Tag Archives: POTUS

Trumps won’t be ‘slumming it’ in White House

white-house

The Donald J. Trump family is quite used to an opulent lifestyle.

Posh resorts, jet airplanes, gawdy fixtures … all that kind of thing.

What are they getting now as they prepare for their new lives as the world’s most visible and gawked-at family — except, perhaps, for the Kardashians?

More of the same, only to a somewhat lesser degree. They’ll be fine.

The Man of the House says he’s going to forgo the $400,000 annual salary. He doesn’t need the money. The president-elect intends to collect a dollar a year, which he said not long ago is required by law. That means he can return nearly $1.6 million to the U.S. Treasury during the four years he’s in office.

It won’t amount to more than spitting into the ocean, but hey, it’s still a good bit of dough.

But think of this, too. The Trump clan is going to get to live in a pretty nice house. They’re going to have security like they’ve never seen. That airplane the president uses for official business — dubbed Air Force One when he’s aboard — ain’t bad, either. The Trumps can rest assured that the big blue-and-white Boeing 747 is decked out with the finest technology ever assembled for a single flying machine.

The Trumps won’t be driving their own motor vehicles for at least the next four years. They’ll have chauffeurs at the wheel, highly trained Secret Service security agents opening doors for them and staffers ensuring that their every wish is met and every command is followed to the letter — which likely is something to which they’ve become quite accustomed already … given the old man’s reported penchant for that kind of detail.

All this speculation is quite relevant, given the Trumps’ lifestyle and y-u-u-u-g-e success — which the president-elect boasted about continually while running for the first public office he’s ever sought.

I’m just hoping now as the new first family gets set to step into the public spotlight we don’t hear any griping from them about how they’re slumming it on the people’s dime.

Yep, Trump is ‘my president’ … for better or worse

trump-wins

I’m hearing some troubling notions from those who voted on the losing side of a presidential election.

Donald J. Trump, some of them are saying, “is not my president. I didn’t vote the guy and he ain’t my president.”

At the risk of sounding sanctimonious and self-righteous, I’d like to offer a rebuke to that sentiment.

I didn’t vote for him, either. I detest the notion that he is about to become the 45th president of the United States. My visceral loathing of him is deeper than anything I’ve felt for any of his predecessors.

He is my president, though.

Why? Because as president he will offer policy prescriptions that affect every American. I’m one of ’em.

I intend to fight him whenever I can through this blog. It’s my right as an American to speak my mind and to protest what my government is doing. I will do so vigorously when the moment presents itself — and so far, those moments are coming with stunning frequency.

Trump is my president, nevertheless.

This “ain’t my president” mantra is far from new. Republicans/conservatives yapped the same nonsense when Barack Obama was elected in 2008 and re-elected in 2012. Democrats/liberals yammered the same lame refrain when George W. Bush was elected in 2000 and re-elected in 2004. You can go back as far as you want in history and dig up statements from those who said the very same thing about past presidents.

Me? My inclination — no matter the outcome — has been to accept the result. I might not endorse it. Sure, I’ve swallowed hard plenty since the Nov. 8 election. I’ve done so before.

I won’t, though, accept the idea that the man who’s about to take the oath of office isn’t my president.

I detest the notion of Trump having the word “President” stated and/or written with his name. I also reserve the right to be critical — even harshly so — of my president.

Obama might speak out as a former POTUS? Bad idea

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Barack Obama is sending some signals that he might not leave the public arena once his successor takes office.

The 44th president of the United States might keep speaking out even as the 45th president, Donald J. Trump, begins his term.

Let’s think for a moment about that.

OK. I’ve thought about it. It’s a bad notion. I hope the president rethinks his temptation to keep speaking out.

I have applauded two former presidents — George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush — for their decisions to stay away from the rough-and-tumble. Both men have declared their intention to stay out of the limelight. They both have said essentially the same thing: They had their time in the arena; it’s time to cede the spotlight to someone else.

I was particularly pleased that George W. Bush remained faithful to that pledge, particularly while former Vice President Dick Cheney kept popping off about President Obama’s foreign policy decisions. I urged Cheney to follow his former boss’s lead: Keep your trap shut, Mr. Vice President.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2009/03/follow-your-boss-lead-mr-vice-president/

Barack Obama’s time is coming to an end. He will have plenty of work to occupy his time while he returns to some semblance of a private life. He’s got a presidential library to plan and develop. He can set up a foundation that continues to speak to the issues near to his heart; the state of race relations comes to mind.

Should he provide post-presidential critiques of decisions that come from the man who’ll succeed him? I hope he keeps his thoughts to himself.

