By Oh Young-jin
Korea heaved a sigh of relief after U.S. President Donald Trump finished his two-day visit and moved on to China, the next stop of his Asian tour.
President Trump was supposed to be a loose cannon, verbally as well as physically.
He arm-wrestled French President Macron and gave an awkward jerking handshake to Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't even get a parting handshake. So much so that President Moon Jae-in had prepared how to prevent Trump from pulling a mischievous act on him during his Washington trip in June. Moon held Trump on the elbow with his free hand. It worked.
Then, Trump acted as if he was a B1-B Lancer strategic bomber but only dropped rhetorical bombs. One of Trump's verbal Mother of All Bombs was a threat he made at the United Nations to "totally destroy" North Korea. Back in Washington after his summit with Moon, Trump went off script to talk about renegotiating the Korea-U.S free trade agreement (FTA), which Korea claimed was not even discussed in their meeting.
So it was no wonder that Korea had expected the worst.
That was why the Blue House had nudged the White House to drop the visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the four-kilometer buffer separating South from North Korea. The worry was that Trump was overcome by the heat of the moment being on the frontline and would blurt out some provocative remarks.
But on his Korea visit Trump turned out to be not the Trump we have known.
A Trump skeptic, an American, who talked about being of two minds ― against him in all fronts except for his tough act on the North ― offered to buy a beer for the speechwriter for Trump's National Assembly address. He may have been swept by a pang of patriotism, being away from home or maybe not.
There were others who were impressed. One Facebook poster, a Korean translator, put the Trump speech at the same level as JFK's inaugural "ask what you can do for your country" address contained in an English reference primer of long ago.
U.S. media outlets including the New York Times noted a well-oiled tenor of the Trump speech, scoring his performance well. That newspaper is among many after Trump's scalp or at least its editorial writers are read so.
Indeed, the Trump speech sounded as if it were one given by Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
Obviously, there has been an evolution ― Trump's inaugural speech was colloquial and to the point, making it easy to understand but preventing it from containing a grand vision. His Seoul speech, minus his introductory compliments about Korean golfers and others, followed the established format and sounded presidential.
What does it say? Simply, Trump has been growing into his job.
How can this change be explained in detail?
Whether those big words were put into his mouth or not, Trump has the potential to beat Ronald Reagan, the great communicator and the near-paragon model of a Republican presidency. Contrary to his much-wowed predecessor Obama, Trump has two strengths ― claiming ownership for things that don't belong to him and the power to make people believe it is so. For instance, his Wednesday speech was a case in point. He had been thought to be an isolationist and anti-globalist and doted on self-interest. But he twice talked about a global coalition in as many days in Seoul, which included China and Russia as well as the entire civilized world, and challenged them to deal with the North collectively for peace.
Did he sound as a know-nothing, orgy-loving, swindling wife-changer that he had been?
No.
Now, let's click back and see what made us change our view about Trump.
Trump has been engaged in a variety of campy, quirky and duplicitous affairs that have made us underestimate him, enabling him to start from a very low level of expectations. In other words, we may be suffering from a collective case of optical illusion. That is: an act we would take for granted had Obama done it, is an unbelievably heroic masterstroke from Trump.
It all comes back to Trump the businessman, whose secret of success, according to his "Art of the Deal" book, is playing the trick of making the party on the other side of the negotiating table feel he gets a good deal, even if it is mediocre.
But we don't need to feel sorry about ourselves to find the joke is on us or not to have demanded he should play by the same rules as his predecessors.
Trump still runs the risk of unraveling himself. His domestic woe ― the Russian scandal ― may bog him down and send him off the throne. Then, he is facing a greater international challenge with a long game being played by China. The Chinese are crafty, having learned to act as if they would do anything at the other's bidding but engage in one-upmanship to wear them down to win. Or as indicated in Xi Jinping's consolidation of autocracy, they can be impatient and play a short game.
If Trump loses ― through impeachment or China's scheming, it could do real damage to the U.S.-led pecking order ― Pax Americana. That could mean a big mess or major reconfiguration of the global order, depending on which side you are on.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.
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President Trump was supposed to be a loose cannon, verbally as well as physically.
