A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad President Builds an Empire

TO MOST highly educated people I know, President Trump is a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad president. 

For two years, the people with at least two university degrees (PALTUDs) have been gnashing their teeth about Trump’s every utterance and move. To the foreign policy experts, he is a bull in a china shop, trampling the “rules-based international order” underfoot. To the economics establishment, he is a human wrecking ball, smashing more than a half-century of consensus that free trade really works better than protectionism.

A striking feature of all this dire commentary is how wrong it has been so far. Despite all the Cassandra talk, the United States could still meet its Paris target for reducing carbon dioxide emissions (not least by keeping its nuclear plants going and thereby reducing the utilization of coal-fired capacity). Europeans have largely accepted that they need to spend more on their own defense. North Korea leader Kim Jong Un has halted his missile and warhead tests and come to the negotiating table. And Iran is reeling from the re-imposition of sanctions and a concerted US-Israeli-Arab military pushback.