I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry when I read something like Gerald Seib’s column in the Wall Street Journal:
Let’s imagine an alternative opening act to the Trump presidency.
Specifically, let’s imagine a presidency that attempted from the outset to take advantage of the fact that Donald Trump isn’t an ideological conservative or a traditional Republican, but rather a radical centrist who should be able to create unconventional, bipartisan coalitions.
Imagine this new president had given a different kind of inaugural address, one in which he didn’t accuse the capital’s political leaders of flourishing at the expense of its citizens but rather sketched out a vision of a new way of working with those leaders.
There is an old Yiddish proverb which responds to that perfectly: if my grandmother had balls, she’d be my grandfather.
Putting it into Aristotelian terms, divisiveness and polarization aren’t accidents, incidental characteristics, of Donald Trump’s presidency. They’re its essence, what makes it what it is. There couldn’t have been the alternative inaugural address that Mr. Seib imagines because Trump is who he is and Trump’s presidency will be what it will be.
In tandem with that Yiddish proverb:. If Trump had a D by his name, the divisiveness and polarization, seen as the essence of his personality, would be described in terms of a strength – a politician who sticks to his convictions despite waves of criticism.