As many of his predecessors have noted, we have only one president at a time. The guy who’ll sit in the Oval Office will get plenty of hits from the rest of us out here in the peanut gallery.

Transitions should be peaceful … always

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Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump are giving Americans a fascinating civics lesson.

A bitter, divisive, ruthless and occasionally slanderous presidential has come to an end. The president is about two months out from the end of his two terms in office. The president-elect — one of the principals in the aforementioned campaign — is about to take the reins of the only public office he’s ever sought.

The two men met for 90 minutes in the Oval Office on Thursday.

They sat before the media and spoke of the transition that has begun. No outward sign of the acrimony that punctuated this campaign. No apparent hard feelings over the amazingly nasty things these men said about each other.

As Trump noted, they had never met face to face — until Thursday.

Now, to be sure, the backdrop isn’t entirely peaceful. Demonstrators have been marching in major-city streets for the past few days protesting Trump’s election. They vow to keep it up. Nor will the outward peacefulness at the White House dissuade others from making angry statements about the winner of this campaign, or about the candidate who lost, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

That shouldn’t cast too large or too dark a pall over the formalities that are occurring at and/or near the center of power.

The president is vowing a smooth transition; indeed, he wants to model the hand-off he got from President Bush and his team in 2009.

The peaceful transition of power is a marvelous aspect of our system of government. It becomes especially noteworthy when the presidents are of differing political parties.

In this particular instance, the transition should become a virtual miracle given the fiery rhetoric that was exchanged over the course of the past 18 months. Indeed, in the case of Trump, he’s been at the forefront of one of the biggest political lies of the past century: the one that suggested that President Obama wasn’t a legitimate American citizen.

None of us knows what the men said to each other in private. I would love to know how that conversation went.

However, we’re entitled to hear what they say in public. I am going to retain my faith that the tradition of peaceful political transition at the highest level of power in the United States will continue.

It’s all part of what enables the United States of America to remain the greatest nation on Earth.

Yes, the world takes a keen interest in U.S. elections

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WEITERSDORF, Germany — I mentioned in an earlier blog post that I intended to comment on the interest level among Germans in the U.S. election.

I have a pretty good idea of that interest, based in part on a lovely evening my wife and I spent with our friends and their parents.

Gerhard and Gabi are the parents of Alena, one of our hosts in this village near Nuremberg.

My sense from both of them — particularly from Gerhard — is that, yes, by golly, they are mightily interested in the election we’re about to have back home.

Do they totally endorse Hillary Rodham Clinton? I didn’t get that from them. Do they totally fear the election of Donald J. Trump? Um, yes, I did get that feeling.

Gerhard also believes there might be an anti-woman feeling in play in the United States, which could signal a Trump victory in exactly two months.

I sought to tell him tonight over dinner that I didn’t believe the sexist vote was that prevalent back home, that a majority of Americans who bother to vote are going to choose experience and actual knowledge of government over the rhetoric that’s pouring out of Trump’s mouth.

Gerhard, a lifelong journalist who works in Nuremberg, didn’t quite buy into the notion that Trump is going to lose. Gabi, a homemaker in this lovely and oh, so quiet village — which is about a 10-minute train ride from central Nuremberg — was a bit quieter on the subject.

If these two fine folks are indicative of German sentiment — and they seem to be mainstream folks who have carved out a comfortable mainstream life in this rural village — then at least this portion of the rest of the world is watching with great interest in what American voters decide on Nov. 8.

This is the kind of attention that great nations engender — no matter how many times Donald Trump tries to tell us back home that we are no longer a great nation.

‘Running out the clock’? Hardly

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I keep hearing reports of how Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Rodham Clinton is “running out the clock” against Republican opponent Donald J. Trump.

The suggestion is that she’s got the Electoral College locked up and that she’s not going to do anything to put that sure thing in jeopardy.

She’s ceded the political stage to Trump in recent weeks. He’s taken full advantage of Clinton’s generosity.

In doing so, Clinton is giving Trump some more ammo to fire at her … which is that she “lacks the stamina” the be commander in chief.

Here’s what I’m thinking might happen.

We’re coming up on the Labor Day weekend. We’ll all grill some burgers, hot dogs and brisket, pay tribute to working men and women, watch a little college football.

Then on Tuesday, my strong hunch is that Hillary Clinton is going to launch her campaign full bore, going stride for stride with Trump.

You know and I know — and so does Trump and his team know — that Clinton’s brain trust has developed a strategy for dealing with Trump’s seemingly countless flaws as a national political candidate. They start with his utter lack of knowledge of, well … anything.

