The Columbus Dispatch

Bait or not, Trump’s parade merits outrage

- EJ DIONNE E.J. Dionne writes for the Washington Post Writers Group. ejdionne@washpost.com

President Trump is such a master of the politics of distractio­n that everything he says and does is assumed to be a diversion from something more important, the Russiacoll­usion issue above all.

It’s certainly true that in Trump’s exotic circus of scandal and outrage, many stories that would have engulfed earlier administra­tions roll right off the back of the news cycle. Consider, for starters, his profiting while president from his resorts and golf clubs and his alleged payoff of a porn star.

On the substance of policy, he can govern largely by stealth. Discussion of the decisions his administra­tion has made on a range of regulatory, environmen­tal, labor, health-care and tax matters gets pushed to the bottom of the public agenda.

It will thus be tempting to dismiss Trump’s desire to have a big military parade as yet another ploy to change the subject. Trump knows perfectly well that many liberals are uneasy with massive demonstrat­ions of military strength, so some who might dissent could draw back, out of fear that he is baiting them and that they’ll play into his hands. Trump clearly longs to be the lead figure on the reviewing stand gazing out on the tanks and missiles as a tribute to his own power, while casting his critics as unpatrioti­c foes of our men and women in uniform.

But this is precisely why his parade proposal should be treated as dangerous and not simply another bout of Trumpian ego enhancemen­t.

When a leader who often praises strongmen abroad suggests hauling out the military to march in our streets as he looks down from on high, friends of freedom should take notice. In enduring democracie­s such as ours, liberty is eroded slowly, by politician­s who undermine the norms and practices that protect it. There is good reason why we have not made military parades a standard part of our patriotic repertoire.

Trump said he got this idea from France, our democratic ally whose Bastille Day military procession goes back 138 years. This gives him cover because spectacles of the sort Trump has in mind are associated less with free nations than with dictatorsh­ips in Russia, North Korea, China and the totalitari­an regimes of the 1930s.

The United States, born in republican opposition to royalist rule, has been properly reticent about flaunting our formidable arsenal, typically limiting such displays to celebratio­ns of war victories.

There is also an element of pragmatism in our shunning of martial ostentatio­usness. Our military is, as Defense Secretary James Mattis has said, “the world’s most feared and trusted force.” There is no need to prove this with a pageant of might that is at least as likely to inspire resentment as respect.

Mattis has done better than most Trump appointees in avoiding complicity with the president’s worst abuses. Perhaps Mattis has decided to preserve his influence by humoring Trump’s parade envy. Here’s hoping that instead, a Marine who knows what genuine battlefiel­d heroism entails will find a way to sideline this very bad idea.

He might persuade Trump to spend the money a parade would cost on scholarshi­ps for the children of wounded warriors and those who have died in battle, or to help homeless vets. This is what real patriotism looks like.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the last great general to serve as president, urged “an alert and knowledgea­ble citizenry” to mesh the “huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” Trump’s parade is the antithesis of Ike’s prudence and his commitment to safeguardi­ng our democracy.

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