William Galston writes in the Wall St. Journal:
“In this age, in this country, public sentiment is everything,” Abraham Lincoln declared. “With it, nothing can fail; against it, nothing can succeed.”
Faced with negative public reaction to his latest attack on Iran, Donald Trump said, “I don’t care about polling. I have to do the right thing.”
Mr. Trump’s position sounds nobler. But America’s greatest president was making a deeper point: In a country whose government derives its legitimacy from the people, public support is necessary for success.
Lincoln didn’t mean that leaders must always consult the people before acting. As president, he didn’t when he suspended the writ of habeas corpus early in the Civil War. (He did submit his decision to the judgment of the people’s representatives once Congress convened in July 1861.)
Nor did he mean that the public must support the president’s decision at the moment it is made. Rather, he said, leaders in a republic must seek to “mold” public sentiment—to convince an often skeptical populace that a controversial course of action is justified. Persuasion, he rightly believed, isn’t an ornament but the heart of republican leadership.
Trump only cares about his base and I think he’s caring about them less and less. He’s playing for history now — it’s all about being remembered as the greatest president who ever lived. I suspect in the end he almost prefers it that most people hate him because he thinks he’ll be proven right in the long run and everyone in the future will hail him for his courage and genius for “doing the right thing.”
He will go to his grave believing that and since there seems to be no accountability for him in this life, he’ll die a happy man.
I know that’s dark but look at it this way. If that’s true it means we’ll have survived this.