Is she running out the clock?

I doubt it.

Seriously.

9/11 to bring relief from campaign

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Now, for a little good news regarding the dismal campaign for the presidency of the United States.

Both major-party nominees — Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton and Republican Donald J. Trump — have agreed to suspend campaigning for a day.

That day will be Sept. 11, which happens to be the 15th year since the terrorists attacked the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and crashed a third jetliner into a Pennsylvania field.

An aside: I hesitate to use the word “anniversary” to define this event … if you get my drift.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/trump-clinton-september-11-campaigns-227559

We all remember how we heard the terrible news. We all remember the horror, the shock, the grief, the sickening feeling we felt as we watched the events unfold on that terrible day.

That day ought to be a day of reflection over what happened and a day of solemn prayer for the nation that continues to fight on against the evil forces that seek to destroy us.

It has become something of a tradition since 9/11. President Bush and Sen. John Kerry suspended their campaigns in 2004, as did Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain in 2008; indeed, Obama and McCain appeared together at an event at Ground Zero in lower Manhattan. In 2012, President Obama and former Gov. Mitt Romney held events, but those events memorialized the victims of the attack.

We need not hear the candidates’ yammering on this solemn date.

POTUS set to tour Louisiana flood zone

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Well, here you go.

President Obama has said he’s going to Louisiana next week to see first hand the damage caused by the historic flood.

I’m glad to know he’s going to size it up in person.

Yes, I wrote that he should go. Republican presidential nominee Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, made a show of it today by venturing to the flood zone. They went despite being asked to stay away by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards.

It’s interesting to me that candidates can do nothing to help. They do manage to score some political points, which Trump sought to do.

Presidents, though, do bring loads of gravitas to such visits.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/obama-louisiana-flooding-visit-227209

For that reason, I’m glad Barack Obama is going to fulfill an unwritten but always understood job requirement. It is to be the comforter in chief. Obama is good at it.

Lord knows he’s had enough experience embracing grieving Americans caught in the midst of crisis.

https://highplainsblogger.com/2016/08/president-ought-to-take-a-look-at-the-flood-damage/

 

 

Rubio to Trump: I detest you, but not as much as I do Hillary

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U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio finds himself defending an unusual political position.

The Florida Republican stands by his comment that GOP presidential nominee Donald J. Trump is a “con man” who shouldn’t be president of the United States.

But he’s going to vote for him anyway.

Some observers in Florida and elsewhere are quizzing the one-time GOP presidential primary candidate who, during the campaign, said some amazingly harsh things about the man who defeated him — and 15 other contenders — for the party nomination.

Rubio isn’t back away from any of them.

But he’s voting for Trump … he says.

This well might summarize the state of the 2016 presidential campaign.

Many rank-and-file “establishment” Republicans can’t stomach the candidacy of Trump, but they truly detest — even hate — the Democratic nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

Lesser of two evils? This is it, according to Sen. Rubio.

Ready for a ‘first-name president’?

hillary

Am I hearing things?

Whenever I watch TV news/opinion talk shows, I keep hearing people — political experts, strategists and rank-and-file voters — referring to the Democratic Party presidential nominee by her first name.

She’s just plain “Hillary.”

Hillary’s got to do this or that. Hillary suffers from this “trust” deficit. Hillary’s standing in the polls is going up.

Hillary, Hillary, Hillary

I don’t yet know about the psychology of this first-name reference. Hillary Clinton is a serious person. By my way of thinking, she’s far more serious than her Republican presidential nominee opponent, Donald J. Trump.

I’ve tried throughout my commentary on this political campaign to reference the Democratic nominee the same way media refer to every other politician or public figure: first and last name in the initial reference; last name in subsequent references.

I’ll admit, though, to fall off the traditional method wagon. I’ve taken to referring to other politicians by their first names. They are Mitt (Romney), Newt (Gingrich) and Jeb (Bush).

I mean no disrespect to any of them. I actually rather like Mitt and Jeb. Newt? Not so much.

I get a strange sense, though, that the use of Hillary Clinton’s first name only is more a symptom of disrespect than affection. I hear it from disgruntled voters who are likely to vote for Trump. I hear it also from conservative media talking heads who certainly are no fans of the Democratic Party presidential nominee.

As for the office these two people are seeking — the presidency — I also have taken up the custom of using the term “President” while referring to those who have held the office. I use that reference out of respect for the office.

My hope is that the media and others will treat Hillary Clinton with the same respect accorded those who have preceded her in that high office.

Now … as for Donald J. Trump, I’ll admit to anticipating a serious struggle if somehow he manages to become the next president of the United States.