I am sure my next few words may come as a surprise to many of you, but the President has a few good ideas; Correcting the imbalance with our foreign trade partners, specifically the Chinese, has bipartisan agreement. Extracting troops from 18 years of war in the Middle East would make even the far-left stand and cheer. Finding a permanent solution instead of kicking the can down the road that would enduringly and comprehensively fix our ongoing immigration debate also has bipartisan support.
Every President prior to Donald Trump since Nixon has grappled with one or more of these problems. The fault lies not in the pitch but the strategist. Standing in the middle of the White House ballfield and throwing screwballs is not how you win. A President who admittedly does not read and looks upon anyone who is not white, American or Christian as inferior is cooking up a recipe for disaster. With an American President who has trouble handling his own language more or less the complexities of international negotiations is “abzerd” (sic).
Vengeance is not a strategy. After the President performed his usual back-flip-flop and kowtowing to Wayne LaPierre, the head of the NRA, by backing off background checks for gun owners he brought up mental health as the reason for gun violence. He even rephrased the old canard of guns don’t kill people, people kill people, a longtime trope of the NRA to avoid the responsibility of being gun sellers not gun safety advocates. That mimicking of his orders from “Wayne” in a widely reported phone call between himself and the NRA Chief Executive points out the lack of real ideology by the President. One of the first moves by Mr. Trump, who regurgitates the mental health slur after every domestic terrorist mass shooting, flies in the face of one of his first orders as President. He rescinded an Obama policy restricting gun ownership to a portion of the mentally ill. Parts of the original order was limited to people who had previously been considered incapable of handling their financial affairs. The NRA objection was ostensibly made over “due process.”
Mr. Trump has shown his obsessive dislike for former President Obama over the past few days with raving incoherent blaming of the past President for his own woes. A competent less vengeful man would have realized a step had been taken toward his supposed goal and would have used it to improve the order. Smartly, a real strategist would have tweaked the order and taken credit, but again the President struck out. This has been a cloud over the thinking of Mr. Trump since the day he took office. Lying about crowd sizes, election margins, and berating the former President's intelligence have been a fifth-grade response to a post-graduate job.
Mr. Trump took office with majorities in both Houses of Congress. The bases were loaded for comprehensive immigration reform, improving the existing health care law, infrastructure (one of his promised goals) and gun reform were within his grasp and was frittered away like a ground ball to Bill Buckner. You keep swinging but missing, time for a new batter Mr. President—only one with a better eye.
Vote in 2020 for Change.
