View from K Street: The era of feelings, or the perils of instability
Fourteen months into the second Trump administration and three weeks into the second Iran war, we’ve learned that decisions having a calamitous impact on the entire world are based largely on the president’s “feelings.” This mattered less when inept and incompetent acolytes were named to the cabinet. It mattered considerably more when arbitrary tariffs were imposed on a whim, raised, lowered, and found illicit but re-imposed, pitching the world’s economy into turmoil and causing universal distrust of the president and the nation. However, when a decision involves life and death, blood and treasure, it matters more than can easily be expressed. Yet, the second Iran war was commenced, we are told, because “the president had a feeling.” And the war will end—despite presidential assurances that it is already won—“When I feel it— feel it in my bones.”