American Politics – Page 27

Let’s have a truce for Mr. Trump’s day.

January 20, 2017 by Peter Lowry

It all becomes real today. That person will become President of the United States of America and there is nothing we can do about it. We can share our shock with the rest of the world. We can ridicule the corrupted system that allowed it to happen. Finding fault is so much a fool’s game.

There is little consolation in that this despicable person was not the popular choice. All he won were the states necessary to win the key electoral votes. If it makes you feel any better, he had no reason to expect to win either. The situation during the election confused the candidates, their teams, the pollsters, the news media and the pundits. We all got it wrong.

In the last week of the campaign, we saw him as an angry, rude and truculent child. He was bitter and sensing defeat. There was no consolation.

What bothers us is that the stupid people who voted for him were under the impression that he would have some adults around to keep him from really screwing things up. Who has he ever listened to before, other than his father?

America just gave him the keys to the family car. At what point in time do you think he is going to learn how to drive?

He could become the first American President to attempt to break more laws than he signs into existence. Our fondest hope at this time is that his Republican Congress becomes so annoyed with him that they impeach him.

But it is hard to judge the competence of either the Administration or the Congress after that disgusting 2016 election. It was as though there was a pact between the voters and the candidates to disregard any attempt at civility, decency, honesty or good manners. From a political point of view the entire process was a disgrace from beginning to end.

It was an election that should leave all Americans feeling ashamed. That boor was allowed to stand on platforms all over America and turn obvious lies into a vulgar mantra. Not even the creator of the big lie technique, Dr. Joseph Goebbels (1897 – 1945), would have believed that people would be so gullible. It seems just enough Americans were.

We have heard that today’s inauguration speech by the new President will have precedents in inauguration speeches by Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy. We do hope the speech writers for the new President know the difference between quoting and plagiarism.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Let’s march to our own drummer.

January 11, 2017 by Peter Lowry

It was hardly a surprise when the Prime Minister’s Office said he was not attending Donald Trump’s inauguration in Washington next week. Frankly, the Canadian prime minister would just be in the way. It was more of a surprise that he would not be attending the concurrent world economic conference in Davos, Switzerland. It seems that our Prime Minister has decided he would rather talk to some Canadians that week.

It reminds us of the 1972 federal election that Pierre Trudeau almost lost because he said he was going to have a conversation with Canadians. It was because of that resulting minority government that Pierre Trudeau brought more political people into his office and gave Liberal organizer Keith Davey his old job back.

But there is no concern over our current prime minister missing Donald Trump’s inauguration and ‘celebration.’ And, frankly, the after parties could be quite depressing. Nor would Trump would want someone younger and better looking to compete with on the inauguration stage. He suffers enough just standing near outgoing President Obama. Obama’s eight years in the Oval Office have certainly greyed his hair but he is still a lot younger than his replacement.

It was quite a reach the other day when a writer tried to compare the impact Franklin Roosevelt had as President of the U.S. to the potential impact of Donald Trump. Trump might be a change-agent businessman but he is a special maverick breed of businessman: a developer. They play by different rules. It is like in the movie business, you are only as good as your last blockbuster. And besides, Roosevelt cared about people other than himself. Many would argue he was the greatest President Americans ever had.

Somebody must have said something to the powers that be in the Prime Minister’s office about the perceived elitism of our prime minister. Last year at the Davos gathering of the rich and famous, Justin Trudeau was the flavour of the month. Maybe there were just too many pictures fed back to Canada of him cavorting with the moneyed of the world. This year, those of us who belong to the hoi polloi get him.

We certainly hope that we will get him more fairly distributed than when the special parliamentary committee on electoral reform visited with Canadians last summer. More than 13 million Canadians in Ontario got a half day visit in Toronto while many smaller provinces got two or three visits.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

The adults are leaving the White House.

January 5, 2017 by Peter Lowry

We were never as concerned with George W. Bush as President of the United States. Everyone seemed to understand that ‘W’ is as dumb as a Texas hitching post, but we were probably wrong to assume there were some checks and balances on him. People thought they had more reason to fear Vice President Dick Cheney. He was the one who shot an acquaintance while they were out hunting quail.

But President Elect Donald Trump is more dangerous than either. His foolish shooting from the lip on Twitter is cause for great concern.

Talking to a Trump supporter recently we heard the tired and trite answer that there would be smart people around him to advise him. Our only comeback was that we hoped these grown-ups were not the same smart people who were supposed to keep George “W” from going to war with Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

The list of President Elect Trump’s proposed cabinet appointments—the millionaires and military rejects—is not giving us much confidence. Since Trump seems to have no specific agenda, he is inviting losers with their own agendas to join him in the White House playpen.

