The Trump administration seems to
have gotten off to a reasonably good start. It looks like all of Trump’s
nominees for major Cabinet posts will be approved by the Senate despite
nit-picking by the Democrats. It looks like Trump has put together a first
class team of qualified, experienced people. Even long-time critics of Trump
like the editors of the Wall Street Journal have had to admit that Trump has
been surprisingly level headed in choosing his team.
The Democrats who oppose Senator
Jeff Sessions, the nominee for Attorney General, have had to resort to calling
this experienced jurist a “racist,” even though his record shows him to be just
the opposite. If you want to talk about racism, does anyone believe that Geoffrey
Holder or Loretta Lynch would have been nominated for Attorney General by
Barack Obama if they had not been black.
Democrats also oppose Rex Tillerson’s
nomination for Secretary of State because of his alleged ties with Russia while
he served as CEO of energy giant Exxon. Can anyone seriously believe that the
wealthy Tillerson, who could have stayed at Exxon forever, has anything to gain
by being in bed with Vladimir Putin? Also, who ever objected to Barack Obama’s
nomination of the relatively inexperienced Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State
back in 2008?
So far the criticism of Trump has
had nothing to do with what he has actually done since Election day. Opponents
just don’t like the man and have to focus on his personality and his tweets and
ignore the seriousness with which he has seemingly thrown himself into the
difficult job of President. So what objections have been raised?
During the election campaign Trump’s
frequent complaint that the coming election was “rigged led a debate moderator
to ask him if he would support the outcome of the election. Trump declined to answer the question and
said that he would keep us in suspense. No matter what one thinks of his answer, no one can deny the shock and
dismay that immediately erupted on the part of his opponents, both politicians
and pundits. How could he say such a thing? How could he even decline to say
whether he would accept the results of a Presidential election?
Now that he has won the election,
the refusal of his opponents to accept the result represents not only the
height of hypocrisy, but also a dangerous incitement to violence. In this
country we have always enjoyed the tradition of a loyal opposition. We are
allowed to dislike and oppose the measures and policies of our elected leaders.
We are even allowed to dislike them personally. But when we call them
illegitimate or claim that they won their election by nefarious or illegal
means, we invite fanatical loonies on both extremes of the political spectrum
to take the law into their hands.
Claims that Trump is illegitimate
are really based on personal antipathy to him as well as to the cause he has
come to represent. It is nonsense to say that he is illegitimate because he did
not win the popular vote. Both he and Hillary Clinton played by the rules, and
both of them fought to win a majority in the Electoral College. No one
complained about the Electoral College when it seemed like Clinton was sure to
win.
It is equally nonsensical to claim
the Russian hackers who exposed nasty emails in the mailbox of Clinton campaign
manager John Podesta influenced the outcome of the election. The revelation of
an old videotape showing Trump engaging in “locker room” talk, had far greater
impact. Nevertheless, in the campaign frenzy leading up to the election, I
never met a single person whose mind was not made up. I never saw such passion
on either side.
It is especially dangerous when
high-ranking politicians like Rep. John Lewis of Georgia call the
President-elect illegitimate. It may just be hyperbole on his part but words
have consequences. Didn’t President Obama and his staff claim that the attack
on the American embassy in Benghazi was caused by an inflammatory video on the
Internet?
Political commentators are also
treading on dangerous ground when they attack the newly elected President on
purely personal grounds. They don’t like the new President period. We know
that. But now it is time for them to criticize or assess his actual
performance.
We have become accustomed to the
ravings of the left-wing media but even a conservative commentator like Bret
Stephens of the Wall St. Journal has become rabid in his dislike of Trump. In
his last two weekly columns he has gone over the top in portraying Trump as
some kind of evil monster, and totally ignored the fact that this so-called
inexperienced buffoon has assembled a really first-rate team of Cabinet
advisers. He picked them but they, from Senator Jeff Sessions to Exxon CEO
Tillerson, have chosen to work with him.
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