A new word for Donald Trump's vocabulary
I've been known to bang my head against a wall (figuratively at least) but I'm not dumb enough to think I could do anything to add the words "humble" or "polite" to the vocabulary of the man who now calls himself the "presumptive Republican nominee." But it's that presumption that is an indicator he needs to learn a new word. That along with his claim that Ted Cruz and John Kasich should quit the race because neither of them can win enough delegates to be a first round nominee. The word is "spoiler."
Let's be clear. Of the 25 million primary votes cast in the Republican primaries thus far, Donald Trump has received the most of any single candidate. This is true. What is also true is that 15 million of those 25 million votes were cast for someone other than Donald Trump. That's a plurality, not a majority. So if Kasich and or Cruz want to stay in the race to try to prevent Trump from turning his plurality of votes into the majority of delegates, they have every right to.
The lesson to be learned here is from the 1980 general election. Actually there are two lessons to be learned. The first is that you don't quit before the race is over. Had President Carter waited until after the California polls were closed to deliver his concession speech, some of the congressional races on the West Coast might have ended differently. Bobbi Fiedler, who defeated a ten-term Democrat in winning election to the House of Representatives in 1980 would have almost certainly lost has Carter not conceded early. She's not the only one.
But there's something more important to glean from the Carter presidency than just his early concession speech. In Douglas Brinkley's excellent book on the Carter presidency, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, Professor Brinkley writes about a survey that a politics buff named Kenneth Kline did after the 1980 election. Mr. Kline sent a questionnaire to 200 prominent people, asking questions about why President Carter had lost. The following is excerpted from Professor Brinkley's book:
"Kline's cover letter pointed out that it had been only four years since Carter had been anointed the perfect elixir to as suage the political ills during the 1970s, when Americans still raw from the trauma of Vietnam sat transfixed before their television sets watching the Nixon administration unravel. By 1976, America's bicentennial year, a nation disheartened by political corruption capped by a suspicious presidential pardon wanted to believe in something--and there was Jimmy Carter, a devout evangelical Christian who promised "to make government as good as its people." So what happened?
Nearly every U.S. senator Kline polled, from William Proxmire on the left to Barry Goldwater on the right, attributed the Carter presidency's implosion to the prolonged Iran hostage crisis and the stagnant U.S. economy. Republican senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina put it in grander terms, boasting that Carter's defeat was part of a paradigm shift that "marked the decline and fall of the public's faith in statist liberalism ... the idea that the solution to all our problems as a nation and as individuals is to be found in some sort of intervention by [the] federal government."
Even those who were not overtly hostile were melancholy over what might have been. Responding to Kline's survey, Father Hesburgh wrote, "I have always had the feeling that [Carter] is a good man, but somehow was not able to bring his vision to reality. That is not unusual on this earth." This benign assessment was shared by many, including Jesse Jackson and Billy Graham. Veteran NBC News commentator David Brinkley summed the matter up crisply in 1981:
The Los Angeles Times published an editorial calling Donald Trump unfit to be president. Like any individual they are entitled to that opinion. I happen to agree with it. The big unanswered question is, why do people support the Donald in the face of the fact that Trump does lack the experience and temperament to be a president?
Let's be clear. Of the 25 million primary votes cast in the Republican primaries thus far, Donald Trump has received the most of any single candidate. This is true. What is also true is that 15 million of those 25 million votes were cast for someone other than Donald Trump. That's a plurality, not a majority. So if Kasich and or Cruz want to stay in the race to try to prevent Trump from turning his plurality of votes into the majority of delegates, they have every right to.
The lesson to be learned here is from the 1980 general election. Actually there are two lessons to be learned. The first is that you don't quit before the race is over. Had President Carter waited until after the California polls were closed to deliver his concession speech, some of the congressional races on the West Coast might have ended differently. Bobbi Fiedler, who defeated a ten-term Democrat in winning election to the House of Representatives in 1980 would have almost certainly lost has Carter not conceded early. She's not the only one.
But there's something more important to glean from the Carter presidency than just his early concession speech. In Douglas Brinkley's excellent book on the Carter presidency, The Unfinished Presidency: Jimmy Carter's Journey Beyond the White House, Professor Brinkley writes about a survey that a politics buff named Kenneth Kline did after the 1980 election. Mr. Kline sent a questionnaire to 200 prominent people, asking questions about why President Carter had lost. The following is excerpted from Professor Brinkley's book:
"Kline's cover letter pointed out that it had been only four years since Carter had been anointed the perfect elixir to as suage the political ills during the 1970s, when Americans still raw from the trauma of Vietnam sat transfixed before their television sets watching the Nixon administration unravel. By 1976, America's bicentennial year, a nation disheartened by political corruption capped by a suspicious presidential pardon wanted to believe in something--and there was Jimmy Carter, a devout evangelical Christian who promised "to make government as good as its people." So what happened?
Nearly every U.S. senator Kline polled, from William Proxmire on the left to Barry Goldwater on the right, attributed the Carter presidency's implosion to the prolonged Iran hostage crisis and the stagnant U.S. economy. Republican senator Jesse Helms of North Carolina put it in grander terms, boasting that Carter's defeat was part of a paradigm shift that "marked the decline and fall of the public's faith in statist liberalism ... the idea that the solution to all our problems as a nation and as individuals is to be found in some sort of intervention by [the] federal government."
Even those who were not overtly hostile were melancholy over what might have been. Responding to Kline's survey, Father Hesburgh wrote, "I have always had the feeling that [Carter] is a good man, but somehow was not able to bring his vision to reality. That is not unusual on this earth." This benign assessment was shared by many, including Jesse Jackson and Billy Graham. Veteran NBC News commentator David Brinkley summed the matter up crisply in 1981:
* He had no base in the Democratic party and few friends in the federal government, making it difficult for him to achieve his purposes.
* Despite his intelligence, he had a vindictive streak, a mean streak, that surfaced frequently and antagonized people,
* He became so absorbed in detail he never was able to articulate a coherent public policy, foreign or domestic.
* Several failures during his term were not his fault, but nevertheless hurt him politically: inflation, the hostages, the blundered rescue attempt....
* The extravagant promises in his campaign generally were not kept. Many could not have been kept and he should never have made them.
* And [he exhibited some] examples of excruciatingly bad taste, such as telling an insulting and unfunny joke [about Montezuma's revenge] at a dinner in Mexico City."Several of those bullet points describe Trump to a T. Bad taste. Vindictive and mean streaks. Inability to articulate a coherent foreign policy, although it is for a reason that is exactly opposite to that of Carter; as Trump has no details rather than an absorption in detail.
The Los Angeles Times published an editorial calling Donald Trump unfit to be president. Like any individual they are entitled to that opinion. I happen to agree with it. The big unanswered question is, why do people support the Donald in the face of the fact that Trump does lack the experience and temperament to be a president?
posted by me at 12:44 PM
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