In a Friday post on the website of The Washington Monthly, not of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Martin Longman discussed President Trump in strikingly medical terms. “The reason Trump has become so vulnerable so quickly is because he’s treating Washington like the pathogen when he’s the infectious agent,” declared Longman. “A better politician might be able to take over the host and turn to it his own purposes, but what Trump is experiencing instead is a massive and determined immune response.”
Longman observed that “it’s possible for a president to radically change our government and our country…But it requires shrewdness and patience, and it requires allies across the aisle,” adding that Ronald Reagan had all of those, whereas Trump didn’t realize “he wouldn’t have the power to prevail and succeed if he didn’t build support within the power structures he was trying to change.”
In Longman’s view, Trump’s problem is that he’s (as a certain left-leaning country-music group once put it) not ready to make nice (bolding added):
Trump is going about this radical change thing all wrong. If he doesn’t figure it out quickly, he will get impeached because he will have too many enemies on the Republican side. And, even if he survives in a technical sense, if he doesn’t change his strategy his agenda will never get off the launching pad…
…If you send the wrong person to drain the swamp you just create worse problems.
<<< Please support MRC's NewsBusters team with a tax-deductible contribution today. >>>
…Trump has the added disadvantage of being an actual scoundrel. And if you have ethical and legal weaknesses when you arrive in Washington, and you create more for yourself once you get there, then having friends and allies and party unity becomes of paramount importance.
People don’t need to make shit up to rationalize removing Trump from power. They actually need to continually find rationales for failing to do so.
…Russia may not be the issue. It could be sexual assault. It could be countless acts of fraud. It could be the goddamned Emoluments Clause. Soon it will be some Constitutional violation or another, or even just inescapable culpability for bringing on a foreign policy, environmental or economic catastrophe.
Longman concluded by again contrasting the Gipper with the Donald: “Iran-Contra would have taken out a lesser politician than Ronald Reagan. He survived it because he had earned some good will.”
