Right in the centre - What really counts?
- Details
- Published on Monday, October 15, 2018
By Ken Waddell
Neepawa Banner & Press
One has to wonder what has happened to the political talent pool in the United States. In the days leading up to the 2016 presidential election, I pondered both privately and publicly about the quality of the candidates.
Donald Trump was pushing 70, not a pleasant man and not the best speaker by any means. He was self-funded, which means he didn’t have to appear to cow-tow to any group in particular. Some of his opponents for the nomination were pretty smart individuals, but some were pretty dumb if judged by their debate words and tactics.
In the end, he stated his case strongly and he won. Donald Trump mined a strong seam of voter sentiment that ran a lot deeper than journalists and opponents imagined. The big cities didn’t like him but the smaller cities, small towns and rural America, at least in comparison to Hillary Clinton, did like what he had to say and they voted for him.
And maybe that was a factor, they liked what he had to say more than they actually liked him.
The Democrats, and most of the media, decided they wanted Hillary Clinton. She was also pushing 70, but she had some other definite disadvantages. For one, she wasn’t Barack Obama. She said some dumb things, just like Trump’s opponents in the Republican nomination race. She discounted Trump supporters as “deplorables”, coining a new word for most of us who hadn’t thought that deplorable could be a noun.
Underlying the U.S voter mood was a factor that most journalists and analysts missed. A large number of voters who had supported Obama in 2008 and 2012 looked at whether the eight years of Obama had improved their lives and concluded it had not. They actually voted for Trump.
Now that Trump has had two years in office, it appears, and I say appears for a reason, that he has stood up for his country. He has certainly got China and North Korea’s attention. Not sure if that is good or bad. He says he will move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. Before Canadians let their head explode over that issue, remember Canadian Prime Minister Joe Clark said similar things in the 1980s. It looks like Trump out-smarted our current prime minister by the changes to NAFTA. One Canadian cartoonist showed Justin Trudeau and Chrystia Freeland walking away from the trade talks wearing only shirts, no pants, saying “Well at least we didn’t lose our shirt.”
When one looks past the showboating by Trump, it seems that the U.S. economy is doing well with record lows in unemployment. Some will remember Hillary’s husband, President Bill Clinton famously saying, “It’s the economy, stupid.” To many, that is true.
When we look at this whole picture, one has to wonder why two 70 year old presidential candidates with huge loads of baggage, can possibly be the best and the brightest that the whole country has to offer. In total contrast, either party could have been fronted with what could been a much different scenario. Both parties could have ran 50 year old black women. In all of the United States, surely there would be better candidates than what they ended up with.
Then take a look at the Supreme Court nomination, a middle aged white guy. If Trump had really wanted to make a clear statement that few of his opponents would have been able to denounce, why didn’t he nominate a conservative black woman. It’s not as if the Supreme Court of the United States is overloaded with blacks or women.
Perhaps the problem is that U.S. politics is so mired in hypocrisy. Instead of debating and perhaps defeating the nomination of the judge nominee based on demographics, the Democrats decided to go after the morality card. The nominee may have assaulted a young woman, 36 years ago, at a high school party. But how in heaven’s name can either party go after the morality card when Trump has so many allegations against him, Bill Clinton against him and the Democratic darling of the 1960s, John F. Kennedy had against him? It’s a sad thing when morality only matters in America when it is convenient.
There is a conservative wave sweeping America (and Canada) and it has little to do with morality. It has a lot more to with reality and that reality is that the economy and jobs seem to come ahead of morality.
Disclaimer: The writer serves as a volunteer president of the Manitoba Community Newspaper Association. The views expressed in this column are the writer’s personal views and are not to be taken as being the view of the MCNA board or Banner & Press staff.
