Donald Trump's 'America first' pitch

It’s beginning to look like Donald Trump will be the next president of the United States. If he wins the Indiana primary tomorrow—which polling, Bobby Knight, and Ted Cruz’s basketball ring stumble indicate he will—I expect he will get his 1,237 delegates on the first convention ballot with the help of unbound delegates who see where things are headed. Come November, if Hillary Clinton stays out of jail, she will find flat enthusiasm outside of pro-abortion middle-aged women. The far left and the Barack Obama–Bernie Sanders youth vote will stay home. Clinton’s negative voter impressions are baked in hard after 25 years of public life. Trump, by contrast, has shown an ability to move his numbers in ways most thought impossible.

Trump’s “America first” foreign policy speech last week, filled with contradictions though it was, will add to his appeal with voters as he distinguishes himself from his two predecessors in the White House and his likely opponent. Regardless of the actual history, many Americans are sick of what they see as our leaders putting the country second or themselves first: President George W. Bush’s “America to the rescue” policy, President Obama’s policy of “American passivity,” and former Secretary of State Clinton’s history of “America for sale.”

Voters associate Bush’s neo-Wilsonian policy of creating Middle Eastern democracies with a long and expensive war that in the end seems to have bought us chaos in the region, Iranian dominance, and leaking terrorism. Obama’s reckless and premature withdrawal from Iraq is more arguably the cause of those problems, but voter perception is what matters in this case. People are tired of spending American blood and treasure, as they see it, so that Iraqis can squander the chance at liberty for which they should have risked their own lives.

Seven years of Obama’s policy of American withdrawal under the cover of a phony “leading from behind” has many voters livid, especially on the right. Indifference to a dead ambassador and empty red-line threats have constrained our ability to defend our interests by alienating our allies (Europe, Saudi Arabia), emboldening our enemies (Russia, Iran, China), and earning us the contempt of even small nations.

Infamous $235,000 speeches by Bill and Hillary Clinton to corporations and at least one country with business before the U.S. government anticipate that Mrs. Clinton, if elected, may well subordinate national interests to her personal pockets and funding the Clinton Foundation at a time when Americans are feeling especially sold out by their political leaders.

So when Trump says, “America first will be the major and overriding theme of my administration,” it resonates with voters.

God established government for the good of the people it governs, for their liberty, prosperity, and moral flourishing, not for the enrichment of those who rule or the benefit of other countries at the expense of one’s own. Despite the incoherency of Trump’s foreign policy speech and what I have argued is the untrustworthiness of the candidate, he touches on an important truth. God’s love-of-neighbor ethic also governs nations that are, after all, communities of individuals. But that same love requires nations, which are essential to people’s well-being, to preserve themselves in a dangerous and competitive world.