Star of his own show steps up, as formidable as ever

You’ve got to hand it to Donald Trump — he surely is smarter than your average Yogi Bear.

Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address flanked by Vice-President Mike Pence and house Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

You’ve got to hand it to Donald Trump — he surely is smarter than your average Yogi Bear. The President’s midweek State of the Union address has changed no fundamental dynamic in US politics, yet everything is slightly different after it.

It was by far Trump’s most ­important prepared speech.

For Trump owned this speech more than any other prepared speech he has delivered. It had ­elements of the usual Trump weirdness. Democrats met his admittedly uncharacteristic and implausible calls for bipartisanism compromise the next day, ­announcing the most extensive, extravagant, mind-numbing anti-Trump congressional investigations imaginable.

The sinister Trump presidential inauguration ball will be subject to searing scrutiny. Did rich people subsidise the ball to gain favour with Trump?

Gambling, Louis? In a casino? I’m shocked. Truly shocked.

The television network CBS, hardly pro-Trump, took a poll straight after the State of the Union. It found more than 75 per cent gave the address a favourable rating.

No, that doesn’t count, Trump haters rushed to declare. Trump cannot win even a single minute for these folks; only Republicans were watching TV by the end. For these commentators, everything Trump says or does has to indicate moral degeneracy and intellectual idiocy.

But this speech, in its sprawling vastness, elucidates Trump’s world view, his domestic and foreign priorities, themes of his re-election bid. Above all, it demonstrates how formidable Trump remains.

Of course, the speech also ­contained statements that were simply not true, and characterisations of his past actions that turned reality on its head. The ­extreme challenge Trump poses for analysts is to understand that he is not good or bad, he is good and bad; he is not smart or dumb, he is smart and dumb; he is not shrewd or reckless, he is shrewd and reckless.

Someone who has known Trump for many years offered me rare insight into his character. He is extremely competitive, determined to win in everything he does, has high self-confidence, motivation and energy. His psychology is reciprocal. He is nice to anyone who is consistently nice to him and useful. But if you hit him, his instinct is to hit you back 10 times as hard.

His aggression and reciprocity are part of his deal-making. Trump’s character obviously has unpleasant aspects but people who know him recount as many stories about his generosity as his nastiness. Bob Woodward, hardly a Trump sycophant, recounts in his book Fear the trouble Trump takes over his personal phone calls to the families of US service personnel killed in the line of duty, how long he talks to the families, how he often embroiders the stories of the popularity of the dead soldiers he is praising.

The long-term Trump associate also suggested to me that some of Trump’s loopiest statements may have this explanation. He may at times say things outlandishly naive or even foolish in order to get people to under­estimate him as part of the endless negotiating games he is always playing in his head. That seems at first blush outrageous pro-Trump rationalisation. Yet, albeit in entirely different ways and contexts, both Ronald Reagan and Dwight Eisenhower, two of the most successful presidents the US has known, did something similar.

One other bit of personal testimony: years ago, when I myself could not see a single redeeming feature in Trump, I met a college professor, a liberal Democrat, who had taught Trump’s daughter. The professor described the younger Trump as the most ­polite, friendly, considerate, collegial and unaffected student she had come across and reflected: that must say something about her upbringing.

You can easily be dazzled, misled by the consistently high negatives in Trump’s polling numbers, as I was at the past US election. One reason Trump can win with such numbers is that he targets specific demographics and states. Next time, like last time, four swing states — Ohio, Pennsyl­vania, Wisconsin and Michigan — will be key.

Trump’s approval rating is about 40 per cent. I’m sure that’s a bit below what he would like. At 45 per cent he is extremely formidable. This is because he will never win a nationwide vote of love and confidence like Reagan won in 1984, the last great presidential landslide.

Trump has a chance to win ­because he will be running against one Democratic opponent. ­Remember that before she got mashed up by Trump, Hillary Clinton was the most admired woman in America. Trump’s line — “crooked Hillary” — was crude and offensive, and tremendously effective.

Consider Elizabeth Warren. Two years ago, she was the left-wing politician progressive Democrats most wanted to run against Hillary and then Trump. Progressive, smart, a woman, of Native American heritage, a wonderful signifier of all identity virtues — race and gender, in particular — more rounded than Bernie ­Sanders, more consequential in the Senate. She was the "It" girl of the Left.

Seemingly without any strong evidence, Trump intuited her claims to being a Cherokee were ridiculous, and took to calling her “Pocahontas”, after a legendary Native American woman of the 17th century.

Warren claimed to be unfazed, but plainly Trump seriously messed with her head. He bluffed her into two catastrophic mistakes. She took a DNA test that showed she had considerably less than one-thousandth of a part of Native American genetic ­ancestry, somewhat less than the average American.

The test was ridiculous and her claim was ridiculous. She then went on to say that actually she had never really claimed to be a Native American and had never sought to use this for career ­advancement. One second later her 1986 bar admission form is ­recovered and leaked and there in her own hand she is claiming her ethnic status as Native American, a claim she would make only for career advancement. All of a sudden Cherokee elders are condemning her and she is apologising everywhere.

