In a recent column at National Review online, writer Charles C. Cooke puts out there for far more viewers than I could ever to hope to reach, exactly what I've been saying since we started the 2016 campaign for President of The United States:
"Whatever he might claim before his adoring crowds, Trump is not in fact an antidote to Barack Obama. He is his parallel."
Thank you, Charles! *man hug* I have said repeatedly that we do not need another petulant, thin-skinned wanna-be king in the White House just because he's running with an R after his name. Or as Cooke puts it:
"As has been made abundantly clear by his incessant mewling and pathetically thin skin, Donald J. Trump is not in fact an unwaveringly resolute tough guy of the type you would hope to find standing next to you in the trenches, but an insecure attention seeker who cannot help but pander to his audiences’ prejudices."
Precisely. As Charles Krauthammer pointed out recently, Trump is running his campaign like a reality TV show. He's simply in it to win it. He doesn't really care about being President, he simply wants to win the contest to feed his ego. Honestly, can you truly imagine this vulgar cretin constrained by the office and all it entails for four years? If elected, Trump could conceivably be the first President to step down voluntarily before his term is up because he simply didn't like the job.
We saw and heard TV pundits and analysts, particularly after the last debate, give Trump a pass as he showed a distinct weakness on substantive policy discussion -- whether domestic or foreign. The boilerplate apologies go along the lines that Trump is so far out in the lead, he really didn't need to have a great debate, just be gaffe free, blah, blah, blah.
In fact, both Trump and Dr. Carson do badly in substantive debates because neither has any experience actually running anything. And both are staggeringly ignorant on foreign policy and domestic economic policy. Dr. Carson is a good, honorable, decent man. And I like him personally. But the time when a nice guy could just amble into the White House and run this country armed with only simple ethics and desire ended over a hundred years ago. You need to know how to politic and craft policy and work your political opponents to create compromise to get things done. Something that despite the incessant vitriol leveled at George Bush, he managed to do quite well. And this is where our current President has failed so dramatically. Unable to get his own party to enact legislation when they controlled both houses of Congress. Or just pass his own budget. Once! In eight years!! Ridiculous!!!
Barack Obama was elected on a plate of childishly simplistic rhetoric. And we have seen how that has failed to translate to actual achievement. Thus Obama rules as King via executive order. Something we fought a war to free ourselves from a couple of hundred years ago.
Cooke points out this very thing in his article about Trump:
"In Trump’s world, America will be restored to glory when his handpicked team of experts is permitted to experiment upon the public outside of the usual constitutional limits. Nowhere in his rhetoric will you find any reference to America’s pre-existing cultural and legal traditions, or to the necessary bounds that free men insist be imposed upon the state. There is no talk of "freedom"; no reflexive grounding of ideas in the Declaration and the Federalist Papers; no conceptual explanation or underlying philosophy. There is nothing, except will to power. By his own admission, Trump’s are the politics of doing enthusiastically what works in the moment; of Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt; of the administrative state and of bureaucratic expertise."
Again, precisely. Trump's standard remark when pressed is "Trust me" or "We'll get it done" but never how. We heard this all before. Eight years ago. Are Republican voters so stupid as to fall for this again? I hope not. But at least others are starting to point the problems with Trump as President.
Glad I'm not the only one saying this stuff now.
One more thing.
Trump and Carson, and to a lesser extent, Fiorina, all as outsiders will have to have a coterie of advisors working with them to inform their President when making policy decisions. We've seen what happens when you pick a group of radical leftists to advise a President (Obama), so I think it would be good for the voters to learn who would have the ear of each of these candidates if they reach the Oval Office.
Don't you?
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