Discipline at a Moment of Power
Editor's Note
In a cold civil war, victories can breed their own forms of weakness. A movement that learns how to fight must also learn how to govern, and Daniel J. Mahoney argues, here, that governing requires a different temperament than insurgency. Our moment calls for discipline equal to the stakes, writes Mahoney. Indeed, political energy wins battles, but restraint and clarity sustain a cause over time.
A little over a full year has passed since his second election, and the president remains as polarizing as ever. That reality reflects both the fanaticism of his opponents and Trump’s refusal to act “presidential” in ways that might strengthen his effort to preserve a republic rooted in common sense and self-government. I count myself among those who, like the novelist and essayist Lionel Shriver, agree almost wholeheartedly with Trump’s goals — yet are put off by the bombast that too often accompanies them.
His impressively consequential presidency is, alas, marred by rhetorical bluster that risks exhausting the American people and, worse, undermining some of his most choice-worthy initiatives. President Trump may stubbornly resist advice in this regard, but his friends and supporters — among whom I number myself — remain obliged to offer it.
Don’t misunderstand me. The Never-Trumpers fill me with disgust as they turn a blind eye to the authoritarian Left, which organizes and applauds lawlessness in the streets of Minneapolis while its loudest voices casually invoke Nuremberg trials for Trump and his supporters. It’s sad and perplexing to see Bill Kristol, once a committed pro-lifer of fifty years, now celebrate abortion-on-demand as our most cherished freedom and indulge trans fanaticism. Equally striking is his willingness to endorse Mayor Zohran Mamdani, an authoritarian leftist and bitter enemy of the state of Israel, simply because he has become an ally in the war against Trump and Trumpism.
But those of us who defend Trump against defamation and against the active promotion of woke despotism and ideological insanity are by no means obliged to believe that he can do no wrong or to endorse his every move. In the pages of The Spectator World, Rod Little calls that approach “TIS,” or “Trump Infatuation Syndrome.”
Let’s leave such poses aside. Trump can only benefit from having within his broad coalition truly independent-minded supporters who offer constructive criticism when needed and who point out self-defeating behavior and rhetoric when these risk undermining the one thing most needful, saving the country from those elements on the destructive Left who would transform it beyond recognition. Count me among them: a friend but not a flatterer of Donald Trump and the Trump presidency.
To be clear from the onset, I believe Donald Trump poses no threat whatsoever to American liberty or to our republican institutions. Despite a propensity to vanity that he occasionally jokes about, Trump, it appears, deeply cherishes our nation and its freedoms. He retains an appropriately liberal disdain for those who would close off civic debate and criminalize old-fashioned common sense, and, despite protests from his critics, this is no small thing.
As Paul Gottfried has recently argued, wokeism is far from defeated, as is DEI and the new racialism from which it flows. But at least half the country is fighting back, emboldened by Trump, and the federal government is no longer in open alignment with the forces promoting woke despotism.
Similarly, the curse of ideological indoctrination and active disdain for patriotic sentiment is being lifted from the armed forces. Trump has vigorously defended freedom of thought on college campuses and, through his appointee Harmeet Dhillon, has taken aim at immoral and illegal race preferences and at the institutionalized anti-Semitism that turns a blind eye to the terror cult that is Hamas. These efforts deserve applause and gratitude.
I also applaud the administration’s efforts to confront an unconstitutional and politically unaccountable administrative state. Daniel McCarthy is surely right that, without indulging in abstract philosophizing, Trump and those around him have aided the cause of self-government by challenging the cult of scientific and technical expertise and the New Deal orthodoxies that have steadily undermined constitutional government, without being wedded to a doctrinaire alternative. That is no mean accomplishment.
Moreover, Trump sees through the secular religions of climate change, gender ideology, and national self-loathing as few in the political class do. In this he connects deeply with the American people in resisting the cultish commitments of the hyper-educated. At the same time, his pragmatism and transactional temperament make it more likely that he will address these matters in a commonsense and politically-viable manner.
Gottfried is right that even these are not simple 80/20 issues. A substantial portion of the public — including the academic clerisy, radicalized single women and militant suburban mothers, and professional anti-patriots such as Nicole Hannah-Jones — long ago left the world of common sense behind. They inhabit a dreamland of ideological surrealism where stubborn facts pose no obstacle to elite-driven projects aimed at remaking human nature and society itself. Trump grasps this in his own way, but more sustained argument may be needed in this long ideological struggle.
