Fuck the Orangutan

How Trump Can Start Over

The State of the Union address rarely matters, but this one does.

By JEFF GREENFIELD

It’s not hard to imagine how a president, fresh from a midterm pounding and a shutdown debacle, could use the State of the Union to strike a new tone. He could graciously, even humorously, acknowledge the loss of the House. “It looks like a good many of you have moved over to the left since I was here last,” Harry Truman told the newly Republican Congress in 1947. He could pledge to keep the government running. “I challenge all of you in this chamber: Never, ever shut the federal government down again,” Bill Clinton said in 1996.

President Donald Trump could even, on Tuesday night, echo Clinton’s 1999 call for “civility,” uttered a month after the House had impeached him. Or he could remind the Congress, as George W. Bush did in 2007 after losing the House and Senate the previous November, that “our citizens don't much care which side of the aisle we sit on—as long as we're willing to cross that aisle when there is work to be done.” He might even concede that at times, it might be better to tweet a little less.

But to imagine those possibilities is to recall what a widow said to her daughter after a long, unhappy marriage: “We could have had a wonderful life, if only your father had been a completely different person.” For Trump and his speechwriters, the challenge at the State of the Union will be to put his opponents on the defensive without using we’re-all-in-this-together rhetoric that would cause his audience to erupt in laughter.

There is a way, however, that Trump could right his presidency with this speech, and even set himself on a path for reelection. The theme of the next two years of the Trump administration should be: “You probably don’t like me, and that’s fine. But check out the results.”

On the economy, Trump can frame the good numbers about jobs and growth in a manner that will all but require Democratic approval. Wages are growing at a pace not seen in years. The wage gap suffered by minority workers is closing. The poverty rate is beginning to come down.

On foreign affairs, Trump can—if he can restrain himself from massive overstatement—contrast his record with those of his critics. He can’t promise we’ll see a denuclearized North Korea, but he could assert that the danger has receded because he and Kim Jong Un have engaged in historic talks. Likewise, most everyone agrees that China has been extorting our intellectual property and imposing costly tariffs. While Trump can’t promise he’s going to succeed, he can genuinely say that he’s working on a new deal that will open their markets and protect American businesses. And we’ve known for decades that our NATO allies are not doing enough to pay for the common defense. Now they have begun to change.

“If my words are tough, that’s because they are producing results that softer words cannot,” Trump could say. And, he might add, “When I talk about ‘America First,’ this is what I mean.”

The center of attention, of course, will be what he says about the battle over the proposed wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. Depending on what time of day it is, or what he has just heard on Fox News, the president is either willing to stretch the definition of a “wall” to the breaking point, or not. But the advice the late Senator George Aiken offered on Vietnam is apt: “Declare victory and get out.” If House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy says it can be a “barrier,” and if the Democrats’ No. 3 House leader, Jim Clyburn, can embrace the same rhetoric, Trump can declare himself the reasonable leader: Let’s not let a dispute over what to call it stop us from building the border security we need. (If this represents a flip-flop, or a somersault, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.)

And if such a move annoys his base, he has two issues guaranteed to win its affection: the controversy over the Covington Catholic High School boys, and the recent moves by Democrats in Virginia and New York to extend abortion rights late into the third term.

The rush to judgment over what happened at the Lincoln Memorial is a surefire way to assail “fake news.” The same core Trump voters who love his judicial appointments would be thrilled to hear him take on the news media that hastily condemned high school students who were gathered at a March for Life rally.

And Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, newly reviled for his medical-school yearbook, had already galvanized the antiabortion-rights movement for comments that seemed to embrace a right to abortion almost up to the moment of birth (he has since denied any such idea). There isn’t an easier person for Trump to dunk on right now. Saying that the abortion-rights lobby wants to sanction the idea of taking a baby’s life just before birth is a ludicrously unfair description of its side of the debate. But that’s never stopped the president before.

Trump’s words Tuesday night are unlikely to have a lasting effect. These speeches rarely ever do. But a speech that moves the president out of the trough of disillusionment—a place where he’s a loser who’s been whipped into submission by a Democratic speaker—could form the basis of his case for a second term. Trump’s probably too needy to actually feel this way, but he could pretend that he doesn’t want our love, just our votes. And that his record of success is why he provokes such fierce opposition. FDR, after all, tried something similar just before his first re-election: “Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today. They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

And, oh yes, one stylistic note. Trump should spend his “executive time” on Tuesday reading through his remarks several times, so he does not resemble someone reading an eye chart at the Department of Motor Vehicles.