And when Trump ridicules the opinion of the U.S. military and the Central Intelligence Agency by tweeting that North Korea’s missiles cannot reach North America, he is obviously in need of some adult supervision. And any psychologist would tell him it is unwise to challenge the claims of someone with North Korean Leader Kim Jong-un’s obvious personality disorders.

And yet we hear that Trump’s current press secretary was interviewed and informed the news media that as President, Trump will continue to keep his followers informed on Twitter. It means that Trump will be the first President of the United States who cannot keep a coherent thought that is any longer than 140 characters.

And the challenge to computer hackers everywhere will be to hack into Trump’s Twitter account and send spurious twits. Can you imagine the panic at the White House when nobody has a list of the news media to inform them that it is not Mr. Trump threatening to nuke Mexico City?

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

The Roman God Janus is smiling.

January 1, 2017 by Peter Lowry

Looking both back and forward is a trick of a God such as Janus. Humans find it easiest to look ahead as we enter a new year. We have already written off the year behind us as a bad dream. And we have much excitement to look forward to in 2017.

In North America, the circus is coming to town in Washington with the inauguration of Donald Trump as President. Canadians might feel they have a ringside seat for this presidency but we can only hope to avoid the splatter.

Nobody here is worried about Trump building a northern wall to eliminate illegal immigration but then the Mexicans are not all that worried either. We can also expect that rewriting the North America Free Trade Agreement will not be of particularly high priority for the Trump administration either.

And we will have our home-grown turmoil in Canada as well. The first move of the American Kinder Morgan pipeline company to resume twining its pipeline to Burnaby, B.C. will set the drums pounding throughout the mountain forests. There will be troubles.

And, speaking of pipelines, corporate greed being what it is, watch for further ruptures of the Husky pipeline near the North Saskatchewan River. This is an old pipeline working at high pressure to pump more heated tar sands bitumen than it was originally designed to carry. And the sooner CBC stops calling it oil, the sooner fat-cat Premier Brad Wall of Saskatchewan will get his comeuppance.

Nor is the entire world just waiting for Mr. Trump. Dictator Bashar el-Assad has his own designs for his fiefdom of Syria and there are still scores to settle. The flimsy Russian-Turkey ceasefire in Syria might not be recognized by the Syrian murderer of women and children.

While Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel might think he can treat outgoing President Obama rudely, not all others agree. Great Britain might jump in to support Netanyahu but they just need to get everybody off the Brexit file for a bit. The rest of the world diplomatic corps is a tight community and they will wait an opportunity to show Netanyahu up for his bad manners towards Obama and his Secretary of State. America has always been a very good friend to Israel and Netanyahu needs to smarten up.

The New Year promises to be an interesting rollercoaster ride. Buckle up!

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Petticoats and pantsuits: The politics of gender.

December 29, 2016 by Peter Lowry

There is a double standard in writing about the politics of gender. A man has to be oh-so careful not to offend while female writers can tramp so carelessly on men. And today, we are supposed to commiserate with the female politicos still drowning their sorrows in gin fizzes over Hillary Clinton’s loss.

Face facts folks; Clinton lost because her brain trust could never figure out how to respond to Trump. They were a great political team trying to figure out how to deal with a totally irresponsible and apolitical opponent. Trump could say anything he wanted and did not care. Clinton was restricted within the bonds of political hyperbole.

Women seem to think that they should come on stronger than a man to win. They really do not have to do that. It only shows insecurity. Any individual, man or woman, has to play in their own playpen. You have to deal with the familiar and be yourself. One of the reasons that Clinton’s polls were up was that she had the experience to win the televised debates. It brought up her confidence and she thought she just had to stay strong through to November.

Her obvious problem down to the wire was that she let Trump continue to disrespect her. She seemed to think of her pantsuits as her armour. They did not protect her. Trump’s streams of lies about her stuck to her while a woman in more feminine attire would have had more protection. It would have allowed her to be more combative and to put the beast in his place.

Clinton made much of the so-called glass ceiling in her speeches. The reality in North American politics is that there is no ceiling, glass or otherwise.

Having worked with many politicians—male and female—over the years, you realize there is little difference to the voters.

The reality in 2016 in the United States was that Bernie Sanders would have defeated Donald Trump, given the chance. It was a year for radicalism, it was a year of tumult. There was an anger that needed to be addressed and the need for change was felt if not understood.

Hillary Clinton was caught in the maw of the machine. She had worked for her opening since the early 1990s. It never was the year of any ceiling being fractured. It was a year for the system to fail.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Are they making America great again?

December 28, 2016 by Peter Lowry

As much as there is an ongoing hullaballoo about President Elect Donald Trump as America runs up to his inauguration, we should never forget the people who elected him. It is quite likely that not even half these people can explain the process of the Electoral College but they are proud of their accomplishment. Their vote was a vote of protest. It was an admonition to their own politicians. It was pay-back time. It was doing the Lord’s work—in a strange way.

