The one thing Donald Trump is really getting right
“‘With malice toward none, with charity for all . . . except for all the losers, clowns, and dummies.’ —President Donald Lincoln.”
“Can’t wait till Trump rips off his face Mission Impossible-style & reveals a laughing Ruth Bader Ginsburg.”
“Donald Trump haiku — Who would the Donald… Name to #SCOTUS? The mind reels. *weeps — can’t finish tweet*”
These are not the public statements of the chair of the Democratic National Committee or a liberal third-party attack group. They are the Twitter musings of Texas Supreme Court Justice Don Willett, one of President Donald Trump’s new appointments to the 5th District U.S. Court of Appeals.
Most notable about the Willett appointment is how…
normal it is. In the era of a president serving as human resources director for the National Football League and threatening nuclear war against an international foe on social media, sometimes the mundane stands out. Willett is a standard conservative jurist — the type George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan would have appointed to a federal appeals court. It appears, at least with his court picks, Trump is doing a fantastic job. (And trust me, my fingers almost wouldn’t allow me to type the last six words of that sentence.)
But even just as important, the Willett pick demonstrates a heretofore unseen level of Trump magnanimity. Normally, the president would deride anyone who mocked him as “fake news” or a “loser.” But in this case, he overlooked Willett’s jibes and promoted him, showing a basic level of maturity missing in virtually every one of his other public pronouncements. Our boy is growing up!
But for more traditional conservatives horrified by Trump’s behavior, his levelheaded judicial picks make the rest of his tenure even more frustrating. Why can’t all of his actions be like this? Even his most vocal critics on the right have to concede his Supreme Court pick was superb: In order to get through their day, most #NeverTrumpers likely gaze at a photo of Justice Neil Gorsuch the way Garfield the cat stares at a plate of lasagna.
Of course, the courts are just one aspect of Trump’s presidency — if his next Supreme Court appointment made Antonin Scalia look like Elizabeth Warren it wouldn’t be enough to salvage his reputation if America is at war, cities are on fire with racial strife and the health care system is a disaster.
But his managing of the court system could provide a blueprint for how to handle other aspects of his administration. For one, on court picks, it seems Trump is willing to delegate authority to those with more expertise. During the 2016 campaign, he released a list of potential court appointees that leaned heavily on suggestions from conservative groups such as the Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation. Granted, these picks still irritate progressives, but for the right
reasons, not because they’re so far out of the mainstream.
Suppose Twitter didn’t exist, and Trump were a Calvin Coolidge-like introvert, directing policy from inside the White House while rarely making public statements. Think of this Trump as “Paper Trump” — what has he done in black and white, on paper, rhetoric aside?
While sloppily drafted and clumsily implemented, Trump’s travel ban was, at its core, defensible. Despite sabotaging his own party’s message time and again, he seemed willing to sign meaningful reforms to repeal and replace Obamacare. He pushed the issue of what to do with children of undocumented immigrants out of the executive branch and into Congress, where it belongs. And, as noted, his judicial picks have been flawless.
In all these cases, Trump delegated authority either to his advisers or to Republicans in Congress. And yet it’s impossible to separate Paper Trump from the real one, who dominates news cycles by infecting America with his cult of inanity.
Trump’s judicial picks give us a glimpse into what’s possible when there’s no computer or camera around the Oval Office. America needs Paper Trump, not the delusional windbag who feasts on coarseness and disunity. Sadly, it is an insurmountable obstacle when the biggest problem with a presidency is the president.