OPINION:
President Trump has changed the image and basic goals not just of the conservative movement in America but of America itself.
That his impact extends beyond the movement to the nation is understandable, given conservatism’s astounding but little-remarked influence.
A safe wager is that most conservatives don’t know they outnumber liberals in 44 of our 50 states, as Gallup reported last February.
Another safe wager is that the changes Mr. Trump has brought are being judged by the movement and the nation as mostly for the better, but not completely.
That incompleteness doubtlessly will be discussed in quiet dignity — except when it isn’t — by thousands of activists on the right during their political action conference going on this weekend, just a few miles from the Oval Office.
From that office and sometimes via bedroom tweets, Mr. Trump has forced us to focus on what’s most important to conservatism. And important to the republic we’ve managed so far to keep.
Most important to that republic’s preservation, Mr. Trump has made us address immigration head-on. It is the thorniest issue of all. It is the problem from which all hitherto existing presidencies and Congresses have fled in terror for their political lives, making truly foolish compromises along the route of their retreat. Think chain migration, immigration by lottery and anchor babies.
Immigration is the most important issue because America is who its people are — what they hold dear, what makes them proud to be Americans and what keeps this nation, we hope, the brilliant exemplar it has always been for the world beyond our borders.
That, I believe, has been the president’s message, however imperfect at times the clarity and precision of its delivery — especially the initially gratuitous and blanket denigration of Mexicans.
Emma Lazarus aside, it’s not true that all immigrants are good simply because they’re immigrants. Nor are all of them bad. What is true is that we have the exclusive right and the absolute obligation to say whom we welcome to our shores, when, why and for how long. And an obligation not to demonize people who in desperation flee eternally corrupt, dysfunctional economies, in most cases to bust their behinds providing for their families and in other cases to live off the fat of the land of social welfare?
Who but President Trump would make such a stubborn commit to building a virtually impregnable wall — yes, there is such a thing — to avoid having to deal with illegals in the first place?
Who but President Trump would straightforwardly recognize that sanctuary cites are as clearly seditious as the Confederate States of America were? And that their sanctimoniously blocking enforcement of the law of the land smacks of treason?
Second in importance to the Trump makeover of the movement and of America is globalization — the good, the bad and the abominable. American business needs a physical and financial presence in every country and every country’s market, the better to compete with foreign businesses.
But Americans need a significant amount of manufacturing to take place in America, from basic things used to make other things to the highest of high-tech devices and equipment. It needs these for jobs for national security and, yes, for national pride, for which there is no dollar value.
Mr. Trump gets that, as no previous president in either party has and as none of his rivals for the presidency in 2016 did. That is a truly remarkable reality.
Yes, he and we want all nations to prosper, but not at our expense. No American president has been firmer and clearer in that conviction. Not even close.
Third, Mr. Trump has focused the public and the Congress on the financial and moral need for America to involve itself less in the politics and internal problems of other countries.
America’s founders showed their genius best in making clear that the republic they were creating was not meant to be responsible for what kind of economics and systems of governance other peoples adopted.
Getting right this business of meddling in other peoples’ internal affairs is not just presumptuous. It’s impossible. We haven’t a clue which factions in Syria or Iraq or anywhere else are reliable and will be forever loyal to our worldview. Assuming otherwise puts us in deep financial debt to the rival nations that are out to crush us economically and to change how we govern ourselves.
Mr. Trump gets that, though again much gets lost in the imperfect and sometimes inconsistent way he delivers that message.
Many of Mr. Trump’s supporters won’t say a word about his minuses because they don’t want to seem to join the condemnatory chorus of Democrats and their lackeys in the press who say nothing but bad about this president.
One such sympathetic critic is a childhood friend of mine who went on to head a famous political science department. He notes that Mr. Trump’s “style too often is vulgar and insulting. He makes Republicans look like the worst among us — a caricature of what liberals say we are like.”
While conservatives are indebted to Mr. Trump for forcing us all to focus on what’s most important to keeping the republic, he could use more focus himself.
It is presumptuous to tell a president what he needs to do. So may I suggest he consider sticking with the issues on which he rivets our attention and not wander quite so often into extraneous subjects — though not at the expense of ceasing to be the most constantly riveting, entertaining and engaging president in memory.
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