Still Winning : Our Last Hope to Be Great Again (9781546085287) Page 2

  “You submit a memo presenting a range of five choices: the top one amounts to Abject Surrender and the bottom one to Nuclear Strike,” Safire wrote. “In this way, the chief executive is induced to choose the one in the middle—Option 3, the most sensible, or at least most centrist, choice.”

  Safire went on to recall one time when he tried the nuclear option—or Option 3—trick on President Nixon, but someone called his bluff: “I tried to get away with the Option 3 trick once with President Nixon, but his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, intercepted my decision memo and panicked me by musing, ‘Interesting you should bring up the nuclear option.’”

  Indeed. Interesting someone should bring up the nuclear option.

  HOMEGROWN DEPLORABLE

  A little background is in order to shed some light on why I see things as I do. And why in 2015 Donald Trump was in my view the perfect political answer to everything that was wrong in Washington.

  For most of my life, all I ever wanted was to write for newspapers. My brother and sister and I started our first single-sheet newspaper when I was eleven years old. Put simply, I liked finding out what was going on and telling others what I found out; if it had a sting to it, all the better. In college, where I majored in political philosophy and English, I worked for daily newspapers every summer and never wanted to go back to school in the fall.

  After working at a couple of newspapers in my home state of Virginia, I got a reporting job as an intern with the esteemed St. Louis Post-Dispatch, with its storied history in the Pulitzer family. Additionally, two of my favorite correspondents—Ernest Hemingway and Truman Capote—had given me a taste of the American heartland outside of the rural South and I wanted to see it for myself. Soon after, I got my first full-time newspaper job in Detroit, when the Detroit News went on strike. After six years in the Motor City, covering murder, the mob, and all manner of mayhem, I got my first job covering politics in Washington. Along with our newborn infant, my wife and I moved east ten days after September 11, 2001.

  In my first days in Washington as a political reporter, following the 9/11 terror attacks on New York City and the Pentagon, it was unnerving to see Humvees parked on bridges and at every intersection. Huge military convoys circled the Pentagon and seeing them on civilian highways around a modern American city was jarring. At the same time, it was also a moment of near-total political unity. The motives and interests of an entire nation were laser focused on a barbaric common enemy that wanted to obliterate every one of us and erase our way of life.

  Even as months turned to years and the Bush administration laid out plans for invading Iraq, there was a remarkably united front in Washington. Democrats joined Republicans to green-light Bush’s invasion plans. Then-senator John Edwards called Saddam Hussein a “clear and present danger” and “imminent threat.” Senator John Kerry, who would soon flip-flop and run a presidential campaign against the war, voted in 2002 to invade Iraq “to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.” Former first lady and then-senator Hillary Clinton offered similarly stark warnings. “He has also given aid, comfort, and sanctuary to terrorists, including al Qaeda members,” she said. “It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons.”

  Clearly, the political class in Washington was unified. Saddam Hussein might not have been directly responsible for the 9/11 attacks, but leaders in both parties were in lockstep that he and his rogue country posed a pressing and legitimate threat to the United States—a threat that could no longer be ignored in a post-9/11 world.

  But humming along under the surface of this apparent unity were the same old divisions that separated those who believed in limited government and those who wanted the government to be all things to all people. Though the federal debt was less than $6 trillion at that point, all signs were pointing to the upward explosion that, in fact, came to pass.

  Never in the history of the world had a more powerful and far-reaching government been assembled. Yet, increasingly, this government had grown less and less answerable to the innocent citizens. The federal bloat was such that whole departments—vast bureaucracies wasting hundreds of billions of dollars—could be eliminated without any real impact on the average taxpayer. It was maddening to behold, and it fed the national anger over a government gone berserk.

  Entitlement spending back then was spiraling toward bankruptcy, although some argued there was still time to fix things before they became dire. Partisans on both sides agreed changes had to be made to ensure the long-term solvency of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. At least there seemed to be a mature recognition on both sides for the need to fix our grave and potentially crippling problems before they consumed us.

  The first sign to me of what lay ahead was how quickly the unity behind the Iraq War crumbled. Not because things got ugly in Iraq—all war is ugly—but rather because the next election cycle was fast upon us and politicians were doing the smooth-shoe to abandon any principle that had become inconvenient. For Democrat presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, their commitment to the troops they had voted to send into battle lasted only until it became politically expedient for them to turn tail and run.

  Think about that for a minute. Kerry and Edwards both argued for the war in Iraq. Both voted to send in brave and heroic Americans to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Not two years later, these two perverted scoundrels were running for the White House on a campaign explicitly opposed to the war in Iraq.

  Republicans were not a whole lot better. They were supposed to be the “conservative” party most concerned about the fiscal viability of America’s entitlement programs. Around the edges they nibbled to make reforms. And the first chance they got to score a big victory before the next election, Republicans introduced and passed the largest expansion ever of any American entitlement program, known as Medicare Part D.

