Too Close For Comfort

Being the creatures that we are, we tend to bend the arc of our lives toward risk. Otherwise, how would we make progress?

We see a sign on a white picket fence, and it says, “Wet Paint.” The urge to touch the paint is almost overwhelming, isn’t it? We have to find out if the paint is dry, maybe just a little tacky, or, as the sign clearly says, still wet.

We see a posting by an icy pond that says, “Danger! Thin Ice!” Don’t we cautiously take a step and crunch the ice under a boot? How about: “Bridge Ices Before Road.” What does that even mean, anyway? So, we step on the gas.

In November 2016, the warning signs were everywhere. Many of them were even flashing red: “Elect Donald Trump at the Risk of Losing Our Democracy.”

He was loud, crude, untamed, irresponsible, misogynistic, unqualified, uneducated, and downright dangerous — and we elected him anyway. The only alternative had a baggage train a mile long, and who wanted “Bubba Bill” back in the White House, unfettered, to chase the female interns?

The duck-tailed mullet and the “Access Hollywood” audio recording should have been enough, but they weren’t. And, here we are, four years later, with pandemic failure, record unemployment, crippling national debt, diplomatic catastrophe, and democracy in America at a tipping point.

We bent the arc of risk to the breaking point. But, as I always believed, the American people, or at least a good majority of them, saw through the Trump charade and bent the arc back.

But it was close. We could have lost it all. As it is, Trump has done considerable damage to our institutions and the rule of law. It will take most, if not all, of Joe Biden’s first term to get the guardrails back in place and clean up the mess. But I believe he and Kamala can do it.

It would have been better if the Trump Era hadn’t happened at all, but since it did, let’s hope we’ve learned the lessons we need to have learned.

First and foremost, we now know how to recognize a charlatan when we see one. We know, without question, that no matter how bad gridlock in Washington, D.C., may seem, the solution will never again be to elect an unqualified “rule-breaker,” or someone who says, “I’m going to shake things up!” No shaking in the future, thank you — we’ve had quite enough.

This train wreck of a presidency has also taught us that certain qualifications in presidential candidates are required, beyond simple native-born citizenship and a qualifying age.

At the very least, all major candidates for president must be made to disclose their financial records immediately upon getting the nomination of their party. This would include a minimum of the last 10 years of tax returns. Their medical histories should likewise be an open book. I’ve also said before, and will keep saying it until I’m gone, that anyone who wants to be president must have had elective experiences in government at some level and a minimum of two years of military service.

Trumpism will fade — and disappear quickly. There will be no presidency for any of the Trump children. But there are still two challenges with the Trump legacy.

First, the Republican Party must be rebuilt from the ground up. True Republicans (and I consider myself in this category) understand that Trump was never one of us. He was, first and foremost, an opportunist. Had the right conditions for him existed in the Democratic Party, he would have run as a Democrat.

This means that we true Republicans must cast out from the party the Lindsay Grahams and Mitch McConnells and all of those senators and congresspersons who supported Trump. They belong in a party unto themselves and their perverse leader. A new set of Republicans must rise, and they are out there — perhaps led initially by Mitt Romney or Ben Sasse or Charlie Baker and the hereditary acolytes of John McCain.

The second challenge is to bring back into the mainstream of American politics the 70 million-plus who voted for Trump in 2020. As recent polls show, a significant number of these voters truly believe that Trump was cheated out of a second term — somehow. And why do they believe this? Because that’s what Trump is telling them.

The 50 million people who voted for Al Gore in 2000 felt the same way, but when Al Gore, the patriot and good citizen that he is, graciously conceded the election, after a bitter and hard-fought post-election controversy, the world returned to normal and life went on.

It’s what presidents from John Adams forward have done, time after time, to ensure the peaceful transition of power, and it has worked every time — until now. Of all the terrible things Donald Trump has done during his blighted four years in office, being a sore, bitter and vindictive loser is right up there near the top. (Costing America tens of thousands of innocent lives by bungling the pandemic has to be the worst sin he committed.)

It leaves his voters in a terrible place. Instead of them being able to good-naturedly say, “Just wait until next time!” as half the fans at every football game end up saying, they are fed lies, lies and more lies.

This must end.

Outside of binding up the country with effective measures to fight the virus, Joe Biden’s biggest task will be to find a way to reach out to Trump voters and bring them back into mainstream America — the America that we all knew and loved so well until Trump nearly destroyed it all.

Yes, that was close — very close. Much too close for comfort.

And you know, of course, that I am “mostly right.”