The Wall Street Journal summed up the case for and against Donald Trump’s re-election in an editorial today. Here are a few excerpts, with my comments added in italics:
“Four years [after President Trump’s election] our verdict is that he has been better on policy than we feared but worse on personal behavior than we hoped. Whether Americans re-elect him depends on how they assess that political balance sheet. …
The President contracted out tax reform to Congress, especially Paul Ryan in the House and Pat Toomey in the Senate, and they delivered. Mr. Trump also hired a cast of deregulators who liberated the economy from burdens on energy and more. …
Mr. Trump is also the first President since Ronald Reagan to try to rein in the administrative state. … Betsy DeVos’s repeal of Joe Biden’s ‘guidance’ for handling sexual assault cases on campus will spare many young people from unfair ruin. The repeal of the Waters of the U.S. rule will spare farmers and property owners from bureaucratic harassment. …
[I particularly appreciate that these last two changes were made with proper process, following the procedures of the Administrative Procedure Act, not skirting them or avoiding them, as the Obama administration so often did. Whether President Trump knew it or not, or cared about or not, some of his people were restoring proper respect for the rule of law. I appreciated it.]
Yet his bullying and impulsiveness have needlessly soured relations with allies, especially Germany, and raised doubts about U.S. commitments. Most offensive is his personal courtship of dictators, such as Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and for a while Xi Jinping. He seems to think he can charm these hard men, and he has little to show for his pursuit.
[These points are among my biggest objections to President Trump’s record. In my mind allies are critical. I think they are part of making the world safer for America. He doesn’t. The idea that he can “charm’ people like Putin and Xi, etc., in negotiations between countries, like it’s a giant real estate deal, is scary and an indication of how little he knows about government and the world outside of real estate and TV.]
Which brings us to character. Americans knew when they voted for Mr. Trump that he wouldn’t adhere to convention, but they also hoped his manners would rise to the respect due the office. They too often haven’t. He is needlessly polarizing, luxuriates in petty feuds …. He seems not to care if what he says is true, which has squandered his ability to persuade in a crisis. …
Americans now know Mr. Trump isn’t going to change, but then he isn’t running only against himself. He has a chance to win another four years if voters conclude that his disruption is less risky than the Biden-Sanders Democratic agenda.”
On June 5, I wrote about the four criteria General George Marshall used to pick the high-ranking generals for the U.S. Army during World War II. The most important was character, which is the first word that comes to mind when one thinks of General Marshall himself.
Which brings me to the election in November. As The Wall Street Journal says the choice in November is, in effect, between the Democratic platform and President Trump’s character. I cannot risk the latter. I fear what it would mean for the future of America and the world. John Bolton has talked of his worries about the foreign policy of a President Trump untethered by the possibility of re-election. That plus President Trump’s character, or, rather, his lack of character, means I cannot vote for President Trump.
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