Throughout this entire election process I've found myself dismayed with America's current choices, but I have not ever, nor am I now, really all that concerned with the eventual fate of the Republic itself.
Don't believe me? Read this.
Go ahead, I'll wait.
Back? Good.
And while I don't think that America is going to be in for days of wine, roses and stuffed peacock, I do think that, ultimately, the Republic will endure.
I think that because the United States of America is a bigger thing than one man in one office at any one time. We survived Jackson, Buchanan, Harding, the scandals of Grant, the ineptitude of Carter, the god-king delusions of Roosevelt, the paranoia of Nixon, the hedonism of Clinton and the fecklessness of Obama.
In short, America will emerge from this all right. Maybe not as strong as we were before, maybe with less influence on the global stage, maybe a little bit poorer, but if there's one thing that history has taught us it is that the machinery of the Republic moves on. Yes, we might have just made a modern day Caligula the President-Elect, but the Holy Roman Emperor didn't have any checks and balances on his power, the Bronzed Ego will.
He'll also have a partially functional Congress to have to do business with and a newly motivated minority in the Senate. He'll have States who have enumerated powers seeking to keep those powers and (hopefully) a rather conservative Supreme Court that (hopefully) rediscovers its skepticism toward executive power.
He'll also have a mid-term election to face in a couple of years. And a citizenry to satisfy who has shown a willingness to flip the legislative branch opposite the political leanings of the executive branch in order to curb excess. Like Obama before him, Trump and the GOP are going to find they have a very short window for enacting change.
Granted, the map for Democrats in 2018 does not look promising, and they'll have to find the will and activism to do something they traditionally haven't. In short, they're going to have to turnout for mid-term elections. That they're likely going to be doing with with Sens Elizabeth "high cheekbones" Warren and "Angry" Bernie Sanders as their standard bearers should give them a moment's pause.
The temptation will be there for the GOP to overreach, here's hoping what remains of the Democrats will not let them. I'd appeal to their good sense but the GOP has shown to have little of that remaining.
Most importantly though, the power of the USA lies not in her political class but in the machinery of the people. This morning around 300 Million people are going to wake up and continue going about their daily lives. They will do this tomorrow, and the next day, and the ones after that. They will continue to go to jobs, participate in leisure activities and (hopefully) nurture families that will generate the next generation of leaders. Leaders who, have a pretty low bar to clear to best the levels of accomplishment attained by the Baby Boomers.
No doubt there will be struggle. There will be disagreement and there will be stumbles along the way. Radical Islamic terror is still a thing, China is still looking to expand her footprint in Asia and Russia will now become very emboldened. Our allies in Europe are still trying to figure out where they went so wrong and Africa is a powder-keg waiting to explode in a fury of Ebola and poverty.
The climate is still going to change (as it has for Millennia) and the United Nations is still going to try and stop it rather than figuring out what in the word we can do to deal with it. Energy demand will continue to increase while supply lines are threatened, and there's still the issue of what to do with a under-educated workforce that's slipping further and further behind because of an education system that's totally in shambles.
The unions will still want more money to maintain their outdated business models and there will still be progressives running around clamoring for economy-killing things and pining for the day that their hand-picked "experts" get their hands back on the tiller.
Crony Capitalism is just as prevalent in GOP administrations as it is in DEM ones, and Sheldon Adelson has spend tons of money making sure that his interests will be brought to the front. In short, there are a long list of distractions that the new Trump-led GOP will have to overcome to meet their campaign promises and try to attempt to open back up an economy that almost 75 years of progressive policy has strangled.
Here's hoping they succeed.
