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Trump Goes to Mexico

Sometimes his foes make it easy for him.

By James Taranto

Some of Donald Trump’s supporters went overboard after his campaign announced Tuesday he’d be visiting Mexico’s president Wednesday. “You know, if @realDonaldTrump comes back from Mexico tomorrow with a big check from Mexico to pay for the wall...that’s game, set, match,” tweeted Joe Walsh, the radio host and one-term representative from Illinois (2011-13) late Tuesday.

That’s what we call a “big if.” A few minutes later Walsh added: “Nixon goes to China. Trump goes to Mexico. I’m going to bed.” Sleeping off that analogy was a good idea. The old Vulcan proverb is “Only Nixon could go to China,” and that’s not true of Trump and Mexico, where plenty of American statesmen have gone before.

Which is not to deny the political significance of the trip. Hillary Clinton could have gone to Mexico City; President Enrique Peña Nieto invited both nominees. But only Trump stood to advance his candidacy by making the trip—though Mrs. Clinton may wish she’d pre-empted him by accepting the invitation first.

“It was a big win—a very big win—for Trump,” writes the Washington Examiner’s Byron York:

Going into a meeting with the potential for disaster—who knew how Pena Nieto would receive the world’s most controversial presidential candidate or what embarrassments might lie ahead?—Trump came out of the meeting looking very much like a potential President of the United States. Standing beside the Mexican leader in front of a green-gray granite wall reminiscent of the United Nations, Trump presented the picture of a statesman. . . .

After the hour-long session, Trump benefited enormously from the conventions and practices of international relations. There they were, the president at one podium and the candidate at another, translators translating, the assembled international press watching. When it came time to talk, Pena Nieto observed the niceties of diplomacy, treating Trump as a quasi-president already.

But did the meeting really have “potential for disaster”? Some anti-Trump commentators certainly thought (or hoped) so. Late Tuesday night Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo published a post titled “Can Trump Be This Stupid? (Not a Trick Question),” though we think he meant it was not a rhetorical question. Marshall:

It’s a general rule of politics not to enter into unpredictable situations or cede control of an event or happening to someone who wants to hurt you. President Nieto [sic; Peña is the patronym] definitely does not want Donald Trump to become President. He probably assumes he won’t become president, simply by reading the polls. President Nieto is himself quite unpopular at the moment. But no one is more unpopular than Donald Trump. Trump is reviled. Toadying to Trump would be extremely bad politics; standing up to him, good politics.

Put those factors together and Peña Nieto has massive and overlapping reasons to want to embarrass Trump. . . .

When you’re in a campaign under constant scrutiny you do your best to control every situation, reduce the risk of unpredictable, embarrassing or damaging events. You try not to cede control to others. You especially try not to cede near total control to someone who has every interest in the world in harming you. The maximal version of that “big thing you’re not supposed to do” is precisely what it looks like Trump is doing.

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