#Americans don’t want ‘change’ and other commentary

Conservative: Americans Don’t Want ‘Change’

Whenever Democrats manage to pick the “electoral locks” and “find themselves in control of the White House,” snarks Kyle Smith at National Review, they claim “the People have spoken” and want “Profound and Lasting Change!” Yet voters in November, as in past elections, simply chose the guy who wasn’t the incumbent. All Joe Biden needed to win was to say, “I’m not Trump.” Democrats “will be shoving themselves into a buzzsaw” if they interpret November’s results — which had Biden winning only by small margins in a few key states and left Congress closely split — as “a decisive mandate for sweeping change.” Or even as “a whispered suggestion of substantial change.” Americans “don’t want anything more complicated than to turn the page on the Trump era.”

Capitol beat: How Did the Mob Get In?

Roll Call’s Chris Marquette notes the tragic irony of the mob attack on the Capitol building — given that just last week, the Capitol Police insisted that “it had a comprehensive plan to keep Congress safe while lawmakers certify the Electoral College win by Joe Biden.” So much for that: “It is unclear how the Capitol Police force — with 1,879 sworn officers and a budget of $515.5 million — was unable to protect Congress.” As one lawmaker said, “I think it’s pretty clear that there’s going to be a number of people who are going to be without employment very, very soon,” owing to the “lack of professional planning and dealing with what we knew was going to occur.”

Economist: Trump Proved Stagnationists Wrong

“The Obama administration promulgated hundreds of new federal regulations that protected certain special interests from market competition. . . . President Trump promised to undo all that, and in many cases succeeded,” Casey B. Mulligan points out at The Wall Street Journal. And soon: “The economy was growing at the same time that something was dragging down inflation” — defying “the ‘secular-stagnation’ narrative of economic decline that had become so fashionable in Washington.” When Obama-era growth lagged, this school argued that America “was fundamentally incapable of anything more than tepid growth.” They didn’t expect “that small business optimism would skyrocket to record levels . . . real wages would grow again (especially for blue-collar workers)” and poverty and unemployment would fall quickly — thanks to Trump’s policies. Obama “punished work, hiring and success rather than rewarding them.” Trump, meanwhile, sank stagnation.

Foreign desk: Putin’s Goons a Laughingstock

“Vladimir Putin has used the FSB’s aura of efficiency and brutality to threaten regime opponents with kompromat, exile, poisoning or a bullet to the head,” Paul Roderick Gregory writes at The Hill, but the “botched ­assassination of opposition leader Alexey Navalny and the embarrassing unraveling of the Kremlin’s narrative thereafter have turned the FSB into a laughingstock.” A key moment: Navalny’s taped call to purported assassin Konstantin Kudryavtsev, where the dissident conned the goon into explaining why the attempt went wrong. “Konstantin’s most telling revelation: The squad laced the poison into the seams of Navalny’s blue underpants.” With the tape’s release, “the Kremlin was caught flat-footed,” as “demonstrators stood on Moscow street corners holding blue underwear,” and “Russian social media erupted in salvos of satire, sarcasm and political hilarity.”

From the right: 1776 Panel’s Laudable Goal

The first meeting of President Trump’s 1776 Commission Tuesday ­“included a wide range of voices” and “a commitment to American ideals,” reports The Federalist’s Joy Pullmann — with members stressing the need to avoid “partisanship” and to reach out to “Americans of all backgrounds.” That contrasts sharply with “leftist” depictions of the panel and “wild claims” that it seeks to “hide America’s sins” and promote “chest-thumping nationalism.” The group merely aims to unite Americans in “a shared identity rooted in our founding principles” and stresses the importance of education. As one speaker noted, “if Americans understand who we are as a nation and where we have come from, they will better be able to transcend race and other things that divide us.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board