After eight months in the White House this President is simply no longer taken seriously. He has reduced the world's most powerful office to a shabby, selfish little enclave. He stood in front of the United Nations this week and said, "Our government's first duty is to its people, to our citizens, to observe their needs, to ensure their safety, to preserve their rights and defend their values. As President of the United States, I will always put America first. Just like you, as leaders of your countries, will always, and should always, put your countries first."
Well yes, naturally, but America used to be so much bigger.
Oddly enough, this nuclear rhetoric was the ultimate nightmare last year when a rank outsider, a crude populist with no knowledge of statecraft and showing no regard for it, was running for President. A friend used to laugh when we argued about Trump over a beer in the club after tennis. He was thoroughly enjoying the big fellow's challenge to liberal sensibilities and dismissed the idea he would do anything really dangerous.
I didn't raise the nuclear spectre in as many words. It seemed preposterous even for Trump back then. The threat of a trade war was bad enough. But here we are, the tough guy is dealing with Kim Jung Un just as he probably dealt with small independent contractors through all those years building his real estate empire. Try to scare them, threaten them with ruin. They stood to lose more than he did. They always came around, why should a small country be any different?
He thought his old art of the deal was working a few weeks ago when he publicly announced his threats seemed to be getting Kim's respect. Many others were finding, to their surprise, they were drawing hope from the possibility Kim was more rational than Trump. Then North Korea fired the missile over Japan and exploded a warhead more compact and powerful than anyone thought it possessed, sending a seismic shock through the hemisphere.
It was then, I think, that Trump decided to give the North Korean a silly nickname, just as he did for his rivals in his election campaign. "Rocket Man". This was probably Trump's way of defusing tension when a contractor looked like he might really sue. Call him some crazy New York thing and they'd both have a chuckle. Trump has that blokey charm. It might have worked in the only business he knows, where he held all the cards. It doesn't work in diplomacy.
Sooner or later, probably sooner, Rocket Man will have a missile capable of reaching Washington DC and a warhead that can withstand the re-entry. What happens then? It's some comfort to be told there are still grown-ups in the White House, possibly more than there were before the recent purges of Anthony Scaramucci and mad Steve Bannon.
The President, as the sole elected figure in the executive branch of the US Government, has been invested with immense personal power, ultimately his finger alone is on the button. But when the American voters have made a serious mistake, electing someone temperamentally unreliable to the awful responsibilities of the office, we might find the Washington establishment can keep decisions out of the Oval Office when necessary.
Already, his bloated talk on every subject floats across our television screens without really exciting or alarming anybody anymore. He knows the sort of people who voted for him and he continues to speak to them while embarrassed Americans can only cringe.
