Theodore Kupfer describes at National Review Online how President Trump‘s itinerary this week resembled his election campaign.
Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends. Donald Trump put on what his press secretary called a “campaign event” Tuesday night in Phoenix and, during the rally, made generous use of the future tense, that hallmark of election season: “We will make America the best place in the world to hire, grow, and start a business,” Trump said, “we’re going to do an infrastructure bill,” he continued, and “we will make American great again,” he divined. The president even issued a call to action, telling his thousands of supporters: “This is our opportunity to recapture our dynasty like never before.” No, Trump didn’t forget that 2016 came and went — he’s getting a head start on 2020. And he’s glad, so glad, you could attend.
That campaign is already well underway, despite being three years away. Trump established his reelection committee on his first day in office, and Politico recently reported that its fundraisers, pollsters, and opposition researchers are hard at work. Brendan Doherty, a professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, isn’t surprised. Doherty, author of The Rise of the President’s Permanent Campaign, is well acquainted with the phenomenon of the never-ending campaign. He’s found that recent presidents have consistently made more and earlier public appearances in battleground states than their predecessors.
Yet while Trump walks the same path as his own, he’s taken it a step further. Consider: Presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton declared their respective reelection bids progressively earlier in their third year in office. Trump did so on day one.
