Trump best to let go of Lewis feud
Donald Trump got it wrong in nipping at the heels of U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) with a peevish tweet, proving he’s yet to learn he doesn’t have to go to every fight he’s invited to.
As any exasperated parent could tell him, there are times you have to pick your battles, and one of those times for him would have been to turn a deaf ear to the congressman’s contention that a Trump administration can’t be seen as legitimate.
Truth be told, there’s bias here because Lewis straddles a mountain of goodwill at this address where regret still lingers over an opportunity squandered years ago.
He was spotted standing by himself at Logan Airport that long-ago day, and the instinct here was to offer him an outstretched hand because shaking hands with him would have been like shaking hands with history.
From a family of sharecroppers and a background of segregated public schooling, he would emerge as a towering figure in the civil rights movement, allowing himself to be jailed, beaten, spit upon, and critically wounded by raging mobs he unflinchingly faced while marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge on Bloody Sunday.
Would it have been an honor to shake his hand? You bet.
But time was short, so the moment passed, never presenting itself again.
Lewis, however, has remained an immensely admired figure here, even though his politics have often been difficult to digest. So what? There’s much to admire on both sides of the aisle if you can look beyond petty partisanship.
That’s what made this last presidential campaign so repulsive because neither side could claim higher ground.
But the system we embrace did produce a winner and did it without the aid of hanging chads or a Supreme Court intervention.
So Lewis, who often placed his body in harm’s way to assure every American had ownership of that system, is the last official you’d expect to reject a legitimate result simply because it wasn’t the one he preferred.
He once bled in defiance of such tyranny.
Now he’s even suggesting Russia might have helped Trump subvert the process, the way a CNN panelist tried to subvert it by letting Hillary Clinton know what questions she’d be asked in a debate.
Please. It’s beneath John Lewis to play this game.
Of course, he just published a new book, and nothing boosts sales more than a nasty controversy. Or is that being too cynical? Whatever his reasoning, this 76-year-old icon gets a mulligan here.
Cut him some slack, Mr. Trump. He’s more than earned it.