Impromptus

The Trump effect, &c.

By
Former president Donald Trump speaks during a rally in Miami, Fla., November 6, 2022. (Marco Bello / Reuters)
On trickle-down behavior; a spy for Havana; a noble American general; a Hall of Fame baseball manager; sights in Cambridge, Mass.; and more

Many, many years ago, George F. Will observed something about Capitol Hill: a congressman’s staff took on the character of the congressman himself; the staff reflected the head. If the congressman was decent, the staff tended to act that way too. If he was coarse or high-handed, the staff followed suit.

Has that been your own experience, in various sectors of life?

In an official statement, a spokesman for the Trump campaign referred to Nikki Haley as “Birdbrain.” We conservatives used to speak of “the coarsening of the culture.” (It was one of our buzzphrases; the alliteration helped.) Name-calling was bad. Lots of things were bad.

Bad behavior has now been utterly normalized. No one even blinks. A campaign spokesman refers to another candidate as “Birdbrain,” and no one bats an eye. This sort of talk is the daily music of our lives.


More in Donald Trump

(“Music” is probably the wrong word. “Music” has a positive connotation, to me, though there is a lot of bad music.)

Routinely, Donald Trump, as president, referred to the speaker of the House as “Crazy Nancy.” No one thought this was weird. It was normal. It was expected of the president of the United States.

Ronald Reagan did not refer to Tip O’Neill this way. Bill Clinton did not refer to Newt Gingrich this way. It would have been thought — weird, and “unpresidential,” and all that old-fashioned stuff.

“The Republican Party used to be in the virtue business,” observed Kevin D. Williamson earlier this week. And now it is “in the sneering-at-virtue business,” as witness the general GOP attitude toward Mitt Romney.

Back to the “Crazy Nancy” thing. The incumbent president does not refer to the speaker of the House as “Crazy Mike.” The public would think him crazy to do so. Maybe there is simply a Trump exemption?

Have a look at the man himself — who forgot to refer to Nikki Haley as “Birdbrain” but was reminded to do so by a fan:

Tens of millions of people support and love Donald Trump, and some millions of those are parents. Would they allow their children to talk that way? Maybe they would — the culture has shifted dramatically.

A few months ago, I talked with a friend who has long worked in the restaurant business. He said that there was something different about the public: “They talk to you like they’re tweeting. They are so rude, so nasty.” Online life has crept into real life. The worst elements of our social media — anti-social media! — are now out in the open.

Leadership matters. Peggy Noonan wrote a book about Reagan called “When Character Was King.” Socialists and others sneeringly refer to free-market thinking as “trickle-down economics.” The behavior of leaders? Leaders in politics, and media, and entertainment, and so on? I think it trickles down.

Look, I know all the lines of the Trump movement: “Republicans and conservatives were too polite! What did conservatism ever conserve, huh? William F. Buckley Jr. knew which fork to use, and he knew a lot of fancy words. Trump is fighting for us!”

Even some of these Trump enthusiasts, someday, may be sorry.

• Here is something else at which no one blinks an eye — the type of thing that people ignore or try to explain away:

Over the years, some people have asked me, “Why are you against Trump?” I sometimes say, “Well, for starters, I don’t think he has a liberal-democratic bone in his body.” And they’re apt to respond, “Yeah? So?”

Lately, many people have been warning against a second Trump term. They say that he will be “unleashed.” That his natural authoritarianism will come to the fore. That a second term may make his first seem like a golden age of democracy.

Other people say that those doing the warning are hysterical. They pooh-pooh the idea that Trump poses a danger to democracy. “Just a little rough around the edges,” you know.

I hope the pooh-pooh-ers are right. I suspect that they are not. I also suspect that we will see.

• One of the oddest phenomena of our exceedingly odd era is religious Trumpism. Here is a taste:

Tim Alberta has just published a book on this subject: The Kingdom, the Power, and the Glory: American Evangelicals in an Age of Extremism. (Tim is my former National Review colleague and my fellow Michigander — and a top-notch reporter and analyst.)

