Trump and the Flood

“When I imagine him in the White House, I’m disgusted,” declared a Hillary Clinton campaign email that went out May 4, just after Donald Trump clinched the Republican presidential nominee. The putative author, deputy communications director Christina Reynolds, explained her reaction wasn’t just to Trump’s policy ideas, yucky as they are, “but also because I try and imagine him doing the more symbolic, but often just as powerful, parts of the president’s job.”

She tried, and she failed: “I just can’t imagine him mourning with the country after a mass shooting, or comforting us after a natural disaster.”

We wrote about this the next day (last item), and we observed: “Isn’t this about the easiestthing to imagine Trump doing well? Whatever his shortcomings—real, exaggerated and imagined—we’ve never heard a lack of emotional openness and honesty mentioned among them.”

When we’re right, we’re right. On Friday Trump visited the site of a natural disaster, in Louisiana, and he did fine. Not only that, but Mrs. Clinton and President Obama were both AWOL. In an astonishing act of political maladroitness, these professionals allowed themselves to be outstaged and outclassed by a talented amateur using their own playbook against them...