The White House — Home to the People’s Choice (Part II of III)
How Low Can You Go? REALLY!!!
The arrival of Donald Trump on the political stage coincided with the media’s anointing of Hillary Clinton as the next President. She would be the first woman President (Presidette?), she’d been a senator, Secretary of State, had lived through the vast right wing conspiracy and was hailed as the destroyer of the glass ceiling. She outlasted a field of aspirants marked by an absence of Presidential qualifications and gravitas. On the far left, Sens. Sanders and Warren proved eminently caustic and unlikeable. Yang, Buttigieg, Harris (the first to exit the race), Michael Bennet (!), Gabbard and others were never contenders.
On the other side, the circus that was the Republican primary featured a half dozen guys and Carly Fiorina haplessly covered with Donald Trump insults, name calling and bloviating. One by one Bush, Cruz, Graham, Fiorina and rest fell under the deluge of Trump extravaganzas and the MAGA rallying cry.
What followed was four years of unfathomable vitriol, skullduggery, impeachments, conspiracies, and insurrections never experienced in American government. No good purpose is served by reciting the litany of misdeeds and misstatements on both sides. They are well documented elsewhere. Fractured political parties and a wider and deeper political divide are the backwash that remains.
After the four-year conflagration, several positives became clear. THE US proved it had the resources and ability to achieve energy independence by becoming the world’s leading producer of fossil fuels. The unimaginable had happened as industry had claimed for decades — even crude and natural gas exports climbed. And, despite exiting global climate soirees, the US achieved the goals of Paris and Tokyo accords anyway. To boot, when the Covid virus escaped the Wuhan (and partially-US funded) laboratory, Operation Warp Speed delivered vaccines from three US pharma concerns. Strategies and tactics are still debated, but the results stand as a singular achievement.
Election Day 2020 brought the due bill for Mr. Trump’s hucksterism, exaggerations of “the best, the most, the greatest, new records” and the truckloads of steaming piles of self-congratulations of the previous four years.
As the barely visible senator saved by his South Carolina buddy from the ash heap — Joe Biden: punchline to Barack Obama jokes; plagiarist; prevaricator (how is the bottom 10th of your law school class the “top?”); became President-elect. Not content to depart quietly, Mr. Trump’s final “salute” to America is his rallying and subsequent failure to call off the thugs attacking the nation’s capital.
His economic accomplishments notwithstanding, Trump’s legacy will be that sad day. Further, it wounded conservatives and their cause as they were labeled enablers, and it gave credence to the accusations by Schumer, Pelosi, Schiff, Nadler, and the rest that he was only about his presidency and its power, not the good of the country. As one letter writer so eloquently stated in The Wall Street Journal, “It is maddening that a man’s acute egocentrism can blind an electorate to the success of his presidency and give us President Biden.”
Many who voted for him, and a fair number who didn’t, admittedly enjoyed his peeling the bark off the woke, the press and lefty legislative leadership. His indiscriminate pokes in the eye to his own party’s leadership and overreaction to thoughtful opposition cost him a second term. It didn’t help that the man exhibited zero sense of humor, nor self-awareness. Was this White House audacity, truculence, and confrontational style a one off? Or did “go with the flow” Joe adopt it for his own?
Up next — with Democrats lurching leftward with the narrowest of legislative majorities — and — Republicans split into the Trump MAGA’s and the rest of the party, Joe Biden pledged to be the Uniter. How is that working out?
Comment *I agree with you that Trump hurt himself very badly by his own actions on media during is presidency. And his zanny belief that the 2020 election was actually won by him , not to speak of his failure to be very firm about Washington wild demonstrators, have hurt him subsequently……….as has his devotion to personal justification in oncoming elections.
But I also think we have to stress too the tremendous media bias he faced/faces; and the huge money differential that he faced in the 2020 campaign, including all the dark money that his opponents claim they oppose.
My personal view about Trump, and I would rather discuss this in this medium than at the card table, is that he was alsolutely the wrong messenger but I can’t think of how the messages he brought could have been otherwise brought. But now another messanger is needed, not Trump.
In all of this it is not clear in my mind how clear I am in my mind so to speak, since my views in Madison, on such political matters, are wildly out of touch with most the people I know and treasure…….
Happily your views are not wildly out of touch in this forum. And, I too prefer to discuss them here. Indeed another messenger is needed, most assuredly whomever that might be will be subjected to the denigrations and hysteria any conservative has and will suffer. Style, grace and to me, above all, humor would neutralize the woke jackals. The name calling, threats to primary non-supporters, divisive rants against against R party leadership only weaken the knees of independents. After this 12 months of dizzying missteps, clownish faux rants and goofiness at every turn by the VP, I believe a majority of this country is ready for a clear-eyed, objective conservative who embodies resolve, compassion, can drive a serious immigration policy and comprehends the depth and breadth of the threats we face. A tall order, no doubt. But if the Rs use 23 and 24 to make real progress with almost certain majorities, I believe that candidate will become obvious and Trump will have paved the way for a transformative term for the next POTUS.