I have no idea who will win the election for the Presidency of the United States 2020. The polls in the last week would suggest some tightening but the key swing states remain in the Biden column, or too close to call. In a truly bizarre, unprecedented strategy to an election, the Democrat party determined that the “hate” for the persona of Donald J Trump was so great that, the best election would be Trump against generic democrat, or more specifically, Trump versus Not Trump. Any democrat candidate with a core value would open the discussion to an actual in depth analysis of their position on issues. A “generic” democrat would have a marshmallow core, absent of any formed opinion other than “build back better”. In Joseph Biden,they found a 47 year political caricature of the ‘experienced’ Washington insider, absent of achievement, enmeshed in the process of the deep state, desperate for one last grasp for the ring and willing to represent any opinion necessary to be generic. The supreme contrast with an over opinionated Trump could not be more stark. At this point, Trump is holding rallies before thousands of enthusiastic supporters who see him as the holy crusader for their personal sacrifice and ignored contribution to the fabric of American success. Biden is holding rallies before tens of people who work for the campaign, as enormous work has gone into removing any semblance of a Biden directed future, in favor of his cloaked deep state minders that will actually reorient the future. It is just what the Democrats and jilted insider republicans have been working tirelessly for four years. If you see what we have done to Trump, you will be careful to stay out of the way of what we are about to do to you.
It just might work, and the money and polls are betting that the public just wants to make the constant turmoil stop.The tactic may have created a Stockholm syndrome among the voting electorate. Just tell me what to do, to make it all go away.
But after all, this remains the national election of the most powerful, and freest nation upon the earth. If the decision is to divest from the current leader to an unknown future, an in-depth review of what has transpired with this leader, and what would be given up, is the mark of a sophisticated electorate. What is objectively clear and indisputable after perceptive analysis, is that Donald J Trump has been …. a very consequential President. I’m not kidding. Despite all the bluster of how chaotic and dysfunctional the Trump administerial style has been reported as, the results objectively reviewed are impressive, cross all the facets of judgement in both domestic and foreign policy achievements, and perhaps most amazing of all, align with candidate Trump’s 2016 promises to an unprecedented extent. If you voted for Trump in 2016 based upon what he proposed to accomplish, you saw fruition in spades. In four short years, under assault from almost the first day that would have dislodged and defeated a lesser man, the President has gotten it done. It is said that Trump’s personality fundamentally is the gasoline that drives the hatred that could lose him in 2020 election. If so, it says more of us as an electorate that can not discern the simple, telling truth, that a democracy works best on holding a politician accountable for what they do, not what they say. Take the pugnacious Trump persona out of the equation and what is left is, one of the best four year stretches of accomplishments in decades.
America is Back : For 20 years since the dot.com bust, the consensus by several administrations was that America was in a period of progressive economic decline and obsolescence. America, beset with a mythic past that “covered over” foundational sins, was inherently unfair, and coolly dismissive of inequities, was best served by accepting the decline and turning inward toward a ‘many out of one’ future – the antithesis of E Pluribus Unum. President Obama stated the inherent contradictions would require ‘getting used to’ a moribund economy with growth of one percent or less as far as the eye could see. Despite doubling the national debt, Obama clamped down on any economic tools that would potentially fuel an American entrepreneurial driven economic response , the only means to conceivably finance the growing burden demanded of the productive American. Convinced of the need of America to be a global cooperator rather than a leader, any unique American advantages based upon its specific principles of free will and incentive would have to be suppressed.
Trump immediately drove a stake in that corruptive thinking through two massive philosophical conversions away from the mindset that strangulated business and innovation. First, a revolutionary removal of the regulatory choke hold of government bureaucrats on business, and second, reduction of business capital gains taxes more in line with America’s competitors. Within 18 months of attaining office, a historic American driven economic recovery was spectacularly under way, with a unique combination of growth across all economic sectors and profound reduction in unemployment in minority populations that had heretofore been unable to share in the middle class bounty available to others. President Trump’s unyielding instruction to his negotiating teams to put America First reoriented strategy in trade agreements such as NAFTA, the Pacific Rim agreement and relations with America’s chief competitor and economic advisary, China. The underlying goal of restoring America’s manufacturing prowess, returning supply lines for crucial supplies such as pharmaceuticals, and bringing home factories has begun to finally swing the trade pendulum back toward the US, to the benefit of the long suffering American middle class. Then, despite a self induced sudden catastrophic contracture of the economy by greater than 30 percent overnight as a consequence of the pandemic, the media driven, unfairly derided Trump management of the crisis upon closer objective inspection stands tall,with nearly overnight creation of logistics and restoration of resources to address the virus, emergency underwriting of individuals, small business and healthcare to prevent economic collapse, and shepherding of a manhattan-style project to formulate a vaccine through private enterprise in a previously inconceivably short period of time. Trump has managed in two quarters, despite daunting odds, a V shaped recovery that is the envy of the rest of the world.
