Is there a doctor in the house?
Phoebe Keane, a reporter for the BBC World Service emailed me eight years ago and it could have happened yesterday. In those days our clock radio was tuned in to a station that carried the BBC broadcast overnight, and I was intrigued by her contact.
Our daily newspaper, the Seattle Times published my essay in early August 2016 about why Donald Trump would make a good President, and she had come across it. Who could have guessed they read the Seattle newspaper in London? She wanted to know if I was the author and said,
if so, I’m making an edition of The Inquiry, a BBC World Service Radio programme. 65 million people around the world listen to the BBC World Service each week, including 10 million in the USA alone. Our next edition is looking at the sort of President Trump would be and I wondered if you had time to talk to us.
She wanted to talk to me about Trump and maybe set up a recorded interview after that depending on “my thoughts”. We spoke for about a half hour later that day.
The theme of her story was going to be that Donald Trump was a dangerous man whose election would destabilize the world. I was amused at her suggestion and tried to persuade her that contrary to the premise of her question the US President has very little power. He cannot make the law, and while he has the bully pulpit to call for this or that policy there were several institutional obstacles to undertaking any radical changes. Even his ability to deploy military forces is circumscribed by general officers and other subordinates who will act as a brake on any rash moves.
We witnessed that reality during Trump’s first term when a minor staff person with a personal interest in Ukraine set in motion the events leading to Trump’s first impeachment and later when it was revealed the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Mark Miley spoke to his Chinese counterpart in the last days of Trump’s term to warn the Chinese he would let them know if an attack was imminent, an act of treason for sure.
She seemed surprised by my response, and I did what I could to describe how the separation of powers under our Constitution is supposed to work.
The next day I emailed Ms. Keane about her plans. She replied,
Thank you so much for giving me so much of your time and talking to me yesterday. Our conversation really helped my research and will inform the programme and the other interviews we do however we won’t need to record an interview with you after all.
I listened to the story a few nights later. She stayed with her ‘Trump is dangerous’ theme, using clips of interviews with academics who agreed with her. I wrote her the next morning and said,
I heard the report this morning, very early morning at that. Well done.
I have one quibble. The report’s conclusion was that Mr. Trump’s statements about foreign affairs are dangerous because they may be destabilizing. The flawed premise of the conclusion, I submit, is that there is anything stable about foreign affairs. Far from it.
From my vantage point, it appears instability is evidenced by the Brexit vote, renewed interest in Scotland to exit the UK, issues throughout the EU driven in part by mass migration of Muslims, Ukraine, Russian interests, all of North Africa, the central and eastern African region, Turkey, the Middle East, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, South China Sea territorial claims, changes in China, the nut job in North Korea, the assassination of journalists and mayors in Mexico, Venezuela’s meltdown, and now the Philippines is making noise about withdrawing from the UN, all of which are of interest to the US. It is hard to see any stability, except maybe in New Zealand, which is regularly shaken by earthquakes.[1]
Later that day, her editor Richard Knight emailed me. He said,
I’m editor of The Inquiry. Thank you for listening.
My colleague Phoebe passed on your email to me, because she wasn’t involved in today’s Trump programme.
I think you make a fair point. But I don’t buy it completely. The world is certainly unstable, but that doesn’t mean making it even less stable would be harmless.
As so often with The Inquiry, trying to get to a clear answer (when the question is complex) is an almost impossible task. We thought the fairest conclusion was that careless statements can have real-world consequences and that, to date at least, Mr Trump has made statements which could fairly be described as careless. As president, such words would or could be far more consequential. All that said, he might – in office – be more disciplined when choosing his words. Who knows?
So, we’ve moved from dangerous to careless? Maybe that’s progress. I had come across the work of Roger Scruton and love the way he found absurd humor in mundane idiocy. Unable to resist, like a hungry trout rising to a barbless fly, I replied,
Thanks for your post. I could not help but observe that if carelessness is the issue, then at the highest levels of U.S. government – as in using a private server for our nation’s diplomatic secrets and drawing red lines against the use of chemical weapons – one might conclude carelessness is the standard of care.
I didn’t hear from them again.
The joke of it is that after four years of his Presidency, which destabilized nothing and instead gave us a roaring economy, increased financial contributions by the NATO members, and peace in the Middle East, the left is unable to let go of its delusional belief that Donald Trump is dangerous.
Victor Davis Hanson summarized the problem in his essay today, September 6, 2024. He said,
In sum, for some nine years, the media and the left have successfully fed the country a succession of rank deceptions and conspiracies. They did so because they proclaimed Trump too dangerous to be president, and therefore, any means they employed to stop him were to be justified. And they are doing so for a third time in 2024. As they continue, they have all but destroyed democracy, ruined the reputation of the media, alienated the public -- and embarrassed their country before the world.
If there is an antidote to this madness, I’d like to know what it is, for what it’s worth.[2]
[1] Johnny Kidd & The Pirates, Shakin' All Over
[2] Buffalo Springfield, For What It’s Worth