None Dare Call It Trumpcare

President Trump [sic] is having a tough week. The “repeal and replace Obamacare” operation is running into trouble because Obamacare (i.e., the Affordable Care Act) was designed to help poor Americans get and keep insurance while the GOP replacement plan is designed to make the rich and powerful richer and more powerful. This fact should not be a surprise since the rich and powerful are the Republicans’ favorite charity (about $33,000 in tax cuts for the one percent, $197,000 for the one tenth of one percent in the Republican health care proposal). What is surprising is Mr. Trump’s refusal to call the GOP plan “Trumpcare.” I’m not sure why. Maybe he’s just modest about putting his name on big expensive things.

Now perhaps you believe the GOP is making a good faith effort to help poor Americans keep their health insurance. And perhaps you are an idiot. The fact is Republicans hate Obamacare for three reasons; first, it makes insurance affordable to poor Americans by providing them with subsidies - which in GOP-speak is “a government takeover of health care;” second, once established Americans were certain to like it, or, as Senator Ted Cruz said in 2013, Americans were bound to “get addicted to the sugar” of Obamacare and therefore it would never be repealed; and third, it was President Obama’s signature program. This was the most damning feature of all, given that GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell had stated that the Republicans’ primary goal was to ensure that Obama failed as a president.

But Trumpcare (or Ryancare or Billionairecare or whatever) is in trouble now since conservative Republicans say it isn’t generous enough to the super-rich and moderate Republicans say that taking away insurance from 24 million Americans would make it hard for them to get re-elected.

And Trumpcare isn’t The Donald’s only problem. Just yesterday federal judges began telling him that his travel ban on six Muslim nations (whose citizens have been responsible for no terrorist attacks in the U.S.) is unconstitutional. Admittedly, Mr. Trump was facing a delicate problem here. Putting together a carefully constructed travel ban whose provisions would appeal to his base (which is chock full of anti-Muslim bigots), but making it seem to be totally unrelated to religious discrimination is not an easy thing to do. As President Obama said, being president is hard, and Mr. Trump seems to be starting to get that.

Making the job even harder is his having to deal with imaginary wiretaps. Just because they only exist in Mr. Trump’s head doesn’t make it any easier for him to endure them. I guess I shouldn’t say the wiretaps exist only in his head, because he did find them referenced on Breitbart or Bigots-R-Us or some other such “news” source that he likes to rely on. And think about this: just how hard is it going to be for Trump to handle the presidency when he starts seeing imaginary assassination squads coming after him?

As Americans, we naturally have to be concerned about the Trump presidency. Especially because we now face a growing nuclear threat from another national leader even more dishonest, deluded, and psychologically unstable than President Trump: North Korea’s Kim Jong-un.

Maybe it’s just me, but I firmly believe that it is a crime for someone who is entirely unfit for the presidency to actually run for president. The question is, can we consider it the kind of high crime or misdemeanor that is the necessary basis for impeachment?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, everyone.

He didn't say assassination squads, he said "assassination squads!"

On Legitimacy

Democratic Congressman John Lewis of Georgia stirred things up last week by saying of Donald Trump, “I don't see this president-elect as a legitimate president.”

This was during an NBC interview broadcast on January 13. By early the next morning Trump was attacking Congressman Lewis in a series of tweets:

Congressman John Lewis should spend more time on fixing and helping his district, which is in horrible shape and falling apart (not to......

mention crime infested) rather than falsely complaining about the election results. All talk, talk, talk - no action or results. Sad!

My immediate response to these tweets was, “How do you ‘falsely complain’ about something?”

More to the point, most people know that Congressman Lewis struggled heroically on behalf of civil rights in the 1960s, during which time he was clubbed almost to death by conservative southerners. So, I wondered why Trump would describe him as “All talk, talk, talk – no action or results?” Really, all talk and no action is the opposite of Mr. Lewis.

But Congressman Lewis's heroism aside, let’s consider the question his comment raises: Will Donald Trump be a legitimate president? 

My answer is a decisive Yes. 

And No.

Perhaps you're unimpressed by my bold stand on this issue, but wait -- let me explain. The American presidency rests atop two structures, one legal, the other moral. These two systems don’t always correspond in our society or in many others. For example, in The Sound of Music, when a group of nuns stole a distributor cap to disable a Nazi vehicle, thus allowing the Von Trapp family to escape to freedom, nobody faulted them for the theft – though it was an illegal act.

Well, maybe David Duke, American Nazi icon and Donald Trump fan may have faulted the nuns, but ordinary people would not, because, though their action broke the law, it reflected a higher order, a moral order. Any decent person would want the Von Trapps to escape the Nazis, even if the legal system had to be violated to make their getaway possible. What is legal is not always what is moral, and vice versa.

That’s Donald Trump’s problem. Or one of them. He is the “legitimate” president because he got enough votes to allow him to slip into the White House with a boost from our quirky Electoral College. By law he is about to become president.

But the American presidency is different from the offices of many other world leaders in that the occupant of the White House is not only a powerful politician, but is also a representative of the American people. In this role, a president is expected to occupy an elevated moral plane, much as a constitutional monarch (ideally) would.

Queen Elizabeth, as a monarch, is the representative of the British people. She fulfills this office with dignity, even though there are those who don’t believe that the UK should have a monarch. If she had Trump’s personality, she might well tweet something like this to those Brits who harbor anti-monarchist sentiments:

One day the throne will be William’s and then George’s, so whiffle-piffle on you so-called “patriots.” It’s a right gaggle of losers you are!

Or:

Tho ’tis true everyone’s seen Harry’s private parts, this doesn’t keep him from being an emergency back-up king. Long live the Royal Family and its proud members!

But no, the queen doesn’t send out crude, petulant tweets every time someone attacks the Royal Family. If she did, she would lose her legitimacy as the representative of the nation.

This is one reason why Trump is not legitimate in a moral sense. He is not a worthy representative of the American people. He doesn’t present to the world an image that says, “This is who we Americans are.”

Instead, his persona says, “I’m a grossly unethical, corrupt, and narcissistic vulgarian, and, I only care about myself.”

At his core, where most people harbor a basic sense of decency, Trump nurses a deep self-loathing shrouded with a crude, ill-humored hyper-sensitivity.

Is this the kind of person that we, as Americans, want representing us? Most would say, No, a point that was officially (and legitimately) revealed in a Gallup poll taken earlier this month. According to this poll 51% of Americans expressed disapproval of Donald Trump. The same poll had shown that in 2009 83% approved of Barack Obama during his transition and in 2001 61% approved of George W. Bush.

So my view is that in Trump we have someone who can legally occupy the White House by virtue of the Electoral College. What we lack is a legitimate representative of us and our ideals.