Donald Trump and Ulysses S. Grant

Following the bloody stalemate of the Battle of the Wilderness in the Spring of 1864, Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant dispatched a New York Tribune reporter to Washington with a message for President Abraham Lincoln.  “He told me I was to tell you, Mr. President, that there will be no going back,” the correspondent reported.

If our Republic, as it was before the Civil War, is to remain standing, President Donald Trump must not relent in the face of withering fire from all sides.  Similar to Lincoln’s instructions to Grant ahead of the Siege of Petersburg, Virginia, Trump must “hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke, as much as possible” if he is to vanquish the enemies of freedom threatening to destroy our constitutional republic from inside and out.  In order to accomplish this feat in his second term, Trump, like Grant, can take steps to break the will to fight of the Uniparty swamp creatures.

“On to Washington“

From a policy perspective, Trump must seize the federal bureaucracy.  If he can accomplish a GOP majority in both chambers of Congress, he should deliberately enact a program of decentralization of federal government agencies out of the nation’s capital.  Taking steps to relocate agencies among the communities whose interests they purportedly represent in D.C. is a practical, cost-saving approach that would attrit the entrenched workforce.  Why not move the Department of the Interior close to some of our most treasured national parks in the West?  The same could be said for the Bureau of Land Management, who could better support (as opposed to confront) and oversee vast swaths of American land.  It would seem a natural progression for the headquarters of the Bureau of Indian Affairs to be co-located on an Indian Reservation.  The Department of Defense already maintains a geographically disparate civilian and military presence in the United States, so let’s bolster local economies in less affluent areas with an influx of jobs, while simultaneously rooting out generations of disinterested, overpaid bureaucrats from Washington.

“You are Relieved of Command”

Much debate centers on President Trump’s first-term inner circle of political glad-handers, Cabinet-level appointees, and high-ranking shysters living toadstool existences in federal largesse.  These are the Dr. Faucis, James “Mad Dog” Mattises, warmonger neocon John Boltons, and Anthony Scaramuccis of the world…individuals who stepped into their new positions with high regard or potential, only to undermine if not outright poison their benefactor’s presidential policy ambitions.  In many cases, the actions of these caustic actors led directly to their removal or cajoled resignations, but in other cases, they remained in place, exploiting crises to their benefit and to the detriment of Trump and the American people for years to come.

Ineffective, insubordinate surrogates must be extricated from their roles if success in politics or on the military battlefield in general is to occur.  As President Lincoln ousted many ne’er-do-well Union generals, so too did General Grant relieve of command his intractable subordinates to ensure that his orders alone were realized rather than thwarted.

In a second Trump administration, care must be taken to truly understand the essence of individuals tapped to helm the levers of government and to foster an environment where hierarchy is respected, where there is unity of vision for American exceptionalism, and where there is steel-eyed commitment to the honorable discharge of duties to the citizenry.

“The Butcher”

History has been mostly gracious to Ulysses S. Grant, save for the tumult of his scandal-riddled presidency and his partiality to a tipple in periods of idleness.  After all, he was the blunt force object Lincoln so often relied upon to deliver the preservation of the Union.

Dubbed ignominiously “The Butcher” by journalists at the time, Grant was eviscerated for his overconfident, devastating frontal assault on Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s forces at Cold Harbor, Virginia in June 1864.  Suffering close to 7,000 casualties in under 30 minutes, Grant endured a horrific late-war defeat he would lament the rest of his life.  Although the outcome of Cold Harbor was a crushing loss to the Union general, no one questioned Grant’s determination to destroy Lee’s army at any cost — in this case, a price the Confederate leader simply could not pay in soldiers and supply.  Cold Harbor would be the last major victory for the Confederates; shortly thereafter, Grant laid siege to Petersburg, hastening the destruction of Lee’s army and ultimately his surrender to end the Civil War.

Like Grant, Trump’s legacy will necessarily be driven by his dogged resolve to restore America to its founding principles in his return to the White House.  Next time, there can be no tolerance of gross insubordination, of intentional perversion or subterfuge of his goals for the country by political hacks, or of retreat in the face of a deeply entrenched bureaucracy in Washington.

President Lincoln once said of Grant, “I can’t spare this man — he fights!”  Our country, deeply divided against itself, needs President Trump the fighter, now more than ever.

Image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0.