The Cost

admitted, as the courts and Congress maintained the usual restraints on the White House.¹ But many of Trump’s critics have simply moved on to claiming that he violates vaguely defined constitutional “norms.” Such claims often come from people who favor violations of actual constitutional rights and spend much of their time pressuring judges to ignore the plain language of the first two amendments.

Trump doesn’t trample our rights and he doesn’t start wars. He says things that offend people.

Another thing that Trump sometimes says is that Americans “have no choice”² but to vote for him given his economic policies. We always have choices, but he has a point for voters who prize limited government. As we write this in the summer of 2020, with virus lockdowns ravaging the economy and triggering the highest unemployment rates in more than seventy years, Trump’s presidential election opponent Joe Biden is stubbornly maintaining that what the U.S. economy needs is a $4 trillion tax increase. Biden has also proposed a much larger increase in federal spending, plus a wave of new federal regulation. This fall voters have a clear choice between a candidate who favors economic growth and one who has other priorities.

The massive exception to Trump’s limited government agenda is, of course, the rise in federal debt during his presidency; sadly this is the one area in which he has proven to be an utterly conventional politician. But if voters choose to reject him on this basis, they will elect a candidate promising to spend and borrow much more.

The Republican president Trump is the imperfect champion for foundational liberties at a time in our history when socialism is increasingly embraced by Democratic candidates. In this context, it’s possible that Trump’s controversial tweets will end up as forgotten footnotes.

One can argue with the slogan “Make America Great Again,” on the grounds that America never stopped being great. And the United States is not just one of the great countries of the world. It’s the greatest. No other country has done nearly as much as the United States to liberate and enrich people all over the world. Trump the salesman actually understated the case.

Still, the important thing about Trump is that he believes in American greatness, wants America to be the most prosperous country in the world, and prioritizes a thriving America above all other considerations. In another time and place, it might be obvious that a president puts the interests of his country first. But Trump came along at a time in America when too many politicians seemed to view America as one of the world’s challenges, rather than its greatest asset. Trump’s predecessor President Barack Obama began his tenure by making a series of memorable speeches overseas in which he described American flaws. In France of all places, he castigated America for “arrogance.”³ Critics dubbed it Obama’s “apology tour.”⁴ By Obama’s last year in office it had become standard operating procedure, even when visiting Marxist dictatorships, to recall alleged U.S. misdeeds against the host nation. During a visit to Cuba he noted that the United States had once sought to “exert control” over the country and no doubt many suffering Cubans were wishing that we had.⁵ Trump doesn’t apologize for America. When it comes to foreign relations, he thinks that in many ways we’ve been too nice. He presented himself to voters in 2016 as an experienced negotiator who could cut better deals on America’s behalf.

Trump correctly casts the United States as a model for the world. And regardless of the number of odd messages he may post on Twitter, he’s done as much as any recent president to maintain the constitutional governance that made us great and allows us to exercise the global leadership the world needs. In a September 2019 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, President Trump said, “I have the immense privilege of addressing you today as the elected leader of a nation that prizes liberty, independence, and self-government above all.… Americans know that in a world where others seek conquest and domination, our nation must be strong in wealth, in might, and in spirit. That is why the United States vigorously defends the traditions and customs that have made us who we are.”⁶

Trump then encouraged the leaders of other nations to honor their own cultures as the foundation of a patriotism that inspires people to defend their independence. But he might just as well have been talking to Americans who have lately witnessed a flood of media stories about attempts to destroy U.S. monuments, even ones dedicated to great abolitionists. Trump stands squarely against efforts to trash our history and understands that while America has often fallen short of its founding ideals, the answer is not to reject such ideals but to extend them to people everywhere. He said at the U.N.:

The core rights and values America defends today were inscribed in America’s founding documents. Our nation’s Founders understood that there will always be those who believe they are entitled to wield power and control over others. Tyranny advances under many names and many theories, but it always comes down to the desire for domination. It protects not the interests of many, but the privilege of few.

Our Founders gave us a system designed to restrain this dangerous impulse. They chose to entrust American power to those most invested in the fate of our nation: a proud and fiercely independent people.

The true good of a nation can only be pursued by those who love it: by citizens who are rooted in its history, who are nourished by its culture, committed to its values, attached to its people, and who know that its future is theirs to build or theirs to lose. Patriots see a nation and its destiny in ways no one else can.⁷

Of course such soaring rhetoric is often followed by undignified Twitter commentary. For years this has led many observers to cast Donald Trump as the guilty pleasure of American politics. It’s been a recurring theme in