Of course, it was the Iran war—though I don’t think people, including Vice President JD Vance, are fully putting their finger on why.
Fairly close to 100% of the electorate, whether they love or hate Donald Trump, understand him not as somebody to follow into a military campaign of his own impulsive choosing, unprovoked by any national emergency.
Though in his arrogance and presumption it would have been hard for any underling to put it to him, there was something else: the unique and sequined nature of his legitimacy.
His freakish rise in our politics is so much the reciprocal of the illegitimate and foolish machinations of his enemies. His very existence as president is an expression of domestic impasses and recriminations. A man with more self-knowledge would understand that foreign crusades aren’t licensed for such a president; they shouldn’t even have interested such a president.
Vice President Vance has been tagged with “disloyalty” for his indecently hurried tweet on Wednesday blaming the war for the midterm outcome. Mr. Trump himself is famously devoid of loyalty to anyone and anything, including the party he nominally heads, as will likely become apparent in the days and weeks ahead. That’s just the beginning of the real trouble.
If there had been a 9/11 or Pearl Harbor and the American people wanted and demanded action, of course, the story would have been different. But that wasn’t the case here and Mr. Trump knew it. He didn’t try rallying the country to his war. He knew he wouldn’t be able to.
Call it the necessary downside of Mr. Trump’s outsider act, his playing the bull in the china shop. His voters loved him for his clownish antics and norm violations partly because they also trusted him to know his limitations. In the event, he didn’t. It was clear from day one that he didn’t know what he was doing in Iran.
Particularly poignant was the cognitive dissonance of longtime Iran hawks. They recognized, as most Americans probably do, the basic legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s aims. But that doesn’t overcome his limitations. He outran his leash, unique to him and not like any other president’s, both in what it permits and what it forbids. “No forever wars” wasn’t just an ideological stance. Voters had a steep hill to climb to trust Mr. Trump with commander-in-chief powers. Mr. Trump was the most known person ever to run for president, and most of what was known was conventionally disqualifying.
When he told Tucker Carlson he pulled the trigger on Iran because things always work out for Donald Trump, it was exactly what his intrepid, fingers-crossed supporters didn’t want to hear. Waging wars of choice shouldn’t have been in his basket of options, if only because half the country would be in opposition and he would never be able to deliver if the going got tough.
The depth of the repudiation on Tuesday wasn’t because Americans value cheap gas above all. High gasoline prices were a manifestation of a collapsed experiment in trust.
Voters cut him off at the knees for this. Ambitious Democrats aiming at 2028 are already advising the incoming Congress against impeachments. But Democrats should understand: Voters just imposed on the legislative branch a duty to impeach and remove Mr. Trump if he doesn’t get the message.
Not that I think it will be necessary. America has shouldered inconclusive military adventures before without it blowing back unduly on domestic order and prosperity.
Some have likened Mr. Trump’s war to “America’s Suez,” the botched 1956 military caper that sealed the unraveling of the British Empire. The comparison contains an irony: One of the key bumblers of Suez would nevertheless inherit the British premiership. A year later he would be able to tell the British people, accurately, they “never had it so good.” Britain’s postwar boom had become apparent on the heels of Suez. London was about to embark on a golden age as a capital of fashion and culture. British rock ’n’ roll was about to conquer the world.
Mr. Trump has the AI boom going for him. He has America’s energy power, ironically boosted by the Iran war. He has his bully pulpit and veto pen. He remains the gifted showman. He can still leave the White House in two years on a high note if he’s seen as having been a useful, moderating force who protected prosperity from whatever Democrats have in mind.
