{"id":32243,"date":"2018-09-10T23:51:29","date_gmt":"2018-09-10T23:51:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32243"},"modified":"2018-09-10T23:51:29","modified_gmt":"2018-09-10T23:51:29","slug":"when-have-we-ever-discussed-presidential-fitness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32243","title":{"rendered":"When have we ever discussed presidential fitness?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/533-0221040827-a.png.jpeg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-32151\" src=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/533-0221040827-a.png-300x247.jpeg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"247\" srcset=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/533-0221040827-a.png-300x247.jpeg 300w, https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/533-0221040827-a.png.jpeg 504w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been walking along this Earth for a lot of years. I&#8217;ve been watching politics for most of my life. For the life of me I cannot remember a national discussion that comes close to mirroring what we&#8217;re hearing at this time about the fitness of the man who serves as president of the United States.<\/p>\n<p>We didn&#8217;t hear it at this level when President Nixon was mired in the Watergate scandal. We didn&#8217;t hear it in 1984 when President Reagan stumbled in his first debate with Walter Mondale, only to say at the <em>second<\/em> debate that he wouldn&#8217;t &#8220;exploit for political purposes my opponent&#8217;s youth and inexperience.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>These days, the discussion has turned to Donald J. Trump&#8217;s actual fitness for the job. There&#8217;s open discussion about invoking a constitutional amendment that would strip the president of his powers. There is talk among White House aides about the president&#8217;s &#8220;impulses&#8221; and whether this man has the capacity to understand the myriad complexities of his high office.<\/p>\n<p>Am I missing something? I just don&#8217;t recall ever having this discussion at any time, at any level with our previous presidents.<\/p>\n<p>And yet, here we are.<\/p>\n<p>The White House is pushing back. Trump allies say the president is fully capable. They say he&#8217;s engaged in the nuance of policy. They&#8217;re condemning the &#8220;gutless coward&#8221; who wrote that anonymous op-ed published in The New York Times, the essay that talks about the theft of memos from Trump&#8217;s desk and the effort to protect the nation against the president&#8217;s more dangerous instincts.<\/p>\n<p>Yes, Trump promised he would be an &#8220;unconventional president.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Boy, howdy! The man has delivered on that promise.<\/p>\n<p><em>Bigly!<\/em><\/p>\n\n<div class=\"twitter-share\"><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?via=jkanelis\" class=\"twitter-share-button\">Tweet<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve been walking along this Earth for a lot of years. I&#8217;ve been watching politics for most of my life. For the life of me I cannot remember a national discussion that comes close to mirroring what we&#8217;re hearing at this time about the fitness of the man who serves as president of the United &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=32243\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">When have we ever discussed presidential fitness?<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[83,1424,3940,4017,5043,5246],"class_list":["post-32243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","tag-25th-amendment","tag-donald-trump","tag-richard-nixon","tag-ronald-reagan","tag-us-constitution","tag-white-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32243"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32243\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32246,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32243\/revisions\/32246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}