Trump Walks the Political High Wire

This story was originally published on nationaljournal.com on March 7, 2017 Pres­id­ent Trump is go­ing to miss Hil­lary Clin­ton. Last Novem­ber, both Trump and Clin­ton had en­thu­si­ast­ic sup­port­ers. But most voters cast neg­at­ive bal­lots against one or the oth­er. And some voters, called “double neg­at­ives” by poll­sters, dis­liked both of them so much that they picked what they saw as the less­er of two evils or threw their sup­port to Liber­tari­an Party nom­in­ee Gary John­son or the Green Party’s Jill Stein. (It’s worth keep­ing in mind that Stein’s vote count ex­ceeded Trump’s vic­tory mar­gins in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wis­con­sin, the three states that ef­fect­ively de­term­ined the out­come of the elec­tion). Now that Trump doesn’t have a foil in Clin­ton, it’s all about him. Trump’s style seems more about sub­trac­tion and di­vi­sion, des­pite the fact that polit­ics is sup­posed to be about adding and con­sol­id­at­ing sup­port. His well-re­ceived ad­dress to a Joint Ses­sion of Con­gress last week could have been a nice bit of ad­di­tion. But his mo­ment­ary tri­umph was rendered moot by on­go­ing con­tro­ver­sies in­volving Rus­sia and his in­tem­per­ate tweets