This past week our family vacationed in the Florda panhandle. It was a delightful news break, only interrupted by Biden’s withdrawal from the presidential race. We followed the revelations on the attempted assassination of President Trump. Shocking unpreparedness by the Secret Service. My hope was to do some reading, which I did, and some writing on a chapter of my new book. I accomplished that also. I had no plans to indulge in the silliness that passes for news these days. But it was hard to avoid the major stories.
I have written in this space in weeks past that 2024 will be a wild ride toward Election Day. That has now been proven to be an understatement.
Indeed, politics in our country has taken many strange turns this year. It began with two superannuated candidates for President that many Americans had hoped would not be recycled. But in a strange way, the horrible policies of the current administration summoned the former President to run for reelection. It was as if the Democrats were making a case to voters to toss them and return the White House to a Republican they had defeated in the most recent election.
Imagine for a moment a Hollywood script writer barging into the office of a movie producer declaring that he has a blockbuster idea for a new movie. One candidate defeats a sitting President. The new President performs so horribly that the former President challenges him. In the process, the former President outpolls the current one so conclusively that the current President’s party forces him out of the race. Then the current President is replaced by his Vice President who had polled worse than her boss. And the script writer offers up that before the current President folds his campaign tent, there is an attempted assassination of the former President!
At that point, it’s not hard to also imagine the producer rising calmly from his desk, escorting the script writer to the door, and saying, “Look, why don’t you take a few days off and get some rest.” Yep, unbelievable. That’s the only way you can describe what has occurred in the past few months. Reality is stranger than fiction.
Things will get stranger, I predict, as we approach Election Day. President Trump has a record from his days in the White House. And his new challenger, Vice President Kamala Harris has one too. Heretofore, she has been notable for word salads, lack of focus, and a hearty laugh that resembles a strange cackle. Off-putting. But she has support among Democrats who utterly detest Donald Trump. The election is set up to be a close one, and the outcome will determine our future as a nation.
I’m a conservative much more than I am a Republican. There was no possibility I would support any candidate the Democrats would proffer, certainly not Biden or Harris. Both are completely out of step with my world view. And while I have my reservations about the character of the man I am supporting, Donald Trump, he nonetheless had policies that were good for the economy, the border, international affairs, and law and order. Moreover, he prosecuted a successful campaign to destroy ISIS and gave a wakeup call to NATO to begin paying their fair share in defense spending for the alliance. Indeed, there was actually hope for a semblance of peace in the Middle East. All of that evaporated with the election of Joe Biden. And for that reason, I am ready to see Mr. Trump return to office and get the nation back on track.
But first he must win. And to do that he must conduct a campaign that focuses on the issues, not personalities. He must also be careful not to be seduced by Democrat name-calling to engage in similar petty acts. This is particularly true with Harris who has taken to calling him “weird.” One can only be tempted to call her “wacky.” But better yet simply focus on her policies and statements of the past. There’s a treasure trove of them that reveals she is truly the most extreme progressive politician ever to run for President. Calling her policies “wacky” would be acceptable, but Trump should be judicious in this.
To be sure, the economy and lingering inflation is a real problem for the Democrats. Insisting the economy is improving amounts to an arsonist returning to the fire to clean up the mess and declaring “See, I’m making it better!” So too the international scene where Biden has presided over a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, failed to deter Russia in Ukraine, and wavered on support for Israel. And of course, there is the border. That is a complete catastrophe.
Yep. That’s so wacky that even Hollywood couldn’t imagine it.
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