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Romney on Trump
From the opinion piece in the Washington Post yesterday by the new junior senator from Utah:
To a great degree, a presidency shapes the public character of the nation.
To anyone who would like a small challenge as we all get back to work, here’s a Ricochet essay question: To what extent is Mitt Romney correct? Discuss with reference to what we now know about the private lives of FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Bill Clinton. Feel free to add a comment or two on Richard Nixon and obstruction of justice.
Published in General
Others have said something along this line, but Senator Romney gets this nearly completely backward. In a republic, the character of its leaders reflects, rather than affects, the charter of the nation. Most people I know model themselves on someone with whom they have personal experience, a parent, relative, teacher, clergy, etc. I’ve certainly never entertained the thought that I could behave like Bill Clinton or Donald Trump simply because he was president.
What do our leaders tell us about the “character of our nation?” (Isn’t public redundant here?) We’ve chosen:
In 2016, we managed to limit our choice to two candidates with unprecedentedly high “unfavorable’ ratings–in other words we forced ourselves to pick between two people most of the country disliked if not despised.
I view President Trump as an embarrassment to our nation, but its an embarrassment we merit.
Heard a great line recently (can’t remember the source)
the American people were faced with a candidate they hated so much they elected a candidate they hated even more.
On a personal note, I was so anti anti-Trump, and reflexively defensive (I come from peasant stock and recognize snobbery when I see it) that by the time of the election I voted for DT with enthusiasm and celebrated his victory. And have been pretty happy with his results so far.
This is simply a convenient approach for Romney. His calling-card is his supposed decency and morality – in life, mind you, politics notsomuch.
He’s saying we need a President like him because we need a father-figure to look up to. The Presidency is how we instruct our children to be morally upstanding. Never mind the posters of LeBron, Pink, Tupac or 50 Cent on your overprescribed teenagers walls, show your young lad or lass how Mitt Romney does it!
When we have the type of President of which Mitt speaks, America is liked and respected around the world, there’s a kind of contagious morality, crime goes down, people are nicer to each other, and everything works swimmingly.
Just look at history as the OP suggests. When I was young, JFK was President and I thought he and Jackie, Ted and Bobby, were great. I also believed Santa Clause ate my cookies on Christmas Eve. I discovered Santa wasn’t real, but it was much later that I discovered the Kennedy mythology, and quite a great many more politicians were no saints. That was because my de facto political parents, the journalists, shielded my virgin ears.
Maybe it was better before when journalists and politicians didn’t race to the cameras to gossip and judge. Then we wouldn’t be subjected to the likes of the virtuous politician. From the left, they are politically virtuous with their deep caring of the downtrodden and oppressed. From the right, they are pristine family-men who are nevertheless suspect in the area of caring for certain demographics, but free to lie and betray voters at will, being nice-guys who were heroically faithful to their wives and all.
Bush was a good man, right Mitt? The country was so united in those days!
Romney can’t cite his political accomplishments, he has few political victories and it’s become impossible for him to lay out any policy blueprints without directly contradicting himself regarding past positions.
So of course he’s going to highlight what might be his only strength.
Romney needs to attack the Character of Hillary Clinton when she lied about a video tape. He needed to attack the character of Obama when he ran.
No, like Flake, like McCain, only attack people on your own side.
Actually, I rather like Romney attacking Trump. It highlights the complete hypocrisy of this type of Republican. He’ll vote however he votes, but going on CNN wagging his holy fingers at us is precious irony.
Count me among those “type of Republican” who measure our conservatism by what we defend rather than who we attack.
This is a Terrific comment. We seem to spend an awful lot of time in today’s politics attacking those we deem to not live up to what we want. Instead of doing that, we need to defend and explain conservatism to people, so that we can persuade them that what we believe will do them, and the nation, the most good.
People like Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan understood that we have to increase our following, by practicing addition, not division or subtraction. We are doing a superb job today in adhering to the latter. We need to work on the former instead.
What’s this “we” stuff, paleface?
So, is this a repudiation (dare I say, attack?) on the Romney Op-ed in the Wapo?
Good luck with that, amigo. Godspeed!
Everyone is a socialist and they want the government to steal for them. Half of the Democrat party is strictly about largesse and the other half is radical in one way or another. Good luck.
absolutely not. I was indicating how much I liked the comment from of Shellgamer, what I inferred he was saying (assuming the person is a he).
IMO, Nixon brought the country cynicism about government (I will leave it up to you whether that is good or bad – at least we got X-Files out of it).
You can draw a direct through-line from Clinton to Trump; parents suddenly having to explain to their children what a bj was. Obama accelerated the process by turning the presidency into a celebrity (I, for one, think that Obama is a decent human being and father, although I disagreed with his politics). But by trying to be seen as hip and cool, he made the office one that any celebrity could aspire to. So, we got Trump.
I didn’t vote for him and I am not sure what I will do in 2020. I like a lot of the things that have happened under his administration, but …
Everybody lies, but Trump lies all the time. He lies when he doesn’t have to. He lies reflexively. Lies rain out of him like a waterfall.
I am worried about what the long-term ramifications of that will be on our government and the culture. I think it will depend partly on who is in office next, in two years or six.
https://mises.org/wire/democracy-god-thats-failing
“Tet.” “Body count.”
Actually, it was LBJ and his Pentagon spinmeisters, along with the pro-communist “anti-war” nightly spin of our network media that could be claimed to be the start of modern cynicism about government. And I’m sorry a Great Big Ugly Man came up, and tied his horse to you.