Trump: Puppet master or puppet?
By:
LeRoy Goldman
Columnist
Times-News
BlueRidgeNow.com
April 16, 2017
In case you haven’t looked, America is a nation in peril. Its manifestation is everywhere, evident in the self-destructive actions of the Trump administration.
Unfortunately we now face an apparently insoluble problem, a nation so polarized that compromise and accommodation are beyond our reach. We arrive at this sorry and dangerous point in our nation’s history the old fashioned way. We’ve earned it.
The wellspring of national polarization dates back to the utterly unexpected and stunning Republican victory in 1994 when the Republicans gained 63 seats and took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate for the first time in 40 years. Their victory was the electoral culmination of the Gingrich Revolution.
Gingrich and his revolutionaries came to power with a mission to dismantle the sprawling Washington leviathan. But they had no idea how to accomplish their mission. They soon learned that such profound change was beyond their grasp. However, the seeds of discord, distrust and deadlock had been planted.
Since then, the seeds have flourished, nourished by a body politic that is now so separated into warring camps of red and blue that the only acceptable strategy for each of them is a war of annihilation aimed at the other.
On Dec. 1, 1862, one month before signing the Emancipation Proclamation, President Abraham Lincoln sent a long message to Congress. In it, he stated, “We can succeed only by concert. It is not ‘can any of us imagine better?’ but, ‘can we all do better?’ ”
Today, however, the reds, the blues and their elected slaves at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington lack the imagination and the will to act in concert with one another. Lincoln knew that was a recipe for disaster, but Donald Trump, his sycophants on the Hill, the Democrats and most of us don’t.
It’s not surprising, therefore, that last year’s presidential election gave the American people two unacceptable choices. Poll after poll showed that most voters had little use for either Hillary Clinton or Trump. Throughout the bitter campaign, Trump managed to disparage women, African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, Jews, the media and elites. Nonetheless, he managed to win by a whisker.
Once the campaign was over, many of us hoped Trump would at long last pivot and demonstrate that he understood the only path to a successful presidency was one that demonstrated he was obligated to be president of all of us, not just some of us. Equally important was the need for him to demonstrate that he was up to the job of being leader of the free world in a time of international turmoil and danger.
He’s had more than five months to make that pivot. It hasn’t happened, and it’s clear it’s not going to happen. With Trump, what you see is what you get, a thin-skinned bully who’s incapable of faithfully discharging the duties of the presidency. In fact, it’s worse than that. Instead of surrounding himself with a White House team that could help him grow, he’s packed the White House with political hacks.
Look at the results. For openers, we had Trump’s dystopian inaugural address that sounded like it was drafted by an FSB inquisitor deep within the Kremlin’s Lubyanka prison. That was followed by the sloppily drafted Muslim travel ban that predictably flamed out in federal court. When it did, Trump defaulted to his preferred form of fury and tweeted an entirely unwarranted assault on the constitutionally guaranteed independence of the judiciary. Has he ever read the Constitution? No, it’s more than 140 characters.
More recently, Trump threw his gravitas as the supreme deal-maker behind Paul Ryan’s ill-fated health care replacement bill that flamed out in the House. Never mind that Trump campaigned on providing health insurance to all Americans and then failed in his effort to pass a bill that would have taken coverage away from 24 million Americans.
On the international front, Trump has offended NATO, the European Union and the leaders of American allies such as Australia, Great Britain and Germany. In contradistinction, his buddy is Vladimir Putin, the unreconstructed KGB operative who has threatened international order by his actions in the Crimea, Ukraine, Syria and the unprecedented Russian cyberattack on our election last fall.
Nonetheless, Trump unwaveringly coddles Putin. Why? We don’t yet know, but we can smell smoke. Thankfully the FBI is well into a criminal investigation of this matter, including possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. If there is evidence of such collusion, it’s curtains for Trump. And no stream of hyperbolic ejaculatory tweets will save him from that.
Comedian and puppet master Edgar Bergen and his more famous puppet, Charlie McCarthy, were nothing but hilarious together on radio and television. Puppet master Donald Trump and his puppet, Donald Trump, are not. Together they embarrass, enrage and endanger America.
LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident and welcomes comments. He can be reached at:
