Donald Trump cleaned up one of his messes, endorsing the re-election of fellow Republicans Paul Ryan, Kelly Ayotte and John McCain. On Monday, he laid out a tax plan that GOPers are genetically predisposed to embrace.  This assures us that Mr. Trump is not crazy in any clinical sense—incapable of changing his approach and adapting to feedback from the environment.  It only semi-assures us on another question. At least part of Mr. Trump is serious about being president—or, anyway, about mounting a campaign that won’t rebound disastrously on the GOP.  Those who marinate in the hyperbole of the moment found Mr. Trump’s bickering with the parents of a slain American soldier of a different order of personal dysfunction, recklessness and political tone-deafness than his threats against Jeff Bezos, his attack on Judge Curiel, his fake buddy act with Putin, etc.  In fact, the back and forth with the Khans was distressingly normal compared with these other episodes. The Khans launched an unquestionably partisan attack (which does not mean it lacked substantive validity) in the most partisan of venues, a Democratic convention.  For once the personal and political were united in one of the Donald’s miscarriages. He may have been motivated by a personal slight but he wasn’t politicizing the nonpolitical for personal or business reasons.  Mr. Trump is still an outside chance to win the presidency. Those commentators who spend all their effort pronouncing him unacceptable—and consigning to reputational hell any who quibble—are letting down their fans. For voters the problem is a multidimensional one.  If Mr. Trump isn’t crazy, unstable or irrational, then he’s merely unpresentable. A Hillary presidency may be preferable if Mrs. Clinton’s only path to presidential achievement is through a Republican Congress. But a possible outcome is all the levers landing in the hands of Democrats who believe nothing is wrong with America that more regulation and redistribution can’t fix. Read the Washington Post’s chilling account of how her campaign gestated Mrs. Clinton’s “detailed and complicated economic policy agenda.” Try not to think of Ira Magaziner’s health-care task force in 1993.  In contrast, Mr. Trump’s campaign has been a promise to make America great again—not a laundry list. It’s reassuringly likely that his most ill-advised and headline-grabbing policy pronouncements mean nothing. That’s a plus.  He tells an excitable part of the electorate what it wants to hear, on guns, trade and immigration. When you tell the public untruths, in Mr. Trump’s understanding of business, that’s marketing.  His overwhelming goal, he has said, is to make sure his rallies aren’t boring. His rallies aren’t window-dressing—they are his campaign, unlike any traditional candidate. He calculates that a large and sufficiently enthusiastic minority can produce a turnout tsunami to swamp the anti-Trump majority who are content to sit at home and yell at the TV.  What’s more, his $62 million in small donations reveal that his fans are not ready just to shout down hecklers and make rude suggestions about Hillary. They are willing to reach into their pockets.  Mr. Trump’s faults are glaring, but he’s not the maniac with his finger on the nuclear button of the latest Democratic ads, aimed at a disengaged, conformist section of the electorate looking for a stark characterization to latch onto. The ads may be effective but they are a complete misreading of a 70-year-old family man who turned the family business from real-estate development to branding because it was less risky.  In the last week, however, we have also been reminded what to expect when Mr. Trump decides the wave has carried him as far as it can. Republicans wish it weren’t so, but he’s been running against them as much as against the Democrats.  He began last week by withholding his blessing from GOP colleagues like Messrs. Ryan and McCain. He tested out the theory, as he did during the primaries, that any failure on his part can only be due to a “rigged” system.  When he decides the wave has been played out, Mr. Trump can serve up this analysis to his fans, blaming defeat on a corrupt and criminal elite of both parties, and many will buy it. Their allegiance and enthusiasm, to Mr. Trump, will be capital in the bank, to be deployed later in the ever-evolving mission of Donald Trump to advance the celebrity and grandeur of Donald Trump.  The word “un-American” has been rightly used—not for Mr. Trump or his ideas, but for the uncharacteristic willingness of the American voter to opt knowingly for a bunkum artist as long as he says the right things about American renewal.  Mr. Trump, bless him, has left voters in no doubt about who he is. He’s not George Washington any more than he’s the nuclear madman of Democratic ads. If mainstream Democrats or Republicans don’t pick up on the Trumpian hunger of Americans for leadership, they’re the ones who are crazy and incapable of adapting to feedback.
Business World columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr., writes about Donald Trump’s weird place in American politics: He’s not a nuclear madman—and he’s not back inside the GOP tent either.