‘A LOSER PRESIDENT.’ DAN RATHER HITS HIM WHERE IT HURTS

Mar 24, 2017 by

 

Dan Rather has logged another entry into his brilliant and composed, yet scathing criticism of our so-called President.  I’ll get right to it.

Loser. That’s a word that Donald Trump fears being called more than any other. It is a word that he has wielded with relish against his enemies. But if the health care bill goes down in defeat, and at this point that is still a big if, Mr. Trump will be seen as a loser, and so will his new cheerleader Speaker of the House Paul Ryan.

A loser president. It’s a moniker that every president dreads, but especially President Trump. It strikes at the very essence of his being. It is why he rails away at conspiracy theories about voter fraud. Once you are seen as a loser in Washington your enemies are emboldened and your allies become skittish. Power can evaporate faster than dew in Dalhart.

Two paragraphs in, and he’s already nailed it, every issue, every tweet, every grope.  It’s about power, and losers in politics (or anywhere really) just don’t have any.  Without power, he is just another old and rich but otherwise talentless and featureless white guy.

When you look back at the history of the modern presidency, the most accomplished denizens of the Oval Office came in with bold agendas that they quickly put in place. Look at Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, in particular. It must vex Mr. Trump no end to see the accomplishments of his predecessor used as a measuring stick for his own failures.

My emphasis, but oh, absolutely yes.  He wanted to be a better version of Reagan, and crush anything that Obama could have been remembered for.  Now he will be remembered for failing, bigly, on both counts.

We are in a cauldron of chaos and confusion bordering on havoc. We have thousands of key posts in the Federal Government yet unfilled, and we see an administration struggling to get much if anything done. Many have worried about Trump’s personality and character, but that can easily be explained away by his allies as a partisan divide. An even bigger question is his competence, and so far there has been not much demonstration of this key presidential quality. That is why you see members of his own party openly flaunting Mr. Trump in the House and Senate.

Again, surgical precision.  The transition into this administration has been notably characterized by madness, because the leading figure himself is mad.  And Rather is absolutely right- members of his own party (which Rather later reminds us really isn’t his own party) who don’t need him, or need to distance themselves from him, in order to save their own political careers, are doing so regularly and  repeatedly.

The struggles with the Republicans in Congress to formulate a coherent governing strategy shows how hollow their rhetoric was during the Obama years. They became the Party of No and not the party of ideas.

As has been said here and elsewhere many times since the [s]election, now that the GOP has the reins, they have no idea where they want to go, or how to get there, and the longer they stand still, the more evident the horseshit is that accumulates around them.

Meanwhile, the specter of Russia is a shadow that grows ever darker over the White House. An isolated president in an isolated administration looking at public losses and dropping popularity will react in ways no one can predict.

Only Dan Rather could end with “oh yeah and there’s Russia” without being accused of snark.  His point is dead on, though, and more than a little ominous.

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