I wrote about the strange martyrdom of #NeverTrump crowd the other day. They could be thrashing and screaming in the Niagra River, approaching the falls, hearing the thunder in the distance, and if Donald Trump was piloting a lavish, gold-canopied Trump cocktail cruiser and throwing out a life-preserver, they would look around for another option and shout, “hey, I know you are generally pro 2nd amendment, but didn’t you fudge once, ten years ago, on the AR-15?”
Hopefully this crowd will wake up and take the life-preserver, but a few of them have reminded me: “You missed something. Donald Trump doesn’t have the credentials, the demeanor, the bearing, the experience to be President of the United States?”
..and this would be one of those moments, where my wife, Mary looks across the room at me, confirming that we have both just heard something extremely weird.
Folks, we have just endured eight years of a community organizer and affirmative action case residing in the White House. The Founding Fathers were brilliant men. They designed a system with checks and balances. The presidency has endured some truly unprepared souls. Barack Obama has proven — provided there is a peaceful transition of power on the next inauguration day — that our system can withstand the good intentions of an uniformed electorate, one that voted twice to make quota history, instead of qualified history.
And please no Harvard and Columbia references. Obama never released his Columbia transcripts, and the Harvard Law Review position he held represented the predictable result of pressure at Harvard to pick the editor based on an election and not on academic merits. As the teleprompter-addiction reflects, Obama is what actor James Woods called him — “a socialist meat puppet.”
The bar, in other words, is very low.
Okay, you know all that, but you remind me: should two wrongs make a right? Of course not. In this election, we are weighing the merits of Hillary Clinton, a different kind of affirmative action case, and Donald Trump, a guy who made his fortune in business–a place where you actually have to make something someone actually wants to buy.
I submit to you this: almost any American capitalist is better qualified to manage the affairs of state than any creature of government. Hillary Clinton has married, and heckled her way to the top. And what does she have to show for it? Can anyone truly praise her sleepy, bitchy presence in the United States Senate? Can anyone laud her attempt, as first lady, to secure socialist health care? When she isn’t drinking, or sleeping, she is policy-wonking and offending. I’m no fan of Bill Clinton, but she has none of his personal charm, no inner force other than simmering resentment. Her high and holy intentions for the middle east, “Arab Spring” have only strengthened ISIS and further destabilized the Middle East. She has contempt for the security protocols that protect our intelligence assets and personnel overseas, and she is now a proven, repeated liar. It’s difficult to actually prove “liar status,” but Hillary made it easy.
On the other hand, Donald Trump has had to fail and succeed (succeeding mostly) in the rough and tumble fray of the free enterprise system. He’s had to please hospitality guests, after jumping through the rings of fire unions and bureaucrats place in front of any development process. On a very small scale, I’ve seen some of this world and — unlike punching the clock in DC — there is no paycheck until well after final inspection. Anyone who can build a hotel in California, people, is instantly better qualified for the task of actually getting things done than the majority of 20th century United States Presidents.
But he won’t school himself on arcane foreign policy issues; he fails Constituional “gotcha” questions. He flaunts his ignorance of your pet policy project.
Listen up, folks: He’s a manager. He delegates. Remember the last micro-manager we had in the White House? Jimmy Carter. The guy who lectured us all about turning down our thermostats and allowed Iran to go full Jihad?
We forget that we don’t elect individuals to the White House. We elect a political fellowship, a team. So far, Trump has shown that he cares about an issue vital to the party of Lincoln, life, by selecting the most pro-life running mate in history, Mike Pence. He has selected an economic team that CNBC commentator, Larry Kudlow has observed will send “a very substantial pro-growth message.” (Remember when presidents actually talked about growing the economy through private enterprise?) His foreign policy team will make some novel proposals: Europe should pay for its own defense. You know all those wonderfully “socialist” Scandinavian experiments that American progressives love to praise? We pay for them. Europe hands out the goodies because they don’t pay for their own protection.
Trump will surround himself with advisers and cabinet members who know their fields, and who know how to get the job done.
So just stop it with the qualifications objection. He has already succeeded in a field far more difficult than government.
