Should we applaud the broken clock when it’s right two times a day? What if that clock happens to be leader of the free world?
As a reasonably loyal and patriotic American, I would enjoy nothing more than to support the president—my president—in everything he says and does on behalf of the United States. Believing, as I do, that America is ultimately one big family—albeit an absurdly diverse and dysfunctional one—I occasionally still cling to the fantasy that our leader, in addition to being the nation’s chief executive, can also serve as a sort of father figure: A man of integrity, wisdom and resolve whom we can trust to do the right thing and respect even when he falls short.
In truth, of course, not every American president can be George Washington (including, arguably, George Washington). More to the point, when it comes to public servants—particularly those with the nuclear football—skepticism should always take precedence over deference. All humans are flawed—politicians triply so—and to invest total, uncritical loyalty in another person is a fool’s errand of the highest order.
And yet, every four-to-eight years, roughly half the country comes to Jesus on whomever the newly-elected commander-in-chief happens to be, defending his every action like it came directly from God. Meanwhile, the other half—acting as a cosmic counterweight—grows to hate this man with the fire of a thousand suns, condemning his tiniest faults as the manifestation of pure evil, lamenting his very existence as a blight on the face of the free world.
The media calls this “polarization.”
While American politics has functioned in this sorry way since at least the days of Bill Clinton, it is beyond dispute that the electorate’s mutual antipathy has been ratcheted up to ludicrous speed with the rise of one Donald J. Trump. To liberals like me who viewed Barack Obama as a leader who could do practically no wrong—a man of high intelligence, impeccable taste and the good sense not to invade foreign countries all willy-nilly—Trump comes across as someone who can do practically no right.
Indeed, the 45th president’s behavior has been so consistently appalling since the moment he took office, liberals (and many conservatives) have been able to march in lockstep in opposition to virtually every word that has spewed from his mouth and every executive order that has passed across his Oval Office desk. From his anti-Muslim travel ban to his tacit endorsements of racism and police brutality, Trump appeared destined to fulfill Trevor Noah’s recent characterization of being “on the wrong side of everything in history”—an ugly caterpillar that will never, ever become a butterfly.
But then, on September 6, something funny happened: Faced with a debt ceiling crisis and the prospect of a total government shutdown, Trump sat in a room with Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi—the leading bogeyman and bogeywoman of the left—and cut a deal: The government would stay open beyond September 30, without a requirement to fund a Mexican wall—this despite Trump’s earlier demand that he wouldn’t accept one without the other.
In other words, Trump did right when he could’ve easily done wrong. He compromised when he could’ve stonewalled. For perhaps the first time in his presidential life, he put the interests of the nation ahead of his own selfish need for dominance.
Sure: Trump’s deal with “Chuck and Nancy” was a strictly short-term maneuver that, in all likelihood, was just a roundabout way of poking congressional Republicans in the collective eyeball for being such lousy collaborators since practically the first hour of his administration.
But so what? The end result was the same: The government could continue to function (I use that word loosely) while the president could rightfully take credit for reaching across the aisle and actually getting something done.
In effect, Trump’s budget deal was the silver lining that liberals long assumed didn’t exist: Because he is beholden to no party or clique—because he has no moral center and cares about nothing but himself—Trump is prone, with some frequency, to act as an ideological free agent who is afraid neither of making friends of enemies nor enemies of friends. While he used the GOP to win election and still formally identifies as a Republican, he is at heart a pure opportunist, prepared to work with anybody—on any side of any issue—so long as he comes out looking victorious in the end.
So it was, for instance, that just days after announcing the supposed end to the DACA program—the Obama-era law protecting children of illegal immigrants that, as it turns out, is far more popular than the president realized—Trump abruptly tweeted, “Does anybody really want to throw out good, educated and accomplished young people who have jobs, some serving in the military? Really!…..”
Elizabeth Warren couldn’t have said it better, and to hear those words from Donald Trump—Donald Trump!—is proof positive that our 45th president is someone whom Democrats can work with, after all. Someone whom we, as a people, can occasionally be proud to have put in charge.
I know what you’re thinking: I’ve lost my goddamned mind. As he has proved in a thousand-and-one different ways, Donald Trump is a liar, a con man, a racist and a thug—not to mention a sociopath and malignant narcissist with zero capacity for basic human empathy.
All of that is true—and always will be true—but you know what else he is? The president of the United States. He is the most powerful human being on planet Earth, and the awesome reach of his power is not lessened one iota by the profound magnitude of his awfulness.
In their frothing, maniacal hatred of all that Trump represents, many liberals have forgotten—or rejected—the idea that you can negotiate with someone whom you detest, and they have accused people like Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi—architects of the budget agreement—of selling their party down the river in the name of fleeting bipartisanship.
The fear, one assumes, is that cutting a deal with Trump is a slippery slope to “normalizing” him, and once Trump is accepted as a backroom politician like any other, the nation will have irretrievably lost its soul (and possibly also its healthcare).
The problem with this theory is that Trump is, in fact, a broken clock: He is absolutely wrong at least 95 percent of the time, but that still leaves 5 percent in which he lives up to his billing as the guy who speaks truths that few other public officials ever have. (The truth, for instance, that legislators are bought off by billionaires like Trump, or that globalization has had negative consequences for certain subsets of American workers.)
The conventional wisdom about Trump—largely true—is that his beliefs are shaped by the last person he speaks with—hence the pro-DACA tweet shortly after his meeting with Schumer and Pelosi—and there is real validity to the notion that his presidency remains a hunk of wet clay whose final form will be determined by whichever adviser—or whichever party—has the more nimble hands.
Don’t forget: This is a man who has switched political parties at least five times in his adult life. Are we so sure that he won’t do it again sometime in the next three years? Shouldn’t the Democrats have a contingency plan in the event that the Donald decides the GOP is no longer his cup of tea?
In any case, for Team Never Trump—a group that only grows larger with time—I would recommend an old Lenin adage: Keep your heart on fire and your brain on ice. By all means, condemn President Trump as the wretched piece of orange excrement that he oh-so-obviously is. However, do not allow your contempt for him to so warp your perspective that you can no longer recognize the moments (rare as they are) when he actually behaves well.
Don’t make the perfect the enemy of the bad. If you do, things will only get worse from there.
Trump may not be your president, but he is the president, and you owe it to your country and yourself to push him in the right direction whenever the opportunity presents itself. You might be surprised how good it’ll feel when you succeed.
The Party Crasher 