Another Press Rant
Watching President Trump’s daily press conference has become the huge point of frustration in my life. He ignores the facts and the science in order to pursue his own political agenda. It will cost human lives. It’s hard to give him “credit” for the “good” he’s done, for every “good” there’s so much more that turns out bad. Friday what stood out to me was his open narcissism. His message: I’ll help Governors who are grateful for MY help, as if the American people aren’t the ones paying for it.
He’s only the President of those who are grateful to him, only willing to help those Americans who live in “Red States”. The pinpoint enforcement of the Defense Production Act against General Motors is simple payback for closing Lordstown, not a needed action. It’s vindictive. His attack on the Democratic Governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer (who commits two sins, a Democrat and a woman) is ugly and personal. Mr. Trump has abrogated his role as President of all of the United States. You see it in his press briefing, and you read it in his twitter feed.
From a political standpoint, I was shocked that Mr. Trump’s approval rating reached the highest point of his Presidency, 50%. Nate Silver, pollster of “538” and the one guy who got the 2016 election right, analyzed the numbers. Silver’s view is that Americans are looking for a unifying figure in this corona-virus crisis, and “want” to support the President. That doesn’t mean they’ll vote for him; in Biden versus Trump polling, Biden is still winning by 7% or more.
I was looking back at the Presidential terms I’ve lived through, trying to find which Presidents I’ve respected and admired, and why. I left off on Jimmy Carter. Here’s part two of Respect and Admiration.
Reagan
We elected an actor and cowboy as President in 1980. It was all right that California picked him as their Republican Governor (boy, have times changed) after all, they’re California. But the entire nation selected him over a hamstrung Jimmy Carter, trapped in the White House by the Iran hostages.
When “progressive” Democrats say today that we have to nominate an extreme progressive rather than a moderate, they point to the 1980 election. Jimmy Carter was a moderate. Reagan, a smoothed over Hollywood version of Barry Goldwater, confronted him, and Carter was crushed. Progressives claim we need to do the same in 2020.
Changing the Course
Reagan brought his extreme brand of conservatism to the White House, trying to alter the steady course of American government since Franklin Roosevelt. In his first years, he crushed unions by destroying the Air Traffic Controllers, he “freed” education from Federal control by cutting billions of education dollars, and he followed the 1920’s Republican philosophy: what’s good for business is good for America.
And, in a foreshadowing of today’s crisis, when AIDS appeared in the gay community, he ignored it. It took the death of hundreds of thousands, including children and “straight” celebrities, for the Reagan administration to begin to act. That delay allowed the disease to infiltrate the US population: ultimately 700000 Americans died. All because being “gay” was against the Reagan political view.
But Reagan was able to “act” the part of President, perhaps better than any. When the space shuttle Challenger exploded on launch, it was Reagan who spoke the words written by Peggy Noonan, quoting the World War I poem: “…they reached out, and touched the face of God”. And Reagan traded dollars for blood, driving the Soviet Union into bankruptcy with the Cold War arms competition. In the end, the US debt quadrupled, but we never had the nuclear war that our generation expected. You have to respect that.
Bush One
Reagan was Hollywood’s President: Bush was a traditional Republican. He acted like one, running the country like an Eisenhower or a Nixon (without the war and the corruption). Perhaps he was just in the right time, the Cold War was over, but Bush managed the ensuing unrest that came after. He was a President with a “light” touch.
He came to the rescue of Kuwait, and the world’s oil resources, with the Persian Gulf War. It was a war of American precision, carefully orchestrated with a huge alliance of nations in support. And it was a “win” against a far outmatched opponent, the Iraq of Saddam Hussein. We got ahead, and we quit, deciding not to destabilize the region by removing Hussein from power. It was a lesson a son should have learned.
