Ineffective pulchritude or consequential crudity - make a choice

From Elites Value Mellifluous Illegality over Crass Lawfulness by Victor Davis Hanson.

Hanson has a sustained rat-a-tat indictment of the corruption of the Obama administration which was routinely and systematically downplayed by the very press which now finds fault with the manners of the current president. Hanson's is a hard knock against the vacuous classism of the press.

Donald Trump blusters nonstop. He offers contrasting messages about whether, on any given day, he might fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. His tweets are certainly not presidential, at least as the adjective is usually understood.

At perpetual campaign rallies, Trump mocks his critics, caricaturing their voices and slamming them with adolescent epithets like “Cryin’ Chuckie Schumer.” He accuses House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of being an enabler of M-13 gang members after she chastised him for calling such psychopaths “animals.” Trump has defined his own uncouthness, which so incenses his opponents. as “the new presidential.”

Yet so far, after over a year of intense investigation, Special Counsel Mueller has found no evidence that Donald Trump — or even his low-level subordinates — had ever colluded with Russian government interests to hijack the 2016 election and defeat Hillary Clinton. Indeed, Mueller has shown himself desperate to indict almost anyone connected with the Trump campaign with almost any charge he can think of — other than colluding with the Russians to warp an election, his original mandate.

Call the Trump paradox “crass lawfulness.” What drives Trump’s critics nearly crazy is not any evidence that Trump has broken federal laws per se. Instead, their rub is that there are somehow no criminal statutes against a president boorishly acting “unpresidential” in his loud quest to supercharge the economy, while undoing the entire agenda of his predecessor, who was so dearly beloved by the media, universities, Hollywood, and identity-politics groups.

Certainly, President Obama’s teleprompted speeches were mellifluous. As some sort of postmodern preacher, Obama often sermonized to Americans about the predetermined “arc of history” that purportedly bent all of us inescapably toward his own just moral version of the universe.

In calm, ministerial tones, the progressive Obama sometimes slapped a puerile America’s wrists, with frequent admonitions to behave and to not act so illiberally. Or he frequently reminded us, with a frown, “that is not who we are.” Recall that Obama came into office promising that he would could lower the seas and cool the planet, with a generation of young like-mind activists who, we were lectured, were the ones we had all been waiting for. Now president emeritus Obama worries that perhaps his messianic appearance came too soon for us to fully appreciate his divinity.

Despite Obama’s recent projection that his eight-year tenure was “scandal-free,” along with the reality that the media’s biased compliance sought to make such a startling fantasy true, the Obama administration was in many respects lawless. It will eventually rank as the most scandal-ridden administration since Warren G. Harding’s.

The rest of the article is a relentless recitation of all the scandals that were ignored or downplayed during Obama's administration.

Hanson brings to mind a comparison which must have been made but which I have not seen: the parallelism between Kennedy:Johnson and Obama:Trump.

Kennedy was the young, suave, intellectual beloved of the media of the day. It has taken some fifty years for the extent of his betrayal, crudity, predatory sexualism, etc. to come to light. The shine of Camelot has dulled. What was known but hidden has become public knowledge. And the suave darling was followed by the crude Texan, Johnson. The press never loved Johnson as they worshipped Kennedy. He was crude, swaggering, a bully. Everything that Kennedy was as well without the sheen of sophistication. Crude, indeed, but also crudely effective. Whatever the pros and cons of all his legislation, he was enormously effective at passing nation-altering law, much of it rectifying the last vestiges of some of our most grievous shortfalls from the ideals of our classical liberal heritage.

I had never thought of this parallel until reading Hanson's review of Obama's transgressions and betrayal of our nation's values. It was known at the time but the press were enamored with Obama as they were enamored with Kennedy. Obama never had the career accomplishments or the intellectual chops of Kennedy, but he dressed as nicely and spoke in as easy cadences.

And he has been followed, as Kennedy was by Johnson by a President who is crude, swaggering, belligerent. And, as with Johnson, so far as astonishingly effective. There is plenty of time for things to come off the rails. But so far, we have tax reform (of a poor sort with a couple of redeeming aspects), a roaring economy lifting all citizen's boats, safety at home, safety abroad, a reworking of the international order to reign in the global advantage-taking of the US, a delivery on a key promise to an ally of several decades standing which several impuissant presidents in a row have promised and never delivered. A nuclear rogue state is close to the negotiating table, a tyrannous regime is being cornered in the Middle East, Israelis are allying with Saudis and other Arab states and the Saudis are reforming themselves and taking themselves out of the terror business.

Much can go wrong, but in the meantime, much is going right. Ineffective pulchritude is followed by crude effectiveness. The talking heads prefer the one but those with thin wallets and real grievances prefer the benefits of the latter. Or so it seems.