America is Free: America is free to make decisions in its own interest because it is energy independent for the first time since the 1960’s. President Trump released the Keystone pipeline for building, removed America from ludicrously unbalanced shackles of the Kyoto Agreement, unharnessed the fracking revolution from artificial suppression, and in three short years created an America that is the leading energy producer in the world and, incredibly, a net exporter of oil and natural gas. This spectacular turnaround has had untold positives beyond the expansion of a multi-million employment industry. Most critically, it has released America from the choke chain of Middle Eastern despots, removing the responsibility of America to defend the oil lanes and be subservient to local toxic entanglements. Suddenly a way forward out of endless spillage of American blood and treasure to mitigate Middle East conflict and Palestinian intransigence has presented itself in huge opportunities for stability in the region for the first time in decades. And of that Kyoto Agreement? Well, America has managed through conversion to natural gas to meet all the expectations of being a signee in regard to carbon reduction, without having its hands tied like so many of its European partners, as signees, consigned to the impossible mandates of an agreement that leaves the largest carbon emitters, China and India, off the hook.
America is Restoring its Founding Principles: The revolution of the enlightenment was embodied in the principles of the crafted document known as the American Constitution. America’s unique self corrective tendencies to orient towards justice and protect the rights of individuals to self actualization was fortified by this profound document and its carefully constructed individual rights and delineated limitation of government power. Despite the derision of the elites regarding President Trump’s supposed superficial understanding of constitutional law and pugnacious personality, compared to many of his predecessors, he has acted with far better Constitutional instincts. Despite demands by many opponents to act as dictator in the pandemic crisis, Trump respected the limits of federal power and allowed individual states to orient their own unique responses to the crisis. Faced within days of entering office with a special prosecutor investigating a concocted treasonous claim devised by his corrupt election opponent and her deep state collaborators, Trump, without claiming executive privilege as so many previous administrations had, fully cooperated in unprecedented fashion with the investigation, until progressive facts identified the nefarious goals and conspiratorial actions of his accusers. Trump has in four short years re-oriented the entire judicial branch of government back toward constitutional principles, bringing three originalists to the supreme court, and hundreds of lower level judges, in line to return the interpretation of law back to the principles of justice rather than attempting to divine intent or ‘balance the scales’ with a hand towards personal feelings. The rights of every individual to get a fair trial based upon the presumption of objective understanding of the rule of law has received a dramatic injection.
America is a Nation again: No promise resonated with the voting population of 2016 as did Trump’s assertion to “build the Wall” on the southern border. The underlying reality was that a porous border with Mexico had created innumerable pathologies. America’s generous proclivity to accept with open arms those who yearned for a better life had over the decades had deteriorated into an intolerable influx of uncontrolled invasion of masses of illegals circumventing the requirement to accept not only American residence but American responsibilities of citizen-hood, rule of law, and community responsibility. Border states and progressively non-border states became inundated with millions of people using services in education and health care, ignoring laws and collapsing local authority. Big Business and Big Farming loved the influx, allowing extremely cheap labor through illegals without having to provide the other means of benefit support associated with employment of a citizen. Jobs were either exported, or lost by citizens who had entered the legal way. The porous border allowed massive increases in dangerous human, and especially child, trafficking, influx of drugs , and the crime upon innocents associated with it. Trump’s derided solution was to simply build a wall, and realize all the secondary benefits of simply returning rationality and control to immigration. Despite massive efforts through congressional obstruction and litigation to derail the wall, 400 miles have now been built of the 700 miles recommended to restore control. The effect has been dramatic with over 90 % reduction in illegal transit through effected communities behind the new wall. The overall effect of course, is the increasing value of a legitimate immigration process, and the increased dignity and recognition of American values by the recipient, and markedly increased accountability to the worker by the employer The elites who condescendingly assume that hispanics have come to America with a different set of inspirations from that driving all previous immigrants, will be progressively shocked at how popular the re-orientation of the immigrant experience toward American freedoms and responsibilities is among the Hispanic community like all previously driven to immigrate. Freedom accepted with an earned place in the American Dream is a bedrock of the American story. The entire political class, Republican and Democrat alike, was paralyzed to act, until Trump came along and through sheer will, got it done.
America is a Respected Power again: America faced an existential foreign policy crisis at the beginning of the Trump Administration. Despite having an unrivaled military projection and prowess, American power was under siege and threat from multiple missteps and miscalculations. The previous 16 years had left President Trump a set of profoundly weak positions. The entirely understandable push of the Bush administration to respond to the threat of Islamic terrorism had morphed uncontrollably into a series of endless military commitments in Iraq and Afghanistan based upon a woefully mis-guided desire to reorient the cultures of both cultures toward modern western democracies and values. Trillions of dollars and thousands of lives had not improved the circumstances on the ground beyond the removal of a tyrant in Saddam Hussein. The Obama administration naively assumed the failure was in America’s lack of apology for perceived slights, determined to restrict America’s influence through apology, and reorient control of the region to Iran, the advisary of the Sunni Arab nations and a mortal enemy of America’s own ally, Israel. The result of Obama’s ludicrous Iran agreement was increased belligerence of Iran despite a treaty designed to give it markedly increased hegemony, unimpeded development of ballistic missile capacity and an avenue to a nuclear weapon within ten years. The distain in the region was palpable and led to the pathologic rise and expansion of ISIS, the re- entry of Russian influence in the region through Syria, and a revolutionary expansion of radical Iranian influence in the person of the Revolutionary Guards led by Qasem Soleimani.
