Christina Cauterucci writes today in Slate a piece entitled “Donald
Trump’s Personality Is an Impeachable Offense.”
The honesty of this is not so much in her judgment about the President’s
personality as it is in the fact that it reveals the truth about the
unremitting attacks on this President.
That truth is that the Democrats and other Washington insiders and
politicians do not like the personality of the President and, for them, that
justifies any and all attempts to remove him from office, declare his
presidency illegitimate, attack his family and friends, attack his supporters,
and do any and all other acts that we see daily intended to in some way hurt
this President and his presidency.
What Ms. Cauterucci and others do not seem to understand is
that the presidency is not a popularity contest. The election is not for a prom
queen or king. It is for someone whom
the people see best suited to protect America and carry out the duties of the
president. It is not about someone whom you
would want for your pastor or someone you’d like to have a beer with. It is not about whether someone has a
personality that, in your opinion, is or is not distasteful .
The office of president is for one who will “faithfully
execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of
my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”
(presidential oath of office, U.S. Const. Art. II, Sec. 1). The President’s
duties include serving as commander in chief of the military, making treaties,
appointing ambassadors and judges and other officers of the United States (U.S.
Const. Art. II, Sec. 2). He “shall take
Care that the Laws be faithfully executed (U.S. Const. Art. II Sec. 3). The Constitution says nothing about one’s
personality; there is no requirement of likability or lack of distasteful (to
some) characteristics.
Yet, the Democrats and other anti-Trumpers live in a world
in which presidential personality seems to be the only thing that matters. Ms. Cauterucci, based on her reading of the
Mueller prosecutorial report, judges Trump as socially inept, selfish, manipulative,
sometimes cruel, and pathetic. That is
her opinion based on her reading; it appears she has never actually met the President. I suspect others may have other opinions –
perhaps a tough leader, perhaps angry about false accusations, perhaps other
views. (And, one ought to recall the old adage that "If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.")
But none of that matters because
the presidency is not a cult of personality; it is that which the Democrats
fail to understand. For Ms. Cauterucci
and others, a personality that they find distasteful is more than enough for
impeachment.
Do they not understand how ridiculous and irrational this
is? Yet, Ms. Cauterucci’s piece, by its
very focus, reveals why the Democrats and other anti-Trumpers don’t care about
the many positive accomplishments of Trump’s presidency (better economy, lower
unemployment, improving trade, improving international strength to name a few). While these things would seem to be those on
which we should be judging a president, not whether we like the personality he
uses in getting them done, the Democrats and their supporters (often including
the media) have lost all understanding of the office of president. Their judgments are not just clouded but are
completely obscured by their dislike of the President’s personality. For them, personality alone is everything and
the only thing that qualifies or disqualifies someone for office.
They have not liked Donald Trump’s personality since the
beginning – he is a successful business man, not a political insider; he is
brash and speaks directly rather than using their refined and often senseless
political-speak; he wants action and would rather get things done than have
endless meetings and studies; he has a vision of America that resonates with
the American people and he is working hard to do what he said he would do if
elected; he is accomplishing things that political insiders have only talked
about for years, and he tweets and brags about all this.
All of this seems to have irritated the
anti-Trumpers to the point that they are now living in a world far removed from
the people of this country, a world where someone with a personality they find
distasteful not only should not be president, but must be completely destroyed. And destruction of our country along with
that is something they see as merely some sort of necessary collateral damage.
This irrationality might be humorous if it were not so
dangerous. But this monomaniacal focus
on destruction of the President to the exclusion of everything else is eating
away at not just the President himself, but at the presidency, the government,
and our country.
If a likable personality is a qualification for a president,
then not only would many of our past and some great presidents have been excluded
from holding office, it also means that in the future one’s ability to lead or
to get anything done, to protect our country from both foreign and domestic
threats, the ability to actually carry out the duties of the office, become
unimportant and secondary. Qualification and ability
will mean nothing while likability will be the gold standard. Yet likability does not mean that one can
actually do the job.
Likability is subjective.
Of course it plays into one’s opinions about whom they support, but it
is not a qualification for office. And
lack of likability is not an impeachable offense.
It is well past time that the Democrats acknowledge this and
return to the real world where they perform their duties to the American people
rather than act out their hatred against a personality they do not like.
In a well-written piece in The Hill titled “The Mueller report
concludes it was not needed” (LINK ),
Kevin Brock writes: “A cabal of politicians and bureaucrats frivolously and
cynically manipulated the levers of government to further their own political
greed and lust for power by trying to exploit a falsehood. It cost us over $30
million and needlessly pitted Americans against one another.”
Those of us left in the reality where there are far better
things to do with our tax dollars than spend it to gratify an obsession against
a disliked personality need to say “Enough!”
And if that call is not heard, then let us say it a different way – at the
polls. For if we do not end this
insanity, it will likely end our country
as we know it.
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