Bill Clinton
In a world where the President didn’t seem quite as important, Bill Clinton gained the Presidency with 43% of the popular vote in 1992. Clinton was a moderate, so much so, that he seemed to be Republican-lite. The old liberals of the Democratic Party swallowed hard to accept another Southern Governor as President, but, like Eisenhower, Clinton seemed to be a candidate less likely to “rock the boat”. That was particularly apparent when compared to the third competitor in the field, Ross Perot, who promised short-term economic pain and suffering to wipe out the national debt.
Clinton governed from the middle, making him a very popular guy. When Bob Dole ran as the Republican in 1996, Clinton took the broad political spectrum. Dole was only able to win over the right. So eight years of Clinton was eight years of moderation, with a healthy dose of personal irresponsibility. It was Bill Clinton that created the division between “personal” and “professional” conduct that paved the path for Donald Trump’s election despite immorality. Americans were getting what they wanted from the Clinton Presidency, so what if Bill was getting “something else” in the Oval Office.
But there was a price to pay for the Clinton impeachment. The voters couldn’t vote against Clinton in 2000, but they could vote against Al Gore in protest. The price America paid was George W Bush.
George W
So what happens when a nice guy, a guy you’d have a beer with at the local bar, becomes the President of the United States. It all depends on the people around him, and George W Bush specifically rejected the advisors that carefully steered his father’s Presidency. Instead, he became the “front-man” for Vice President Dick Cheney and the neo-cons, Americans who practiced a new version of manifest destiny. Cheney believed the US had power and should control the world economy. If it took military might to do it, so be it.
You have to respect Bush’s leadership. His actions after the attack on 9-11 helped unify the nation. Even this liberal Democrat was ready to do whatever needed to be done, when President Bush put his arm around the firefighters at Ground Zero and said: “I can hear you! I can hear you! The rest of the world hears you! And the people — and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon!”
But more importantly, later that week the President went into a mosque and spoke of his admiration for Islam. He let Americans know that we were at war with terrorists, not with a religion.
But Cheney subverted the righteous anger of 9-11 to pursue his economic agenda, and manipulated the intelligence data to put the United States at war in Iraq. The fall of Saddam Hussein was hailed as a victory, but it really “took the cork out of the bottle” of the Middle East, leading to the rise of Iranian power and the disorder we see today.
Obama
When the history is written, Barack Obama will be much more than just the first Black President. He will be seen as the President who, against his will, presiding over the segmenting of America. He isn’t the first President to come in with an opposition party, but he may be the first to have an opposition party who believed that their ONLY goal was to defeat him. For the Republican leadership, what was good for America was a poor second choice.
Whether it was ideology, racism, or money, or a combination of all, it was difficult for President Obama to govern. He still did it with grace and honor. Not since Kennedy was there a President who could lift Americans so high with his words. But many refused to listen, as money and media drove wedge after wedge into our minds. Barack Obama was the President who passed the Affordable Care Act and killed Osama bin Laden, but Roger Ailes ran Fox News with a free hand and an unlimited bank account from Rupert Murdock. That may be the most significant event of the Obama Presidency.
Today
It certainly brought us to today.
I long for the language of Kennedy and Obama, or even Reagan. Long for the leadership of Eisenhower or Johnson, or even Nixon. I hope for the moral rightness of Carter, or Ford, or George HW Bush. Even wish for the “good times” of Bill Clinton’s tenure.
In this existential crisis caused by our current President’s malfeasance, a crisis that will unnecessarily cost thousands, perhaps millions of American lives, none of that is possible. But, we are Americans, and we will struggle through. What remains of the “hated Deep State” in our government will try to do what’s right, even though the Administration will fight to do what’s wrong.
In our current crisis, we talk a lot about lines and arcs, flattening the curve to protect our most vulnerable. And in our national story, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used arcs to describe our history. He said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice”.
I still believe in American exceptionalism and American justice. America has the ability to rise above any crisis, even one led by our own President. We will survive, and we will learn from our mistakes. It is not only what we must do.
It is all that we can do.
