The Case for Trump - Victor David Hanson

When it comes to politics, it all boils down to a question of whom to believe, much less trust. It's a complicated subject, and it takes a certain kind of writer, one experienced enough to neatly slice through all the baloney to reveal the truth in concise, understandable prose.  Victor Davis Hanson is that kind of writer.  Hanson is a California professor and military historian who has written a couple of dozen books on everything from the military history of ancient Greece to World War II history (I highly recommend The Second World Wars to anyone interested in the subject).

I've read several recent books on current events and what's going on in Washington D.C., but few of them much impress me because they seem to be little more than a regurgitation of news stories and opinion pieces that anyone paying attention already has seen for himself. Howard Kurtz's Media Madness is particularly bad about that - way too much chronological listing of events with way too little analysis of why it all happened and what it all really means.  In The Case for Trump, Hanson covers all of the same developments, but his insight, analysis, and organizational structure make it all seem fresh.

Victor David Hanson

The author is quick to give Donald Trump credit for the one thing that seems to have escaped his rivals in both parties: his recognition that 2016 was the perfect time to defend the American working people and appeal to them for help in putting him into a position where he could, in turn, repay the favor.  Hanson believes that a politician like Trump comes along only every once in a while (think Harry Truman, for instance) - and that so obviously an outsider will only be successful if the time is exactly right. Hanson goes on to argue that successive presidents in the Trump-mold would probably doom the country in the long run, but that at certain crisis points in her history, the United States cries out for just such a person. In 2016, according to the author, the U.S. found herself at one of those crisis points after a decade long cultural drift to the left that horrified enough voters to make Trump look very much like the potential savior they craved. 

In what is the most compelling chapter in the book, "Trump, the Tragic Hero?," Hanson makes exactly that point:

"Tragic heroes do not necessarily intend to be heroic. Sometimes their motives for confronting dangers or solving crises can just as easily be self-centered or arise from a desire for personal vengeance or fantasies of self-redemption or just an endless need for adulation." - Page 322

[...]

"The real moral question is not whether the gunslinger Trump could or should become civilized (...normalized as 'presidential'). Rather, the key is whether he could be of service at the opportune time and right place for his country, crude as he is."  Pages 341-342

 Interestingly, Hanson says, "The threatened establishment almost seems embarrassed that it had to stoop to find salvation in such anti-establishment methods - especially if they serve as reminders of its own feral and now happily forgotten past, and, far worse, its present inability to deal with the very world it created."

And there you have the "tragic" part of Donald Trump, the human being. No matter what good the man may accomplish in the end, he will remain a Washington outsider for the rest of his years. He will likely be discarded as soon as his usefulness ends. As Hanson puts it, "I doubt that president emeritus Trump will attend many future solemn ceremonial assemblages of ex-presidents."

Bottom Line: This one has a lot to say to those on both sides of the political spectrum if only they are willing to listen because, as usual, the real truth seems to be somewhere toward the middle of both extremes.

Book Number 3,391