Columnist’s dream could be a nightmare for the country
Trump’s style was entertaining, but relying on instincts alone is not good leadership
As a columnist, President Donald Trump would be good for me.
As a columnist, he offers a large, slow, oddly colored target, something like a ruptured duck that dares you to shoot at him and attacks you for quoting him accurately. This assumes the columnist can untangle his mangled syntax and sort out the “sarcasm” and “jokes” from serious statements — should there be any.
With a President Trump, I would never worry about where my next column is coming from. All I’d have to do is turn to Twitter and see what he had to say (on what I guess would be his presidential Twitter handle: @I’minChargeShutUp).
Although his campaign is in free fall, the Trumpster gets credit for beating 16 other candidates, although the large number probably enabled him to slip through. Sixteen candidates of varying degrees of talent and philosophy formed a circular firing squad and split the “serious” vote while only one candidate offered a primal scream of ego and ignorance.
It was bad when he mocked a disabled reporter and Sen. John McCain’s war record, when he said he wanted to ban Muslims from entering the country, when he urged Russia to (in effect) help his campaign by releasing Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails and when he claimed President Obama was the “founder” of the Islamic State group. Ironically, his Teflon wore off when he quarreled with a Muslim Gold Star family whose son died for America.
It may have been entertaining at the start. The fun has been drained out of it now.
Thin-skinned, fat-headed, fact-averse Trump now has establishment Republicans and current office holders like Sen. Pat Toomey avoiding him like the Zika mosquito.
The Republican National Convention didn’t dump Trump — and shouldn’t have. He won fair and square. His campaign is a train wreck and likely will get worse as he gets angry and sets about settling scores before he retires to Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.
That brings me to the key issue I have with him, aside from political and diplomatic naivete, not knowing what he’s talking about most of the time and denying what he said the rest of the time.
Facts, they can be learned. If he wanted to, he could learn about the Middle East, or IS, or NATO or the nuclear triad. I find in him no interest in learning. He prefers going with his gut.
There are circumstances where going with personal experience and intuition is helpful in shaping policy. But it shouldn’t be the only tool in the box.
Time and time again he has proved himself a sore loser, a crybaby who relies on conspiracy theories instead of self-reflection. I don’t think experts have all of the answers, but they have some of the answers.
Trump is the worst messenger for some issues that resonate with Americans, such as the hotbutton issues of “free trade” that export American jobs and implode American industries, sanctuary cities that shield foreign felons, murky tactics in the war on terror. Trump correctly identified the problems, but offered solutions that could have been written by the Inquisition’s Tomas de Torquemada.
Some of the roles the U.S. president plays, in addition to heading the executive branch, are commander-in-chief and leader of the free world.
As commander, Obama does not order our military to commit war crimes, as potential President Trump said he would.
His inability to define what victory looks like and his unwillingness to name the enemy — radical Islam or some variation — hurt Obama’s effectiveness as the leader of the free world, but he didn’t make our friends fearful of us, nor turn his high office into a dunk tank.
Despite the obvious benefit to my job that a President Trump would be, I can’t be so selfish as to vote for him.
But that does not mean the only alternative is Hillary Clinton.