Category: Politics

THE TWELVE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS DONALD TRUMP HAS TAUGHT ME (Thing No. 3):

When a campaign presents you a choice between a career politician and someone whose entire experience has been in private enterprise, always vote for the career politician.

One of the most overused appeals in Republican political campaigns goes something like this: “My opponent is a career politician. Vote for me because I have created jobs and made payrolls. I know how to work within a budget.”

First of all, there are all kinds of businesses. I think we can quickly dismiss the kind of business Donald Trump operated as being in any way relevant to the common defense or general welfare of the republic. Other more ethical business people can claim a little more relevance but when a retailer or manufacturer claims credit for creating jobs, it is well to remember that entrepreneurs without consumers are nothing. There is no payroll for them to meet if there is no one shopping for goods and services. Consumers make jobs.

Besides, government is not a business and trying to operate it like one will have the result of a lot of very bad policy resulting from the misapplication of the common practices of the workplace. You wind up with an education system that is oriented toward production – just like in business. But, production of what? The product turns out to be answers on standardized tests given by a child who has learned, by rote if necessary, how to take tests.

But what about career politicians? Republicans have been putting the smear on people in career public service for many years. Bureaucrats take a pretty good drubbing from the politicians of both parties really. They are safe, apolitical targets since the Hatch Act discourages them from participating in partisan politics. Democrats even jump into the game when they try to compete by moving closer to Republican positions. But Donald Trump essentially went to war with the career civil service or, as he called it, the deep state.

I contend that your best bet in that typical race between the “career politician” and “the businessman,” you are better off casting your lot with the career politician. They are more likely to understand the purposes of government, its mechanics and the importance of its standards and traditions. Donald Trump had no understanding or appreciation of any of these key KSAs and the result has been a near disaster.

So, America, if you wish to staff your government with something besides career politicians, maybe you should look to one of the professions. But don’t trust our fate to “businessmen” with no experience in government at any level.

Suggestion: Go with a school teacher. A teacher creates jobs every day of his/her life. Thinking young people who will be both producers and consumers in a capitalist economy are its most precious capital. And teachers build that base.

THE TWELVE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS DONALD TRUMP HAS TAUGHT ME (Thing No. 4):

That reasonable people who love America should never vote for any Republican.

This has always been a personal rule of mine but I never faulted a friend for voting his/her conscience if it led them to the Republican column on the ballot. That was important for me in the town where I live because I am surrounded by some of the kindest most generous and gentle people you would ever meet. And around seventy per cent of them habitually vote for Republicans. And I do treasure their friendship. Well, some of them.

Most people vote for Republicans because they truly believe in limited government, private sector solutions, and any of several elements of conservative religious or social policy.

I hope they are able to resurrect a party that can help them make their vision of America real. My hope is partly grounded in my assessment that a Democratic Party without opposition will not be as wise in its governance as one which is constantly pushed to prove itself to voters in the marketplace of ideas.

But, as far as I am concerned, that marketplace has been so corrupted by dishonest vendors that only one party remains capable of governing in the year 2021.

The Republican Party has slipped slowly, but ever so surely, over the last fifty years into a morass of issues that have yielded us Donald Trump. Personally, I saw this coming in 1980 with the election of an actor of somewhat limited ability to the presidency.

He acted constantly against unions and what has since come to be known as the deep state. He broke the union movement with his mass firing of federal air traffic controllers. Not an activist by nature, my sense of what was happening to our country in the early 1980s led me to join a protest line for the first and only time I ever hit the streets to voice my opinion.

I became a member of CWA and joined other PATCO sympathizers and demonstrated at the fence outside Houston’s Intercontinental Airport (now Bush). I joined the protest because I saw the firing of the air traffic controllers as an assault on the right of workers to organize. It is not a right you find in the constitution. It was won the hard way through the confrontation of employer abuses with the righteous demands of workers. It was no trivial matter.

Reagan’s election also caused me to change my career path. I was planning a career in government public service but by 1982, with the president ridiculing public sector employees whenever he thought he could make the crowd laugh, I resigned my state job and joined the nonprofit sector.

And I never voted for another Republican, not that I had voted for a Republican before. But now it set a course from which I have never strayed. And I would tell any friend and my LJ brothers and sisters: Never vote for any Republican. Their interests eventually yielded Donald Trump’s presidency. The people who call themselves Republicans have a lot of soul-searching to do. I wish them success. We need an effective two-party system. I offer them my thoughts and prayers – but never my votes.

THE TWELVE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS DONALD TRUMP HAS TAUGHT ME (Thing No. 6):

We have some work to do to make our constitution serve our needs in the 21st Century.

There were major problems with the constitution when it was adopted. A few things have been repaired along the way. We got rid of slavery, adopted a definition of citizenship, and made the senate a popularly elected body. Those changes were some of the most significant. There have been others.

But the Trump presidency has brought other problems to my attention that we have traditionally overlooked either because the parties that benefit can’t be persuaded to go along with a change or because we believe that citizens of good will won’t exploit them.

There is, of course, the Electoral College standing between the citizens and majority rule. In the past, candidates who won Electoral College majorities in spite of coming in second in the popular vote, at least showed enough respect for rule of law and our the business of government that we were able to limp along through the years and preserve our institutions.

Not so in 2016. Our minority rule 45th president dedicated his administration to the destruction of democratic governance as it has been practiced since the George Washington administration. He behavior on January 6, 2021 was a desperate effort to keep himself in office.

Trump has had his aides poring over the Constitution looking for loopholes he could exploit. The run up to the certification of the electoral vote had him trying to drop a wrench into the works at every opportunity. Every step presented him another opportunity to have the people’s voice overruled. Judges saved the day.

But there is danger in relying on a single branch to provide the safeguards. Over time through poor appointments, even corrupt appointments, the courts can also be subverted.

Some options for potential changes that would be helpful, but difficult to accomplish:

• elimination of the unit rule in allocating each state’s electoral votes
• better yet, elimination of the Electoral College
• address gerrymandering to make it illegal, establish a fair method or drawing congressional district boundaries that is fair, respects communities of interest, and keeps districts geographically compact
• establish terms for court appointments, rather than for life
• reconsider the structure of the Senate; is it necessary to pay respect to the former sovereign status of states? It has been over 230 years from the adoption of the Constitution. Could it be time to govern as though this were a unified nation?
• In consideration of the previous item, do away with equal representation in the upper house.
• The list could go on.

Thanks to No. 45, we have been prodded to think about these things that never seemed so urgent before.