One down, one in progress
The GOP sets the table with some troubling ideas about foreign affairs
Two weeks of political party conventions, which I feel obliged to watch, have left me longing for the freedom to watch old Westerns instead, with Matt Dillon gunning down blowhards and villains.
With the Republican convention completed, one side of the table has been set and the Democrats are in the midst of their version of the venerable institution. Sneaky thought: Might these two affairs end up so disastrously that they will spell the end of the practice? There is an argument for it. Who likes and needs superdelegates, televised balloon droppings and being lied to about what candidates are going to do for us?
I suppose it is useful to get to know what the candidates look like. Republican candidate Donald J. Trump gave us a good look at himself and his family. His wife, daughters and sons spoke. (I was hoping for the family’s singing dog, but was disappointed.) One came away with the growing suspicion that Mr. Trump’s family members were the only people he could count on to endorse him, given the performance of Lyin’ Ted Cruz and the absence of many senior Republican politicians, including the two Bush former presidents and ex-candidates Mitt Romney and John McCain, not to mention host Ohio Gov. John Kasich.
Melania Trump got lured into plagiarism by speechwriters. She appears to be a nice person from Slovenia, but it is hard to see her following in the footsteps of Mamie Eisenhower, Jackie Kennedy, Lady Bird Johnson and Michelle Obama. With respect to her speech, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery but one is obliged to cite the sources of good lines.
Mr. Trump’s vice president choice, Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, looks acceptable, and, given his background could probably step in credibly as president if Mr. Trump were to go to pieces or drop off the twig. Mr. Pence will allegedly help Mr. Trump win evangelical voters, not the natural constituency of a casino owner and New York City wheeler-dealer. Mr. Pence occasionally had that “What have I got myself into?” look during the proceedings.
I look at Mr. Trump’s presentations of his views from the perspective of a former diplomat. Thinking where America would stand in international affairs if we woke up on the morning of Nov. 9 with him as president, I wished for a commercial during his convention speech to pour myself a scotch.
His idea that the United States should come to the defense of attacked NATO members only if they had paid their dues — while it might make sense to say that to them in private — was easily the dumbest thing I have heard in years in that it invites Russian President Vladimir V. Putin to fiddle around militarily on his country’s borders. It is also downright insulting to other NATO members’ leaders. It was as though Mr. Trump were imagining that he would still be a hotel keeper asking for French President Francois Hollande’s credit card before allowing him to check in, instead of president of the United States of America dealing with the heads of sovereign nations.
Some of them, by the way, already think he is crazy. We can say we don’t care what they think, but it doesn’t help the United States to be represented by a clown in international circles. Like or hate President Barack Obama, he is taken seriously by U.S. interlocuters.
The other extremely unpromising foreign-affairs prospect of a Trump presidency is that, for the first time in about 100 years, we would have difficult relations with Mexico, with whom we have a 2,000--mile border. Mr. Trump said again he was going to build his “great border wall.” He says he’ll make Mexico pay for it, too, an utterly batty boast. He has also said he would renegotiate the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement. That would enrage Mexico and Canada.
Mr. Trump’s threats against China don’t take into consideration the fact that some $2 trillion to $3 trillion of America’s $19 trillion national debt is held by China. Maybe he intends to try an Atlantic City-type bankruptcy play on them, a very bad idea.
Looking seriously at his pledge to make “safety, prosperity and peace” the hallmarks of his presidency, there is certainly nothing not to like about those goals. I have, however, always hated American politicians who try to scare voters into voting for them in order to be safe. Mr. Trump said he is the law-and-order candidate. His claim that Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state had left as a heritage “death, destruction and weakness” is just silly.
Entirely missing from Mr. Trump’s trumpery was any effort to address the economic inequality that is plaguing Americans and getting worse. What he wants, exactly, is safety and peace so that the prosperity of people like him is in no way threatened by the needs and aspirations of ordinary people. Let them continue to have to hold two or three jobs to make ends meet, send their children to college only by incurring crushing debt and, as a result of the stress they live under, fall victim to drug abuse, foreclosures of their homes and the other problems of the downtrodden.
Mr. Trump, and the few senior Republicans who support him and his rich people’s goals, could have been encouraged by the uncivil chants at the convention of “Lock her up,” referring to Hillary Clinton, but somehow, in my heart, I don’t think America’s voters are that dumb.
Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a PostGazette associate editor (dsimpson@post- gazette. com, 412-263-1976).