"Missing the Forest for the Tree"

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Missing the Forest for the Tree”

May 19, 2021

 

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

                                                                                Attributed to Albert Einstein, but also to Mark Twain and others.

 

A principled stand by a politician is admirable. Too often, politicians follow the road of least resistance (or the one with the most voters). But when a principled stand evolves into stubbornness, the forest can be lost in concentration on a single tree. That, in my opinion, is the problem of Elizabeth Cheney (R-WY).

 

Most Republicans do not want to denigrate President Trump, but neither do they want to elevate him. Benign neglect is the preferred path. The good of what he did – freeing up the economy from restrictive regulations and confining taxes, repatriating more than a trillion dollars in corporate cash, raising wages for the lowest income workers, and creating the most jobs ever for Black and Hispanic; taking real steps to resolve the border crisis; addressing the bureaucratic morass in Washington; calling out international governmental bodies for their undemocratic ways; getting NATO nations to pay a greater share of their defense; confronting enemies of freedom like Communist China, Russia and North Korea; signing the Abraham Accords and instigating Operation Warp Speed to get a COVOD-19 vaccine out in record time – was overshadowed by a supersized ego and mean-spirited, feckless Tweets.

 

Democrats, on the other hand, would like to keep the spirit of Donald Trump front and center. While it is true that his ardent Republican supporters do not want to give up on him, neither do Democrat leaders who see him as someone around whom they can rally their troops. Trump Derangement Syndrome helped Mr. Trump with the public when he was President because complaints about him were so outrageous. But it hurts the Republican Party and their chances today when anti-Trump opinions are voiced by other Republicans. “Prudent Republicans,” wrote Andrew McCarthy in the May 15^th issue of National Review, “perceive that the best way to move on from Trump is to stop talking about him.” I agree.

 

If Republicans want to take control of the House and Senate in 2022, they will have to focus on issues, not on the personality of the former President. Single issue politicians detract from legitimate policy debates. In refusing to accept the outcome of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump has done no more than what Al Gore did in 2000 and Hillary Clinton did in 2016. In all three cases (2000, 2016, 2020), there were certainly electoral irregularities, but there always have been. However, from what we now know, none of those elections would have been reversed. “If questioning the results of a particular election were a crime, as many have asserted in the wake of the controversial 2020 election and its aftermath,” writes Mollie Hemingway in her forthcoming book Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections, “nearly the entire Democratic Party and media establishment would have been incarcerated following the 2016 election.” It is not that Mr. Trump’s character should be ignored, but that it must be kept in perspective.

 

As for the January 6 protests that culminated with a number of people making their way past security into the Capitol, an independent commission has been created to investigate exactly what happened. But to call the event an “insurrection” is argumentative and misleading. More than 400 individuals have been arrested, with dozens incarcerated without trial. What ever happened to one of the most sacred principles in American justice, the presumption of innocence? None of those entering the capitol that day, according to reports, carried a firearm. The only individual shot and killed was a thirty-five-year-old female protester, Ashli Babbitt, from California. She was shot by a police officer who has been cleared of any wrongdoing and has never been identified. Would media silence have reigned were roles reversed and had the protester been a Democrat? Nevertheless, we should await the finding of the commission, and trust it will be as non-partisan as possible – a difficult, if not impossible, task in this factional age.

 

While it is still too early to claim the Biden Administration a success or failure, its start has certainly done little to heal a fractured nation, despite promises in his Inaugural. On the other hand, his Administration’s policies have offered opportunities for his opponents. His positive ratings have slipped, while his negative ones have risen. As Gerard Baker wrote this week in the Wall Street Journal, this is what happens “when you construct an ideological dreamscape made up of impossible promises, implausible assertions and dishonest propositions.” A few of the Biden policies that offer opportunity to Republicans: The crisis on the southern border, with children being smuggled in by paid “coyotes,” and sometimes abandoned on remote desert ranches; a rise in urban crime amid continued calls to defund the police; an education system that looks to end meritocracy and free speech, while promoting racial differences rather than encouraging melting pot commonalities; urging schools to adopt the segregationist and Marxist views embedded in Critical Race Theory, and the simultaneous “cancellation” of our history and literature; threatening economic expansion by paying people not to work; a continued rise in federal debt to historic levels; a federal budget that proposes a 16% increase in non-defense, domestic discretionary spending, with only a 1.6% increase in defense spending; a Federal Reserve that seems unconcerned regarding the inflationary consequences of an expansive monetary policy; sharply higher gasoline prices and shortages in six states; abandonment of the Abraham Accords and a rise in Middle East violence; an aggressive China, which threatens Hong Kong and Taiwan; and Russia, with increased troops on Ukraine’s eastern border. 

 

With the “forest” so ripe with issues beneficial to Republicans, it would be a shame to let the “tree” that is former President Trump be the focus of Republicans looking to take back the Senate and the House in 2022. While Republican leadership must understand the reasons for Mr. Trump’s popularity (and they must appeal to his supporters), they must also highlight and concentrate on all that which has gone wrong in the first few months of Mr. Biden’s Administration. For Republicans, to repeatedly bang on the anti-Trump drum is a form of insanity that will surely lead to political losses.  On the other hand, the misdeeds and errors of the Biden Administration would be, as Rahm Emanuel might say, a terrible thing to waste.

