Roger Kimball

Jeb! We hardly knew ye. The 2016 election seems soooo long ago. There was a time, for about 15 minutes, when some wise people regarded Jeb! Bush as the front-runner. He had the name. The camera liked him more than it liked George W. And he had the money. Lots and lots of money. (One of my favorite photoshopped images from the campaign altered the text of a huge billboard from ‘Donald Trump is a moron. —Jeb Bush’ to ‘Burn all our donors’ money. —Mike Murphy,’ Murphy being Jeb!’s campaign manager.) There was so much money sloshing around in Bush campaign coffers that it was hard to keep track of it all.

What does desperation smell like? It smells like House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler, who is reprising his ‘Impeach Trump!’ act from 2017, this time with a gavel in his hand. No one knows when Robert Mueller will deliver his report to Attorney General William Barr, and no one knows what portions, if any, General Barr will make public. But the hissing sound you have heard over the last several weeks is the air going out of Mueller’s Get Trump probe as story after story has been crafted to manage expectations down regarding ‘Individual 1,’ aka Donald J. Trump.

Remember the Cretan liar paradox? Epimenides the Cretan says ‘All Cretans are liars.’ But if it is true that all Cretans are liars, then his statement must be false. But if it is false, then Epimenides is telling the truth. So, Epimenides is both truthful and a liar. Ouch. There are solutions to this paradox—for example, to say that ‘all Cretans are liars’ does not entail that they all lie all the time — but what are we to make of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal lawyer, emphasis on the word ‘former’? Cohen is being measured for his orange jumpsuit in preparation for his sojourn in the Big House as a guest of the government. His tort? Lying to Congress.

I reckon that editors at our former paper of record have been thinking wistfully of the Mikado’s song, in particular this bit about the fate of the billiard sharp who’s ‘made to dwell/ In a dungeon cell/ On a spot that’s always barred.’ And there he plays extravagant matches In fitless finger-stalls On a cloth untrue With a twisted cue And elliptical billiard balls!

Donald Trump is not always as charming as P.G. Wodehouse. Nevertheless, his magnificent State of the Union Address tonight put me in mind of this remark from the preface of Plum’s great novel Summer Lightning: ‘A certain critic,’ Wodehouse wrote, ‘made the nasty remark about my last novel that it contained “all the old Wodehouse characters under different names.”’ Waxing utopian, Wodehouse wondered whether, like the children who made mock of the prophet Elisha, that critic had by now been eaten by bears. Had he survived, though, said critic would not be able to make the same complaint about Summer Lightning.

There are at least two tasty dishes in the smorgasbord today: one is the latest action of the fourth branch of the US government, the one run by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller. The other is an announcement from the head of the second branch, the executive, that the month-long government furlough would be suspended for three weeks, until February 15, while House leaders pretend to negotiate with President Trump over the issue of border security and, in particular, appropriating funds to build a wall along vulnerable parts of our Southern border. Both dishes look promising, so let’s take a taste of both. First, the Stone soup, or perhaps I should say Stone in soup, for that would seem to be where Roger Stone, colorful Trump ally and Wikileaks expert, has been firmly placed.

I have bad news for you. Somewhere in the this country, right now, teenage boys are acting like jerks. Yes, it’s true. Some are taunting their little sisters. Others are picking on a funny looking kid in their class. Still others are grandstanding for the benefit of the cute girl who happens to be part of their clique. It’s not new. Mitt Romney, the Grecian-formula candidate, was bullied by The New York Times and other subsidiaries of the Democratic party for bullying a kid in high school who, the Times reported, later turned out to be gay. Fine doubled, Mr Romney: you should have known. The episode might have sunk Romney’s Presidential bid but, with the customary bureaucratic efficiency of the 53 percent, he saw to that himself.

It wasn’t quite the Cena Trimalchionis, but the robust, non-sissy feast that the President of the United States laid on for the Clemson Tigers — the college football team that just won the national championship — would in its own way have been the envy of Petronius’s diners. No larks’ tongues, but plenty of Big Macs, Whoppers, French fries, and pizza, all served up on gleaming White House china with the condiment proffered from silver bowls. Donald Trump paid for the repast himself — 1,000 hamburgers he said at one point, though fact checkers at the publicity arm of the Democratic National Committee said that there were probably no more than 300.

In his late essay ‘Perpetual Peace,’ Immanuel Kant lauded the ideal of ‘universal hospitality.’ In his first Oval Office speech Tuesday night, President Donald Trump took issue with Kant (though not by name), noting that the porous Southern border of the United States represented a serious humanitarian and security crisis. Everyone who can spell ‘Google’ knows that the Democrats, until November 7, 2016, supported robust border security and, indeed, a physical barrier — otherwise known as a wall — to retard the flow of illegal immigrants into this country.

A couple of days ago, the Competitive Enterprise Institute announced that Donald Trump, pursuing a central campaign promise to cut federal regulations and ‘drain the swamp,’ had during his first two years in office issued the fewest new rules ‘in recorded history.’ In other news, Mitt Romney, the failed presidential candidate and incoming junior senator from Utah, published a stinging rebuke of the President in the Washington Post. ‘[H]is conduct over the past two years,’ Romney wrote, ‘particularly his actions last month, is evidence that the president has not risen to the mantle of the office.

What Malcolm said of the Thane of Cawdor — ‘nothing in his life/ Became him like the leaving it’ — cannot be said of General James Mattis’s leavetaking his position as Secretary of Defense. Let me first say that General Mattis has long served his country with distinction, betraying immense care for the Marines and soldiers under his command as well as condign fierceness towards the enemies of civilization. As Secretary of Defense, he obliterated ISIS as a fighting force and has overseen the beginnings of a critical upgrade of America’s military infrastructure, which had been allowed to atrophy under the lead-from-behind posturing of Barack Obama.

Sometime back in the Pleistocene Era — that is to say, round about 2015 — a frequent criticism of Donald Trump was that he wasn’t ‘really’ a conservative. He was an ‘opportunist,’ you see, someone who blithely changed his position on exigent issues — abortion, government run health care, etc. — and even his political party to suit the prevailing winds of the zeitgeist. There is something to that charge, but the more interesting question is whether it counts as a criticism or a commendation. The poet William Blake was not exactly a political sage. But his observation that an honest man may change his opinions but not his principles is relevant here.

Will wonders never cease? Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III is recommending that General Mike Flynn serve no jail time. Isn’t that nice of him? Of course, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III first destroyed Mike Flynn’s career and essentially pauperized him through legal fees (‘the process,’ as they say, ‘is the punishment’). In making his recommendation, Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III cited Gen. Flynn’s ‘substantial assistance’ in the long-running soap opera that is his campaign against the president of the United States. The centerpiece of that ‘special assistance’ are the 19 interviews with the Office of Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III for which Gen. Flynn sat.

As the teeming mass of mostly male, partly criminal, humanity stews about on Mexican side of our Southern border, entertaining itself by throwing rocks at US border officials, emoting for CNN cameras, and periodically rushing the fence in an effort to break through to America, it is worth stepping back to ask a few large questions. But first, let’s step out of the rancid pool of sentimentality with which the media, in its anti-Trump frenzy, has surrounded this episode.