Writing a book takes prodigious amounts of effort and time. The amount of time can be divided into the years it takes to write and revise and revise and revise and revise and revise the book, and the months it takes to publish it.

If one is writing a book about current affairs, that second part is the worst. Even for best-selling authors, there is a period of time between when one is done with the writing and when the book comes out. For academics, that gap between writing and publishing can be a year or longer. During that time, things can happen that completely subvert a book’s arguments. I was pretty sure I was right when I wrote “The System Worked,” for example, but in the eight months between handing in the final draft and the book’s arrival in stores, I was petrified that the WTO would dissolve or the IMF would fall apart and I’d go down as the Norman Angell of my time.

The reason I bring up this dilemma for book authors is that Ann Coulter writes the following words on page 3 of her new book about how Trump is awesome: “there’s nothing Trump can do that won’t be forgiven. Except change his immigration policies.”