Authored by William McGurn, originally published Op-Ed via The Wall Street Journal,
What’s the best case for Donald Trump?
The question comes in the week Republicans here will formally nominate him for president, and the answer is not complicated. Indiana Gov. Mike Pence gave it as his reason for signing on as Mr. Trump’s VP: The alternative is President Hillary Clinton.
This is the reality of choice in a two-party democracy. Still, many have a hard time accepting it. So even as Mr. Trump handily dispatched 16 more-experienced rivals, his shortcomings and unfitness for office have become a staple of conservative fare.
Yes, Mr. Trump elevates insult over argument. Yes, he is vague and contradictory about the details of his own proposals. And yes, he often speaks aloud before thinking things through. It’s all fair game.
Even so, in this election Mr. Trump is not running against himself. Though you might not know it from much of the commentary and coverage, he is running against Mrs. Clinton.
On so many issues—free trade, the claim that Mexico will pay for a border wall, his suspiciously recent embrace of the pro-life cause—Mr. Trump gives reasons for pause. But he still isn’t Mrs. Clinton. That’s crucial, because much of the argument for keeping Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office at all costs requires glossing over the damage a second Clinton presidency would do.
Start with the economy. There is zero reason to believe a Clinton administration would be any improvement over the past eight years, from taxes and spending and regulation to ObamaCare. If elected, moreover, Mrs. Clinton would be working with a Democratic Party that has been pulled sharply left by Bernie Sanders.
Mrs. Clinton’s flip-flop on the Trans-Pacific Partnership is illuminating. As President Obama’s secretary of state, she waxed enthusiastic. But when it came time to take her stand as a presidential candidate, she folded. Mr. Trump has made his own protectionist noises, but if this same trade agreement had been negotiated by a Trump White House, who doubts that he would be telling us what a great deal it was for American workers?
Or what about social issues? Mrs. Clinton has loudly repudiated the moderating language her husband ran on in 1992, notably on abortion. In sharp contrast, she is the candidate who touts the Planned Parenthood view of human life, who sees nothing wrong with forcing nuns to provide employees with contraceptives, and who supports the Obama administration’s bid to compel K-through-12 public schools to open girls’ bathrooms to males who identify as female.
In short, Mrs. Clinton is the culture war on steroids.
Which leaves foreign affairs. Here again, the initiatives where she was front-and-center do not inspire confidence: the Russian reset and Benghazi. More to the point, while she now apologizes for her 2002 vote to authorize the use of military force in Iraq, what she ought to be apologizing for is her admission that her 2007 opposition to the surge in Iraq was dictated not by any military concerns but because she was worried about facing antiwar candidate Barack Obama in the Iowa Democratic primary.
Today this same woman supports the nuclear deal with Tehran and offers an Islamic State strategy that sounds tough but is not materially different from Mr. Obama’s. This is the “hawk” we’re always hearing about?
Nor is the case against Mrs. Clinton limited to policy. It’s as much about personnel, which goes much further than the activist nominees she would almost certainly nominate for the Supreme Court.
When presidents enter office, they bring with them about 6,000 people. From the head of the Environmental Protection Agency and White House assistants down to the lowliest Justice Department lawyer, Mrs. Clinton would fill her government with people who get up each day looking to tax, spend, regulate—and use the federal government to stomp on anyone in their way.
At a time when so much of American “law”—from the Health and Human Service’s contraceptive mandate, to the Education Department’s “Dear Colleague” letters on transgender policy, to the National Labor Relations Board’s prosecution of Boeing for opening a new plant in South Carolina instead of in Washington state—is decided by faceless federal bureaucrats, Mrs. Clinton would stuff these federal agencies from top to bottom with Lois Lerners and Elizabeth Warrens.
Welcome to 21st-century American liberalism, which no longer even pretends to produce results. Whatever the shortcomings of Mr. Trump’s people, non-progressives simply do not share the itch to use the government to boss everyone else around. On top of this, an overreaching President Trump would not be excused by the press and would face both Republican and Democratic opposition.
Fair enough to argue that Mr. Trump represents a huge risk. But honesty requires that this risk be weighed against a clear-eyed look at the certainties a Hillary Clinton administration would bring.
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