Tag Archives: POTUS

national news

Can you really blame Hillary for the snub?

I want to defend former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton for a moment, so bear with me.

The media have reported extensively on her refusal to acknowledge the arrival this week of Donald J. Trump at the funeral of former President George H.W. Bush. She sat in her front-row church pew seat, looking straight ahead while the president and first lady Melania Trump greeted former President Barack Obama and former first lady Michelle Obama.

Hillary sat next to her husband, another former president, Bill Clinton. To her left was former President Carter and his wife, Rosalynn Carter; the Carters didn’t acknowledge the president’s arrival, either.

So, why the hubbub? I guess it’s because the Obamas were able to muster up the courtesy of extending their hands to the Trumps. Many in the media have asked: Why didn’t Hillary Clinton do the same thing and pretend to make nice with a fake smile?

If only the president had won the 2016 election with a smidgen of grace. If only he had defeated Hillary Clinton and then kept his trap shut. He didn’t do that. He has continued to suggest that Hillary Clinton should be prosecuted for unspecified crimes and locked up. He has defamed her, insulted her at every turn, denigrated her service to the country (which far outstrips anything Trump has done or ever will do).

It’s helpful as well to ask: How would any of us act if we encountered someone who continually defames our character and suggests the things Trump has done with Hillary Clinton?

I give the Obamas credit for smiling and shaking the Trumps’ hands. They are better people than I would have been in that circumstance, given the things that Trump has said about his immediate presidential predecessor.

As for Hillary Clinton’s declining to acknowledge Trump, I am OK with that, too.

I am certain that every word all the former presidents and their spouses heard from the pulpit by those honoring the late President Bush — the descriptions of his decency, humanity and his decades of public service — drew immediate comparisons to the man sitting at the end of that church pew.

national news

‘Dumb as a rock’? Seriously, Mr. POTUS?

Donald J. Trump, president of the United States, has just posted a Twitter message about a man he nominated to become the secretary of state, the nation’s top foreign service officer.

Mike Pompeo is doing a great job, I am very proud of him. His predecessor, Rex Tillerson, didn’t have the mental capacity needed. He was dumb as a rock and I couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. He was lazy as hell. Now it is a whole new ballgame, great spirit at State!

Yep, that’s our president, the guy who sought to present the United States’ foreign policy statements through its secretary of state.

Now he calls the man he fired earlier this year “dumb as a rock.”

I don’t believe Rex Tillerson is “dumb as a rock.” He ran ExxonMobil oil company before he took the job as the nation’s top diplomat. I don’t believe he was well-suited for the job at State.

It is simply astonishing, though, that the president — our head of state, our commander in chief, the leader of the free world — would resort to the kind of language he is using to denigrate someone he hired for this most sensitive of jobs.

And we’re expected to take the president seriously?

national news

Trump’s singular approach to presidency on display

Even when he’s not the center of attention — supposedly — Donald Trump finds a way, even when it’s not of his own volition, to become the center of attention.

There he was Wednesday morning sitting in a church pew next to his wife, first lady Melania Trump, along with the three surviving presidents and their wives.

He sat in the pew with his arms crossed. He didn’t recite the opening prayer along with the rest of those gathered to honor the life of the late President George H.W. Bush; nor did he recite the Apostles Creed along with his wife and the other presidents.

The Twitter Universe is abuzz with comments about it. Yes, it’s about Donald Trump. The comparisons to Bush 41 are inevitable. All those who eulogized the great man spoke of his humility, his dedication to public service, his empathy, his humanity, his steady and confident leadership while the Cold War came to an end, his self-deprecation.

How can one not think of Donald Trump when one hears the statements made about one of his presidential predecessors? I could not help myself. Neither, apparently, can millions of other Americans.

Bush 41 is going to be saluted once again later today in Houston. Then he’ll be placed on a train and will ride the rails to his burial site in College Station, at his presidential library, where he will lie next to his beloved wife, Barbara, and their toddler daughter, Robin.

We’ll hear more wonderful rhetoric about the glorious life this man led and we’ll hear more about the qualities that made him such a good and decent man.

And to be sure, there will be more not-so-kind thoughts about the fellow who occupies the office President Buch once did with grace and dignity.

national news

Awkward encounter coming up?

If you’re honest with yourself, you are wondering the same thing I am wondering.

They’re going to honor the life of the late President George H.W. Bush on Thursday at the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. Attendees for the event clearly will be others who held the exalted office that President Bush held for four years.

George W. Bush, the late president’s son, will be on hand. Bill Clinton — who forged a close friendship with Bush 41 — will be there. So, likely, will Barack Obama. And yes, so will Donald Trump. I don’t know yet whether Jimmy Carter will attend; I hope he’s there.