In three short years Trump has completely reversed the losing hand. ISIS was driven back, and crushed, and its genocidal leader Al-Baghdadi killed. Syria risked return to chemical warfare and Trump responded with a destruction of their airfield designed for delivery; Russia had mercenaries threaten American troops and Trump immediately eliminated the threat. The disastrous Iranian deal was abrogated by Trump and sanctions returned ; Soleimani ignored Trump’s warning to stay out of Iraq and when he ignored the warning, he was eliminated, with massive loss of face to Iran in the region Their desperate, pathetic response was to accidentally shoot done one of their own commercial aircraft.
Trump determined to completely upend the traditional diplomacy of the middle east to demand concessions from Israel in order to get Palestinian cooperation; he simply informed the Palestinians that the world had moved on, and encouraged them to improve their position rather than demand Israel’s contrition. The Palestinians, assuming the usual American eagerness to be seen as conciliatory, refused. Rather than accepting the traditional view that the Palestinian question remained the lodestone of any peace initiative, Trump simply pivoted directly to the Arab nations progressively aligned against the threat of Iran, and worked with them to see that their self interests in a modern world would be most bountiful orienting toward a positive relationship with the economic powerhouse Israel, rather than staying with tactics that had failed for decades. The result is stunning – direct recognition and bilateral business relationships between three Arab states and Israel, and counting – the first substantial movement toward regional peace in three decades.
Europe, positioned to despise Trump, has been forced by him to reexamine their relationship with America and Russia. NATO had increasingly become a paper tiger defense with nations completely abrogating their responsibility to adequately support, much less upgrade, their defense capacity. Russia convinced Germany to become beholden to the Russians for energy needs with the Baltic Sea pipeline. Trump demanded that Europe meet its 2% GDP commitment to NATO, or risk ending the seventy year American commitment. He hectored the Germans into ending their commitment to the pipeline. He ended the laconic support of Ukraine with blankets provided by Obama in response to the Russian invasion of Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, and provided real defensive weapons, stopping Russia’s threat to Ukraine’s survival and demanded the Europeans do their part as well to sanction bad Russian behavior. Russia is not about to roll over in their own neighborhood but they now realize the American push has restored the European backbone.
On the Pacific rim, China for decades had sold the world on the idea that economic bounty would eventually calm its radical communist core and allow a progressively modern attitude in international relations. Instead, for two decades China took advantage of its favorite nation trading status to steal intellectual property, maintain unequal trade deficits, ignore environmental responsibilities, decimate their Hong Kong, Uyghur and Tibetan communities, threaten Taiwan, militarily intimidate its neighbors in the South China Sea, and corrupt American academia and politicians. This has showed itself blatantly in their Covid deception, releasing onto the unknowing world a global pandemic, and working to gain monetary access influencing the potential next American President Joe Biden. Trump has for decades demanded a more balanced trading relationship with China, improved behaviors, and has been engaged in a trade war. The result is the first time in decades that anyone has stood up to the Chinese. The Pacific Rim countries have been the most thankful, and Trump’s contrarian approach has gotten people from both parties (excepting Biden) to take a new look. The outcome will clearly extend beyond four years.
Trump has achieved the amazing outcome of projecting power and achieving American goals without starting a single new conflict, and closing the door on a few old ones. For that alone, he deserves the laurels of greater Presidents.
The Cleanest President Ever: There can be no argument against Donald Trump being the most investigated President ever. The effort to investigate every pore of his being began even before he was President and continued every day of his Presidency. His business relationships, international actions, taxes, personal relationships, and actions with the deep state were dissected by the opposition candidate, a special prosecutor, 10 opposition prosecutors, an impeachment committee, the FBI, the CIA, and the entire weight of the American media – and they found….Nothing. Not a thing. After all the viciousness and character assassination, the history books will show an opposition candidate participated in her own dirty tricks to hide her corruption, an attempted coup from deep state ne’er do wells’, a 40 million dollar prosecutory disaster that only ended the reputation of the special prosecutor, and an impeachment attempt that ended up uncovering the actual corruption in Biden that they tried to find in Trump. You want a President who has been vetted beyond any doubt as to his motives? You got it in Donald J Trump.
Donald J Trump, flaws and all, has proven to be one of the more consequential Presidents in history. He deserves, more than most, another swing at the plate. I don’t know what the outcome of November 3rd(or beyond) will be, but if performance not personality is the gauge of American leadership, then Donald J Trump should win in a landslide. He has completely surprised me, and something I would never have said four years ago, I will say now. I will vote for him unreservedly.
Four More Years.