I’d Heard He Was Doctrinaire

I haven’t paid much attention to Marc Thiessen over the years, and had only heard he was a doctrinaire extremist-conservative. He’s a columnist for WaPo, and when I saw he had a list of the top 10 best things Trump’s done, I couldn’t resist a list.

Sadly, it’s not a good list when I can only agree on one thing. But let’s go through them one by one, as it’s illustrative of the far-right mindset.

1. He, not Hillary Clinton, was inaugurated as president. And the beat goes on in running against Hillary, who appears to be guilty of … well, it’s hard to say, beyond being Clinton. Every time I see some mud flung at her, it doesn’t stick. But the important point here is that Thiessen is participating in the Clinton/Satan meme. Evidently coming up with more than 10 was a problem?
2. He is installing conservative judges who will preside for decades. And, as we’ve discussed, many nominees are so incompetent for the jobs that even his own Party’s hack has started rejecting them. This is a good thing?
3. He enacted historic tax and regulatory reform that has unleashed economic growth. No, we were doing just fine without them, by objective measurements of the nation as a whole. Thiessen is reaffirming his allegiance to the “taxes taxes taxes oh so high and horrible we’re all suffering” ideology of the GOP, rather than fulfilling his duty of sober analysis. And his assertion that economic growth has been unleashed is just that – we continue to toddle along just as we did with Obama.
4. He admitted he was wrong on Afghanistan and reversed Obama’s disastrous withdrawal. I’ll just abstain on this one, because Afghanistan appears to specialize in gobbling up invading forces such as the Soviets and now ours. On the other hand, portions of the populace do reach out for help. It’s a bit of a heart-breaker, but in the end we’re trying to build a democracy, and that just doesn’t seem to work very often.
5. He has virtually eliminated the Islamic State’s physical caliphate. Just following in Obama’s footsteps, as I understand it. I suppose you can at least give him credit for letting the military do its job – just as Obama did.
6. He got NATO allies to kick in $12 billion more toward our collective security. If so, I think that’s good. But, I don’t really know how he did it. By suggesting we’d walk away? His link only verifies the jump, not the reason. If he put NATO at risk just to save a bit of money, then I’d have to consider retracting my agreement.
7. He withdrew from the Paris climate agreement. Freaking potential disaster. You need leadership on these sorts of things in order to communicate the seriousness of the problem to those in a position to do something about it and help direct resources. It’s been great that various cities and even States have stepped up to counteract Trump’s failure of nerve, but let’s not sugarcoat it as Thiessen does, where he says, “After George W. Bush pulled out of the disastrous Kyoto treaty, U.S. emissions went down faster than much of Europe. The same will be true for Trump’s departure from the Paris accord. Combined with his approval of the Keystone XL pipeline, and opening the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to exploration, Trump is helping usher in a new age of American energy development.” No, he puts the country at risk. Present and future tense. And he gave credibility to the anti-science movement, which is also a high-risk thing to do.
8. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. And every independent analysis of this move has condemned it. Need more be said? Oh, let’s add – we’ve capitulated on our leadership position in a very difficult situation.
9. He has taken a surprisingly tough line with Russia. In what sense? That he signed the sanctions legislation that he criticized vociferously, and signed only when it became clear his veto would be overridden? Come on, Thiessen, that’s a joke.
10. He enforced President Barack Obama’s red line against Syria’s use of chemical weapons. Which consisted of a single attack on a Syrian airfield for which the field had been given warning and was swiftly rebuilt. I thought it was worthless.

Doctrinaire to a fault, I’d say. It echoes Trump’s urge to take credit for the work of others, it projects success in the future and then assumes it and takes credit for it when that success is considered doubtful, and generally ignores the promotion of trends which lead us astray when he should be providing strong leadership.

I see little reason to be reading Thiessen.