In 2016, a bilious billionaire became the instrument of those who see the American dream as a failure. And there appear to be more of those people than you might have thought. The reach of their anger covers the landscape of America. They are the coal miners of Appalachia, idled by the environmentalists concerned for global warming. They are the rust belt remnants who failed to adapt to new technologies, new economies and the exigencies of world trade. They are the downtrodden of state right-to-work laws who found sustenance only in being born again.

And can you believe that in 2016, Holy Rollers found their faith restored by an atheistic apparition with orange hair? He made a mockery of the god-fearing as they flocked to his banner. They bowed down to a misogynistic boor as he told them he was their new savior. He laughed at them. He used them.

Trump ridiculed the Republican Party and Republicans flocked to his banner. The politicians had been promising Nirvana and the reality was a dust bowl. Washington was enriching the richest and impoverishing the hoi polio. Congress acted as capricious children squabbling over the spoils of the war against the taxpayers.

And they accepted a liar as their candidate. He never told them how he would make America great again. Trump was that middle finger that they flipped to their politicians and yet they had no other choice to vent their anger on Congress. They still voted Republican.

And there is now a fifth rider joining the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Trump has been preparing his cabinet and warring with the outgoing administration. It will be a cabinet foreign to Republican lawmakers and there is little excuse for its inept choices. These generals and millionaires are ready to take the helm of the ship of state. They have no knowledge of Trump’s supporters nor do they care.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Reprising a year of bad bets.

December 25, 2016 by Peter Lowry

The regrets of a political junky can be many. After years of easy political prognostications, to be a failure and ground under the heel of a person such as Donald Trump is ignominy. The guy did not even appear on our political radar until March. And we foolishly picked him as an obvious loser.

But we must have known something when we touted him as a four-to-one bet against Clinton’s two-to-one on our morning line. We did not think his chances were as good but we allowed that he was in the running. We have made money at the track over the years on four-to-one horses. Our political instincts were in conflict with our handicapping.

Mind you our betting was also in conflict with our sense of decency. We really do not like Mr. Trump. This person is an affront to what we know about business, politics, world affairs and human-to-human civility.

Politics has always had a sad attraction for developers. They consider politicians to be usable and disposable. They wine them and dine them and buy them and then cast them aside. There are good developers and there are rich developers. Like in the movie industry, every project stands alone financially. Some projects are blockbusters and some are dogs. And the dogs get dog kennels. We have never seen a Trump project we would care to enter.

But the one thing we can assure you is that Donald Trump is no politician. He does not like them. They do not trust him. He fought with the Republican Party all the way to the Republican Convention in the midst of the Cleveland summer. He took over the convention and flipped the party establishment the bird! It was a time for the Trump Family Players.

But pundits were now wanting to believe that Hillary Clinton was ahead in the polls. Trump is so apolitical that he thought he was going to lose. He was truculent and self-absorbed. Even he failed to see the size of his vote and how it was distributed. It was not just the hot heads and holy rollers, it was the quiet of American Gothic. And it was the rust belt against Silicon Valley. The shock of November 8 sent a chill around the world.

But there is more to come. In the run-up to his inauguration, Donald Trump is showing his complete lack of understanding of policies and world affairs. He does not understand the difference between giving his opponents the finger and panicking the world over nuclear proliferation. Maybe, in all of this, his supporters will come to understand that he does not give a damn about them either.

Maybe, to borrow a line from Tiny Tim, we should just say “God bless us everyone.” We are going to need it!

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Who chose who?

December 17, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It is grating when we read about Ontario politics and a careless reporter refers to Patrick Brown as ‘winning’ the leadership of Ontario’s Conservatives. He hardly won it. It would be the same as saying Donald Trump won the most votes on November 8, 2016. He did not win the most votes; he won the United States’ Electoral College.

But there is little anyone can do about it now. Despite the questionable circumstances in both cases, it is too late for change.

You can have recounts for Clinton in Wisconsin, Michigan or Ohio and what are the chances? Sure, the FBI made improper allegations about Clinton and the CIA held back their allegations about the Russians helping Trump until after the election. Would it have made a difference? Who knows? The saddest part of it was Donald Trump claiming the election was rigged before hand, because he thought he was going to lose.

But Brown in Ontario is small potatoes compared to manipulations south of the border. All he did was steal the leadership of his Conservative Party. He dumped more than 40,000 new memberships on a party with less than 25,000 members. How did he do it? He cheated. He beat the popular choice of the Ontario PCs by his massive sign-ups of thousands of immigrants—mainly from the sub-continent of India.

