Yes, you do have to hand it to Donald Trump.
“If elections ultimately come down to the quality of the candidates,” Jeff Blehar writes in the new postelection special issue of NR magazine, “then surely it must be granted that Trump won in large part because he is in his own way a truly superb politician, an authentic generational talent who should be compared to Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.”
“Some people would blanch at such a characterization,” Jeff adds, “but the fact that Trump has, in all likelihood, earned the GOP its first popular-vote victory in a presidential election since 2004 and nearly achieved an absolute majority despite his obvious handicaps suggests that, if anything, his skills are underrated.”
I can’t say that I disagree. Despite everything that came his way — including a universally hostile press, indictments, attempts on his life, political rivals who hated his guts, and more — Donald Trump nevertheless persisted. I don’t know how Trump’s story will end (for good or ill), but it’s already a quintessentially American story.
Read the whole thing here. It’s a great cover essay. It’s trenchant, serious, but, as always with Blehar, witty and funny.
This is the magazine’s special postelection issue. In it, you’ll find complete coverage, including:
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