Donald Trump’s Last Hurrah
In his second term, he should focus exclusively on his legacy to live for the ages.
President-elect Donald Trump’s second tour in the White House can be a glorious last hurrah or the last flicker of a dying comet. The choice is his.
Mr. Trump will enter the White House on Jan. 20 free from customary political obligations or ambitions. He has no political debts to pay. He defeated Democratic nominee Kamala Harris decisively despite the handicap of four felony prosecutions. Campaign contributions were largely superfluous. Mr. Trump’s notoriety and prime colors campaign left no voter uninformed about his political agenda without any paid advertising.
The 22nd Amendment prohibits Trump from a third term. Further, Mr. Trump is 78 years old and has shown signs of wear and tear. In his second term, he should focus exclusively on his legacy to live for the ages.
That means eschewing pettiness, personal brawls or a politics of revenge. Mr. Trump should endeavor to represent all Americans, not just his political supporters. He was elected president of the United States, not president of Trump loyalists or president of the world. He should summon the better angels of his nature to the White House and, following George Washington, set a standard to which the wise and honest may repair.
Trump should begin by downsizing the bloated, dysfunctional, prohibitively costly American empire, which absorbs the lion’s share of all discretionary spending. He has scolded NATO’s other 31 members as sponges. It’s time for the Europeans to ride their own military bicycle without U.S. training wheels. NATO is nearly 76 years old — well past retirement age. It was born in 1949 not to strengthen the U.S. from external attack but to weaken our invincible self-defense by squandering money, weapons and manpower on Europeans. Even without the U.S., NATO members would dwarf Russia in military and economic strength. And Russia’s continuing quagmire in Ukraine discredits any Russian claim to superpower status.
On that score, Trump should employ his amicable relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin to bring the horrendous Russian-Ukraine war to a close. It has already cost the U.S. over $170 billion and is dangerously close to nuclear weapons. The big sticking point has been Ukraine’s ambition to join NATO. One way to cut the Gordian knot would be Ukrainian neutrality. Moreover, NATO sans the U.S. would be unthreatening to Russia. If Mr. Trump can broker peace in Ukraine, wouldn’t the Nobel Peace Prize follow?
Since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, the entire Middle East has convulsed. Israel is engaged in a seven-front war in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Yemen. Trump was able to pull a rabbit out of the hat in negotiating the Abraham Accords in 2020 between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates to break the ice in Israeli-Arab relations. Trump should employ his magic again to bring peace between Israel and its neighbors.
Trump understands that we are a nation of immigrants. But we also celebrate the rule of law. The two are not in conflict. Legal immigration is in. Thus, Mr. Trump supports H-1B visas to attract the best and the brightest from abroad to boost American productivity and innovation. Indeed, his sidekick Elon Musk, the richest person in the Milky Way, held an H-1B visa before naturalization. But illegal immigration is out.
Fairness, equity and the rule of law combined militate against permitting immigrants who have flouted the law more generously than immigrants who have patiently waited in line for years to obtain proper visas. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and American business generally squint at illegal immigration to maximize profits. But their demand for industrious workers can be accommodated by hiking legal immigration while correspondingly diminishing illegal immigration through stepping up enforcement and deportations. Nations live by symbols. A wall with Mexico aiming to staunch illegal immigration is no panacea. But it sends a proper message that the legal immigration route is safer and ends with a welcome mat.
Trump will inherit a sprawling administrative state that suffocates innovation or entrepreneurship while enriching parasitic super lawyers. Annually, federal agencies sally forth with tens of thousands of new pages of regulations that require navigation by high-priced specialized attorneys charging more than $2,000 per hour. The federal regulatory behemoth saddles the private sector with a staggering $2.1 trillion in additional costs, an alarming percentage of annual federal spending.
We have lost our way to prosperity. Moral philosopher and economist Adam Smith, gospel to our Founding Fathers, elaborated, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things.” Free and unregulated markets are not perfect. Nothing is, because mankind is made of crooked timber. But centuries of experience teach that government regulation is a cure far worse than the disease.
Shouldn’t Trump consider an executive order prohibiting any federal regulation that requires specialized lawyers charging more than $500 per hour to comprehend?
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