Whether Clinton or Trump Wins, the Country Is in for a Massive Post-Election Hangover

[Valin]

National Review:

Either candidates presidency would be dogged by the turmoil currently roiling the election.

Jonah Goldberg

October 19, 2016

 

Sometimes you can’t just plan for the ball; you have to plan for the hangover, too. No matter how 2016 ends, there will be a headache that haunts the country for years to come.

 

Let’s start with the most obvious but less likely scenario: Donald Trump wins the presidency in perhaps the biggest black swan event in the history of American politics. Whether you think Trump’s presidency would be an unfolding disaster of biblical proportions (“The Potomac! It’s turned to blood!”), or the unfolding of a biblical prophecy to save America (“The Winning! So. Much. Winning!”), or something in between, no one can deny the enormous change it would represent, and the hostility and fear it would likely elicit from various institutions and constituencies, particularly the news media, but also Hollywood, higher education, our NATO allies, unions, left-wing activists, and perhaps even Wall Street, the Pentagon, and much of the federal bureaucracy.

 

Fortunately, Donald Trump has the Lincolnesque qualities of political subtlety, magnanimity, and foresight to quell any such misgivings.

 

(Snip)

 

During the Cold War, the Russians mastered the use of slow-acting poisons to kill victims long after they were stabbed with an umbrella tip. Fittingly, the WikiLeaks e-mails may act like ricin or anthrax, wreaking havoc on Clinton’s presidency long after they’re released. In a normal election year with a normal GOP nominee, the WikiLeaks revelations might prove fatal to Clinton’s candidacy. Instead, it seems almost a sure thing that they will poison Clinton’s presidency for years to come. The allegations of pay-for-play between her foundation and the State Department, her speeches to Wall Street, the animosity of some of her closest advisers for Catholics: All of these things will have a long half-life. As will her manifest lies about the use of her private server.

 

The populist Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic party has been given ample evidence to support their suspicions of Clinton as a conniving and cynical politician. The populist Trump wing of the Republican party — and large swaths of the rest of it — is already locked into the belief that Clinton is a singularly nefarious force in our politics. If elected, she will have fulfilled the only mandate that unites large numbers of voters: She’s not Trump. (Nearly a third of her voters say that is the No. 1 reason they are voting for her.)

 

Right now, and for the foreseeable future, America is being torn asunder by populist passions on the left and right that lead people to distrust nearly every major institution in this country.

 

(Snip)