Josephine Harvey at Huffpost:
Stephen Colbert didn’t hold back on Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) after the lawmaker’s appearance at a right-wing summit for college students over the weekend.
“Gaetz has been accused of trafficking an underage woman for sex, but it hasn’t affected his speaking schedule,” Colbert said on “The Late Show” Tuesday. “Over the weekend, he appeared at the ultra conservative group Turning Point USA’s annual Student Action Summit. Gaetz will attend anything with the words ‘student’ and ‘action in’ the title.”
During Gaetz’s speech, he criticized former Vice President Mike Pence, saying he was “not a leader” and would “never be president.”
So who is a leader? The DC stage is filled with a lot of performance artists. A few are good at it. But there’s a lot of B and C movie actors whose vision only extends to winning another term on that stage.
When it comes to the presidency, the job is too big for any person. Most of us can’t fully grasp what 332,000,000 want or need and the president is supposed to represent and manage to please a quarter of that number to turn it into an 8 year gig.
So those with the most success not only grasp how governments work, they understand how to message and influence. And the best ones are actually motivated to provide good services to the nation. They have ideas, a vision of what the nation can be. They have negotiation skills so they can put the wheels in motion to bring their vision to fruition.
None are saints and none are psychics. They can see existing problems going in but can’t foresee what fresh events will intrude and capture public attention. So they may have good answers for the initial ones but they also have to be adaptable and improvise like a pro. Contrary to what some believe, that level of leadership is far above what it takes to run a business. No corporation employs even 2.5 million people.
There are more than 18 million employees of the federal and state governments. One in 18 people in this country make up that workforce. Most are civil service employees, each with a set of specific tasks, skills and training. Their managers, and the people hired by executive and legislative leaders, have a critical role to play for any leader to have a shot at success.
The ominous sounding ‘Deep State’ is 18 million employees showing up, doing their job competently. Like in any smaller workplace, there’ll always be a few subpar performers and even fewer outright jerks. By far, most really earn their pay.
So a real leader at a national level has to start with a transition team and fill multiple leadership roles with very smart, very competent people to succeed. The hiring committee has to be exceptional in choosing who to fill leadership roles in the Cabinet, legislative and judiciary positions.
Matt Gaetz is a mouth. He can influence but he falls well short of being a leader. Jim Jordan, MJ Greene, Boebert, Hawley are the same. They grab a lot of attention and mention but in a pop quiz, can anyone name a single bill any of them authored? Or helped pass? Only Hawley has even won a statewide race.
For you to keep your current job, what do you have to do to collect your pay? Would you stay employed if you sucked up to the boss but nothing else? What about if you sucked up to the old boss who got fired?
This was the old boss. The picture was taken 2 days ago at a golf tournament. This, also, is not a leader. It took him 18 months to return to DC. He has to pretend he wasn’t fired to maintain his funding scheme. I think it’s the first time he’s been seen in more than 6 years without his spraycan tan.
He had no record of public service, not even in student government. Was never appointed to a government body. Running multiple businesses, has he employed even a thousand or two at once? Unlikely.
His talents include fundraising, influencing, entertaining, property development and firing people. He became well known with a show about firing people. Before that, radio and TV appearances where he said outrageous or amusing things. He’s a showman. A pitch man. A celebrity known for his overt sexism. He even ran beauty pageants. He views women as objects that delight men. If they don’t meet his standard of beauty, they are nothing to him. He’s trusted a few of them as employees but most of those women have left his employ and don’t display a lot of affection for their old boss.
He has never won a popular vote in any election or competition in his life. He’s fired more people than any president in US history. His misinformation and mismanagement of the covid pandemic killed more Americans than any pandemic performance since the US government was first formed. Compared to other large populations in the world, more than twice as many died in the US. Only Brazil saw more than half as many die.
More Americans died during his 4 years than we lost in any other pandemic or any war. That’s not a good record for a leader. It’s the main thing that got him fired.
