Globe Trot: Inauguration Day in America

UNITED STATES: Inauguration Day, here you are. Clearly President Donald Trump brings a new political order, and to the question of what gets blown up along the way, Daniel Henninger writes, “The most destabilizing force in our politics wasn’t Donald Trump. It was that political status quo”:

“The belief that Hillary Clinton would have produced a more reliable presidency is wrong. Mrs. Clinton represented an extension of the administrative state, the century-old idea that elites can devise public policies, administered by centralized public bureaucracies, that deliver the greatest good to the greatest number.”

The world is watching. In Paris the headline is “L’Amérique sourit jaune,” or “America forces a smile,” and in Buenos Aires it’s “Good luck America.”

MEXICO: Authorities abruptly extradited Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman to the United States to face charges connected to his notorious drug cartel, ending an era in Mexico and perhaps limiting political fallout for President Enrique Peña Nieto ahead of a potential rocky relationship with the Trump administration.

TURKEY: American Andrew Brunson and entrepreneur Ryan Keating are part of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s dragnet that targets Christians, and especially Protestants, in a crackdown aimed at consolidating his power. See my cover story in the latest issue of WORLD Magazine.

SYRIA: Satellite imagery has confirmed ISIS destroyed the most famous monuments in the ancient city of Palmyra. UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova said the destruction constituted “a new war crime and an immense loss for the Syrian people and for humanity.”

I’M READING: Jon Meacham’s Destiny and Power: The American Odyssey of George Herbert Walker Bush, 92, who sent Trump a letter of regret for not being able to attend the inauguration and remains hospitalized in Houston with complications related to pneumonia.

“Civility will return to Washington eventually,” Bush wrote his sons following Nixon’s resignation. “Personalities will change and our system will have proved that it works—more slowly than some would want—less efficiently than some would decree—but it works and gives us—even in adversity—great stability.”