Of course, it was the Iran war —though I don’t think people, including Vice President JD Vance, are fully putting their finger on why.
His freakish rise in our politics is so much the reciprocal of the illegitimate and foolish machinations of his enemies. His very existence as president is an expression of domestic impasses and recriminations. A man with more self-knowledge would understand that foreign crusades aren’t licensed for such a president; they shouldn’t even have interested such a president. Voters cut him off at the knees for this. But Democrats should understand: Voters just imposed on the legislative branch a duty to impeach and remove Mr. Trump if he doesn’t get the message.
Ambitious Democrats aiming at 2028 are already advising the incoming Congress against impeachments.
Mr. Trump himself is famously devoid of loyalty to anyone and anything, including the party he nominally heads, as will likely become apparent in the days and weeks ahead. That’s just the beginning of the real trouble. Particularly poignant was the cognitive dissonance of longtime Iran hawks. They recognized, as most Americans probably do, the basic legitimacy of Mr. Trump’s aims. But that doesn’t overcome his limitations. He outran his leash, unique to him and not like any other president’s, both in what it permits and what it forbids. Voters had a steep hill to climb to trust Mr. Trump with commander-in-chief powers. Mr. Trump was the most known person ever to run for president, and most of what was known was conventionally disqualifying.
Vice President Vance has been tagged with “disloyalty” for his indecently hurried tweet on Wednesday blaming the war for the midterm outcome. “No forever wars” wasn’t just an ideological stance.
