The Madcap Caution of Donald Trump

The worry was that the Trump administration was ginning up fake intelligence about Iran blowing up oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz to justify a war against Iran. Then the next week President Donald Trump said the Iranian attacks weren't a big deal.

The episode is another indication of the underlying modesty -- not a very Trumpian word -- of the administration.

Subtract Trump's taste for nonstop controversy and rhetorical brinkmanship and you're left with an incrementalist center-right government that has pursued an expansionary fiscal policy and avoided foreign war, for a period of peace a...