Myrtle Beach, SC, Orlando, FL and Washington, D.C. October 12, 2020—Thinking Outside the Boxe is pleased to announce that after review of the records, the proposals, and the stakes of this election, we endorse Donald J. Trump for re-election as President of the United States.
In 2016 we said Washington needed an outside perspective, a willingness to confront immigration, spending, regulation, tax policy, and national security without first consulting the language of political convenience. Those were not abstract preferences. They were a judgment about the direction of the country. Four years later, the question is whether that judgment still holds.
On the evidence available to us, it does.
Before the pandemic, the pre-2020 expansion, energy production, regulatory restraint, and the appointment of originalist judges were consistent with the course we described in 2016. The administration’s posture toward China, however incomplete, treated strategic competition as real rather than as a problem that could be managed by tone. The Abraham Accords showed that transactional, interest-based diplomacy can produce results that process-heavy conventional wisdom had declared impossible.
The pandemic tested every government. We do not pretend the response was tidy. We do say that the alternative now on offer is a return to the path we rejected four years ago: larger standing federal direction of economic life, a weaker approach to the border, and a governing class more comfortable with institutional consensus than with results. The Democratic ticket would take the country further toward the model we described in 2016 as economic stagnation dressed as compassion. We cannot endorse that course.
We remain, as we were then, more Libertarian in instinct than either major party. We continue to admire candidates and movements that take limited government seriously. We also continue to believe that this election is not a seminar. A vote that cannot win the White House is, in this cycle, a vote that improves the odds of the outcome we most wish to avoid.
No president solves every problem. The next four years will require negotiation, competence under pressure, and a willingness to put American interests ahead of the comfort of the capital. We believe Mr. Trump is more likely than his opponent to do those things.
We are look forward to a vigorous close to this campaign.
About Thinking Outside the Boxe—Thinking Outside the Boxe is a private, independent research and commentary organization dedicated to examining politics, finance, economics, world affairs, law, public policy, and the conduct of institutions from perspectives often absent from conventional media and public debate. Through original research, commentary, symposiums, and contributions from a diverse group of correspondents, Thinking Outside the Boxe seeks to broaden the parameters of public knowledge, challenge prevailing assumptions, and encourage thoughtful debate on issues of national and international importance.
Thinking Outside the Boxe is independent of political party donors, universities, media organizations, and institutional orthodoxies. Its work reflects a continuing commitment to limited government, lawful borders, fiscal seriousness, open inquiry, constitutional principles, and the belief that a free people are best served when arguments are tested against evidence rather than restricted to an approved range of opinion. Its correspondents may disagree with one another, but they share a willingness to examine difficult questions, reach conclusions, and say what conventional institutions sometimes will not.
