In 2016, Donald J. Trump shocked the Western political world and Washington, D.C., bubble, upsetting the “most experienced and qualified” presidential candidate in U.S. history, Hillary Clinton. Fair-minded and self-critical people in power could have rightfully concluded that it was time for Washington, D.C., to change its ways. Not only did that not happen, but the D.C. swamp doubled down.
THE TRUMP REVOLUTION.
The simplest explanation of 2016 was that the populist Trump ran on the more popular side of the three major issues of globalization: wars, immigration, and trade. Trump understood the American electorate of the mid-2010s as only someone who had spent his life around ordinary people could. For all of the angry Democrat partisans upset that a rich reality TV star could win the working class vote, look at the “traitor to his class” Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Trump is no political heir to the Bush or Clinton dynasties nor a successor to Reagan. If anything, he harkened back to the president elected out of another turbulent time in U.S. history — Richard M. Nixon. But he shared one trait with Reagan: the ability to prioritize and simplify state affairs. Successful presidents tend to focus on three or four key themes.
In a second term, President Trump has room for one more to add next to keeping America out of a Third World War, securing our borders and defending meaningful citizenship, and continuing what is now the Trump-Biden policy of moving away from the free trade consensus that benefited the elites and few others. It is a theme he has already introduced: Washington, D.C. — the swamp itself.
A WASHINGTON OF THE WEST.
The best way to reform Washington, D.C., is to leave it behind and set a course for the next era of our national destiny.
D.C. forms an out-of-touch beltway bubble of professional class delusions that extends through Philadelphia to New York City to Boston — all cities with high crime rates, with D.C. having one of the highest. D.C. is the perfect capital for the moral hypocrisy that has become the Democratic coalition. The high crime rates in D.C. are a national security issue. The insularity of the place is a political issue that will never solve itself. It’s a city built around a subculture of media, lobbyists, consultants, and career politicians that grow distant from their home districts. While an American recovery can still be in our future, a recovery for Washington, DC, is not.
Moving the capital westward into the geographical middle of the country would accomplish Jeffersonian means toward Whiggish ends. It would also solve D.C.’s “taxation without representation” issue. The District could be ceded back to Maryland under the Maryland Plan. The national monuments would fall under the National Park Service just as the Grant Memorial on the west side of Manhattan does.
While this would happen gradually over the next few decades, it would symbolize a triumphant new era of American renewal. Starting over would help us avoid the corruption and permanent government of the administrative state and all of the other issues that were unforeseeable over two centuries ago.
A NEW TYPE OF CAPITAL.
Ideally, there would be no permanent residents in America’s new capital, except the First Family and White House employees. There would be zero permanent voting residents. The population and development of the capital would be strictly regulated. The capital would be a place of the state’s affairs rather than a city with modernist urban planning and ‘culture.’
Regardless of the details of moving the capital, the broad idea of it makes a lot of sense. The swamp can be drained, but it’ll just rain and fill up again. One potential location for the new capital could be Mount Rushmore. At Mount Rushmore, President Trump gave one of the better speeches of his first administration, proposing a monument of American Heroes. Indeed, such a monument of heroes from all walks of life with Mount Rushmore in the background could serve as a perfect locale for new western capital, too small to grow too corrupt and too far from the coastal elites to be bought off behind closed doors.
Our national capital should not be surrounded by urban decay and high crime and more and more single autonomous professionals, but by more peace and tranquility, more of the beautiful natural world to remind officials of the abundant possibilities that this vast land of hope and natural resources gives us, and strong and independent families. Somewhere, Thomas Jefferson will surely be smiling that we again declared our Independence.
