THE UNHINGED PRESIDENT

Chris Wallace and Charles Krauthammer have joined George Will as my least favored media talking heads. There are several others—like Bernie Goldberg, often seen on Bill O’Reilly’s Factor show, that belong on a growing list of people who want us to believe they are SHOCKED! – SHOCKED! - at Trump’s post-election behavior. It’s as though they believed a magic switch would be thrown and Trump would begin behaving exactly as all politicians (particularly Presidents) have done for at least the past twenty-four years. More illustrative of the Potomac intelligentsia is their pronouncement of doom upon this administration because (Gasp!) they don’t follow the accepted protocol in their handling of ANYTHING. Obviously, Trump hasn’t a clue.

Does it take more than a little hubris to assume that a man who has amassed a multi-billion dollar fortune, has managed to establish and prove up many highly successful and lucrative businesses, and has also defeated the best and brightest presidential candidates that either party could array against him—this man is somehow so stupid that he doesn’t know how to deal with obstacles, many of them manufactured, that the secularists place in his path?

A Change.org petition being circulated by mental health professionals asserts President Trump is ‘unfit to serve’! 24,000 signatures have been garnered thus far.

To the mental health professionals and those of the enlightened media who have informed us President Trump is ‘unhinged’, is it fair to ask what evidence you would cite to illustrate your point? If it is his behaviors that you deem irrational, perhaps you could provide us with a definition of ‘rational’, and tell us whether that definition is applicable to all members of the human race? For instance, is it rational for a man in his late 50s or 60s to throw a chair across the floor of a crowded gymnasium? I cannot see Dean Smith, Roy Williams, or Bill Self doing anything so rash, but a highly successful college basketball coach named Bobby Knight did exactly that—and remained a winning coach for several years thereafter! Rational behavior? If that behavior accomplishes the goal that you are seeking, perhaps it is not so irrational for you. You would not expect a Caspar Milquetoast to smash a 250-pound hulking bully in the mouth with his fist; that would be the epitome of irrational behavior. But for Arnold Schwarzenegger to take such action might be a more sensible, even ‘rational’ response to provocation.

I don’t like Donald Trump; haven’t liked him since he first announced his candidacy. He is crude, rude, and perfectly willing to destroy the reputation and career of an opponent to obtain his ends. I truly believe that Dale Carnegie, author of the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, might well have wanted to punch him in the nose.

Anyone who expected Donald Trump to behave exactly as each—indeed, ANY—of the past Presidents has to be smoking some of that funny tobacco. Donald Trump is not George Bush. There are even fewer similarities between Trump and Barack Obama. Trump is Trump. For good or ill, he is going to do things in the ways that have proved, I think you would agree, fairly successful for him in the past. To do otherwise would be foolish, don’t you think? Why exchange the thoroughbred you have ridden to stunning victories, for the old grey mare proven time and again to be slow afoot, often finishing last?

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears the beat of a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.
--Henry David Thoreau: Walden

 Some of the actions he will take during his presidency are going to be applauded by many who are looking for change in America. Some of the things he does will cause many to wince in fear and disgust. But if you are surprised that he is who he is, then you have definitely not been paying attention.

Trump was not elected to win the approval of the media and politicians. He was chosen because he promised to bring a little sanity back to politics; to do things that are in the best interests of America, for a change; to repeal and replace Obamacare, to restore some American pride, to rebuild our faltering military, to solve the immigration problems, to cut taxes and to restore jobs. Everything the immediate past president did accomplished the exact opposite of those ends. America wanted a change. It is as simple as that. Perhaps the media and politicians of both parties will be the last to comprehend that message.

Criticize him if you must. He is NEVER going to be the kinder, gentler president you want him to be. He is always going to be egocentric, thin-skinned, and tone deaf. Maddeningly so, perhaps. But as long as he is making a bonafide effort to restore American leadership, pride and a sense of moral responsibility, anyone who is a genuine conservative should stop and think before giving the secularists too much assistance in trying to destroy our President.

By the way, where are the Democrat opposite numbers of John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Marco Rubio, and Susan Collins? The only Democrat Senator to EVER oppose Obama in any way was Joe Manchin of West Virginia—and that was muted opposition to Obama’s stance on coal. Are the secularists convictions more strongly held than those of conservatives? Interesting . . . 

AN UNREDEEMED PRESIDENCY

As election day draws near and the presidential campaigns execute their final strategies the winds of success appear to be at the backs of the Romney/Ryan team, and it’s not too imperious to envisage a Romney/Ryan victory. It appears that a significant part of the electorate agrees with the title of Niall Ferguson’s cogent essay entitled “Obama’s Gotta Go”. As we eagerly await their promising triumph on November 6th and, risking impetuousness, we deign to contemplate what a Romney presidency will resemble in its maiden year. 

From any perspective, looking forward, President Romney will undoubtedly have to play the part of America’s master repairman.  He has the unenviable task of repaving America’s avenue of exceptionalism, a road rendered potholed and fractured by the Obama administration. There are considerable fixes Romney the new renovator-in-chief must undertake, and if anyone is deserved of a “blame Obama” free pass it will be the new Chief Executive. But leaders don’t blame, they take responsibility for their actions, so it’s doubtful President Romney will exhibit behavior beneath his character and the office of the presidency.