  Meanwhile, federal debt under the supposedly conservative Bush administration climbed from less than $6 trillion to above $10 trillion.

  Then came eight years under President Obama, the insufferable merchant of false hope. He had run a thrillingly positive campaign in 2008, then proceeded to govern like a corrupt Chicago alderman, weaponizing the IRS and the Department of Justice and politicizing everything he touched. He turned the cops into bad guys. He went to Egypt and apologized for America’s oppression of countries and their people around the world. It was simply mind-boggling to watch—and insulting to any true believers in our Constitution.

  Under Obama, the Democrat Party’s embrace of “identity politics” reached a fevered pitch. Their political playbook of racial division was no longer a thing of secret memos between Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The party as a whole came to embrace out-and-out racial political warfare—and what that amounted to was the most highly synchronized display of pure racism the country has ever seen.

  Meanwhile, over in the spending department, President Obama would rack up an additional $10 trillion, boosting the national debt to a whopping $21 trillion for our children and their children to grapple with.

  Even as Republicans gained more and more power in the U.S. Congress during the Obama nightmare, they seemed increasingly incapable of delivering on promises. An innocent citizen would be forgiven for thinking that maybe neither side wanted to fix the big problems of our day, because if those problems got solved in a reasonable way, what issues would politicians run on? How would they possibly raise so much money?

  Meanwhile, the government continued to become larger and larger—and more unwieldy, more untamable, and more indifferent to the wishes of voters. It was literally a Ponzi scheme where new recruits were desperately needed to keep the payments going to the early investors or else the whole thing would come crashing down.

  Interesting that someone wo
uld mention the nuclear option.

  The 2016 presidential election season dawned with two dozen Republicans clamoring for the nomination. There were conservatives and moderates and libertarians and social preachers. We had had a taste of them all—and all had disappointed.

  But oddly, there was a curious element of agreement in this chaotic landscape. We had endured Democrats, conservatives, Republicans, progressives, the Tea Party, triangulators, and even the Contract with America. One thing they all seemed to agree upon was that immigration—legal as well as illegal—was just fine. Those new Americans would be the source for the needed recruits to keep the Ponzi scheme going!

  Thus, the last thing any of these operators wanted was a serious, coherent immigration policy. Why? Because it was too hard to tackle and both sides benefited from the broken system. Liberals wanted illegal immigrants to flow into the country, adding to their political base and making the politicians appear to be openhearted and generous. And the Republicans didn’t want to seem like they were cracking down on those already in tough circumstances. Then you have the Chamber of Commerce wing of the Republican Party, which represents business owners who benefit from cheap labor without the benefit of a system to determine whether workers are in the country legally.

  Also, some in both parties benefited from the cheap labor of illegal immigrants. They want nannies and yard work done for cheap. They benefit from having a permanent underclass of poor workers “hiding in the shadows.” Any discussion of this broken issue would be difficult. And Washington doesn’t do difficult. So, rather than have the debate they should have had, they just didn’t—until Trump forced them.

  It was all somewhat liberating for me. By then I had given up trying to report political news as a reporter and had begun writing my “Nuclear Option” column. As much of a relief as it was to no longer have to treat Democrats as serious people, it was also a relief to give up on the Republican Party.

  “Throw them all out!” became good enough for me. Just blow the whole damned thing up. Whatever is presidential, let’s try the opposite. Whatever is diplomatic, let’s try the opposite. Whatever these people in Washington find most horrifying, let’s try that.

  Needless to say, June 16, 2015, was one of those rare, cloud-clearing days. I will always remember because it was the first time—after fifteen years of covering politics and nearly two decades in the newspaper business—that I ever publicly endorsed anyone for any political office. One minute into Donald Trump’s announcement speech, I realized that we at last had a leader “for just such a time as this.” It was thrilling, and I endorsed Donald Trump completely, freely, and enthusiastically. Warts and all. He was just what so many had been waiting for and praying for.

  In my endorsement column, which I include in the back of the book, I wrote about the heart of why Trump appealed to me and what I now see as his greatest appeal to Americans. He is simplistic in his approach, uncalculated in his remarks, and clear and forceful in what he’s offering. The launch of his presidential ambition showed just what I described in my endorsement:

  As presidential announcements go, it was brilliant. It was simple, and it was patriotic.

  No sun-splashed park with throngs of rented people jammed around an H-shaped stage. No fake columns.

  Just a stage and a velvet blue curtain and a podium. Flanked by American flags carefully folded to show both stars and stripes, Mr. Trump wore a simple uniform of red tie, white shirt, blue suit. Red, white, and blue.

  Get it? Red, white, and blue? America’s colors? The flag? In other words, Mr. Trump loves America. Get it?

  And Trump was never better than when he got down to the nitty-gritty of what’s wrong:

  If the president and his party are telling the truth about all the wonderful ways government can make your life so much better, why is there rioting in Missouri and Baltimore and California after SIX YEARS of Obama and Democrat rule? Why are so many people so desperately miserable today?

