The triumphant ululations of the almost unanimous Trump-hating media of America and much of the world did not clarify the late election. An unknowable quantity of harvested ballots came from the mass unsolicited mailing to the wildly inaccurate voters’ listings in Democratic-governed swing states, following a plan the Democrats implemented in hundreds of state lawsuits over three years and then hid under the pandemic terror that their allies in the media propagated. This produced miraculous Democratic comebacks from ‘ballot drops’ in the middle of the night after counting had been paused in several selected states, and it quickly became almost impossible to verify these ballots, mixed in with many millions of others. Assuming Trump’s enemies pull this off, sustained by the complicity of the American media, severely compromised as they are by their rabid monochromatic Trump-hate, Trump’s story is still not over.
When cant, snobbery and emotionalism subside, Trump has had the best single first term of any president except Lincoln, FDR and Nixon (though James K. Polk deserves honorary mention for stealing a million square miles from Mexico). The practical elimination of unemployment, illegal immigration and oil imports; the tax reductions and deregulation; the hundreds of federal judges who believe in the Constitution; the deliverance of America from the terror and economic masochism of the Paris climate accord; the progress towards Middle East peace; the destruction of Isis; the drawdown of forces and reestablishment of the theory of nuclear nonproliferation among completely irresponsible states; and the recognition of the Chinese challenge have all been important Trump accomplishments.
Before the onslaught of the coronavirus the bottom 10 percent of US income-earners were gaining in prosperity more quickly in percentage terms than the top 10 percent, the first serious tackling of the income disparity problem. Only such a highly successful policy record could have attracted 73 million votes, despite a sandbag-job by 95 percent of the national media and being outspent two to one, thanks to the limousine-left hypocrites of Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood (who had no problems of conscience in snaffling up Trump’s tax cuts).
Trump’s irritating characteristics are proverbial, but he is the first president since Reagan who did anything for underprivileged Americans. He terrified the flabby, mediocre ‘OBushinton’ political class that handed the White House back and forth for seven terms, and he was the only important western leader who did not behave like a chief mole urging the civil populations into a state of terror over a nasty virus which is only potentially lethal to 1 percent of the population. Trump kept shutdowns to reasonable limits, advanced the development schedule for a vaccine by over a year, and set an example of hope and determination rather than panic and cowardice.
If Biden is inaugurated, it will be with a pinless grenade in each hand. He is straddling a coalition from the racist urban hooligans who rioted all summer (unnoticed by the Democrats who governed the cities they vandalized) to the radical-chic rich poseurs. If Trump wants to complete his political crusade, he will maintain some discretion while the Democrats squander the honeymoon they denied him. He will clean up the most annoying foibles of his public personality and then don the mantle of Andrew Jackson in 1824 after the ‘corrupt bargain’ between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay (men of much greater stature than the Biden gang). He can be a secular and unmutilated Samson Agonistes, and replicate the nonconsecutive terms of Grover Cleveland, if he wishes.
It has been a hectic time these past couple of months as both my wife, Barbara (Amiel), and I have launched books, which in this virus-traumatized year means nonstop Zoom and Skype appearances from the rooms that we work in one story apart in our home. Barbara’s book, Friends and Enemies, is a scorcher that was launched simultaneously in the US, UK, and Canada. It is autobiographical and describes her idyllic English childhood, difficult Canadian adolescence, colorful and successful career as an editor and columnist in Canada and in London, and our nearly 30 years together, an eventful and bumpy ride to the serene present. The ‘Friends’ are thanked gratefully, and the ‘Enemies’ accorded more mercy than they showed us. Both groups are listed. It is, by general agreement, what Boris Johnson used to say of the odd piece I submitted to The Spectator (when I was the proprietor), ‘a stonking read’. My book is a much less significant work on the inevitable Donald Trump: A President Like No Other.
A merry observance of the justly celebrated birth of Jesus Christ and a happy new year in the Christian calendar, to everyone.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s December 2020 US edition.
