RUTHFULLY YOURS

George H. W. Bush gave up power quietly and turned to charity work and occasional ceremonial speaking after his reelection defeat in 1992. George W. Bush — like Jerry Ford in 1977 and Ronald Reagan in 1989 — did the same when Barack Obama assumed power in 2009.

Unending Presidencies

Recent Democrats emeriti — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama — apparently had a different vision of the post-presidency, unlike the quiet retirement of Lyndon Johnson back to his ranch in 1969. The three saw politics in more Manichean terms, as an existential struggle far too important to cease at the end of a presidential tenure.

Carter freelanced abroad for 30 years in successful quest for a Nobel Prize, but he often undercut presidential diplomacy. He regularly weighed in on the shortcomings of his successors — in a way he would have deeply resented had either Ford or Richard Nixon done the same.

No sooner had Bill Clinton left the presidency than he and Hillary Clinton began the grand plan for a return to the White House in 2009, and, after a setback, then again in 2017. Theirs was a two-decade long post-presidency of glad-handing, politicking, and, to use a euphemism, quid pro quo fund raising.

Barack Obama has already weighed in, including while overseas, on the shortcomings of his successor. His aides, led by Ben Rhodes, are at the forefront of the “Resistance” to thwart the Trump administration. Susan Rice and John Kerry comment regularly on supposed Trump foreign-policy blunders, as do James Clapper and John Brennan — usually in proactive fashion to deflect news accounts that may reflect poorly on their own past tenures.

Resistances

But all that said, we have never quite seen anything like the opposition of the so-called Resistance to the elected presidency that followed the Obama tenure.

There were the initial false charges that pro-Trump Russians had shut down power grids in Vermont. There were frivolous suits claiming that voting machines in three states were rigged. There was an organized, anti-constitutional effort to subvert the Electoral College so that it would not reflect the vote tallies of individual states. On Inauguration Day, there were congressional boycotts of the swearing-in ceremony. There were demonstrations at which, to take one example, Madonna envisioned blowing up the Trump White House.

An entire genre of assassination chic followed. Politicians, celebrities, actors, academics, and wannabees variously reenacted beheading Donald Trump, stabbing him to death, shooting him, torching him, hanging him, or, in the words of Robert DeNiro, dreaming of punching Trump in the face. Few in the media were bothered by the imagery or threats. Yet sometimes the hysteria became real violence — as when Bernie Sanders supporter James Hodgkinson’s shot prominent Republican politicians practicing for a charity baseball game, gravely wounding Republican House whip Steven Scalise, or when libertarian senator Rand Paul (present at the Scalise shooting) was attacked and injured by a disturbed neighbor and proponent of socialized medicine.

When you look at it hard, two conclusions are impossible to escape: First, at the height of the 2016 campaign, Obama intelligence officials anxiously adopted Christopher Steele’s allegations of traitorous conduct by then-candidate Donald Trump rather than first subject his “dossier” to rigorous investigation — even though Steele himself admits that his “raw,” “unverified” reports might not be true.

Second, at the same time the FBI was receiving Steele’s reports — which were based on multiple-hearsay from anonymous Russian sources, and paid for by the Clinton campaign — Obama intelligence officials were briefing congressional leaders about them, thereby ensuring that they’d be publicized just six weeks before Election Day.

This is the second of two columns addressing the relationship between Steele and American government officials. To recap, Steele is a former British intelligence agent who compiled a “dossier” of uncorroborated reports alleging a Trump–Kremlin conspiracy. Steele was retained for this project by his contractor, the research firm Fusion GPS. The work was paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, through their lawyers.

The first column, on Monday, dealt with the recent referral of Steele to federal law-enforcement agencies by two senior Senate Judiciary Committee members. Republican senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsey Graham seek an investigation and potential prosecution of Steele for making false statements to the FBI. Though most of the referral is classified and non-public, we can glean that it focuses on Steele’s representations about his communications with journalists regarding dossier information.

As President Trump’s first year in office comes to a close, media hysteria about the grave harm he will cause to the nation and the world continues unabated – even though predictions of disaster he would supposedly cause in the past year never came to pass.

Since Donald Trump’s upset election victory in November 2016, commentators, anchors, reporters, columnists, editorial writers, op-ed writers all manner of experts have been opining on the horrors his presidency would bring about.

Gazing into their crystal balls, these sages told us: a monumental stock market crash was just around the corner; there was a good chance we were headed toward a nuclear war with North Korea; U.S. relations with nations around the world would hit a new low; investigations of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election would create a path eventually leading to President Trump’s impeachment; and a Republican revolt in Congress would stop President Trump from winning approval for any significant legislation.

While the prophets of doom have not recanted their claims – and in fact have continued making them – the reality of President Trump’s time in office so far speaks volumes about what never happened.

Looking back at President Trump’s first year in office as it winds to a close we see the following positive developments under his leadership:

The stock market is booming. In 2017, the Dow Jones Industrial Average posted its biggest gains ever, with the most closing highs for the index in a single calendar year. Volatility diminished to historic lows and many global stock markets finished the year at or near record highs.

There’s no evidence of collusion available to the public that shows Russia worked with the Trump campaign to help Donald Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential race.

Unemployment is low. The unemployment rate of 4.1 percent is the lowest in 17 years. The labor participation rate has increased steadily throughout the year, meaning more people are getting and keeping jobs.