Every time a new Nate Silver column came out about the Rust Belt states or Michael Moore sent a letter to Ivanka asking her to do something about her father before Election Day 2016, my friends hit the panic button.
I asked them, “What is the worst thing that can happen if Trump actually won? Will the Republic fall?”
Okay, let’s say the people really want an irresponsible, incompetent, unfit for the job candidate, even though he claims he has “a great temperament.”
Say they want the first so-called Republican ever to praise a former KGB boss who was a sworn enemy of his country trying to subvert our electoral process. Forget the Manchurian Candidate; this may be the Muscovite Candidate.
Say the voters want a man who has learned everything about foreign policy from his beauty contest business, a man who is a credit to the history faculty at Trump U.
And while we’re listing all his qualifications, say the folks are happy with His Hairiness being the greatest liar in the annals of American politics.
It’s a head-scratcher why this man hasn’t been taken off the streets and put away for his own safety, instead of running for the most important job in the world.
In a worst-case scenario—and this was a hypothetical, I warned my anxiety-prone friends—let’s say by some fluke, he increased his approval rating among blacks from 1 percent.
It turned out to be true that Mexicans love him. Muslims love him. Women love him. The physically disadvantaged love him. Believe me, as he said, everybody loves him.
Given all of that, I’m still not buying that time-share in Winnipeg.
And here’s why:
First of all, he will lose tomorrow.
The Trump Raw Deal, or whatever his program may be called should he emerge victorious, as they say in politics, will have to pass through the legislative branch. Congress, as we know, is dedicated to making sure nothing gets done.
Executive Orders he bragged will enable him alone to fix whatever is broken—all Obama’s great programs, like guaranteeing clean drinking water and clean air you don’t see—will be thrown out by the judicial branch, he hopes.
That’s why the greatest democratic system ever invented has three branches of government. The Founding Fathers put in that tripartite business to guarantee we would never have to worry about a freak character like a Donald Trump running the country. It’s worked for 226 years!
In the unlikely chance that a new president ignores the two other branches in the checks-and-balances system, he will face the threat of impeachment. The charges: fraternizing with the enemy, whatever. But that won’t be necessary.
The forty-fifth president, if I’m wrong, will wake up in the bedroom next to the Lincoln Bedroom, occupied by his foreign policy adviser, the Henry Kissinger of his administration, Vladimir Putin. Combing his hair in the mirror, he will ask himself what does he really need all this agita for?
“I’ve got all the material I need for that movie I’m making about the experience of running for president, a horror movie.”
The script idea was to test the bedrock American concept that anybody can grow up to be president. And Trump is anybody. The last fifteen months has all been a form of political conceptual art.
True, his election may be a calamity. But all calamities are bad.
Should the worst happen, let’s give the guy a break. I am willing to predict he will be the best president we have.