End of an Era?

I feel increasingly confident that the Donald Trump presidency is done for. 

 I know, I know…many people were sure he wouldn’t be elected in the first place, and yet here we are. But things are different now in a couple of ways. In 2016, a lot of voters thought, “Well, I wonder what it would be like to have a selfish and ignorant bigot in the White House. How bad could it be?”

 Now we know. Those of us who have survived so far understand just how bad it can be. And, frankly, it may be far worse by November.

 So, I think Donald is a dead duck. On top of his disastrous responses to the pandemic and to the Black Lives Matter movement, there is his apparent inability to change. He proudly relies on his instincts which, surprise, surprise, are telling him to spew out idiotic tweets ranging from the mendacious to the inane. But fewer and fewer people believe anything he says. Backing up the tweet-rants are the usual rallies, now enhanced by their Covid-spreading effects. He is incapable of not being who he has always been and this, I believe, will spell his doom.

 But let’s not forget that the horrors of this presidency were made possible by the complicity of all too many Republican senators. He could not have wrecked the country as he has without the cooperation of Mitch McConnell and company. 

 It will be interesting to see how a future McConnell will try to excuse his support for Trump’s catastrophic and unpatriotic policies. I suppose he could go with the classic “politics ain’t beanbag” defense. For example, he might say, in his low-key, I’m-a-sober-serious-dude voice, “Well, sometimes you have to break eggs to make omelets. Like, if I want Trump to help me suppress voters and funnel more sex offenders onto the Supreme Court, I may have to help him with the jobs Putin has assigned to him.”

 

The 1950s gave us McCarthyism, maybe the late 2010s will be known as the age of McConnellism. 

 How, in the years to come, will McConnell's senator colleagues justify their enabling of Trump's destructive and unpatriotic behavior? Maybe like this: “People may say I’m selfish and corrupt, but…look over there everybody, red velvet cupcakes!”

One of the most disturbing aspects of Trump’s White House tenure is the very fact that he managed to occupy this honored office at all. So now his occupancy will have to be officially memorialized. His portrait will adorn the White House wall. 

 But what will this portrait look like? I propose that we demand Congress make future presidential portraits subject to popular vote. Particularly now, we, the victims of Trump’s presidency, should have the right to decide how he will be officially remembered. In line with this proposal, I hereby offer you an opportunity to vote on your preferred Donald Trump official portrait composition. Please select A, B, C, D, or E below:

                             A

                             B

                             C

                             D

                             E

And, oh yeah, don't forget to vote.

Just How Dumb Is He?

Maggie Haberman of the New York Times is an excellent reporter. So why, in a CNN interview this morning, did she say of Donald Trump, “For all the mocking of him, he’s not dumb, and he does understand that this is actually going to be what he gets judged on in the fall. How he handles this [the pandemic].” 
 

Ms. Haberman’s argument is that Trump is not dumb, since he understands that his re-election will turn largely on whether voters regard his handling of the Covid-19 pandemic as effective. But I disagree. Any slack-brained simpleton would understand that. Realizing this basic truth does not require a Ph.D. in Political Science.

But, more to the point, Maggie goes on to say, “So, he would much rather have it be a fight about the media. And that is what you saw yesterday.” By “yesterday,” she means Trump’s crude propaganda video about his terrific handling of the pandemic, and his snarling attacks on reporters who asked him pertinent questions.

I grant that Trump can be said to have better than average skills in media manipulation. He is quite good at distracting people from important information with his shiny objects. You could say he is, essentially, an Oval-Office-Occupying Flim-Flam Man. His only form of cleverness is his ability to divert and deceive. But ask him to handle a global pandemic and suddenly, He Ain’t Got Shit.

David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker, made a similar point about Trump in an MSNBC interview. “News flash” Remnick said, “He’s not a competent executive.”

He went on to say that what is taking place in the White House briefing room “day after excruciating day” is Trump electioneering for November: “More than anything, Donald Trump is framing a re-election strategy.”

In other words, more aggressive manipulation of the media, while offering no effective response to the coronavirus crisis. When it comes to getting anything done, he’s just plain stupid. His succession of bankruptcies should have clued us in. Well, it did many of us, but not quite enough of us, apparently.

