Although often paraphrased by countless others, in various versions, it was Alexander Pope who first suggested that “blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed.”
That was not the case with the recent elections. Much was expected, and many may be disappointed.
Admittedly, it was an improbable year. The Democrats lost, and the Chicago Cubs won.
The elections of 2016 will be recorded by historians as having produced enough voters who – although not fully certain what a Donald Trump presidency might ultimately bring – still opted for the “I'd rather be pleasantly surprised than fatally disappointed” gambit. Credit is due, to some extent, to the many revelations of WikiLeaks, which taught us more about Hillary Clinton than we were able to know and catalogue during her previous thirty years on the political stage. That, coupled with an arrogance that led the ‘incumbent’ camp to believe the election result would be an outcome that was not very much in doubt.
Hillary visited Giorgio Armani to ready her blue coronation pantsuit instead visiting the blue-collar factories in Michigan and Ohio.
Hillary visited Giorgio Armani to ready her blue coronation pantsuit instead visiting the blue-collar factories in Michigan and Ohio. As emphatic as the two-year old who assures its mother that it does not need a nap, the Clinton machine assured us of its impending victory.
It was not to be. The fears, the hopes, and the expectations were all unrealistic.
All agreed: it was the most important election of our lifetime. The Clinton protagonists, hostages to their own Left-dominate brains, have taken to rending their garments. The Trump advocates now speak of hope and change.
In fact, everything is going to change.
Espousing distinctly different ideologies, both camps have varied expectations that rarely occupy the same zip codes, or even the same universe. There are only two things the two camps have agreed upon – the historic importance of the 2016 election, and its ramifications for a generation to come.
Eschewing for the moment any discussion of the economy or of foreign affairs, the yet-unnamed justices of the Supreme Court who will be seated during the next few years will still be adjudicating matters when most of the high schools students – the class of 2036 – will be unable to answer the question: which president’s signature legislation was an ill-affordable health care act? Or, who was the first female presidential candidate from a major political party, whose defeat in 2016 was a defeat also for the Muslim Brotherhood, and for the two most notorious pro-jihadist organizations in the US – CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America?
And one might add – a defeat for the two misguided Jewish organizations who are shills for Obama/Clinton – the Anti-Defamation League and J Street.
For those who support a strong and secure Israel, and who opposed the Iran nuke deal, the Trump victory was much more significant than they could possibly imagine. The president-elect is surrounding himself with senior advisors who strongly opposed Obama’s pro-Iran line. November 8, 2016 was not a good day for the ayatollahs. Elections have their consequences.
Ignoring a litany of behavioral indiscretions that might have felled another presidential candidate, and the highly-financed Clinton campaign that exploited his frequent blunders and breaches of protocol, there were still millions of voters who were willing to “Vote Trump” with one feeling tied behind their back.
The absolute arrogance on the part of the Democrats, echoed no less by their apologists in the Fourth Estate, and in utter contempt of Barack Obama’s finger-wagging boast in January 2009 that “elections have consequences – and at the end of the day, I won,” seems to carry little currency today. What was good for the goose has nothing to do with the gander.
Despite reluctantly willing to accede to the final Electoral College tally, the Democrats, the media, and the multitude of weeping college students certainly weren’t willing to accept the fact that the winners get to choose the team that will serve as the Trump cabinet, or as his policy strategists and advisors. It’s only fair, Trump’s detractors seemed to imply, that both sides of the aisle need to have some input with the selections of cabinet posts. “Wrong!” – one could almost imagine Trump calling out with pursed lips.
Too many analysts have spent too many hours dissecting the names and reputations of the team that will make up the Trump Administration. Some have already been selected (Bannon, Sessions, Flynn, Pompeo), while yet others are still up for consideration – all, certain to be criticized by the Democrats. Yes, the same Democrats who didn’t care what the Republicans thought in 2008 or in 2012 when they put together their own team.
The individual names – for senior roles – for state, defense, justice, and security positions – are actually secondary to the general direction that their departmental policy pursues. To be sure, some of those who will assume their roles in January 2017 will not even be in place when Trump completes his first term, and certainly not if he serves a second. Consider the history. George W. Bush had two secretaries of defense, while Barack Obama is on his fourth. With national security advisors, Reagan had six during his two terms, Clinton two, Bush two, and Obama three.
Translation: the faces are inevitably going to change. It’s the policy that matters. That needs to reflect the president, and the president’s policies need to assuage the constituents who ultimately forced him to downsize his own home in order to move into the White House. It will be their fears, their hopes, and their expectations that will determine if he gets to do it again, in 2020.
President Obama had eight years to develop his new America, driving it in a direction that was supported by half the nation that hoped, while the other feared. Those who once feared have now won; and they finally hold hope. The Republicans will inherit a government where they control the executive office, the Senate, the House, the governorships, as well as the state legislatures. It is, according to the analytical metrics of ‘RealClearPolitics’ – employing an index which measures the electoral strength of the parties – the strongest position the GOP has held since 1928. How’s that for the Obama legacy of hope and change?
The Democrats will respond to this political tsunami by giving the reins of the party machine to Minnesota Congressman Keith Ellison – formerly of the racist Nation of Islam, and still very much a champion of anything anti-Israel – who will take time from prostrating himself as he faces Mecca five times each day, to face the challenges in Washington DC. The Republicans shouldn’t be alarmed. At all. It simply exposes the misbegotten compass that their counterparts choose to follow. The needle seems to always, and quite accurately, point to true wrong.
The Democratic lemmings, who somehow believe that the party of Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson (with obvious apologies to Carter and Obama, who are busy eulogizing Fidel Castro, the leftist darling who subjugated, tortured and murdered his own people) will find their own trump card three years from now in order to organize a challenge in 2020, will discover that their expectations are unrealistic.
Trump’s electoral mandate has changed everything. He understands the expectations.
We can only hope that he will not disappoint.
His political opponents, meanwhile, who expected so much only a few weeks ago, should expect nothing. They will then not be disappointed.
Meir Jolovitz is a past national executive director of the Zionist Organization of America, and formerly associated with the Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies.