Anyone paying attention to the Trump rise to power knew that his presidency would not be one of quiet rectitude - a Jimmy Carter presidency of sweaters, good will, and fireside chats. Nor would it be that of patrician, Kennebunkport, George Herbert Walker Bush, or any one of a number of 'presidential' presidents who had preceded him.
He was a vaudevillian, a tummler, a Borscht Belt comedian. He was as raw and hilarious as Jackie Mason, Don Rickles, and Joan Rivers put together. He was the master of the personal parody, the caricature, the takedown, the smear. He was a one-man band, a stand-up comic, a master of ceremonies of a circus act.
His Washington would not be the old, staid, wood-paneled, protocoled Robert's Rules of Order Washington. More at home with the glitz and glamour of Las Vegas, its bright lights, sequins, tinsel, and runways, he would fashion the White House in that image. He would take down the old traditional icons of American history, get rid of Chippendale, Townsend, and Reynolds and deck the halls with his images - starlets, American baroque, and all the glamour and fantastical expressions of contemporary culture he could find.
No one expected Pablo Casals or Robert Frost, icons of the Kennedy Camelot years, artists of the old, forgotten generation, no Ronald Reagan and George Bush II brush clearing, back-forty cowboy grit, no FDR aristocratic patrimony, no Jefferson Monticello. The Trump administration would be a departure, a break from the ossified traditions of the past. His years would be not just populist but popular - American popular culture is what defines the nation not the Washington ballet or the New York City opera.
He was not a compromiser, an across-the-aisle supplicant - he was a bullying, aggressive, no-holds-barred street fighter who made his bones in the dog-eat-dog world of New York real estate. 'So sue me', was his calling card. Braggadocio, empty promises, wheedling, and canny back-door deals were his stock-in-trade. There was nothing genteel or reserved about him.
Trump has made good on all his promises - the White House ballroom, the Triumphal Arch, beautiful people - not the Jackie Kennedy Euro-dames but blonde, blue-eyed, peaches-and-cream beauties from Iowa, young women proud of their simple heritage, patriotic to the core, and with an unmistakable American enthusiasm.
He and his staff have taken no prisoners. When grilled by gotcha Democrats in Congressional hearings, they have tossed aside the old prayerbook, refused to genuflect, and have barked back retorts to their tormenters recalling their own smarmy ways, calling them out, refusing to sit back and toady to fools. Trump's Press Secretary has shut up reporters with a summary 'Next', and the President himself has not hesitated to call opponents stupid.
The Left has cried foul. Trump is not acting presidential, they say. Where is his sense of decency, respect, honor? His arrogance and flippancy dishonor the office of the president. His remaking of the White House in a meretricious, bourgeois style offends the spirit of the Founding Fathers. His boorish, crude, barnyard behavior does a disservice to American exceptionalism and the righteousness of a nation of principle, responsibility, and good faith.
His supporters, on the other hand, and most of America outside the liberal warrens of the coasts, cheer every takedown, every invocation of the real America. The WWF (World Wrestling Federation) will showcase its muscles and macho bravura at the White House, and nothing could be more Donald Trump. Of course professional wrestling is fake, but what a show it is! Popular by any measure, and like stock car racing, very American.
There are few scripted Trump presidential press conferences. Trump is the most accessible President in history, eager to answer shouted questions from reporter, turning the whole presidential scene into a marvelous three-ring circus. He is the ringmaster, but his spot-on caricatures of his political opponents - sharp, hilarious images, fit to a tee - are the stuff of Grossinger's comedy. No one tunes in to the news to hear about his policy initiatives - they are clear, unequivocal, straightforward, and predictable - but for the show, the circus act. What will he say next?
Everything he has done has been well within the margins of Constitutional government. His deployment of federal troops to enforce the laws against illegal immigration and to halt the increase in inner city crime; his destruction of Iran's nuclear capacity; the current war against a murderous, terrorist Iranian regime, the removal of a brutal Venezuelan dictator, the opening up of oil and gas fields, the reversal of the corrosive social policies of the Left all are the other half of the show.
Yet, the American Left cannot help themselves and conflate the two. They attack Trump for his behavior and for their own unhinged, fantastical assumptions about him - a king in waiting, a tyrant, a dictator, a homophobic racist - not his policies. Their hate has metastasized to the point where it has become viral, epidemic, with a life of its own.
The Trump circus cannot be the exciting, anticipated extravaganza it is without the clown show of the Left. They are the perfect foils, the dupes, the fools which make it fun to watch Trump's lashing of them. Everything Trump does is designed to enrage the Left to apoplexy. Yes, a new White House ballroom is long overdue, but such a showy, glitzy bourgeois creation? The Kennedy Center, home of opera, symphony, and ballet was also showing its age, but the planned Trump renovation, like the ballroom, was designed to madden his outraged opponents.
The Great Washington soap opera would be nothing but reruns if it weren't for the likes of AOC, the Squad, Pocahontas, Chuckie Schumer, and the felines of Congress. The Left is a caricature of leadership, a feral pack of scavengers, a hysterical mob claiming legitimacy. Gender choice and reassignment? White supremacy? Homophobia? All fictions, balmy assumptions, a priori conclusions, nonsense and bad taste. Americans get it, see it, dismiss it, and are glad that progressivism has been outed for the sham that it is.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said it best:
Progressivism seeks to replace the basic premises of the Declaration of Independence, and hence our form of government. It holds that our rights and our dignities come not from God, but from the government. It requires of the people a subservience and weakness incompatible with a Constitution premised on the transcendent origin of our rights.
That's being polite. What is on display is 'a romp of the addled' - a St. Vitus' dance of the obsessed, a ship of fools, a freak show. It may come to pass that the sage wisdom and historical understanding of Thomas and the wild crew of Donald Trump will finally come together in a perfect storm to eradicate the virus; but for the time being, the circus doesn't come around that often, so enjoy it while you can.
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