What are we wondering, you and I? Well, speaking for myself only, I am curious about how Presidents Bush, Obama and Clinton might react when they encounter the current president.

My guess — and that’s all it is — would be that they’ll all act correctly in public. In private? Well, we cannot know, unless someone who is among them leaks it to the rest of the world.

Donald Trump has expended a lot of his waking-hour energy disparaging Presidents Clinton and Obama. He’s been less vocal about “W.” I’m not going to get into the particulars about what Trump has said about his predecessors, although it is worth noting that he even mocked Bush 41’s “Points of Light” program that the late president made one of his signature domestic achievements.

I believe, too, that Trump will deliver remarks about President Bush during the National Cathedral event. It’s also good to understand that these men were not friends. Bush 41 even acknowledged some time ago that he voted for Hillary Rodham Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, stiffing his fellow Republican, Trump.

I can see the potential for a number of awkward moments this week while the nation continues to bid farewell to President George Bush.

Let’s all watch with keen interest, shall we?

national news

Flags lowered for reason other than mass shooting

1 Comment

The president of the United States has ordered all U.S. flags lowered to half-staff for the next 30 days to honor the life and service of the late President George H.W. Bush.

It’s oddly refreshing — if you don’t mind my using that term — to know the flags are being lowered for something other than a mass shooting. It seems all too often we are displaying the Stars and Stripes to honor the memories of those who get slaughtered at the hands of madmen.

President Bush’s life deserves the high honor it will receive not just in the next few days or weeks, but for as long as human beings inhabit this Earth.

national news, political news

Here come the comparisons: 41’s era vs. today

You knew it would happen — comparisons would surface between the era that encompassed the service of the late President George H.W. Bush and the era in which we live today.

Remembrances are pouring in from around the world about the death Friday of our 41st president. They are heartfelt, sincere and affectionate. They recall a time when politicians of opposing parties weren’t “enemies,” but merely opponents with differing views on how to achieve the same goal: to make the United States a better place.

Some comments have alluded to what has called the passing of an era that we’ll never see again in our political life. I don’t share that view. I maintain hope that we’ll return to that time when public service matters more than personal aggrandizement. I believe we’ll have a day yet again when humility and modesty informs the actions of our political leaders.

Yes, it’s missing now. We all know it. We see it, hear it and feel it 24/7; it’s impossible to avoid it, given the incessant news cycles that bombard us.

President Bush embodied a seemingly quaint era. He didn’t want to dance on the proverbial grave of the communists who saw their empire crumble at their feet in Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s. He chose instead to work behind the scenes, to forge international relationships and to welcome the sea change in concert with our allies.

There was no “America first” policy coming from the White House in those days. President Bush operated on a different set of standards and ideals, far from what we get nowadays.

Yes, the comparisons will continue for a good while. The nation will mourn its loss of a great American. We also should smile at the full and astonishing life he led and the service he delivered to the public through the myriad tasks to which he was assigned.

He did so without glitz, glamor or self-proclaimed glory.

What a man!

national news

RIP, George H.W. Bush; you have earned it

The tributes are pouring in from around the world over the news our nation received Friday night, that our 41st president, George H.W. Bush has died at the age of 94.

We knew it would come sooner rather than later, quite obviously. President Bush led the fullest of lives. He now joins the love of his life, Barbara, in eternal peace.

The world reacts

Of all the ways to honor this great man, I want to look briefly at two related episodes of his four-year presidency. They speak to this man’s humility and his grace. Yes, he was the most qualified man ever to serve as president: combat Navy aviator during World War II, successful West Texas  businessman, member of Congress, special envoy to China, ambassador to the United Nations, director of the CIA, Republican Party chairman, vice president of the United States.

I’ll leave it to others to comment on those accomplishments, singularly and collectively.

Two events occurred on his presidential watch that speak to this man’s astonishing grace: the Berlin Wall tumbled down in 1989 and the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

The collapse of the wall was a singular event that heralded what we all knew was going to happen, that communism in Europe was done for. Did President Bush high-five everyone he could find to celebrate the event? No. He stood by stoically while the world witnessed with its own eyes the unification of a great European nation and the first visible sign that the end of the Cold War was at hand.

Then came the dissolution of the Soviet Union two years later. Soviet chairman Mikhail Gorbachev resigned. The communist government collapsed under its own weight of corruption ideological bankruptcy. It was replaced by the Russian Federation. It began a new era we all hoped would signal the creation of a democratic state in the former USSR. Sadly, it hasn’t worked out the way we hoped it would.

