‘Why can’t he be president?’
“Why can’t he be president?” I will ask my wife frequently, almost daily, as we watch television news programs or otherwise go about our daily business. Often my signature line varies slightly. “Why can’t she be president?” I will ask my wife frequently, almost daily, as we watch television news programs or otherwise go about our daily business.
On Sunday I asked my wife why Tim Scott, a Republican U.S. senator from South Carolina who seems like a bright and honorable man, couldn’t be president. Yes, I disagree with Scott on many issues, but he appears to be a competent and sane person. He would be a capable and fundamentally decent president.
I’ve asked the same “Why can’t he/ she be president” question over the last year about John Kasich, Lindsay Graham, Adam Schiff, Bob Corker, Greg Popovich, John McCain, Jeff Flake, Seahawks wide receiver Doug Baldwin, Amy Klobuchar, Jerry Brown, Marco Rubio, Larry the Cable Guy, the actual cable guy who came to my house to fix the cable, Michael Steele, Gen. James Mattis, Gen. H.R. McMaster, an Imperial police officer, George Lopez, that nice clerk at PetSmart and some random, semi-weird dude I talked with for a while in the Atlanta airport several months ago.
I could go on and on, actually … so I will. Better choices for president than we have now include Kamala Harris, Gilbert Gottfried, Dianne Feinstein, Orrin Hatch, Martin Short if he weren’t Canadian, Justin Bieber if he weren’t Canadian and continues maturing well, El Centro City Councilwoman Cheryl Viegas-Walker, Aaron Rogers, Fluffy the standup comedian, our waitress last week at Burgers & Beer and Joe Biden, who would have trounced Trump in the general election if he’d been the Democratic nominee instead of non-electable Hillary Clinton. I could go on much more, but I don’t have the space.
The truth is almost anyone in this country would be a better president than the mean, petty, vindictive, consistently untruthful, intellectually incurious, image/brand obsessed, misogynistic, self-indulgent, obsessive, bullying, profane, xenophobic, braggadocios tub of apricot-colored goo in charge of this country. There are a few exceptions, including Roy Moore, who you best keep away from the junior high baton-twirling team and your Pippi Longstocking videos, and Vice President Mike Pence, he of the transparent homespun sincerity, constantly concerned furrowed brow and lack of fortitude to stand up to the Lout-In-Chief.
Actually, Donald Trump has shown in his 11 months in office he is among the uniquely unqualified people in the country for the job. He is wrong for the job psychologically and experientially. He appears to have no idea what he is doing. He has exacerbated racial tensions in our land. He’s thrashing our environment. Internationally, he has offended leaders from all over the world and chummed around with murderous dictators including Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. He already has provoked violence in the Middle East and may get us into nuclear war with Iran, North Korea or both Iran and North Korea.
Yes, the economy is humming along, but it was doing well in the last years of the Obama administration and there is little evidence anything Trump has done has made it that much better.
Trump has been trying to vilify the news media since he started campaigning, partly because his gargantuan ego won’t countenance criticism. But it is more than that. I believe that Trump thinks if he discredits the media, along with certain branches of law enforcement investigating him and his cronies, he will be able to tear down the investigative findings when his nefarious personal links to Russia ultimately are revealed.
When that damning information is revealed, we all should be asking, “Why can’t someone else, heck almost anyone else, be president?”