Of course, as Trump demonstrates, a hugely embarrassing ­incident or revelation doesn’t rule you out of high office, but if the Democrat strategy is to energise their base and add voters in the sensible centre, this kind of thing is pretty damaging. It reinforces Trump’s narrative in the culture wars — these sanctimonious lefties are hypocrites and liars.

Let me hasten to observe, I don’t think this is a very elevated or even remotely satisfactory way for national debate to proceed, but Trump’s ability to drive his opponents insane is a key to his chances in 2020.

Trump restated the key planks of his 2016 campaign. He will fiercely oppose illegal immigration. This time, amazingly, he said he was in favour of legal ­immigration in unprecedented numbers. This is actually a big change for Trump. Despite what he said this week, he had previously been opposed to both legal and illegal immigration, wanting to eliminate the latter and severely cut the former.

A certain proportion of his base is opposed to both sorts of immigration. But Trump seems pretty good with his base. Maybe he can challenge them this little bit. He needs a better vote among immigrants. Many American ­immigrants are natural Republicans: conservative social values, strong work ethic, stress on family, attachment to small business.

As anyone who has spent serious time with immigrants knows, no one is more likely to oppose ­illegal immigration than those folks who have worked hard, ­endured long waits, paid all the fees, filled out all the forms, jumped through all the hoops, obeyed all the rules to settle in a country legally. This change in Trump may not last or it may be a strategic shift that could prove fertile.

Trump still wants his wall on the Mexican border but understands he lost the politics of the ­recent government shutdown. Whether it’s declaring a state of emergency, which would be ­inherently ridiculous but allow Trump to spend Pentagon and Treasury money on building a wall, or some minimal legislative compromise with the Democrats, or some other executive action yet to be dreamed up by administration lawyers, Trump will need some minimal level of wall building to keep faith with his base.

Trump’s strongest positive is the economy, and he will face greater trouble if the economy slows markedly before 2020.

However, his greatest advantage is the Democrats’ leftward tilt. The Republican Party has grave weaknesses. Through no fault of Trump’s, it has only 13 women in the House of Representatives. Even Trump cannot win the presidency without a sizeable vote among women and ­immigrants.

But the Democrats are giving Trump immense help by moving so far to the Left. There is a ­bumper crop of left-wing Democrat presidential candidates. And they will claw at each other trying to get the attention of the Democrat base. They will compete by going ever further leftward to arouse base enthusiasm.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez arrives at the State of the Union address.

Trump moved swiftly from ­denouncing Venezuela to denouncing proposals for socialism in America. How dishonest of Trump, CNN scoffed, no one in America is proposing socialism. But, in fact, Bernie Sanders calls himself a democratic socialist. The young, telegenic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, just the sort of candidate who might catch fire in the primaries, especially with millennials, also calls herself a socialist and wants a wealth tax on anyone worth more than $US10 million. Lots of Democrats want big personal and corporate tax rises. Some versions of universal healthcare, which a lot of Democrats support, include banning private health insurance. The perfectly insane “Green New Deal” wants the US to be carbon neutral in 10 years, a scheme rightly denounced even by Obama administration officials. Imagine Trump with a scheme like that to demonise.

Calling all this stuff socialism is not Trumpian exaggeration. It is a perfectly reasonable line of political attack.

Foreign policy figured very little and served domestic purposes. I disagree with many conservatives and agree with Trump’s statement that: “Great nations do not fight endless wars.” Trump is right to seek to end US ground force commitments in Afghanistan and the Middle East and move to a strategy of offshore ­balancing.

This is a big argument but ending ground force commitments will either be done by Trump, who is a national security hawk, or it will be done by a left-wing Democrat, who will almost certainly enact massive cuts to the US military at the same time.

On China, Trump gave nothing away but held out the prospect of a short-term trade deal that would not, of course, remove the long-term structural competition between the US and China.

On North Korea, Trump made one utterly ridiculous statement, that were he not President, the US would now be in a major war. Subtly, he shifted his goal away from denuclearising North Korea to preserving a stable status quo. Nonetheless, you must judge Trump on results. He has got to the point with Korea that any sensible president would have sought: he is deterring North Korea, maintaining sanctions, ­defending the US and its allies and not further disturbing the status quo so long as Pyongyang doesn’t conduct new nuclear tests or missile launches.

Trump has got to this point via the most bizarre route, turning every moment into a psycho­drama in which he is the star. I hate the way Trump fawns over Kim Jong-un, the most repulsive Stalinist psychopath on the ­planet, and the Vietnam summit will doubtless be odious. But Trump has produced a reasonable outcome so far.

In sum, this coherent, balanced, shrewd, sprawling, at times contradictory but ultimately very successful speech shows Trump somewhere near the top of his game. Neither victory nor defeat is assured and we all have tickets to the greatest show on earth.