Via Michael Gerson at Real Clear Politics:
Republicans got a leader who is impatient and easily distracted -- by cable news on the Russian scandal or by Arnold Schwarzenegger's TV ratings. The content and consequences of his tweets are bad enough; worse is the disordered personality traits they reveal -- vindictiveness, shallowness and lack of discipline. Trump spent a total of 18 days on his health care bill before demanding a vote. And he made no speech to the nation to advance his ideas -- as every other recent president would have done.
Republicans got an administration that is incompetent. The White House policy process has been erratic and disorganized. It has failed to provide expert analysis and assistance to Congress and did little to effectively advocate the president's policy in ways that unite the party.
Republicans got an administration that is morally small. Trump's proposed budget would require massive cuts in disease research, global development and agricultural programs -- just as a famine gathers a hideous strength. The proposed budget practices random acts of gratuitous cruelty.
This is a pretty bad combination: empty, easily distracted, vindictive, shallow, impatient, incompetent and morally small. This is not the profile of a governing party.
It can hardly surprise us. The president had no governing experience. He has no detailed governing agenda. He trashed everyone who tried to govern in the past. And we somehow expect him to overcome the complex governing task presented by the Freedom Caucus?
We have in the White House a man beset by scandal. Refusing to answer to any ethical standard, committing acts of nepotism that serve no purpose other than to profit his own family. Pushing our allies away with childish arrogance and shakedown moves worthy of a neighborhood mafioso. Committing acts of ineptitude that would get people fired from any real job.
Sitting in the center of an ongoing storm connecting him to Russian agents and businessmen tied to Putin regarding possible sabotaging and manipulation of our 2016 General Election. A HORRIFYING BLEND of greed, political machinations, and I am not kidding a growing body count.
trump's mishandling of the Russian investigations has been so inept he's dragged in an idiotic House Republican in a poorly-staged attempt to invert the news cycle to "vindicate" trump's behaviors as well as sabotage the House Intelligence Committee's investigations.
trump polled recently at 35 percent. Obama never polled that low. It took Katrina wiping out half the Gulf Coast for Dubya to poll that low. No
This isn't even getting to the fact that trump's intentionally understaffing his own departments, and the fact that trump's only "successes" his first two months in office has been to energize an Immigration agency into greater bullying and harassing of honest hard-working citizens and residents (and their kids, and whole families, and... ). We've already seen how trump will deal with Congress - foolishly - and we're facing an incoming crisis of a government shutdown that the Republicans aren't even addressing.
This train wreck shows no sign of stopping even as every car piles on top of each other like a stack of broken dominoes.
1 comment:
So now we hear that the Russians were actively assisting Trump in the primaries. That means that Putin wasn't just anti-Clinton, he was pro-Trump. We have testimony in a senate hearing that Trump used "active measures" put forth by Russian spy agencies in his campaign. Russia is not being coy about their intentions:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2017/01/18/russias-radical-new-strategy-for-information-warfare/?utm_term=.bd7f7c13136d
This collusion is literally treasonous, given the Russians clearly stated intentions of harming this country.
In light of all that, Gorsuch should not be seated on the supreme court by the Republicans own reasoning that a president in his last year in office should not have his pick confirmed...
h/t Michael Bersin at Show Me Progress
-Doug in Oakland
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