We are the United States but his failed efforts to lead have divided us worse than any time in history except for 1860. Abraham Lincoln’s election triggered that earlier secession. Seven states seceded before he was even inaugurated. In his inauguration speech, he promised not to interfere with slavery in the states where it existed. The forces against him responded with more states seceding and the attack on Fort Sumter came just 6 weeks after he spoke these words:
“In your hand, my fellow countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath in Heaven to destroy the government, while I shall have the most solemn one to preserve, protect, and defend it… We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave, to every living heart and hearthstone, all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
Lincoln led by trying to keep us united. The president in the 2016 election has maintained his influence by dividing us. The most polarizing times in US history have occurred because of racism, followed by economic crisis followed by military drafts. Most assassinations of public figures and politicians in the US occurred because of racism.
Lincoln in 1865? Racism. Garfield in 1881? A job seeker with delusions of grandeur. McKinley in 1901? An anti-government anarchist murdered him. Thwarted and unsuccessful presidential assassination attempts occurred mostly due to mental illness or racism or religious extremism.
Lincoln, JFK, RFK, Medger Evers, Martin Luther King Jr, the attempts on Jerry Ford by Manson followers, numerous civil and voting rights activists in the 1950s and 1960s - including ministers and cops - plus thousands more lynched between Lincoln and Reagan terms. Racism has long been the root of the greatest violence in this country. Most presidents have tried to quell this. A few have instigated worse racism and are regarded by historians as the worst presidents in history.
Donald Trump is currently rated 41st to 45th out of 46 presidents, depending on which group is being polled. Most have James Buchanan as the worst for failing to stop slavery’s spread to new territories and failing to stop or slow the secession movement. Andrew Johnson is 2nd or 3rd worst for his failure to rein in the racial violence after the Civil War and opposing the 14th amendment. He missed getting thrown out of office by 1 vote in his impeachment trial and he bribed that Senator to his side.
Franklin Pierce is also among these bottom dwellers for slavery’s expansion. Teddy Roosevelt described him as "a servile tool of men worse than himself ... ever ready to do any work the slavery leaders set him." John Tyler, a secessionist and Millard Fillmore, for their handling of slavery, also rank among the worst.
Trump ranks in the six worst for his two impeachments, his insurrection effort, and his racism. His only strengths are noted as his capacity to influence and a fair rating as an economic manager.
Rating the best presidential leaders includes Lincoln, Washington (though a slaveholder, his other achievements earned this level of support), and FDR for digging us out of the Great Depression, initiating Social Security and defeating Nazi Germany. He had to stand up to the Supreme Court, Hitler and Hirohito to win those battles.
Teddy Roosevelt, the trustbuster who broke up Big Oil and several other mega corporations. Eisenhower, following up his victorious military career by finishing the Korean War, growing the middle class with the Interstate Highway system construction, and completing the desegregation of the armed forces. And Truman, who began that desegregation, and used atomic bombs to gain Japan’s surrender.
These half dozen guys are typically rated as the best.
Every president in the past hundred years, good leaders and bad, made serious foreign policy mistakes (though some had great foreign policy wins as well). Most had failed marriages or mistresses in the past century. We don’t elect saints but those with good leadership skills are remembered fondly.
After Andrew Johnson left office in 1869, Trump proved to be the worst for race relations in 148 years, defending and approving the rise of violent white supremacists repeatedly. His economic performance benefited the top 5% of the wealthiest Americans, furthering greater income inequality. He emboldened more traditional enemies and treated many traditional allies shabbily.
He claimed to be more expert than every existing expert in any field but the results of his policies demonstrate the opposite. Plus he has the manners of a pig at a trough. He even shoved one foreign leader aside, physically.
There’s nothing in his record that will ever raise him out of the ranks of the bottom dwelling presidents when future historians rank him. Other than coddling one daughter, he’s failed as a father, a husband, a businessman, as a politician, as a uniter, as a moral example and as a man. He’s setting records for most appointees indicted, most supporters jailed because they believed in him, and most citizens reaching early death from his pandemic botches. He’s cheated employees, contractors, investors, charities, the IRS, and all three of his wives, he’s reneged on bets, he consorts with crooks and enemies and violent domestic terrorists and he also cheats at golf.
