Donald Trump built his political career by scrambling American attention spans and preying on the short-sighted impulses of voters. Which is why a key part of his address to the nation on Wednesday night—about the war in Iran, and why we’re doing the whole Middle East adventure thing again—rang so hollow. “This is a true investment in your children and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said, conjuring a world that will thrive without a nuclear-armed Iran. Trump promised, once again, that the aerial bombardment will last only two or three more weeks—“the hard part is done”—and that the United States will be “more prosperous” as a result. Soaring gas prices? They’ll come back down. The Strait of Hormuz? “It’ll just open up naturally,” like a daffodil in spring. Stock prices, down more than 4 percent since the war began, “will rapidly go back up.”