William Saletan has been listening to the speeches that Donald Trump is delivering on his "USA Thank You Tour." If you or I had been elected president, I think we'd be in Washington, planning and holding meetings and charting the best way to run the aspects of this nation that are run out of the Oval Office. Special attention would be paid to how we can bury the divisions from the election, diminish the animosity and resentment of the opposition and promote national unity.
That's what we would do because we're much better, smarter people than Donald Trump, right?
Instead, he's taking a big victory lap to brag about his win, to sell the idea that it was a much bigger win than it really was and to deliver a big Go Fuck Yourself to anyone who doubted or opposed him. His idea of National Unity is that anyone who opposed Trump, within his party or without, apologies and admits they were wrong. In the meantime, his transition efforts have the lowest approval rating in decades and more and more people, including people who voted for him, are asking questions about the Russian hacking and about the "replace" part of "repealing and replacing Obamacare" and what about the wall and all those other things he promised?
The word "meltdown" is one of the most abused words on the Internet. Those who deal in clickbait have discovered that if you have, say, a videoclip of anyone being even slightly annoyed or upset, you can get browser people to click on it if you advertise "Come see the meltdown." Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, no one melts down in what's described as a "meltdown." They just look a tiny bit pissed.
All presidents have periods when their approval ratings plummet and folks who once supported them wonder aloud if they made a mistake. Some rebound from them, some don't. Trump, since he was never that popular to begin with and didn't even win the popular vote, already has a big head start at looking like an illegitimate president and a colossal mistake. Maybe we oughta save the word "meltdown" to describe what he's going to do when one day, he wakes up and finds he's less popular than cholera.