It’s not too late to be great

It’s a common refrain among supporters of your president (not mine).

Repeating as much as the line in the song “Talk Talk” (by the band Talk Talk), it goes something like this: “He has done so much for this country. I wish people would just give him a chance.”

And then I’m usually issued a personal challenge to do so.

Fine, I’ll take off my alleged blinders and play along.

Let’s go in search of evidence of any presidential achievement that rises above the level of the baseline perfunctory stuff.

What has your president (not mine) achieved with the core policy of simply undoing anything and everything that Barack Obama did?

Does governing by overnight insult via Twitter count as an achievement?

By demonizing the media, whose rights are guaranteed under the First Amendment?

It is clear your president (not mine) has certainly tried, albeit with all the political grace of the proverbial bull in a china shop, to fulfill his clumsy populist campaign visions.

Even though the lives of Wisconsin farmers or Michigan factory workers or West Virginia coal miners have not been altered for the better, and sometimes for the worse, your president (not mine) still makes sure to feed them that steady diet of red meat with a side dish of overcooked venom.

But the cost of not governing the full nation has been so steep that we are in Civil War mode.

Your president (not mine) said he was going to build a wall at the border with Mexico and, get ready for the rim shot, make Mexico pay for it.

Because the big baby didn’t get his bottle, he will-

For MediaNews Group

ingly created chaos — a 35day government shutdown – and he is still threatening the nuclear option of declaring a national emergency.

Other applause-line promises included repealing Obamacare, defunding sanctuary cities and Planned Parenthood, starting to say “Merry Christmas Again” (not sure if and when that ever stopped, but whatever), etc.

His main legislative victory was passing a tax reform bill, one that backfired enough on average Americans – likely the same swing voters that got him into office — that the Republican party was hit hard in the mid-terms of last November.

It would seem that, for every attempted step forward, we have waltzed backward toward an abyss.

The real answer to the accomplishment question may lie in the biggest overarching promise of all, the one to which some clung and his detractors scoffed, which was to “Make America Great Again.”

The feeling here is that we were never great, and I challenge you to show me a time in our blood-stained history when we were. Remember, people, “great” is a perfect 10, not a 9 or a 9.5.

Before you tell me to love it or leave it, I do believe that what makes America