Don’t be fooled by Donald Trump’s unorthodox style, says Victor Davis Hanson. Behind the
belligerent, “grating” manner that has so alarmed liberals is a mostly centrist agenda. Critics think
his policies represent some wild departure, but for the most part they just mark a return to how
things were before Barack Obama’s presidency. People have forgotten how radical that presidency
was. Obama didn’t campaign on a “hard-left agenda”: his original platform included opposition to
gay marriage, promises to balance the budget, and a bipartisan foreign policy. But after his election,
Obama ditched the “relatively centrist” agenda for a “staunchly progressive” one. He proposed
immigrant amnesties, pushed through a “revolutionary federal absorption of health care”, and
bypassed the Senate on a treaty with Iran. Taxes rose, red tape and political correctness proliferated,
the national debt nearly doubled. Compare that to Trump’s priorities: gas and oil development,
strong borders, slashing taxes, “unapologetically siding with Israel”, traditionalist values – these may
all now sound radical, but they “used to be standard US policy” before Obama came along. In short,
Trump seems like a revolutionary, “but that is only because he is loudly undoing a revolution”.
