The Washington Post - 22.08.2019

THURSDAY, AUGUST 22 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A

THURSDAY Opinion

F

or a man who sees himself as the mes-

siah, President Trump has a lacklus-

ter record on Earth.

On Wednesday morning, he tweet-

ed out with approval a conspiracy theorist’s

claim that Israelis view Trump “like he’s the

King of Israel” and “the second coming of

God” (a theology Jews reject). He shared the

conspiracy theorist’s puzzlement that Ameri-

can Jews don’t view him likewise.

Hours later, he explained why he has tak-

en a tough trade policy against China: “I am

the chosen one.”

Holy God complex!

I lack the celestial sources to fact-check

Trump’s claim. But as messiahs go, King Don-

ald of Israel, Blessed Be His Name, appears to

be a false prophet:


 The economy teeters on the verge of

recession.


 The federal government’s finances reach

the worst point in 75 years.


 A trade and currency war rages.


 Threats grow from the Islamic State,

North Korea and Iran.


 Trump feuds with Britain, France,

Germany, Canada — and now, preposterous-

ly, Denmark.


 He calls the vast majority of American

Jews stupid and twice calls them disloyal.


 Polls show Trump losing next year to

Democratic challengers.

It would take a miracle to get out of this.

And Trump can perform one.

He can declare victory — and then say he’s

retiring after his first term. He can depart the

White House in a flaming chariot, if he pre-

fers that to Marine One.

That would be divine.

A combination of Trump-incited interna-

tional tensions and shortsighted policies

have put us on borrowed time. The question

is not whether things will unravel, but when.

If the economy collapses in the next

15 months, dragged down by Trump-

instigated international instability, he will

lose reelection in disgrace. If he wins and

things go south after that, he’ll be blamed.

Precarious U.S. finances and international

isolation will make recovery more difficult.

Alternatively, Trump can step aside now

and blame his successor for the problems he

created. He can claim he achieved everything

he wanted in just four years, instead of eight.

By one measure, Trump has been remark-

ably successful: causing chaos and disrup-

tion. He cut taxes, gutted regulations,

cracked down on immigration, slapped tar-

iffs on China, and withdrew from the Paris

climate accord, Iran nuclear deal and

Trans-Pacific trade partnership. And though

he didn’t repeal Obamacare, he seriously

sabotaged it.

But the consequences of Trump’s disrup-

tion are now surfacing.

The Congressional Budget Office forecast

Wednesday that the 10-year federal deficit

will balloon $800 billion more than expect-

ed, caused in part by Trump’s 2017 tax cut. As

The Post’s Jeff Stein noted, this puts the na-

tion’s debt at levels not seen since the end of

World War II.

Acting White House chief of staff Mick

Mulvaney this week braced Trump donors

for what he hopes will be only a “moderate

and short” recession, Politico reported.

Three-quarters of business economists

expect a recession by the end of 2021, their

trade association announced Monday.

Trump confirmed on Tuesday (before recant-

ing Wednesday) that he is considering a tem-

porary payroll tax cut to fortify the economy.

Much of the drag can be traced to the trade

war. JPMorgan Chase forecasts Trump’s

existing and threatened tariffs against China

will cost the average U.S. household $600 to

$1,000 per year.

Overseas, the Islamic State, which Trump

proclaimed defeated, has again surged in

Iraq and Syria and poses a new threat in

Afghanistan. Also, Japan reportedly believes

North Korea achieved the miniaturization

of nuclear warheads — well after Trump pro-

claimed North Korea no longer a nuclear

threat.

At home, white-nationalist violence is

expanding, as Trump attacks racial and

religious minorities and immigrants (the

administration unveiled yet another crack-

down Wednesday on migrant families). On

Tuesday, Trump claimed that Jews who vote

Democratic (nearly 80 percent of them) have

“a total lack of knowledge or great disloyalty”

— reviving the anti- Semitic dual-loyalty ca-

nard. He repeated the slander Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Trump grows more erratic

daily. He has contradicted himself on the

payroll tax, gun background checks and his

perverse determination to buy Greenland

from Denmark. After Denmark told him

Greenland wasn’t for sale, he canceled a trip

to Copenhagen, blasting the Danes and their

“nasty” prime minister, a woman.

Even if Trump were to pull himself

together and win reelection, he has no better

chance of achieving his remaining unmet

promises in a second term. Eliminating the

national debt? Getting Mexico to pay for a

border wall? Draining the swamp? Not gon-

na happen.

