Republicans’ performance at last week’s White House in celebration of the party-line tax bill may have been bombastic and obsequious, but the party placed its bet on a growing economy. The show, however odd, exploited the party’s star attraction, Mr. Trump, whom the cable channels can’t resist, to push out the message to America “good things are happening.”
Every bit as hysterical, excessive and embarrassing was the countershow put on by Democrats. But they put themselves on the side of bad things happening. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and their junior shadows danced around the maypole, lighted candles, burned effigies—in hope that you will lose your job in 2018, see your hours cut, or fail to get an expected raise.
Democratic economists are reworking their “secular stagnation” models to say the Trump program is leading not to faster growth but higher inflation. They are likely to be disappointed. The Trump economy—which we’ve maintained since before Election Day is the economy you get when you take President Obama’s foot off its neck—seems predisposed to remain benign through next year’s congressional election.
It took three Reagan tax bills and five years before we got the bipartisan 1986 tax reform. If that history is borne out a second time, then last week’s victory will be a down payment on better things to come. This could be another way the Trump show, if it creates successes that both parties eventually want to own, teaches us something mysterious about what is required to move our country ahead now.
