How bad is bad? How bad might it become in Trump’s America? Or have we already, as one might reasonably conclude in Minneapolis, crossed the line into a world of bad, one unimaginably at odds with the rules of law, tolerance and comity that most of us, even when all that has been sorely tested, grew up with.
Or, let me put it another way: How bad does Barack Obama think it is?
Perhaps not that bad. Because mostly, it seems, he’s playing golf. And hanging out in Hollywood.
Occasionally, yes, the former president pipes up with a disapproving pronouncement. But, so far, he certainly seems to be holding his moral authority in reserve.
He may be one of the few people in politics left with such a thing, moral authority. His other Democratic presidential colleagues, Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, each who sporadically and to no avail express their horror and contempt for Trump, have, in their own way, squandered theirs. It is Barack Obama who yet holds the respect and interest of much of the nation.
Maybe that’s the secret of moral authority, not using it. Which makes it… useless. Or maybe moral authority depends on using it sparingly—of knowing just when to use it.
So, not now? Not the right time? Things might be bad, but they can always get worse, can’t they? America is resilient; we get through these things: 9/11, the Iraq War, the fiscal crisis, Covid, right? Now Trump. Bad, yes, but maybe not quite as bad as the constant Trump headlines make it seem. Three years to go, and the midterms are coming up. Let’s see what happens. Is that it?
People who speak to Obama—and he has a lot of time on his hands to speak to a lot of people—report that, of course, he only has contempt for Trump. That he believes him to be pernicious, dangerous, and corrupt. That we are in a political situation that will take years for the country to recover from, if ever.
If ever.
So, what the hell? When is the time to spend that moral reserve?
And not oracularly, but specifically: what’s the plan?
How much can an ex-president do? How much has one ever done about anything? Power in America passes, even to Trump. Let it go. Plus, haven’t you heard about Barack Obama’s famous emotional unavailability? Nobody can save us if we can’t save ourselves.
But in an emergency? Burning building? To do next to nothing at all?
And… George W. Bush? What Barack Obama thinks about Donald Trump, George W. Bush thinks too. Trump does not engender a complicated response. W has the right to loathe him all the more so: Donald Trump has wrecked or stolen the Republican party the Bush family considered home. Here are two inimical pillars of American conservative life: the Bushes and Donald Trump. And for Trump, this isn’t a competition. He’s turned it into a death match—kill any Republican who isn’t a Trumper. And, what, W is just painting pictures?
They are apparently friendly now, Obama and Bush. Maybe even friends. How would the Trump subject not come up? Do they just shake their heads in mutual disgust and resignation? I see, at some point in the future (if there is a future), a two-man play: a portrait of the great and good debating all the reasons for not doing what history calls them to do.
Perhaps the lesson of being president is most of all about how little significance you ultimately have. That, in the end, having been president leaves you feeling powerless rather than powerful. Maybe that’s it. Obama and Bush know what Donald Trump still does not, that, in the great weary scheme of things, one man’s impact, even a president’s impact, is small. So, the joke’s on Trump.
Both men certainly seem to imply that they know something more than the rest of us. Some greater irony of history that they are privy to.
Still, it would hardly be a surprise, if you scratched their inscrutable surface, to find that neither really knows how to wrestle with Trump if push were to come to shove. Making themselves a target, they fear, plays into his ailing hands. So don’t give him what he wants. Reasonably, like everybody else, they are afraid of him.
And yet, of course, they understand that at some point—and perhaps every day they measure the distance to it—they can’t continue their reserve. At least, I hope they feel the burden of this; the responsibility and inevitability of having to stand up for something bigger than themselves.
What is it they might do? How about for starters, with as much anger and contempt as they are capable of publicly mustering—and do it together, why not?—just rip the guy a new asshole and dare him to prosecute them.
Click through to Michael Wolff’s HOWL to read more insight on Trump and the state of American politics.
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