No, it would be better for Trump to claim

that he won so much and made America so

great that there’s no reason to serve any lon-

ger. With so much bad stuff coming, he

should quit while he’s ahead — or, rather, less

behind than he will be.

Trump would enjoy a happy retirement,

munching on Big Macs and asserting his

messianic bona fides while blaming others

for the ungodly messes he left behind.

Twitter: @Milbank

DANA MILBANK

WASHINGTON SKETCH

Trump should

quit while he’s

less behind

S

orry to be so obvious, but isn’t it

clear that what the United States

needs is a Democratic Richard

M. Nixon?

No, not that one. We’ve had plenty of

truth-bending, political dirty tricks and

abuse of authority from both political

parties over recent years.

I’m thinking of the “other” Nixon, the

one who longed for a place in history and

whose shrewd instinct for the political

center produced: the Environmental Pro-

tection Agency; arms talks with the same

Soviet Union he had built a career on

denouncing; wage and price controls that

violated every canon of his party’s philoso-

phy; and, of course, the opening of rela-

tions with “Red” China.

That sort of Nixon, with a Democratic

pedigree, is the figure our republic could

use sometime soon.

The breakthrough needed now doesn’t

involve China (though relations there cer-

tainly could be improved), it’s about na-

tional solvency. After radically swelling an

already dangerous national debt under the

most recent presidency, the nation is on

track for a similar run-up during the next

few years.

There is no need to restate all the ruin

that unpayable debt does to nations that

indulge in it. Debt such as what we are now

piling up will end badly. With entitlements

and interest payments devouring available

funds, the result will be some combination

of economic catastrophe, the collapse of

basic services or a disastrous weakening of

national defense. For anyone still in deni-

al, the Flat Earth Society is accepting

applications.

No Republican can even put a dent in

this problem. The party’s Scrooge stereo-

type, however unfair in many cases, is too

burned into the public and media con-

sciousness to permit the necessary ideas to

be advanced from that quarter. The

ludicrous but effective slandering of

then-Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) in 2012 for

his interest in Medicare reform — a TV ad

portrayed the then-Republican vice-

presidential candidate as literally pushing

an elderly woman in a wheelchair over a

cliff — is all the evidence one needs. And

anyway, under present management, the

GOP shows zero interest in even raising

the issue of the national debt.

Hope must come from the other direc-

tion. Just as Nixon, one of his era’s most

vigorous anti-communists, used the credi-

bility of his personal record and party label

to undertake his startling initiatives, a

Democrat — and only a Democrat, protect-

ed by the party’s tribune-of-the-poor repu-

tation — can lead the country fiscally

where it desperately needs to go.

Arguments fully consistent with the

Democratic image and catechism are al-

ready available, and if they are politically

premature today, they will become more

apparent and viable with each passing

year of procrastination. Modernizing the

public safety net is not about trashing it, as

our puerile public debate now asserts, but

about saving it. Absent significant

change, Social Security, Medicare and

Medicaid will go bust, and no one will be

harmed more than those most dependent

on the programs.

Continued entitlement drift is choking

the discretionary government most dear

to Democrats — a squeeze that will grow

inexorably tighter. Saving public housing,

mass transit, federal education funding

and (fill in your favorite social program

here) will become ever-stronger rationales

for what must be done. Attempting to

enact even the tiniest portion of the latest

Democratic policy fads will require creat-

ing some fiscal space on the spending side.

For the moment at least, the Democratic

brand is strong among younger voters.

These of course are the Americans about to

be plundered and gouged by the wanton

borrowing in which we, their elders, are

engaging: borrowing not for appropriate

investment in their future but for our

current consumption.

Today’s young may not know much

about the nation’s history or civic institu-

tions, but they will not remain forever

oblivious to this giant, unconscionable

threat to their economic futures. Here, too,

a Democrat has a far greater entree to

share the stark facts and make the case for

change.

Nixon was a practitioner of the maxim

“If your base isn’t a little mad at you, you’re

doing something wrong.” A considerable

portion of the Democratic core will remain

obdurate on entitlements, determined

never to be confused by the facts. But it

may be possible to lead a large and

growing segment to see their self-interest

being positively affected by reforms such

as means-testing and moderating the in-

creases in autopilot transfer payments.

It’s fair to observe that China, as a

political “third rail,” was never as high-

voltage as Social Security or Medicare. But

that’s where the legacy opportunity comes

in. Assuming that our republic summons

the maturity and discipline to steer away

from a fiscal Niagara Falls, the leader at

the helm of that achievement will be

rewarded with what every president must

yearn for: a place of historical honor. More

likely than not, that person will be a

Democrat.