Did all these newcomers to Ontario pay their own memberships? No. Obviously not! Were not some of them the same as those who were signed up to support Kathleen Wynne win the Liberal leadership two years earlier? Yes. The same organizers signed up the same people. It is so routine!

And do they pay their own membership fee? No. Payment is optional and most often ignored. Who cares?

Some of us care. Honestly still has to count for something in politics. Voters just assume both sides cheat and consider it part of the game.

But politics is not a game. Politics has a purpose to serve people. Political office is a position of trust. To give the finger to that trust is despicable.

Americans do not really deserve the turmoil of the next four years. They have chosen a President who is not political. He is not even democratic. He will make mistakes and he will cause problems—hopefully nothing that cannot be repaired.

Conversely, Ontario’s Progressive Conservative Party leader is a politician. He is a conniver and a sleaze. He is dishonest. He does not think he needs follow the rules. Think back to Michael Harris’ Ontario at the turn of the century. Mr. Brown could be far worse.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

You only know what Donald Trump is not.

December 16, 2016 by Peter Lowry

You can never accuse President-Elect Donald Trump of being a politician. He is the antithesis of that. He despises politicians. You saw how he treats both Democrats and Republicans. He is neither. At best, he is an oligarchist. It is a system he knows from business. It would suit a despot.

But he will continue to defy description. His current challenge is to find a way to work within a system loaded with checks and balances. He will either make nice with the Republicans again or his administration will be strangled by the road blocks of an obstreperous Congress.

Trump can be nothing more than an unfettered ego. He is like a gas-filled balloon character from the Macy’s parade in New York City. He wants to pull loose his ropes and float over America—master of his domain.

He is a denier. He wants to free the coal miners to breathe the dust of death. He wants to approve pipelines to speed the melting of the world’s icecaps. He sees the needs and concerns of the world in the simplistic reasoning of a child. Diplomacy is not in his lexicon.

And yet it will be the people who supported him—who went boldly to the polls and voted for him—who will reap reprisal for their foolish perfidy. They chose anger over reason. The chose self-love over love of country. He told them they could lose nothing more by voting for him. He gave them a pyrrhic victory.

It will be a traumatic four years. It will be a roller-coaster ride of false steps and errors. As any experienced business-person can tell you, trying to run a country as a company is a formula for disaster. A cabinet is not a management board. To build a cabinet of brigadiers, business leaders and billionaires is a guarantee of trouble.

And what will be left in four years? What will be left of the reputation of America? How many allies will Trump alienate? What will be left of NATO after Trump and pal Putin make their deals? Will there be any free trade or even fair trade left for America? How far will Trump go in alienating major trading partners such as Canada and Mexico?

But what Americans cannot do is let Trump destroy what is good about America. There is freedom of thought in most universities. There are skilled medical practitioners and researchers addressing world-wide needs. There are people deeply concerned about global warming. There are entrepreneurs and inventors. And there are decent people who want to build a more successful country. We wish them well.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]

Forecasting what President Trump will do.

December 14, 2016 by Peter Lowry

It was Franklin Roosevelt who showed us how a politician can get around the news media. His fireside chats on radio were his direct connection with the American voters and they loved him for it. It was a lesson we noted early in our career as a political apparatchik. Some of our most successful campaigns were built on personalized communication. Injecting that personal connection into a campaign was key to some surprise wins.

But it has become so much easier with the aid of the Internet. The example of President Elect Donald Trump is what immediately comes to mind today. This guy thinks he owns Twitter. And he might as well own it. And what he is going to do for a press secretary when he moves into the White House is anyone’s guess.

Can you imagine the White House Press Gallery members sitting around waiting for the President’s next tweet to find out what is going on? The reporters will first have to verify the tweet. “Is the President serious or is he funning us?” Will there even be any responsible press briefings? We all know that Mr. Trump really does not like the news media. Why should he want to help them do their job?

And with all the guff he has been feeding Americans on Twitter about his cabinet appointments, it is a wonder that any of it is being believed? And what is the point of even discussing some of his proposed appointments. Congress gets to advise and consent and Trump has no idea if the Senate is about to make nice on some important ones? It could be the first reality check in the Trump Presidency.

And they will have to install a revolving door on the White House to accommodate all the changes Trump will make in speech writers over the next four years. He reminds us so much of a client we once had; briefly. The client told us what he wanted in great detail. We thought it was easy. He fired us because we wrote what he asked. He actually said that he might as well have written it himself. We thought we had done a great job of organizing, correcting syntax and grammar, and keyboarding it for him.

Judging by his tweets, Trump appears to think in less than 140-character gulps. He really does need someone to at least get them in order, smooth out the syntax, make some sense and give continuity to them.

-30-

Complaints, comments, criticisms and compliments can be sent to [email protected]