Victor Davis Hanson argues at National Review Online that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump can trace much of his success in the polls to the disappointing seven-year record of the man he wants to replace.
Barack Obama is the Dr. Frankenstein of the supposed Trump monster.
If a charismatic, Ivy League-educated, landmark president who entered office with unprecedented goodwill and both houses of Congress on his side could manage to wreck the Democratic party while turning off 52 percent of the country, then many voters feel that a billionaire New York dealmaker could hardly do worse.
If Obama had ruled from the center, dealt with the debt, addressed radical Islamic terrorism, dropped the politically correct euphemisms, and pushed tax and entitlement reform rather than Obamacare, Trump might have little traction. A boring Hillary Clinton and a staid Jeb Bush would likely be replaying the 1992 election between Bill Clinton and George H. W. Bush — with Trump as a watered-down version of third-party outsider Ross Perot.
But America is in much worse shape than in 1992. And Obama has proved a far more divisive and incompetent president than George H. W. Bush. …
… In terms of messaging, is Trump’s crude bombast any more radical than Obama’s teleprompted scripts?
Trump’s ridiculous view of Russian president Vladimir Putin as a sort of Art of the Deal geostrategic partner is no more silly than Obama insulting Putin as Russia gobbles up former Soviet republics with impunity.
Trump’s confusions are reminiscent of Obama’s own, though Trump knows how to pronounce the word “corpsman,” and that there are not 57 states.
