The word “Ontario” is Iroquoian. English settlers put “Ontario” on their maps in the early 1600s, borrowing it from the Indians already here, and it meant roughly “great lake.” The water named everything else. The colony took the name from the lake, the province took it from the colony, and the Dominion of Canada did not exist until 1867, two years after Appomattox. That name predates Canada, predates the United States, and predates every man who has ever held the presidency.
Yesterday, the President signed an executive order renaming it Lake America.
Now picture the American voter who was on the sidelines Tuesday, arms folded, undecided about the midterms, who read that headline and thought, “Well, now I’m voting Republican.”
Take your time. I’ll wait.
You cannot picture him because he does not exist. Nobody’s mortgage got cheaper. Nobody’s grocery bill went down. A lake got a new name in one country’s federal register while keeping the old one on every nautical chart and in the mouth of every human being living on either shore. It is rather silly and is what the President is spending his days on with the election fourteen weeks out.
At least, instead of renaming lakes, 𝕏rename the San Andreas Fault after Joe Biden.
The pattern is the problem.
If it were only the lake, it would be eyerolling. But it is not only a lake and it is infuriating. It is a repeated pattern of nonsense and a lack of discipline from the leader of the GOP at a time when, on the side opposite, socialists are rising. It is hard to really believe the President and those around him take the socialist threat seriously when they are focusing on naming lakes.
A trade war with Canada does not help, even if it ends in a signing ceremony next month, because the pain will happen now. The credit, should it come, would come later. Susan Collins, in the fight of her political life in Maine, called those tariffs a mistake this week. A Republican in a must win seat knows how much Canadian trade benefits her constituents and how much a trade war hurts those same people, who are also called voters.
A stalemate with Iran does not help. We killed the Supreme Leader in February, signed a fourteen-point memorandum in June, set an August deadline, watched it pass, and are now threatening Oman for the sin of hosting the conversation. A finished regime is different from a frozen status quo, and voters know the difference even when the press shop does not.
New tariffs do not help. I have literally lost subscribers for telling this simple truth, but a tariff is a tax. Worse, these tariffs are taxes by Executive Order, cheered by a party that spent forty years insisting taxes may be raised only by Congress and preferably never.
Last week, with beef prices where they are, the administration proposed suspending the tariff on 300,000 metric tons of imported ground beef for ninety days, on the theory that lifting the tariff brings the price down. The President is now conceding, in writing, that a tariff raises the price of the thing tariffed. But he left the tax on much of what else is in your shopping cart. The Cattlemen’s Association, who represent voters in conservative districts, said it threw cold water on herd expansion, and prices in the cattle market dropped the day the President announced it. We taxed the consumer to help the producer, kneecapped the producer to help the consumer, and finished the week naming a lake. The President boxed himself in by listening to Peter Navarro and Howard Lutnick, who supported the tariffs that are now being walked back.
The President was, from reports inside and outside the White House, prepared to accept a deal with Canada last week till Howard Lutnick sabotaged it. But, he almost had a very good deal he could still get. Denying Iran a toll booth at Hormuz was right. There are things the President can and should point to headed into November without frivolous distractions.
But there is no evidence he is invested in the Republican Party’s success, only his own. Those interests overlapped in 2016 and in 2024. They do not overlap now, and a party whose leader is optimizing for something other than its survival had better have a message of its own.
It does not have one. The congressional GOP cannot agree on affordability, on immigration enforcement, or on whether tariffs are conservative, so it has settled on screaming “commie” and praying the Democrats trip. They might! They keep nominating candidates with fabricated biographies, and a friendly press lets bad candidates rot in place until November hands you the corpse.
Hoping your opponent hurts himself is not a strategy.
The reset is not complicated and it is not too late. End the tariffs and watch prices fall, then talk about the declining price of a house, a truck, and a pound of hamburger every day until voters are sick of hearing it. Finish what we started with Iran or say plainly that we will not. Stop renaming water.
None of that requires a new leader. It requires the one we have to decide he wants the majority more than he wants the fight. I am not certain he does.
