I Have Too Much Respect for My Country and Myself to Vote for Donald Trump

I recently read A Passion for Leadership by former Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates.  I am now reading an unusual little book, Run Mitch, Run, about the decision process Mitch Daniels, and some friends, went through as Mr. Daniels considered running for president in 2012.  Reading those two books (and Mitch Daniel’s prior book, Keeping the Republic, which he wrote in 2011 and I read a couple of years ago), you just cannot help but be impressed by the quality of these two people.  Smart.  Honorable.  Decent.  Worthy of respect.  People you would have no problem trusting to lead your country.  And people you would follow if they did.¹

Then you look at the man apparently leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination this year, Donald Trump.  Of the many words that could be used to describe Donald Trump, honorable, decent and worthy of respect do not make the list.  Maybe smart does, but it is the kind of smart that is looking out for itself, not for other people or for the country.

His supporters apparently like the fact that Donald Trump “tells it like it is.”  Actually, it’s more that he tells it like they wish it was.  He is not going to do many of the things he talks about and they like.  We are not going to build a wall along the Mexican border and then get Mexico to pay for it.  He’s not going to impose a 45% tariff on imports from China, at least without pushing us into a depression.  We tried that in 1930.  It was called the Smoot-Hawley tariffs.  It didn’t make us better off; it did the opposite.

Then there is his mutual admiration society with Vladimir Putin.  I don’t know if Mr. Trump means all the things he has said about President Putin or if he is pulling all of our legs, at the same time he pulls President Putin’s, but Vladimir Putin is not a good man.  He is not a man to trust or with whom we have any common values.  In March of 2012, President Obama told then-Russian President Dmitri Medvedev² to let Vladimir Putin know once he, Barack Obama, had been re-elected, he would be more flexible on issues, like missile defense.  Since then, Russia has annexed Crimea, invaded eastern Ukraine, sold S-300 air defense missiles to Iran, and sent planes and troops to Syria for the first time in over forty years.  And now, the Pentagon says Russia is the biggest threat the United States faces.  Yet Vladimir Putin is a guy Donald Trump likes.

Donald Trump has no experience in running government.  He seems to have no knowledge about the issues he would face as president.  This doesn’t seem to bother his supporters, however.  They say he will appoint good advisers.  But how would be know who is good and who isn’t?  In any case, he would be the one making the final decision.  That is scary and unacceptable.

The bottom line is I will not vote for Donald Trump for president.  Please understand this is coming from somebody who last voted for a Democrat for something other than judge when Gerald Ford was president.  And only one time since then have I failed to vote for the Republican candidate for any non-judicial office.  But this year, in the biggest race of all, I will not vote Republican if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president.  I have too much respect for my country, and for myself, to do otherwise.
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¹ To be bipartisan, let me note I am very impressed by the new defense budget that Defense Secretary Ash Carter has proposed.

² Dmitri Medvedev filled in for Vladimir Putin from 2008 to 2012 when Mr. Putin couldn’t be elected to a third consecutive term in 2012.