I spent a good part of this Good Friday in various airports trying to return from a short trip away from Washington, and without benefit of services, prayerbook, or the Gospel accounts of the Passion, I wound up reading a very different and painful (if profane) story: Cobra II, Michael Gordon and Bernard Trainor’s extraordinary military history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. I’m less than half-way through reading Cobra II, but it’s very clear the prime villain of the book is Donald Rumsfeld, whose folly was illustrated by (a) pushing for an invasion of Iraq as a simple illustration of American power, not as a response to genuine threats to our security; (b) deciding from the get-go, as a matter of ideology, against any nation-building responsibilities for post-Saddam Iraq; and (c) obsessively opposing any troop deployments that might undermine his determination to prove all the military planners wrong.It’s not surprising that the publication of this insider account of the Iraq war has coincided with an ever-growing cascade of retired military officials, including several top leaders of the Iraq invasion itself, demanding Rummy’s firing. But as David Rieff explains in a review of Cobra II in The New Republic, Rumsfeld’s apparent invulnerability to the manifest consequences of his sins reflects the Bush administration’s stunning inability to learn from mistakes or adapt to objective reality–and perhaps a broader post-Cold-War American elite habit of believing that our “sole superpower” status makes us Supermen. Good Friday is a pretty good time for reminding ourselves–especially those of us whose Christian heritage includes a messianic role for the United States of America–that while our country has enormous responsibilities and opportunities for bringing order, justice, democracy and freedom to the world, we are not immune from the consequences of human fallibility, or of the folly of proud men who wield power without accountability.
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Editor’s Corner
By Ed Kilgore
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November 8: It Was a Change Election After All
I wrote this insta-reaction to Trump’s victory at New York in the wee hours of the morning, after many hours of staring at numbers and trying to understand them. It’s probably as good an analysis as I can manage days later:
We will be debating the contours of Donald Trump’s comeback presidential victory over Kamala Harris for a good while. Certainly among Democrats, this close but conclusive defeat will be interpreted as flowing from a host of party weaknesses and candidate and campaign mistakes. And Republicans, as winners do, will likely over-interpret their success as representing a watershed victory that will turn into governing coalition that will last for decades.
The simplest explanation, though, may be the most compelling: This was a classic “change” election in which the “out” party had an advantage that the governing party could not overcome. Yes, the outcome was in doubt because Democrats managed to replace a very unpopular incumbent with an interesting if untested successor, and also because the GOP chose a nominee whose constant demonstration of his own unpopular traits threatened to take over the whole contest. In the end Trump normalized his crude and erratic character by endless repetition; reduced scrutiny of his lawless misconduct by denouncing critics and prosecutors alike as politically motivated; and convinced an awful lot of unhappy voters that he hated the same people and institutions they did.
Nobody for a moment doubted that Trump would bring change. And indeed, his signature Make America Great Again slogan and message came to have a double meaning. Yes, for some it meant (as it did in 2016) a return to the allegedly all-American culture of the 20th century, with its traditional hierarchies; moral certainties and (for some) white male leadership. But for others MAGA meant very specifically referred to the perceived peace and prosperity of the pre-pandemic economy and society presided over, however turbulently, Trump. When Republicans gleefully asked swing voters if they were better off before Joe Biden became president, a veritable coalition of voters with recent and long-standing grievances over conditions in the country had as simple an answer as they did when Ronald Reagan used it to depose Jimmy Carter more than a half-century ago.
Just as Democrats will wonder whether a candidate different from Harris would have won this election, Republicans ought to wonder whether anyone other than Trump would have won more easily without the collateral damage to their principles, their sensibilities, and their long-term prospects. It’s true that their craven surrender to Trump made it possible for his campaign to present a unified front that took him far along to road to victory in a polarized electorate, despite all sorts of private grumbling over his countless conspiracy theories and insults to opponents. But it’s not clear at all Trump can bring the kind of change he came to represent to his voters. Indeed, the millions of people for whom inflation became not only an economic handicap but a symbol of government fecklessness could easily and quickly become disillusioned with Trump’s strange mix of protectionism and tax cuts if, as economists warn, it will rekindle inflation and spark global economic warfare. It’s a particularly troubling sign for the GOP that so many potential Trump hirelings and allies have wildly conflicting expectations of what he will actually do.
But for now, Trump’s unlikely comeback coincided almost entirely with an election in which voters wanted change enough to ignore or embrace the dark side of his legacy and agenda. It’s his luck and probably this country’s misfortune, but there’s nothing for it but to move ahead with fear and trembling.