He arm-wrestled French President Macron and gave an awkward jerking handshake to Japanese Prime Minister Abe. Remember German Chancellor Angela Merkel didn't even get a parting handshake. So much so that President Moon Jae-in had prepared how to prevent Trump from pulling a mischievous act on him during his Washington trip in June. Moon held Trump on the elbow with his free hand. It worked.
Then, Trump acted as if he was a B1-B Lancer strategic bomber but only dropped rhetorical bombs. One of Trump's verbal Mother of All Bombs was a threat he made at the United Nations to "totally destroy" North Korea. Back in Washington after his summit with Moon, Trump went off script to talk about renegotiating the Korea-U.S free trade agreement (FTA), which Korea claimed was not even discussed in their meeting.
So it was no wonder that Korea had expected the worst.
That was why the Blue House had nudged the White House to drop the visit to the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ), the four-kilometer buffer separating South from North Korea. The worry was that Trump was overcome by the heat of the moment being on the frontline and would blurt out some provocative remarks.
But on his Korea visit Trump turned out to be not the Trump we have known.
A Trump skeptic, an American, who talked about being of two minds ― against him in all fronts except for his tough act on the North ― offered to buy a beer for the speechwriter for Trump's National Assembly address. He may have been swept by a pang of patriotism, being away from home or maybe not.
There were others who were impressed. One Facebook poster, a Korean translator, put the Trump speech at the same level as JFK's inaugural "ask what you can do for your country" address contained in an English reference primer of long ago.
U.S. media outlets including the New York Times noted a well-oiled tenor of the Trump speech, scoring his performance well. That newspaper is among many after Trump's scalp or at least its editorial writers are read so.
Indeed, the Trump speech sounded as if it were one given by Barack Obama or George W. Bush.
Obviously, there has been an evolution ― Trump's inaugural speech was colloquial and to the point, making it easy to understand but preventing it from containing a grand vision. His Seoul speech, minus his introductory compliments about Korean golfers and others, followed the established format and sounded presidential.
What does it say? Simply, Trump has been growing into his job.
How can this change be explained in detail?
Whether those big words were put into his mouth or not, Trump has the potential to beat Ronald Reagan, the great communicator and the near-paragon model of a Republican presidency. Contrary to his much-wowed predecessor Obama, Trump has two strengths ― claiming ownership for things that don't belong to him and the power to make people believe it is so. For instance, his Wednesday speech was a case in point. He had been thought to be an isolationist and anti-globalist and doted on self-interest. But he twice talked about a global coalition in as many days in Seoul, which included China and Russia as well as the entire civilized world, and challenged them to deal with the North collectively for peace.
Did he sound as a know-nothing, orgy-loving, swindling wife-changer that he had been?
No.
Now, let's click back and see what made us change our view about Trump.
Trump has been engaged in a variety of campy, quirky and duplicitous affairs that have made us underestimate him, enabling him to start from a very low level of expectations. In other words, we may be suffering from a collective case of optical illusion. That is: an act we would take for granted had Obama done it, is an unbelievably heroic masterstroke from Trump.
It all comes back to Trump the businessman, whose secret of success, according to his "Art of the Deal" book, is playing the trick of making the party on the other side of the negotiating table feel he gets a good deal, even if it is mediocre.
But we don't need to feel sorry about ourselves to find the joke is on us or not to have demanded he should play by the same rules as his predecessors.
Trump still runs the risk of unraveling himself. His domestic woe ― the Russian scandal ― may bog him down and send him off the throne. Then, he is facing a greater international challenge with a long game being played by China. The Chinese are crafty, having learned to act as if they would do anything at the other's bidding but engage in one-upmanship to wear them down to win. Or as indicated in Xi Jinping's consolidation of autocracy, they can be impatient and play a short game.
If Trump loses ― through impeachment or China's scheming, it could do real damage to the U.S.-led pecking order ― Pax Americana. That could mean a big mess or major reconfiguration of the global order, depending on which side you are on.
Oh Young-jin (foolsdie5@ktimes.com and foolsdie@gmail.com) is The Korea Times' chief editorial writer.
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