Trump is working

In London last week I had the opportunity to talk about President Donald Trump with several politically mature friends. Most were sceptical, even slightly appalled, by him. It was my task to help them overcome this prejudice. I am delighted, dear reader, to attempt the same service for you.

I was not always a fan. For most of the 2016 campaign, I supported Ted Cruz, a choice that many thought only marginally less bad than Mr Trump. But politics is the art of the possible and it turned out that the only two possibilities were Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. For me, that meant that the only possibility was Donald Trump.

Why? First of all, Clinton was the most corrupt serious candidate in history. Her elevation would have tainted the presidency beyond recall. Second, she would have continued Barack Obama’s policy of expanding ‘the administrative state’, the regulatory apparatus of unaccountable bureaucrats that increasingly runs the lives of citizens while promulgating a ‘progressive’, politically correct agenda on subjects from transgender bathrooms to immigration policy. Third, Clinton’s election would have solidified a nascent dynastic impulse, and the presidency should not be a prize that is shuttled among two or three families.

From July, when Trump was officially nominated by the Republicans, to November, when he was elected, I had already begun to revise my faute-de-mieux attitude. In speech after speech, he said things with which I heartily agreed. I liked what he said about judges. For many decades the American left has used the courts to effect social policies that the unenlightened voters have refused to countenance. Trump, taking advice from the Federalist Society, came up with a brilliant list of judicial candidates that any conservative had to applaud. These were men and women who would work to uphold the Constitution, not bend it to a politically correct agenda.