A friend told me something interesting: She has friends from church who will not watch most movies and TV shows, on grounds that they are immoral. And they love Trump — not because they want his policies or whatever, but because they think he is a righteous man.

• Enough of Trump, let’s turn to the Maple Threat — the threat from our north: “A population of hard-to-eradicate ‘super pigs’ in Canada is threatening to invade the U.S.” That story is here. Keep an eye out.

• More seriously — far more seriously: “Former career U.S. diplomat charged with secretly spying for Cuban intelligence for decades.” He went to Yale, Harvard, and Georgetown. He held posts in various countries. He was on the National Security Council staff. He was our ambassador to Bolivia.

And for more than 40 years, apparently, he spied for the Cuban dictatorship.

This was “one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations” the U.S. government has ever suffered. So said the attorney general, Merrick Garland. “Those who have the privilege of serving in the government,” he continued, “are given an enormous amount of trust by the public.” And “to betray that trust by falsely pledging loyalty to the United States while serving a foreign power is a crime that will be met with the full force of the Justice Department.”

I hope so. (To read this story, go here.)

• The balm of sports? As regular readers may know, Jim Leyland is one of my favorite coaches or managers ever. I loved the way he managed. I loved his comments to the press — on baseball and its nature. I learned a lot from him. I quoted him a lot, in my column.

He is one of the few coaches or managers I have ever heard talk about luck. “We got lucky. They hit it hard, right at us. We hit it soft, between them.” Luck is a factor in sports, which people don’t often acknowledge.

On retiring, Leyland said, “No one knows how hard it is to win.” You have a good team, your fans expect you to win. Well, the other guy, the other city, may have a good team too.

Anyway, some news: ““Former Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland elected to Baseball Hall of Fame.” (Article here.)

• A little music, or a lot? For my “New York chronicle” in the current New Criterion, go here. For a review of the Staatskapelle Berlin, conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, go here. For a review of Tannhäuser (Wagner) at the Metropolitan Opera, go here. That performance was interrupted by climate protesters. I will have more to say about that later.

• “William P. Murphy Jr., an Inventor of the Modern Blood Bag, Dies at 100.” An obit worth reading. Dr. Murphy came from an extraordinary family. His father taught at Harvard and won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. His mother “was the first woman to become a licensed dentist in Massachusetts.”

This is pretty hard to take:

William Jr. and his older sister, Priscilla, grew up in Brookline, the Boston suburb. As a teenager Priscilla became the youngest qualified female pilot in the country but died shortly afterward in the crash of a small plane in a snowstorm near Syracuse, N.Y., on a nighttime medical-mercy flight from Boston.

• Do you know about General Becton? “Julius W. Becton Jr., Pathbreaking Army General, Dies at 97.” From the subheading: “A three-star general, he saw combat in three wars and was the first Black commander of an Army corps.” Amazing life. Amazing American. Hombre. Our country hath need of such men. Always has, always will.

• Isn’t it interesting how Einstein is the face of intelligence, or the face of expertise, for any purpose? He must be one of the most famous faces in the world. One of the most famous faces ever.

• Memorial Church, in Harvard Yard, dates from 1932. The inscription reads, “In grateful memory of the Harvard men who died in the World War, we have built this church.”

• The below monument was put up by the City of Cambridge (Mass.) in 1947 — to commemorate “her sons who on land and sea defended the nation’s honor” in three conflicts, from 1898 to 1902: the Spanish–American War, the Philippine–American War, and the China Relief Expedition.

• Let us go back in time.

The Soldiers and Sailors of Cambridge, whose names are here inscribed, died in the service of their country, in the war for the maintenance of the Union.

To perpetuate the memory of their valor and patriotism, this Monument is erected by the City, A.D., 1869–70.

Lincoln is in the middle:

• Here is Charles Sumner:

There are many ways to be remembered (if one is remembered at all). To be remembered for opposition to slavery — that evil institution, the antithesis of freedom — is a great and blessed way.

• I had never seen this before, being in Cambridge in the ’80s (while this was put up in ’97):

And the back:

• How ’bout this?

• Last, a fowl presence, outside Harvard’s Center for Astrophysics:

Thank you for joining me, my friends. Catch you soon.

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