  “We don’t have victories,” Mr. Trump said, before running through all the foreign countries that beat America all the time in trade, immigration, defense and economy.

  “I beat China all the time.” he said flatly. “All the time.”

  “When was the last time you saw a Chevrolet in Tokyo? It doesn’t exist.”

  And then the show began.

  Through all the tumult and turmoil and political missteps, the scandalously hilarious episodes, my enthusiasm for Donald Trump never wavered in the slightest. More than anything, I never once doubted that he could win, publicly predicting on a daily basis that, in fact, he would win. There have been times when he attacked someone more viciously than I liked. He has issued some outrageous “tweets.” He has wandered further from the precise truth than I would have liked.

  But for every example of ill-considered comments or behavior, I can point to countless examples of widely accepted, “centrist” establishment politicians who have done the exact same thing. I can give you far more calamitous examples where Americans paid a far more grievous price. Whatever his flaws, Donald Trump is the most accomplishment-driven politician I have ever covered. (Granted, the bar is pretty low in this department.) The press may hate him, but Donald Trump is the most transparent president since the invention of electricity.

  The day after I endorsed Trump for president in my column, he began calling me. He is such a courtly and charming and funny guy. He would call under the auspices of wanting advice. But truth is, his instincts were dead-on from day one. I think he really just called because he likes people who like him. And he had hit the jackpot with me. People in Washington are so obsessed with style. And they hated Trump’s style. They became blinded with hatred—usually over his style. All I can think of is, if they hate a billionaire real estate mogul from New York City because of his style, can you imagine how much these supercilious folks despise the average American for the same reason?

  On these calls, Trump and I would talk politics and policies and gossip. He understood immigration better than any politician I had ever talked to. I suggested that he spend some time understanding gun politics from the standpoint of a regular citizen—who doesn’t have bodyguards. The more we spoke, the more I realized that just maybe he really was curious about what I was thinking. Contrary to the media’s popular slander that he doesn’t listen, he clearly has a finely attuned ear for gathering facts and ideas. For sure, he is quick to dismiss ideas he thinks are without merit, but that shouldn’t be seen as not listening. He listens more carefully than any politician I have ever been around.

  When we talked early on about the crackling support popping up all across the heartland, I did urge him never to take it for granted. He needed to guard that support like his greatest treasure and to remember how often good people like these had been burned by the pikers and fakers—false prophets, I called them—who wound up leading our government only to become self-serving political hacks. He needed to nurture that support and roll it around like a warm stone in his pocket. These people understood that maybe—just maybe—the man of their prayers had finally come. With the support of these Americans, Trump had no reason to play the chameleon skedaddling around trying to be all things to all people.

  Donald J. Trump had tapped into the mother lode, and he knew it better than anyone else.

  His solutions are not always tidy or perfect, but they are a radical departure from the way things have been done in Washington for a very, very long time. In so many ways, Donald Trump is the nuclear option for our times—and the last best option for making America great again.

  CHAPTER ONE

  President Trump joins children at White House Easter Egg Roll (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

  FIGHTING THE LEXICON OF LUNACY

  When Donald Trump and his elegant wife glided down that glass escalator into a political maelstrom on June 16, 2015, few could have imagined just how radically this rough-hewn real estate mogul would revolutionize everything about modern Americ
an politics. Nothing—and I mean nothing—would be altered more shockingly than the very language. I’m speaking of the way people discuss politics. The manner in which people argue in Washington. Even the things that nice people are allowed to argue about in politics would be radically altered—turned upside down and inside out—by Donald Trump.

  It happened on a Tuesday afternoon. I was in my bright little office three blocks from the U.S. Capitol. Sun flooded through the wall of windows facing southeast three stories above Pennsylvania Avenue. From my desk, I could keep an eye on everyone coming and going across the street at the Tune Inn bar, a legendary Washington establishment featuring reasonably priced cold beer and a menagerie of cobweb-mottled taxidermy. Stuffed deer, bear, jackrabbits, bull skulls, and even a few long guns.

  In other words, the Tune Inn is about the only establishment in this whole Federal City that a normal American would walk into and feel right at home.

  This may sound a little weird, but I kept an old rifle scope on the windowsill of my lair and enjoyed watching people come and go along the street. Most fun of all was busting people I knew who were skulking in to the Tune Inn at 10 a.m.—and not for breakfast.

  Perhaps my greatest achievement along these lines was once holding my phone camera and scope steady enough to snap photographs of friends quaffing beers outside on the sidewalk and then sending them the picture as they sat there. I never could figure out how to erase the scope’s crosshairs from the picture, which freaked them out pretty good.

  Once I accidentally stumbled into a buddy’s divorce when I texted him inquiring as to why he had just walked into the Tune Inn so early in the morning. The friend did not recognize my number and assumed it was from a private detective hired by his wife to spy on him. He stormed back outside to confront the dick. He was relieved when he finally called the number to learn it was just me. But I was sorry to hear about his pending divorce.