often as
he opened his mouth, was “anything but boring.” But now she’d probably agree
with the adage about being careful what you wish for.
For myself, after the
past eight exhausting years, I can’t wait to get back to “boring.”