As Gottfried argues, we must aim patiently to persuade those ordinary people taken in by radical cultural claims. Patience and determination must go hand in hand. At the same time, I have been disappointed by the administration’s lax commitment to vigorously challenging the entrenched abortion regime. Something similar may be said about its flirtation with IVF without sufficient attention to the empirical facts and moral principles at stake.
But with those affirmations and reservations in mind, I now turn to several concrete points of counsel for the administration as it enters its next phase.
1) The president and his team must educate the American people about what is perhaps the signal achievement of this first year: The near-complete stemming of illegal immigration at the southern border. They must explain what is at stake and how this success, barely acknowledged in public discussion, makes possible a new immigration regime that values legal immigration within appropriate limits and restores the meaning of citizenship and sovereignty that have been undermined by tendentious deference to the purported needs of the “undocumented.”
There is neither the will nor the consensus to support the immediate deportation of twenty-five million illegal immigrants. But the administration can begin, as Border Czar Tom Homan has done, by targeting the most egregious criminal aliens and fostering an atmosphere in which self-deportation becomes an attractive option. It must also seriously consider cutting off funding to lawless sanctuary states rather than allowing militants to stir unrest and endanger activists and law enforcement alike. A judicious mix of principle and tough-minded prudence is required.
2) Do the right thing abroad, but do not become inebriated by success. Self-restraint, including rhetorical self-restraint, is not weakness. The hemisphere is better off without Maduro and his unholy alliances, but toleration of Chavista elites must be strictly short term. Let the Venezuelan people govern themselves. And do not speak of oil in ways that sound mercantile or imperial.
There is no need to advertise government intentions on Truth Social. The administration must also clarify the tensions between the so-called Donroe Doctrine and the less interventionist expectations formed after 2016. A case can be made, but it must be made clearly and repeatedly. Trump was never an isolationist, but his base did not expect this level of hyperactivity abroad. The educable public deserves explanation.
3) The president should use his political and moral capital to resist a nascent culture of repudiation on the Right. Stand unambiguously against anti-Semitism and historical revisionism. Churchill remains a hero of Western civilization. William F. Buckley Jr. was not a RINO. A deranged leftist killed Charlie Kirk, not Mossad conspirators. Do not indulge the crazies. Trump’s instincts here are generally sound, but he should say so plainly and encourage others in his administration to do likewise.
4) The administration would do well to show, in the language of the Declaration, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. Defend our interests firmly — but without unnecessary acerbity. Avoid the appearance of bullying. European moralism can be tiresome, but old allies deserve measured respect. Many conservative and national-minded Europeans were dismayed by Trump’s bullying of Denmark over Greenland. America has legitimate interests in Greenland and the Arctic. A negotiated arrangement, perhaps modeled on Britain’s 1957 agreement with Cyprus, might have secured permanent base rights without chaos or mistrust. Avoidable self-inflicted wounds exhaust the American people.
5) Change the tone. Trump’s efforts would be more effective and more widely supported if he occasionally cooled the informality and bombast that characterize him and made a sustained effort to be presidential when circumstances require it. I have many friends and family members, generally well disposed toward this administration, who were taken aback by the president’s crass remarks about the gruesome murder of Rob Reiner and his wife by their son. A magnanimous response here, setting partisan invective aside at least for a moment, would have been noble, high-minded, and in the president’s own interest.
I’ll conclude with a word regarding Glenn Ellmers’ suggestion that Trump adopt a form of Machiavellian realism by being bad in the service of being good. Like him, I’m concerned about the pathological softness Nietzsche diagnosed in modern elites, but I also have reservations. Like Tocqueville, I don’t believe Machiavellian realism, with its infinite flexibility of soul, is morally or psychologically viable. It’s a philosophical fiction that would corrupt those who attempt it.
We have better models. Let us remain with the humane but tough-minded realism of Lincoln, Churchill, Strauss, and Jaffa. That, unfortunately, would be stretch enough for Donald J. Trump. But there is no need for the true realist to choose between decency and strength. The greatest leaders have aimed to be at once good and great. Nothing less will suffice.