Globetrotters vs. the Washington Generals

Ipredicted Donald Trump would be an amazing president. I predicted his energy and “can-do” attitude would make things happen … fast. I predicted he’d turn around America’s decline … fast. I predicted he’d erase Barack Obama and everything he ever did as president … fast. But this is ridiculous. Trump versus the politicians of Washington, D.C., isn’t even fair. It’s like the Harlem Globetrotters versus the Washington Generals. Try as they may, the Generals almost never win. The Globetrotters run circles around them. The Globetrotters bounce balls off their shoulders, heads, even butts — then shoot long jumpers that go swoosh.

That’s President Donald Trump. The Democrats have no clue what they are up against. Trump will out-smart them, out-hustle them, out-work them, outmaneuver them. Like the hapless Generals, they’ve already lost and don’t even know it.

Up until now, Ronald Reagan was my favorite president in modern history. But Donald Trump has passed my hero Reagan in his first week on the job. Trump makes Reagan look like he was standing in quicksand. Trump makes Reagan look like a slacker.

Trump withdrew America from the Trans Pacific Partnership treaty that kills middleclass American jobs. Remarkably, even liberal unions applauded.

Trump used executive orders to give the goahead to the long-stalled Keystone and Dakota Access pipelines. America is open for business again (and high-paying, middleclass jobs).

Trump issued an executive order starting the funding and construction of “the wall.” Liberal heads must be ready to explode. He also announced the hiring of 10,000 new border agents.

He will soon announce a temporary ban on refugees from Syria and Middle Eastern war zones. And a ban on visas from dangerous Muslimmajority countries with inadequate screening.

Trump also announced the end of “sanctuary cities” and the loss of federal funds for any city that chooses to continue breaking the law.

Liberals claimed Trump could never succeed. Really? Within 24 hours Miami surrendered and agreed to Trump’s terms. The dominoes are all falling.

Trump signed an executive order freezing the hiring of non-essential federal employees. Trump issued an executive order to “ease the burden of Obamacare.” This is the beginning of the end for Obamacare.

Trump said out loud the words “radical Islamic terrorism.” He did it in his inaugural speech — which means Trump did in his first 15 minutes as president what Obama wouldn’t do in eight years.

Trump has announced plans to cut 75 percent of regulations … and “maybe more.” Pinch me, this must be a dream.

The New York Times reports Trump is preparing executive orders to drastically reduce America’s funding and involvement in the United Nations and international treaties. I’ve been waiting a lifetime for this one.

Trump erased all mentions on the White House website of “climate change.”

And he erased all Spanish language from the White House website. It is now “English only.”

Lastly, corporations across the globe have all publicly announced they are bringing jobs and billions of dollars of investment monies back to America because of President Trump.

All of this happened in Trump’s first week. Can you imagine what Trump will do starting in his second week? Simply amazing. Breathtaking. Head-spinning.

There is no longer any doubt: Donald Trump is the Harlem Globetrotters of politics. It isn’t even fair.

President Trump says he will announce this week his nominee to succeed Antonin Scalia on the U.S. Supreme Court.

In a lucky — but little-noticed — coincidence, the eight remaining justices sent a subtle signal of their own earlier this month, when they declined a petition from Kelly Davis. Davis had asked the court to review his misdemeanor drivingunder-the-influence conviction in the state of Montana on the grounds that it came after a trial before a non-lawyer judge.

The U.S. Supreme Court decided not to hear the case. It’s less definitive than a written opinion, but it’s nonetheless a message. If the current justices felt strongly that only lawyers can serve as judges, they’d at least have heard Davis’s appeal.

The leaks from the Trump administration suggest that the new president’s nominee won’t be a nonlawyer but instead will come from the conventional ranks of judges already sitting on federal appellate courts.

That’s too bad. No doubt there are plenty of strong candidates for the Supreme Court who are already on the federal bench. But if America can have a president with no experience in political office, surely we can have a Supreme Court justice who is not a judge, or maybe even not a law school graduate.

It was less than 100 years ago that the U.S. Supreme Court included not just one but two justices who did not graduate law school — Robert Jackson and Stanley Reed. The list of justices without prior judicial experience includes some of the most famous members of the Supreme Court, from John Jay, John Marshall, and Joseph Story through Louis Brandeis, Felix Frankurter, Byron White and William Rehnquist.

If Trump is looking for a name, my suggestion is my former partner in the New York Sun, Seth Lipsky, who is the author of a book about the Constitution. Lipsky’s New York Sun, which still exists on the Web though not in print (and where my writing sometimes appears), was one of the few newspapers to endorse Trump in the 2016 election.

What Lipsky has to offer is something that candidates who go straight from law school to a judicial clerkship and, quickly afterward, to the federal bench have less of: life experience and the wisdom it brings. He served in the U.S. Army during Vietnam, where he was a combat reporter for Stars and Stripes and, though he doesn’t like to talk about it, won medals for bravery. He covered the civil rights movement for The Anniston Star newspaper in Alabama, where he saw firsthand the work of Frank Johnson, the federal judge who was a hero of integration and voting rights.

Lipsky had a nearly 20 year career at the Wall Street Journal, in its Detroit bureau, as its foreign editor, as an editor based in Hong Kong and in Brussels, and as a member of its editorial board. As a newspaper and online publishing executive, he’s dealt with employment law, securities law, First Amendment law, contract law, and corporate law from the perspective of a business owner.

I attended a small dinner with Justice Scalia hosted by Lipsky in 2008. It was an off-the-record gathering, and Scalia was sensitive about ground rules. But I can say without violating any confidences that the justice and the newspaper editor seemed quite comfortable together. Sun editorials referred to The Great Scalia, or TGS.

Maybe the non-judge Supreme Court nominee should be someone other than Lipsky. Or maybe it should be for an opening other than the seat left vacant by Scalia. Maybe Trump already has his heart set, this time around, on some federal appellate judge.

But whether it is for this opening or the next, it’s a principle to remember: in addition to all the lawyers, our courts could also sure use some Lipskys.