Jekyll or Hyde?
Trump is a rogue president. That’s not plausibly debatable.
He breaks rules. He’s like a driver who speeds, blows red lights and stop signs, passes stopped school buses, and parks in handicapped spaces without a placard.
Which is fine with his most zealous supporters, who are frustrated that they can’t get what they want by playing by the rules.
But is that just who he is, or something more sinister?
Hardball or thuggery?
Is Trump a hard-charging businessmen who merely brings his aggressive personal style to his politics, or someone who is tearing at the fabric of our democracy, and doing it deliberately, with malevolent intentions — and grave implications for we who love freedom?
First of all, I’m okay with people I disagree with getting policies they want through the right channels. Losing in politics doesn’t bother me, when it’s a fair loss. Other people live in this country, too, and I don’t necessarily have to get my way. I do have a problem, though, with people who think winning is everything and will break rules to win.
That’s not what they teach you in high school sports. And definitely not in college sports. There’s cheating in Olympic and professional sports (very little, actually), but when caught it’s punished. Trump cheats, but Republicans don’t punish him for it. They’re on board with it. They don’t seem to have any principles anymore.
The Constitution created a framework of government that Trump is trying to brush aside. He seems to crave absolute, unchallengeable power; or, at least, won’t give up power “peacefully.” This isn’t my opinion; it’s confirmed by people who’ve been close to him and worked with him, like “Anonymous” and Michael Cohen. And Trump openly admires dictators like Putin and Kim Jong Un, calling the latter his “buddy.”
The Constitution, like traffic and parking laws, isn’t self-enforcing. His party has given him a free hand to violate it because they, too, crave power and fear losing it. Trump is using his office to, among other things, tamper with American’s voting rights, which is just fine with them. The Republican Party has a long history of voter suppression activity. Trump has made vocal and baseless claims of “voting fraud” in an effort to delegitimize any election his party doesn’t win.
All of this might just be hardball unethical politics. He is, after all, a hardball, unethical, and dishonest businessman who will do (and has done) anything to win in business. You could argue “that’s just him” and he’s merely carrying over his personal habits into the office of the presidency. Except those habits don’t belong there.
The difference between hardball unethical politics and subversion is the former stops at the boundary between manipulating our system and overthrowing it.
Trump has no boundaries, and that’s why I believe he’s dangerous, not merely a terrible president. You could argue, despite the overwhelming evidence that his defiance of norms is calculated and intentional, that he breaks our rules of governing because he doesn’t understand them; because he’s a novice in public office; because he doesn’t know what the boundaries are, or where they are.
I’m not buying it, but even so, it doesn’t matter. If a student gets kicked out of college for cheating, you do it to protect the integrity of the institution, and his motives don’t matter. Trump is a threat to the integrity of our democracy, which makes him the most dangerous president in our history, and in practical terms that’s all that matters. This isn’t about liberal-vs.-conservative, Republican-vs.-Democrats, or policy differences. It’s about preserving the 239-year-old system we use to settle those differences without pointing guns at each other’s heads. It’s fragile and we could lose it. There’s a clear and present danger of that right now.
Michelle Obama said this clearly in her speech:
“Let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can: Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country … He is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
“He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.”
Michelle Obama sharply contrasted Joe Biden’s character and record with Trump’s, calling the former vice-president, who served under her husband president Barack Obama, a “profoundly decent man” who will “tell the truth and trust science”.
“He knows what it takes to rescue an economy, beat back a pandemic and lead our country,” the former first lady said. “He will make smart plans and manage a good team, and he will govern as someone who’s lived a life that the rest of us can recognize.”
“Trump succeeded Barack Obama in 2017 and promptly set out to undo many of Obama’s achievements on health care, the environment and foreign policy, among others. Trump also routinely criticizes Obama’s job performance.”
Biden’s sense of empathy was also a key focus of Michelle Obama’s speech. Speaking of the national reckoning on racism sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in May, she said: “whenever we look to this White House for some leadership or consolation or any semblance of steadiness, what we get instead is chaos, division, and a total and utter lack of empathy”.
Biden 2020