Mitch Daniels, a Post contributing columnist, is

president of Purdue University and a former

governor of Indiana.

MITCH DANIELS

The Democrats

need their

own Nixon

E

ven a casual observer of the

entertainment industry

knows that Hollywood is

hooked on established intel-

lectual property at the expense of

original ideas and is awash in more

money than it knows how to sensibly

spend. But three stories about the

business of pop culture that broke

this week illustrate just how dull

American entertainment has be-

come, and how hard it is for even the

most brilliant creators or innovative

companies to escape the undertow.

Warner Bros. Pictures announced

that Lana Wachowski would return

to write and direct a fourth install-

ment in the Matrix franchise and that

Keanu Reeves and Carrie-Anne Moss

would return as Neo and Trinity, de-

spite their characters’ seeming

deaths in “The Matrix Revolutions.”

That news came immediately after

reports that, because Sony and

Marvel had been unable to agree on

financial terms for their partnership,

Marvel will not be involved in future

Spider-Man movies. Peter Parker,

currently played by Tom Holland, will

likely vanish from the Marvel Cin-

ematic Universe.

And, in the story that kicked

things off, the Financial Times re-

ported that Apple is spending as

much as $6 billion on original pro-

gramming for its Apple TV+ stream-

ing service, set to launch in Novem-

ber. That number is contested, but

it’s clear that Apple is splashing fan-

tastic sums on programming such as

“The Morning Show,” which stars

Jennifer Aniston as the anchor of a

TV program in turmoil, and which

might cost more per episode than

HBO paid to produce the later sea-

sons of “Game of Thrones.”

Taken together, these reports rep-

resent a kind of unholy trinity of

depressing Hollywood news.

Word that Wachowski is returning

to the Matrix franchise is a particular-

ly dispiriting reminder that Holly-

wood’s fear of risking money on any

idea that viewers haven’t already em-

braced means the industry has gone

all-in on recycling, and not in a good

way. And it’s especially grim given

both how wildly original “The Ma-

trix” felt when it was released in 1999

and how resolute Wachowski and her

co-director and sister Lilly Wachow-

ski have been in their past opposition

to sequels. During a rare interview in

2015, Lana Wachowski expressed her

distaste for critics who are “obsessed

with sequels and derivative material.

They wildly crave it. That kind of

environment is hostile to originality.”

At the time, Lilly Wachowski dis-

missed the possibility of new Matrix

movies as “particularly repelling.”

Perhaps Lana Wachowski has a

fresh story she’d like to tell in the rich

and unsettling universe the sisters

created together. Still, after a series of

stunning but underperforming proj-

ects, including “Speed Racer,” “Cloud

Atlas,” “Jupiter Ascending” and the

Netflix series “Sense8,” it appears that

at least one Wachowski, unlike her

most famous creation, has given in

rather than continuing the fight.

The Sony-Marvel impasse repre-

sents a second stage in the drawn-out

death of Hollywood creativity: Busi-

ness models don’t just determine

what movies get made, they increas-

ingly determine how they’re told.

Marvel has long argued that the inter-

connected stories its movies are tell-

ing makes its franchise distinct. But if

Spider-Man is expendable, so is the

marketing pretense that sprawling

serial storytelling elevated Marvel

movies above their competitors — as

are the rising indie directors who

Marvel brings in to lend a gloss of

credibility to the franchise.

And whatever Apple is actually

spending on content, it’s clear the vast

sums of cash sloshing around the

streaming ecosystem have created

more, and more expensive, content.

But more expensive does not neces-

sarily mean better. Good for Aniston

for landing herself a $1.1 million-

per-episode salary for “The Morning

Show,” even if she did so more on the

continuing strength of “Friends” as a

draw for streaming customers than

on anything she has done in the

15 years since the show went off the

air. Maybe even good for Martin Scors-

ese for getting Netflix to drop

$159 million so he could tart up a

movie about Teamster boss Jimmy

Hoffa with anti-aging technology. But

it turns out that when cultural pro-

grammers turn to computer program-

mers for insight about what to make,

the reward audiences get for binging

on comfort fare is an eight-picture

Netflix deal for Adam Sandler.

Maybe it’s fitting that Lana Wa-

chowski is heading back into the

world of machines at a moment when

it feels as though our entertainment

is more engineered than ever before.

Whether the machines in question

are cash registers or viewer algo-

rithms, it’s hard to see how we’ll find

our way out of this era of illusion. Too

many of us are content to be sedated

and to pay for our anesthetics.

