Letter: These days, the Presidential failings are magnified

Posted 4/8/20

I have been saying for several years that we — America — are in trouble because we seem unable to do well even the most fundamental things, such as maintain adequate streets, roads, and …

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Letter: These days, the Presidential failings are magnified

Posted

I have been saying for several years that we — America — are in trouble because we seem unable to do well even the most fundamental things, such as maintain adequate streets, roads, and highways and educate our children, but these latest developments regarding the bungling by the Trump administration of the Covid-19 virus response put us in a place I had not imagined.

As has been clear since just about day one of the Trump administration, the president is not equipped either intellectually or temperamentally to hold the job into which he stumbled. He knows next to nothing about the real world, knows next to nothing about American government, appears not to be interested in learning what he does not know, surrounds himself only with people like himself who will not push back against his mistaken approaches to problem solving, belongs to a political party that has shown for decades it is not the least bit interested in governing, and is aided and abetted by a “news” organization that shares his views of non-governing and acts as his propaganda arm.

In addition, he has no respect for either constitutional or statutory law, no respect for governing or social norms and customs, including a free press, no respect for people who are not Trumps by birth or marriage, and no respect for scientific endeavor and knowledge. He lacks analytical skills, leadership skills, management skills, and interpersonal skills.

On top of all these presidential deficiencies we have a pandemic that scientists around the world saw coming but to which our so-called leader turned a blind eye until it was too late to get out ahead of it or even keep up with it, downplayed its potential for death and economic destruction, and then denied his responsibility for the precarious position in which we find our nation and any responsibility of the federal government to lead the herculean efforts needed to surmount the crisis and save lives.

His economic rescue efforts, and those of his party, have been aimed largely at helping those who already have — corporations and the rich — leaving the have-nots pretty much on their own. Without the Democratic Party we would be doomed, and even with the Democratic party and its efforts to help working Americans, we are still a long way from being out of the woods.

Are there ways to remove him from office? Yes, but they depend on a Republican party that decides it wants to govern. It passed on its previous chance earlier this year when handed what members of that party acknowledged was a convincing case of presidential misconduct. The founders gave us a way to take care of a rogue president, but the current Republican party chose not to use it. 

Instead of doing what the Republican Party of Richard Nixon’s time did, telling the malevolent president his time was up, today’s Republican Party chose to tell the president his conduct, while impeachable, was not sufficient to remove him from office.

We are in very serious trouble because if things get worse — as they could with the pandemic not yet under control and the economy perilously close to collapse — we will become a target for those around the world who will see us as weak and try to weaken us further and diminish significantly our role as world leader. Those efforts will be aided and abetted by a president who wants to make America great again but has no idea what greatness is.

Americans need to make plain in the strongest language possible to members of Congress that the status quo is unacceptable and to make plain their choices for good government in the upcoming presidential and congressional elections. In a free society, the people get the government they deserve.

Thomas C. Brown, Jr.
Alexandria, Va.

The writer occasionally sends letters to the editor at East Bay Newspapers because his roots are in Bristol. He attended both private and public schools in Bristol and graduated from Bristol Senior High School.

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