No man enters the presidency prepared for the office, yet few chief magistrates have managed a stage entry as startlingly rife with incompetence and impropriety as Donald Trump. The reason is that the inherent, inertial conservatism of the office disciplines most of its occupants. And this, above all, is why it matters, and why it matters now, that Donald Trump lacks all manner of prudence, restraint, and humility—the disposition of a conservative.
To say he is not conservative does not mean he will not choose judicial nominees from the list the Federalist Society prepared for him. He has and probably will. It does not mean he will not try to repeal Obamacare. He has, if ham-handedly. It means his disposition—his approach to governing and life—is unconservative at its marrow-deep core. And conservatives who are willing to put up with it all to get the tax cuts or the Supreme Court seats or whatever other important yet transient end—a court seat, a court seat, my constitutional regime for a court seat—are just about out of the rope with which they have avoided the reckoning.
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