Again, the president didn’t run a victory lap. He didn’t proclaim that the Good Guys had defeated the Bad Guys. He didn’t gloat, prance and preen. He acted with nobility and calm. The world did not need to hear the president of the United States explain what it was witnessing in real time.

Those, I submit, are the hallmarks of a man who knew his place and knew in his huge heart how to behave while the world was changing before our eyes.

We are saddened today to learn of the passing of this great man. We are grateful, though, for his lifetime of service to his beloved nation.

Well done, Mr. President.

political news

Waiting for unqualified praise of POTUS

I have to make a confession.

It is that whenever I feel the need to offer an encouraging word about Donald J. Trump I am drawn to the need to somehow hedge on it, to offer a qualifier of sorts. Maybe one day, and I have no idea when, I’ll be able to offer praise to the president without having to call attention to all the negative things I’ve said about him.

He recently announced a criminal justice reform notion that would give federal judges more flexibility in handing out sentences; they currently are bound by mandatory sentencing policies. I think the overhaul is a good thing. I said so, too, with praise for the president. But, damn! I had to mention a pledge I made that I would say something good when he merited it; that’s the qualifier, man.

I truly want to get past that. Sadly, I have little hope that this president is going to allow me to do that.

President Bush, shortly after the 2008 election, brought all the former presidents to the White House to greet the president-elect, Barack H. Obama. President Bush wished the new man “success.” Sure, he opposed his election, but he told the president-elect that if he succeeds, the country succeeds.

I know I should be a bigger man that I’ve been at times with regard to the current president. I just cannot help myself. My distaste for his ascending to the first public office he ever sought is palpable and visceral. I’m not proud of it.

I merely acknowledge it.

This blog will continue to offer criticism of the president. I am afraid the critical comments will vastly outnumber the positive comments for well past the foreseeable future.

Just maybe, though, that day might arrive and I’ll be able to offer an encouraging word without referencing the discouraging words.

national news

Did Trump really believe he would win in 2016?

I’m fairly deep into the “Fear,” the blockbuster book by Bob “Watergate Fame” Woodward.

The book touches on a theme I keep encountering as I read analyses of Donald Trump’s administration, his winning campaign in 2016 and the slipshod way he assembled his White House team after he won the election.

The theme is this: Trump didn’t actually expect to win the 2016 presidential election.

Woodward refers to the surprise that voters delivered to the Republican presidential nominee on Election Night. Noting that surprise time and again throughout the book, I keep wondering: Why did Trump actually run for this office? Was it a business deal to end all business deals?

I have noted in this blog that Trump — before becoming a politician — had spent his entire adult life seeking to attain personal wealth. He is the master of self-aggrandizement. Self-promotion is his MO. He is wired solely and exclusively to promote himself.

How in the world does someone with that sort of makeup sincerely believe he is capable of assuming a job that requires him to take an oath to look out for the interests of others?

I cannot possibly believe that such a man actually intends to set aside his entire adulthood existence for a life of public service. When I refer to “public service,” I intend to suggest that one who climbs into that arena is dedicated to others.

Does the 45th president of the United States strike you as someone who fills that bill . . . or even expected to find himself in the role he now plays?

national news

Yes, Mr. POTUS, you’ve ‘made a difference’

Americans have known all along that Donald John Trump does not suffer from any lack of self-esteem.

He’s so damn proud of himself. Of his wealth. Of his stunning political victory in 2016. Of his children. Of his smarts. Blah, blah, blah.

He managed to tweet some idiotic messages overnight in which he talked about the things for which he is thankful. He said, if you can believe it, that he is proud of himself. I know . . . I’m stunned, too.

He is proud of the “tremendous difference I’ve made” as president. Well, you know what? I am going to agree with part of what he said. Yes, the president has made a huge “difference.” Except that I apply another viewpoint in assessing that difference.

The Ayatollah Khomeini “made a difference” when he took power in Iran; so did Adolf Hitler in Germany; same with Josef Stalin in the Soviet Union. They all “made a difference.”

I don’t equate Donald Trump with those hideous monsters. I merely use them as examples of how one can interpret the “difference” reference differently than what the president is asserting.

Trump has taken a politician’s penchant for self-aggrandizement to astonishing new levels. He said we’re “stronger now than before” he became president. How does he measure that strength? He doesn’t say. He alludes to allies that flock to our side. Who? When? Under what circumstance? He doesn’t say. Trump refers continually to the “fine-tuned machine” at the White House and how hundreds of applicants are knocking down the doors to come to work there. How does he explain all the key vacancies in Cabinet departments? He doesn’t.

Yeah, the president has “made a difference.” It’s just not the kind of difference with which he has deluded himself.

Weird.