Suicide Is Painless

Donald Trump is going to talk with North Korea's Kim Jong Un?

This is both the best and the worst news anyone could have imagined.  Trump has an opportunity to establish a productive rapport with Kim over his nukes - but he's going into this meeting, likely to take place in May, with no diplomatic background, few if any Korea experts by his side, no sense of the history of post-war Korea (or its pre-war history as a Japanese colony, for that matter), and no understanding of how summits really work.  On the other hand, he and Kim complement each other as mirror images - they're both pompous, self-absorbed, megalomaniacal, and consumed by a desire to be taken seriously.  So maybe they'll be best buddies.

Trump isn't as crazy as Kim, but Kim isn't as stupid as Trump - he's actually a shrewd cookie, as Trump himself has acknowledged.  He could play Trump for a fool, the same way Khrushchev played Kennedy for a fool in Vienna at their only summit meeting in 1961. Except that Kennedy knew he'd been played for a fool, and a year later he resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis.  Trump - who has Reggie Mantle's ego but is cursed with Archie Andrews' incompetence - could be played for a fool but go away from this meeting thinking he got the better of Kim . . . and then . . .    

Every President since Nixon, who famously went to China and established a rapport with Mao and Chou (clearing the way for President Carter to establish full diplomatic relations with the People's Republic of China in 1979), has wanted a major diplomatic breakthrough with an unfriendly nation.  Obama did it with a nuclear deal with Iran and a normalization of relations with Cuba (both short-lived, thanks to Debbie Wasserman Schultz tipping the scales for Hillary and letting Trump get in power and roll back both achievements).  Reagan tried to reach out to Iranian "moderates" to improve relations with the Islamic Republic and that plan backfired miserably . . . but he redeemed himself with an important arms-control treaty with the Soviet Union.  But previous Presidents had a general idea of what they were doing.  Trump is making things up as he goes along.    

This will bring on many changes . . . but you can take or leave it . . . if you please.