Bottom line on President Trump
I have to admit Pete caught me speechless the other day.
My Republican-leaning friend predicted Donald Trump will go down as one of the greatest presidents ever.
Pete caught me off guard and that made my feeble retort almost comical.
"I walk away shaking my head in amazement after talking to you," he said.
Trump the best president ever?
I think Pete is falling into the trap of confusing action with accomplishment.
True, Trump is the most "active" president since Franklin Roosevelt and our most "muscular" since Teddy Roosevelt.
But both of those men affected the country positively.
It's as though Trump's trying to make up for an underachieving first term when he had at least a few people around him with common sense who counseled a more measured approach.
Now he has only "lapdogs" who will do whatever he wants. I use the word lapdog because that's what he called those on the Supreme Court who objected to his overreach on tariffs forgetting that their allegiance is to the Constitution — not to Donald Trump.
Had he taken the tariff policy to the Congress first where he's had such unguarded loyalty, they might have come up with a similar policy that wouldn't have gone as far as Trump wanted but would have been much closer and the Supreme Court wouldn't have had much of an argument.
But doing things the right way just isn't the Trump way.
He's simply a my-way-or-the highway type of guy — but that isn't always a winning way in a democracy.
Now that his hold has weakened somewhat in Congress, it may be too late to do it any other way.
No one can claim that Trump hasn't been an active president.
He's talked about taking over Greenland and making Canada the 51st state, he disposed of the president of Argentina and now he's toppled the notorious regime in Iran.
He's even talked about wanting the federal government to take over elections which have been controlled by states.
He keeps such a constant flow of activities that we've forgotten about his last "activity" and can hardly keep up with his flourish of "action."
Of course, that makes it difficult to criticize because he has his critics tied up trying to decide what to attack first.
I can't even say whether some of his actions are right or wrong. Time is the great arbiter.
Except I think viewing the rest of the world as run by subservient pawns is a mistake.
His lack of sophistication about other cultures and how other people think and react is appalling.
So why don't I agree with Pete about Trump's potential greatness?
Because I simply think at the core, Donald Trump has no character and that's not who I want as my president.
No matter what he does, he's operating from a base of dishonesty and self-service.
Remember the attack on the capital, his calling Georgia's secretary of state saying he "needed 11,780 votes" and his continuing attempts to overturn the 2020 election?
Then there's the 30,573 Trump lies as documented by the Washington Post before they had to quit counting because the research was taking up too much staff time.
Pete believes that a president should be active and do stuff.
Previously, he'd said that he'd waited for an administration like Trump's for years. It's clearly not a "do-nothing" presidency, but doing stuff isn't necessarily the same as doing the right stuff.
Why don't I like Trump?
Former Republican Congress-man Joe Walsh said it best.
"Donald Trump is everything you teach your children not to be. He's cruel. Ignorant and lawless. He's a bully. A coward. A cheat. And extreme narcissist and pathological liar."