Twitter: @AlyssaRosenberg

ALYSSA ROSENBERG

Pop culture has reached

Peak Predictable

CHRIS DELMAS/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES

An inflatable Spider-Man at the world premiere of “Spider-Man: Far From Home” in Hollywood on June 26.

BY LISA MONACO

AND KEN WAINSTEIN

A

fter the carnage in El Paso and

Dayton, Ohio, we are finally

talking more about the in-

creasing threat of domestic

terrorism, which has killed more people

in America since 9/11 than the foreign

terrorism of al-Qaeda and the Islamic

State. With the body count growing at

an alarming rate, it is time to turn from

talk to action and confront this threat

before it claims more American lives.

As former homeland security and

counterterrorism advisers in Demo-

cratic and Republican administrations,

we saw the operational, organizational

and legal changes that are needed to

meet terrorist threats. In this era of

polarized politics, where too often the

political extremes dictate action — or

more often, inaction — we need some-

thing even more important from our

leaders. We need them to do their duty.

Duty is the age-old notion that one

should do what is right, regardless of

whether it is personally beneficial or

costly. That moral equation has always

been a fundamental precept of our

national character. Duty is a central

tenet in the Declaration of Inde-

pendence, the principle that we reaf-

firm with the Pledge of Allegiance and

the idea that inspired generations of

Americans to sacrifice their lives and

well-being to break from Britain, fight

slavery in the Civil War, defeat tyranny

and fascism in World War II, and stand

up to institutionalized injustice during

the civil rights movement.

Duty says our leaders should priori-

tize the public’s interests over their

own. That means acknowledging and

acting against a threat to our national

security — whether from domestic ex-

tremists or Russian hackers interfering

with our electoral process — no matter

which constituency might object. It

means working with the other party to

find solutions to immigration and gun

control, rather than leveraging those

problems for political gain. And, it

means living a life of duty that sets an

example for the rest of us.

We have seen leaders choose duty

over self-interest before, even quite re-

cently. We saw it when President

George W. Bush sponsored aggressive

financial rescue legislation amid the

economic crisis in 2008, in the face of

criticism from allies and contrary to his

own inclination against federal inter-

vention in the economy. We saw it when

President Barack Obama placed na-

tional security over political expedien-

cy and extended some of Bush’s coun-

terterrorism tools, contrary to his cam-

paign promises and the urging of many

in his party.

We saw it in John McCain’s forceful

rejection of a supporter’s bigoted attack

on his rival during the 2008 presiden-

tial campaign, and we saw it in Bush’s

dignified refusal to criticize his succes-

sor after he left the White House.

We have seen it most recently in

Robert S. Mueller III’s work as special

counsel investigating Russian interfer-

ence in the 2016 election. For Mueller,

duty is the defining force that has

driven a lifetime of decisions, from

enlisting in the Marines during the

Vietnam War to returning in mid-ca-

reer to the front lines as a homicide

prosecutor in Washington.

It was not surprising that Mueller

answered the call in 2017 to serve as

special counsel, knowing full well that

the job would probably subject him to

criticism from both sides of today’s

political divide, and then agreed to

testify before a polarized Congress last

month, knowing that it would be a

lose-lose proposition. Ever the dutiful

Marine, he accepted his mission, en-

dured two years of personal attacks,

and fielded questions and accusations

at his hearings with dignity and dogged

insistence on facts at the expense of

theatrics, disappointing those who had

hoped for a different style or fodder for

their particular view on impeachment.

More than one reporter described

Mueller and his performance as being

“from another era.” Sadly, those report-

ers might have been right.

All too often these days, we tolerate

leaders who promote their own inter-

ests at the expense of duty, especially if

their political affiliation or agenda

aligns with ours. We need to shed that

cynical approach to politics.

Instead, we should reaffirm the im-

portance of duty in our own political

lives by looking for and lifting up the

dutiful leaders among us who remain

loyal to the common good. If we do that,

perhaps our leaders will follow our lead

and recognize the imperative to look

past their own interests, to prioritize

national unity over tribal division and

to make the hard choices necessary to

confront threats such as hate-filled do-

mestic extremism.

Over the past two years, Mueller did

his duty as a leader and citizen, as he

had so many times before. In the proc-

ess, he gave us a lesson in what it means

to be American and what we should

demand of our leaders and of ourselves.

Let’s hope, for the sake of our country

and our democracy, that we can learn

that lesson.

Lisa Monaco served as homeland security

adviser to President Barack Obama. Ken

Wainstein was homeland security adviser to

President George W. Bush. Both Monaco

and Wainstein served as chief of staff to FBI

Director Robert S. Mueller III.

Do your duty, America