"The Election - Trump, A Man for this Season"

                                                                 Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“The Election – Trump, A Man for this Season”

October 24, 2020

 

“This suggests one way to frame the coming election: as a contest between a man, Trump

who believes America is good and a man, Biden who is controlled by a movement that 

believes America is bad. I do not think it is any more complicated than that.”

                                                                                                                                Thomas Klingenstein

                                                                                                                                Chairman, Claremont Institute

                                                                                                                                Speech, October 13, 2020

 

Robert Bolt’s play A Man for all Seasons premiered in London on July 1, 1960. It was based on the life of Sir Thomas More, who is remembered for his fealty to his conscience at the cost of his life. More, as Lord High Chancellor of England, opposed the Protestant Reformation; so, when Henry VIII wanted his marriage to Catherine of Aragon, who failed to deliver him a son, annulled so he could marry Anne Boleyn, Sir Thomas More refused to grant the annulment. Bolt saw More as the ultimate man of conscience, a man who remained true to himself and his beliefs. The title of the play came from the writings of one of More’s contemporaries, Robert Whittington, who described More as a “man of an angel’s wit and singular learning…a man of marvelous mirth and pastimes…A man for all seasons.”

 

Donald Trump is not a man “for all seasons,” but he is, in my opinion, a man for this season, at this point in our history. We know his negatives: His character is faulty. He is an egoist, braggart and often vengeful. He is overly sensitive to insults and has little patience. His speech makes one wince. But Mr. Trump is an unabashed patriot who believes that, fundamentally, America is good, while his opponents are equally vocal, in emphasizing how America has been a force for evil. He, alone among Washington’s smug political class, has had the fortitude to stand up to what has become Washington’s “swamp,” a quagmire that has lured those that want the security of a federally funded job, with an income above the national average and the influence and power that accompanies such jobs. As well, too many elected officials have gone to Washington, not to serve the public’s interest but to gain the notoriety to profit from a book or to make contacts that allow them to join a lobbyist firm upon retirement – in short, to become rich. Nobody wants a system where a poor person cannot run for political office, but the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. A Senator or Representative makes more than double the median household income in the Washington metropolitan area, which itself is 25% above the national average. The median net worth of a member of Congress is more than ten times the median net worth of the typical American. Healthcare and retirement benefits are substantially higher than those received by average Americans. And a compromised politician cannot serve the best interests of the American people.

 

Is it any wonder that Mr. Trump has raised the ire of so many whose livelihoods could be at risk? If Mr. Trump has his way some government agencies could be shut down and others moved out of the D. C. metropolitan area. Abroad, Mr. Trump achieved a rapprochement in the Middle East that had evaded professional policy experts for decades. He moved our embassy to Jerusalem, caused our NATO partners to up their share of defense spending and withdrew the U.S. from the UN Human Rights Council, which “makes a mockery of human rights,” as Ambassador Nikki Haley said. He took on China, imposed sanctions on Russian leaders, released the U.S. from the Iranian nuclear deal and removed the U.S. from the toothless and expensive Paris Accord. He came to Washington as a political outsider. Despite almost four years in the White House, he remains an outsider, which threatens those who see Washington as their own private feeding trough, a place where they can exercise political, economic and personal power. Donald Trump is like the little boy who saw that the emperor was naked, that corruption was rampant. The most recent example has been the Biden revelations – trading access for dollars. But Mr. Trump loves his country and he recognizes that its institutions of family, church, history and tradition are under attack. There are numerous issues over which reasonable people can disagree – the economy, COVID-19, the judiciary, education, taxes, regulation, national defense, healthcare, climate, the environment, immigration, foreign policy, guns, right-to-life – but we should be united on the issue of liberty, freedoms to speak, write and assemble, and of the right to live freely within the confines of a just society based on the rule of law. And, we should be able to trust those who run our government.

 

Democrats and others on the left have raised the specter of an imperial Trump Presidency. They have reported on his canoodling with dictators and tyrants, cited his waving from the balcony of the White House, upon his release from Walter Read Hospital. (Of course, no mention was made of the fact that every President has been photographed from that same spot.) Yet, as Mollie Hemingway recently wrote: “Donald Trump is one of the very few executives in the entire world who has not taken advantage of the latest global pandemic as an excuse to seize control.” Mr. Trump, as a true federalist, left most decisions to the states. It has been governors, usually Democrat governors, who have violated Americans’ Constitutional rights, in closing schools and businesses for weeks and months, banning family gatherings at weddings and funerals, inciting fear and destroying opportunities for those unable to work from home.

