Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Newish Afghan Policy, Same Old Trump

The generals prevailed over the president, and for at least a day he was willing to read off the Teleprompter.

August 22, 2017 at 12:46 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

One speech doesn't tell us what he'll do tomorrow or next week.
Photographer: Mark Wilson/Getty Images

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In a normal address on foreign policy from a normal president, the big news in Donald Trump's address to the troops, and incidentally to the nation, announcing his new Afghanistan policy was almost certainly his harsh rhetoric toward Pakistan, including a threat of a tilt to India.

Of course, this wasn't a normal president speaking. It wasn't even normal Trump; it was 100 percent Teleprompter Trump. And if normal Trump is more bluster than serious policy, then Teleprompter Trump is even harder to pin down. He'll be at a rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night. Will he stick to the policies he announced Monday night? It's a safe bet he won't back up his commitment, in the first portion of the Monday address, that "when we open our hearts to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice, no place for bigotry and no tolerance for hate." That was a little rich coming from President Both Sides, and while it might have been incumbent on him to at least pretend to be talking to the entire nation, it's hard to believe that anyone took seriously his shift to a less confrontational stance.