San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Out of the madness, one profile in courage
You know that the toxicity of American politics has metastasized when even the National Prayer Breakfast is infected with vitriol. The annual National Prayer Breakfast, for goodness sake, an annual gathering of respect for others’ faith and a sanctuary from partisan diatribes since 1953.
President Trump could not help himself Thursday morning. “Love your enemies,” as Jesus implores? No way: Trump lashed at the pursuers of his impeachment as “very dishonest and corrupt people.” He made thinly veiled references to Sen. Mitt Romney, the lone Republican who voted for conviction (“I don’t like people who use their faith as justification for doing what they know is wrong”) and scoffed at the claim of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a devout Catholic, that she prays for him.
This was merely the warmup for his gloatathon before his staff and congressional sycophants at the East Room of the White House. His rambling, 62minute diatribe, alternating between vanity and vitriol, shed any remaining shred of restraint or dignity he might have applied at the prayer breakfast. He called Pelosi a “horrible person” and questioned whether she even prayed at all. He called former FBI Director James Comey “a sleazebag” and others in the bureau “the crookedest, most dishonest, dirtiest people I’ve ever seen.”
He complained that his family was put through a “phony, rotten” ordeal by “some very evil and sick people.”
He deplored the Mueller investigation, which resulted in six convictions of Trump associates and multiple instances of potential obstruction of justice by the president himself, as “all bullshit.” He compared his plight to that of George
Washington after the Revolution.
This was the president of the United States, who holds the controls to this nation’s ability to launch nuclear war, putting his temperament and ego on raw display after being acquitted of abusing his power in the Ukraine scandal. The mind reels at what might have happened if he had been convicted.
Not far behind the National Prayer Breakfast traditions of dignity and suspension of partisan pettiness is the annual State of the Union address, which came Tuesday night, on the eve of the Senate vote. I attended several in the 1980s, when Republican Ronald Reagan was president and Democrat Tip O’Neill was speaker of the House and the policy differences were profound. The reaction to Reagan’sspeeches — hearty applause on one side of the chamber, stillness on the other — reflected the deeply felt disagreements. Yet the atmosphere was always civil and respectful.
On Tuesday, Trump came for combat. He shunned Pelosi’s handshake offer. He plunged into a speech with so many flatout misrepresentations of the economy under his predecessor and his own actions — Exhibit A: claiming he was fighting to preserve coverage for preexisting conditions when his administration was arguing in court to eliminate them — that some Democrats, including
Rep. Jackie Speier, DSan Mateo, walked out. His stickintheeye approach extended to awarding a Presidential Medal of Freedom to ailing talk show blowhard Rush Limbaugh, who has a history of race baiting and misogyny.
In disgust, Pelosi ripped the text of the speech in half at the conclusion. It was not a wise move from a political sense. It looked petty — and provided material for Trump and his surrogates to exploit, as they did with hyperventilation. As Michelle Obama liked to say, “When they go low, we go high.” In this rare variance for a master tactician, Pelosi did not, despite her justifiable disgust at Trump’s overt lies.
“Our nation is having an emotional meltdown, and it’s not pretty,” observed
Sen. Mitt Romney, RUtah
Tracy Thomas, a Petaluma psychologist who specializes in emotional sensitivity. “The chronic reactivity of our leaders has run away with itself, and they are all in desperate need of a timeout.”
Against the dispiriting backdrop of the week was that one shining moment from Sen. Mitt Romney, who stood tall — and firmly with the evidence — in breaking GOP party ranks to vote to convict the president of abuse of power for “a flagrant assault on our electoral rights, our national security and our fundamental values.”
Romney knew he would be ostracized for it, and he was. The president’s son Don Jr. called for Romney to be immediate expelled from the GOP. The Utah senator was, predictably, excoriated on Fox News and by the president.
Romney gave us a rare profile in courage in these polarized times.
“A bright light in a foggy harbor,”as Rep. Eric Swalwell, DDublin, told me.
It was a moment to cherish in a week many Americans would rather forget. This nation could sure use that timeout.
John Diaz is The San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial page editor. Email: jdiaz@ sfchronicle.com Twitter: @JohnDiazChron
President Trump went on a gloatathon after acquittal.
“Were I to ignore the evidence that has been presented, and disregard what I believe my oath and the Constitution demands of me for the sake of a partisan end, it would, I fear, expose my character to history’s rebuke and the censure of my own conscience.”