This week, the president entered into an absurd, degrading war of words with an influential senator from his own party. Without warning, the President of the United States accused Senator Bob Corker (R-Tennessee) of cowardice for his decision to retire following his current term, and the Senator in turn chose to debase himself by engaging in the exchange of schoolyard taunts.
Usually, I use this space to highlight aspects of the political situation that I don't think get the attention they deserve or place individual events in their larger context. I acknowledge that everything that appears here is my personal reading or opinion, but in general I aim higher than simply expressing my feelings.
This post is about how I feel. The more I think and read about the exchange between Senator Corker and the president, the angrier I get. All of the reporting that I have seen on the subject states at least in passing that the feelings the senator expressed - that the president is an impulsive political amateur who has to be constantly managed lest he do irreversible harm - are general ones among Senate Republicans, and have been present for some time.
It seems that the personal attack on Senator Corker broke his restraint in expressing those feelings. For my part, I am outraged he had the temerity to express them publicly at this juncture. If I were a member of the United States Senate, charged with making policy that effects 350 million people at home and literally billions more abroad, I would be mortified to admit to the world that I had not only countenanced but actively supported the election and administration of a man I knew to be a buffoon.
Yet this is precisely what the Republican Party establishment did. It is an extremely telling fact that throughout the primary process, in spite of the fact that everyone involved was well aware of exactly who and what Donald Trump is, the party chose to coyly feign neutrality for fear of aggravating its base voters. Those same Republicans, as Trump demonstrated his manifest unfitness for the office by pettily attacking rivals with personal insults, discounting the opinions of a judge based on his parentage, declaring that he alone among mortals had the capacity to solve the problems of the nation, denigrating the media for noticing his troubled relationship with the truth, and openly admitting a longstanding pattern of sexual harassment, continued to support his candidacy.
The Republican establishment tolerated and promoted Donald Trump because they believed that they could cash in on his populist credibility to make unpopular pet projects of theirs - repealing the ACA, enormous tax cuts tilted to the wealthy, etc - politically palatable. They were so committed to those goals, and so blinded by their desire to return to power after eight years in the wilderness under Obama, that they were willing to place an erratic incompetent with authoritarian tendencies and a wildly overblown sense of his own ability into the most powerful office in the world to achieve them. It is scarcely an overstatement to say that they have traded the dignity of the presidency and materially harmed the political health of this nation for a tax cut.
I understand that it is important for Republicans to oppose the president when he does obnoxious and absurd things. As someone concerned for the country, I welcome that opposition when it appears. Yet at the same time, I have neither sympathy nor patience for any Republican who complains about their treatment at Trump's hands when they knew all along exactly who they were supporting. It was the credibility of establishment Republicans who decided that the unity of the party was more important than having a competent president that allowed Trump, by the narrowest of margins, to attain the office. The fact that he himself cares for party unity, or anything else at all, precisely to the extent that he finds it useful seems not to have occurred to them.
So for Bob Corker to complain that Trump has insulted him, when insult is the only political skill the president has displayed in three-plus years as a public figure, is disingenuous and infuriating. For him to acknowledge, in the course of a personal spat, the inadequacy of the president he was complicit in inflicting on the country, displays an ivory-tower aloofness so removed from the everyday experiences of Americans under this administration that I am astonished he has the audacity to serve the remainder of his term as an alleged representative of the people. For me personally, it reveals a deficiency of judgment and character unworthy of someone in public office.
No comments:
Post a Comment