now what? nothing will be more important to getting that answer right in the trump victory period than separating fact from abundant fiction. the 2016 presidential campaign was a magic mushroom tour through the american psyche<u+2014>its voters, its politicians and not least the exotic varieties of people who populate what we call <u+201c>the media.<u+201d> for all of them, the trump candidacy seemed to be a national rorschach inkblot. everyone looked at the same trump events, trump speeches and trump polls and interpreted them as individual political biases and desires. there was one exception to this mania: the collective wisdom of the american voter. in normal times<u+2014>and these are not normal times<u+2014>it would have been impossible for a candidate outputting donald trump<u+2019>s chamber of spoken and personal horrors to win. (sometime in the next year, john mccain deserves an apology.) what we learned on nov. 8, 2016, was that voters looked past or through all the atmospheric debris of this campaign and focused on what mattered<u+2014>the direction of their country. its economy, its politics and the state of the culture. one stunning example. white evangelical christians voted by 81% for the nation<u+2019>s leading proponent of the playboy philosophy. they blew past that because they knew that mr. trump<u+2019>s personal life would not bring into the oval office the democratic party<u+2019>s triumphant secularism. that is the philosophy that sued hobby lobby and the little sisters of the poor into religious obeisance and elevated transgender bathrooms to a litmus test. thus, their vote. another fable propagated everywhere during the campaign, and especially in the time since the trump victory is that he had unearthed some unknown catacomb of lower-middle-class anger . . . at everything. mr. trump himself tagged <u+201c>globalization<u+201d> with the blame. let us be clear about the economic status of the american middle class, and indeed of the middle-class people in low-growth europe responding to populist appeals there. economic life isn<u+2019>t bad weather. it is the result of politics. wrong political decisions have economic consequences. we didn<u+2019>t have this sense of ennui or dissatisfaction during the growth years of the reagan presidency in the 1980s or the clinton presidency in the 1990s. barack obama has been in charge of the u.s. economy for eight years. after passing a useless $830-billion stimulus his first year, mr. obama outsourced the economy to the federal reserve for seven years. the media let him off the hook for two terms, as if the london fog had caused what for large swaths of the middle class has been 2,900 days of an economy that remains half alive. america<u+2019>s brexit? if so, barack obama and his heir-apparent hillary clinton were our brussels<u+2014>a crude, faraway power in washington. donald trump<u+2019>s victory in blue wisconsin was one of the election<u+2019>s shockers. well, 61% of badger state voters said the economy was bad or <u+201c>not so good.<u+201d> after eight years of it, their vote was a rational choice, as was their decision to send economic reformer ron johnson back to the u.s. senate. the election<u+2019>s most fabulous <u+201c>narrative<u+201d> is that the trump phenomenon has torn apart the gop. in fact, ted cruz <u+2019>s explicitly wedge-driven candidacy was the real potential destroyer. mr. trump<u+2019>s was merely disruptive. set aside the issues of trade and immigration, and the trump policy agenda overlaps with most of his primary opponents and the congressional majority, which is a gift to mr. trump from state republican parties. the trump opportunity is at hand to quickly normalize unease about what his presidency represents by sitting down with mitch mcconnell, paul ryan and u.s. ambassador to congress mike pence to chart a reform agenda on taxes, health care, energy and financial regulation. mr. trump has it within his grasp to rapidly liberate the eight-year suppression of the private economy and then build out the more time-consuming pieces of his agenda atop that firm base. as to the post-comey investigations of hillary, drop it. she<u+2019>s finished. move on. besides, half of the divided country will be watching the trump presidency for any positive sign that he<u+2019>s, well, normal. one would be to continue his campaign<u+2019>s admirable outreach to black and hispanic america. a good omen: mr. trump increased his vote in both categories by 2% over mitt romney. nothing would help struggling americans of any color more than a 2016 upgrade for a u.s. education system producing blue-collar children with skills appropriate to the economy of the 1970s, if that. a presidential inaugural speech restating mr. trump<u+2019>s commitment to full school choice would be a start. one more <u+201c>narrative<u+201d><u+2014>that the gop isn<u+2019>t diverse. yes, they should work on it. but it looks to me as if the democrats have their own diversity problem with millions of u.s. voters. <u+201c>clinging to guns and religion<u+201d>? the <u+201c>deplorables<u+201d>? those aren<u+2019>t verbal slips. it is bedrock belief, and a problem for democrats. new york magazine<u+2019>s cover this week was donald trump<u+2019>s contorted face with the word <u+201c>loser<u+201d> pasted on it. hmmm. as america<u+2019>s newest nobel laureate in literature once put it, <u+201c>the times they are a changin<u+2019>.<u+201d> write henninger@wsj.com.
the trump opportunity - wsj
daniel henninger