Mr. Remnick concluded by saying that Trump is “intolerant of reality.” In other words, whatever is happening, he doesn’t understand, but he does understand something about getting people to believe bullshit.

So, I’m going to agree with David Remnick, and disagree with Maggie Haberman. We do mock him because he is dumb and, in every area except media manipulation, he is dumb. But to be fair, we also mock him because he is misogynistic, bigoted, and corrupt.

Finally, at the risk of being dismissed as petty, let me raise one more mock-worthy point. What is that thing Trump seems to think is a smile? Doesn’t he know what a real smile looks like? Here’s what I’m talking about:

That face does not say to me, “Herein lies a happy, harmonious soul.” That’s because within Donald Trump’s innermost reaches there lies nothing but a black hole of neediness, a yearning for approval that has led to his reckless struggle to keep his re-election prospects up.

It is into that black hole that almost all of his potential intelligence is sucked.

For some excellent reporting on Trump’s pandemic failures, I refer you, once again, to Maggie Haberman and the wonderful piece she and her NY Times colleagues wrote that lays out his coronavirus-related blunders in vivid detail.

In the meantime, let’s not forget what smiles look like on the faces of people with full and genuinely happy hearts.

Befuddlement in the Time of Coronavirus

On March 18, President Trump, at long last beginning to grasp the seriousness of the coronavirus, offered these awkward words: “I view it as – in a sense – of wartime president.”

I don’t believe Trump knows what it would mean to be a wartime president. I’m guessing that one of his White House suck-ups told him presidents are usually re-elected during wartime and that inspired his clumsy declaration. But let’s face it, if Trump had been president in 1941, we might well be speaking German today.

When the U.S. was attacked on December 7, 1941, President Roosevelt acted quickly and decisively to prepare the country to face the crisis. Admittedly this was much easier for him to do than it would be for Trump, because unlike Trump, FDR had not spent his years in the White House dividing the country, insulting political rivals with crude nicknames, and demeaning women, minorities and immigrants as Trump has done. And FDR did not dissipate trust in his administration by lying dozens of times every day. Roosevelt didn’t always tell the truth, but he did not routinely spout out preposterous and obvious lies in order to convince the gullible that he was the most incredible “winner” the world had ever seen. Only a total loser would do such a thing, if you know what I mean.

If Trump were the equivalent of a capable wartime president, he would have pushed the nation into action starting in January, when it was obvious a new and deadly virus was about to infest the planet.

A smart president, whether at war or in peacetime, would never have abolished the office in charge of responding to pandemics and cut the funding for the Centers for Disease Control, as Trump did. In any case, a capable wartime president would have re-established or strengthened those offices, funding them generously. He or she would not put these offices in the hands of someone like Mike Pence, whose respect for science is, to say the least, questionable.

A wartime president, acting quickly, would have set American productive power to work months ago on manufacturing ventilators, face masks, coronavirus testing kits, and other necessities. Under FDR, American auto factories went from making cars to making tanks, planes and other equipment within a matter of weeks. Why isn’t our productive capacity making crucial medical supplies available to us right now?

The Second World War was won not by the U.S. fighting alone, but by a coalition of the U.S., Britain, the U.S.S.R., China, and other allied nations. Why aren’t we working closely with countries like South Korea, that have shown how the virus can be contained? Is Trump’s narrow-minded America First mentality keeping us from using every opportunity to protect us from the deadly COVID-19? If it’s not his suspicion of foreigners, what is it that’s stopping him from using help from other countries?

And, by the way, why isn’t Trump policing American politicians more effectively? Senator Richard Burr of the Intelligence Committee recently made a pile of cash buying and selling stocks on the basis of inside information about the pandemic threat. Burr seems to be emulating not a real wartime leader, but a fictional character, namely, Milo Minderbinder, Joseph Heller’s World War II schemer who raked in profits by (e.g.) selling to the Nazis exclusive rights to bomb and strafe American airfields. Good money for Milo (and Burr), not so good for the rest of us who are not in the loop.

What the country needs is not a slow-witted narcissist who likes to strut across the stage calling himself a wartime president. We need a trusted leader who knows how to gather and deploy all the powers of the nation to meet and defeat the coronavirus threat. When will we have such a leader?