 

Every four years we are told that this election is the most critical of our lifetimes – “destined to change the shape of our nation,” as Chris Wallace proclaims in an ad. This one, however, is unique: Intersectionality, identity politics, victimization, racial grievance, political correctness, multiculturalism and sanctuary cities have come to define the Democratic Party. They have encompassed the radical views of academics, TV talking heads and opinion writers, all of whom are removed, by their jobs and lifestyles, from the hardships of everyday life for middleclass Americans. “Mr. Biden,” as Daniel Henninger wrote in Thursday’s Wall Street Journal, “has made a Faustian bargain with his party’s activist left…putting the U.S. on a fast track toward income confiscation and ‘distributive justice’.”  The Democratic Party has recruited wealthy, “woke” apologists from Hollywood, Silicon Valley and Wall street. In so doing, they abandoned working people who had comprised their ranks, people with ‘bourgeoise values’ that do not comport with today’s “wokeness.” If black lives really mattered to Progressives, would not school choice be encouraged in inner cities? In an interview with Tunku Varadarajan of the Wall Street Journal a week ago, Fred Siegel of the Manhattan Institute said: “Wokeness is a force that undermines the middle class, and you couldn’t have had wokeness without an elite contempt for values of the middle class.”

 

On October 13, Thomas Klingenstein gave a speech at the Claremont Institute, titled “A Man versus A Movement.” He explained why he believes this election to be the most consequential since 1860 and why President Trump is the man most uniquely suited to the moment. He spoke of how this is an election between a man who believes America to be inherently good and a movement based on the idea that America is intrinsically bad. It is the difference between those who believe our founding was in 1776 and those who place our founding in 1619. “Our way of life,” spoke Mr. Klingenstein, “…is based on individual rights, the rule of law, and a shared understanding of the common good. This way of life values hard work, self-reliance, volunteerism, patriotism and so on. In this way of life there are no hyphenated Americans. We are all just Americans. Colorblindness is our aspiration.” In dividing people between black and white, privileged and disadvantaged, oppressors and oppressed, those on the Left sound like Old Testament evangelists preaching that the iniquity of the fathers will be visited upon the children to the third and fourth generations.

 

To the extent that systemic racism exists, it is in those institutions, universities and workplaces that abide by actions that favor one group over another – Asian over Hispanic, Black over White, Hispanic over Black, Black over Asian or White over all others. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, in Parents v. Seattle School District 1: “The way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In his speech, Mr. Klingenstein added: “If Americans are systemically anything, it is a systemic commitment to freedom and equal rights for all.”

 

The United States has not served as a beacon for the world’s poor and oppressed because it is inherently evil. Anyone who has studied history knows that no nation has done more than the U.S. to spread freedom, give people hope and lift them from poverty. As well, the U.S. does not sit on its laurels; it constantly strives to improve itself. The history of the United States is one of a nation never satisfied, but it is one that honors its families, history and traditions. Differences of opinion are healthy. Debate and discussion help us move forward. When debate is stifled, as it has been in some of our colleges and universities, we suffer. When media only tells one side of the side of a story, we suffer. On January 27, 1838, Abraham Lincoln spoke before the Young Men’s Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois: “At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring from amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot., we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Following his election victory in 2016, Donald Trump was not accorded respect by those he defeated. A few members of Congress boycotted his inaugural. Attempts were made to undermine his administration by way of an investigation into an alleged collusion with his campaign and Russia, a collusion that, in fact, originated in the Clinton Camp and was abetted by the Obama Administration, the FBI and the CIA. A three-year investigation by Robert Mueller found no collusion. The Speaker of the House tore up her State of the Union message on live TV. Mr. Trump was impeached for a phone call with the Ukrainian President when, in fact, the real corruption had been between the Biden family and the Ukrainian energy company Burisma Holdings. Opposing parties are healthy, but political corruption is a rot that must be eviscerated.

 

Suspicions that Joe Biden’s son Hunter had leveraged his father’s name gained credibility when Tony Bobulinski, a former Navy veteran, institutional investor and business partner of Hunter Biden, disclosed details of Sinohawk Holdings, a venture between the Biden family and CEFC China Energy, a Shanghai-based conglomerate, since gone bankrupt. Bobulinski had been hired as CEO of Sinohawk Holdings. Mr. Bobulinski, in a televised news conference last Thursday, said he had had an hour-long meeting with Mr. Biden on May 2, 2017, which is at odds with Joe Biden’s claim he knew nothing of his son’s business involvements. The FBI has brought Bobulinski in for questioning. Will they pressure him into not testifying before Senator Ron Johnson’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee?

 

Elections do not provide the voter a choice between the perfect and the imperfect, so voters seek the candidate and policies that best align with their opinions. Both candidates have character flaws – Trump, in ways we all know and that have been widely publicized by a media that detests him; Biden, in ways we have come to know more recently: the Biden family, leveraging access in exchange for financial gain, which could certainly affect foreign policy, and the gradual, but obvious, mental decline, which means his time in office may be shorter than that of William Henry Harrison. Mainstream media blames his periodic verbal incoherence on a childhood stutter, something not noticeable during his years in the Senate and as Vice President. Voters who pull the lever for Biden will actually be voting for Kamala Harris, who in 2019 had the most liberal voting record in the U.S. Senate. One cannot help but suspect that the Democratic National Committee is using Biden as a Trojan Horse to get Harris into the White House. Is the country ready for the radicalization of its economy and government? I think not. Is Mr. Trump a man for all seasons? I also think not. But I do believe he is the man for this season, for this time, which is why he will receive my vote on November 3.