President Romney will have to refurbish America’s ruptured domestic economic environment laden with Obama’s absurdist wealth redistribution policies and profligate spending sprees. He will have to remake a hegemonic America in decline due to President Obama’s feckless appeasement of America’s enemies and indifference and disregard towards its allies. But perhaps President Romney’s most daunting task for renovating America’s path of exceptionalism will be to restore a united America torn asunder by an Obama-led class warfare crusade. A crusade pitting American against American to assuage his personal disdain for a hallmark of Americanism embodied by the freedom loving rugged individualist who takes personal responsibility for their successes and failures. These are the very Americans President Obama fears and derides because he cannot control their independent spirit, intimidate their freedom of thought, nor render insecure their confident natures.

While a Romney presidency is committed to a renewal of American exceptionalism, the Obama presidency is only a remembrance of unfulfilled promise. The 2008 Obama pledges are legendary for their hollowness and now have the status of a parlor joke, to wit, “how is that hope and change working out for you?” Space does not permit the entire smorgasbord of utopias (over 500 by some accounts) offered up by candidate and President Obama. But because of their far-reaching consequences a few warrant call outs to capture the essence of his disappointing term. Candidate Obama professed he would revolutionize American governance by replacing backroom political cronyism with a presidency that would be “the most transparent administration in the history of our country”. It was candidate Obama who swore that he would reduce the national deficit in half by the end of his first term. In 2009 President Obama guaranteed that unemployment would be at 5.2% at the end of his first term and there would be 3% to 4% GDP growth in the final three years of his first term. There were the President’s infamous assurances that his ObamaCare legislation would be budget neutral, reduce premium costs and allow individuals to keep their existing coverage. The President avowed he would commence a “new beginning” between America and the Arab world through his policies of appeasement toward America’s enemies. These and the preponderance of other hopeful pieces of paradise promised by an Obama presidency are relegated to a wasteland of deceit and deception.

Obama partisans are chock full of excuses for the president’s fiascos.  Some justify President Obama’s failures due to his executive inexperience, so perhaps Mr. Obama ran afoul of one of the cardinal rules of business, which is to never over promise and under deliver. But his devotees also plead that now since that he has gotten his feet wet give him four more years. But, to quote one of Vice-President Joe Biden’s few lucid remarks, “…the presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.” Some of the president’s acolytes have chalked up his failures as a consequence of his predecessor’s policies igniting the “blame Bush” strategy. If that is at play, and since every president inherits some undesirable policies and unfavorable domestic and geo-political environments, then it is reason enough to man the Oval office with someone who can live up to the challenges of the presidency. Finally, in keeping with the Obama finger-pointing presidency, the President’s disciples accuse the republicans in congress of partisanship and obstruction. This is mendacious and preposterous given that the Obama policies, which laid the groundwork for America’s current decline, were undertaken in the President’s first two years in office, a period in which the democrats controlled both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

The Obama presidency was unique for both it’s promise and it’s fortification. Without any notable experience to speak of on the part of candidate Obama an adoring mainstream media colluded with an ingenious presidential campaign to successfully fabricate the illusion of a candidate that was infallible and omnipotent. Candidate Obama was lauded and praised as the savior for the woes of the American Republic and he would right the injustices of the past with a wave of his majestic hand. From the failed, pork ridden stimulus to the Benghazi tragedy with flyovers to ObamaCare, Solyndra and his Middle East “American Apology Tour” the media’s coddling continued into his presidency while President Obama’s advisers strove feverishly to enable, defend and rationalize his failures. But the President’s aura of entitlement and enablement were ironically the causes of his failures and disappointments.

However it was how he failed that signifies the tragedy of his presidency. America’s post-modern presidential version of the “emperor with no clothes” luxuriated in praise and fumed at criticism. Handed every opportunity to succeed he stubbornly ignored the obvious manifestations of his failed socialist ideologies. He dug in his heels insisting on an economic agenda that wreaked havoc and misery on the middle class, the very group he claimed to champion in his class warfare campaign. His lethargic foreign engagement characterized as “leading from behind” emboldened America’s enemies resulting in a much more dangerous and tumultuous world for America than when he took office.

In spite of the dangers to America’s economic and international well being, the future of the Republic and his disregard for his oath of office the President was obdurate in his single mindedness. The Constitution is clear as to the president’s responsibilities and President Obama disregarded his solemn oath which was “to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States." Perhaps it is his ability that is at issue.

But the time for entertaining excuses or conjecture is over. In the parlance of the President’s many “let me be clear” moments it is now history’s time to write the Obama epitaph. Historians, unlike the President's sycophants, will not justify his failures nor inoculate his shortcomings. As with all Presidents Mr. Obama’s presidency will be reviewed and recollected historically on the merits of his accomplishments. He was dealt a hand that he willingly accepted and he failed to deliver. It was President Obama’s personal decision to selfishly satiate his personal dogmata at the expense of his sworn responsibility to act as steward of America’s welfare. For that reason he shall not be forgiven, and for that reason the Obama presidency's epitaph will forever be known as an unredeemed presidency.