Joe Biden, despite several mistakes in his long career, is more experienced and skilled, is a better negotiator, a better uniter, remains more ethical and is more compassionate and kind. When he gets angry, he doesn’t throw plates at the wall. There aren’t two dozen women claiming he assaulted or raped them. He doesn’t provoke his supporters to commit acts of violence. He doesn’t use NDAs and cash to buy the silence of anyone. He has no record of financial transactions with any organized criminal gang leaders from anywhere in the world.
He doesn’t call neo-Nazis ‘very fine people’ or call thousands of people to go to Congress and injure hundreds of cops, then tell them ‘we love you’ after several fatalities have occurred.
He’s not under active investigation for criminal acts in multiple states. To my knowledge, nobody is suing him and none have trial dates set for alleged rape. He doesn’t whine and whine and whine and whine that the press, political opponents, women, liberals or random anti-fascists are picking on him. He’s never placed full-page ads calling for the death penalty of anyone, including people who were ultimately exonerated. He’s never violated federal records acts by flushing things down a toilet.
He’s not likely to be listed as a top 5 president but will be far from the bottom. In many ways, he’s just a normal sort of guy with a great record of support for racial diversity. And now, he’s signing the greatest bill in history that aims to slow down global warming.
Perhaps he learned compassion and humility from the suffering he’s endured, losing a beloved wife, daughter and son and nearly losing his other son.
In the 2020 primaries, he wasn’t my first or second choice. But he’s a leader capable of twisting arms to get things done and he has good vision about useful remedies for the problems of the country. NATO allies credit him for creating a united front in opposition to Putin’s criminal war.
I don’t think he’s fired any of his own appointees. He has no plan to fire thousands of State Department, FBI, NSA employees and replace them with loyalists who will do whatever he tells them to. He’s not a white supremacist. He doesn’t pretend to have religious beliefs; he’s always felt great comfort attending weekly church services. Nobody in politics accused him of criminal activity till Donald Trump did.
Which is why he won the most votes from American voters in history, in 2020. Because he’s pretty normal and because Donald Trump failed so spectacularly at leadership. And Trump’ll lose by an even bigger margin if he runs in 2024.
I do get worried and sometimes deeply alarmed at where our country is headed. Not because I think Trump can get elected again but because so many Republican officials are mirroring his worst impulses and worst leadership skills. I mean, why, exactly, would anyone do that?
I mean, a CNN poll this week is telling:
”a majority of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters now say they do not want Trump to be their party's presidential nominee in 2024 (55% say they want a different candidate), a slight shift away from Trump compared with earlier this year (49% preferred someone other than Trump in a poll conducted in January and February). An increasing number say they feel that way primarily because they just don't want him to be president (27% now, up from 19% earlier this year).”
Meanwhile Trump’s favorite leader, VladDaddy Putin continues to represent Russia badly:
Horrific video has emerged that appears to show a Russian soldier castrating a Ukrainian prisoner who other reports suggest was subsequently murdered.
The footage, reviewed by the Guardian, was originally posted on pro-Russian Telegram channels.
A Russian soldier, wearing a distinctive black wide-brimmed hat, is seen approaching another figure who has his hands bound and is lying face down with the back of his trousers cut away. The prisoner is wearing blue and yellow patches identifying him as Ukrainian.
The soldier in the hat, who is wearing blue surgical gloves, is holding a green-handled knife and reaches down to mutilate the prisoner as other soldiers abuse the prisoner.
While much is unknown about the provenance and date that the footage was recorded – and where – there are claims that the Russian soldier was previously filmed in the vicinity of the Azot chemical works in Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine and that he was serving with a Chechen formation known as the Akhat battalion.
While the Guardian has been unable to independently verify the authenticity of the footage, it has been widely shared on pro-Russian media sites as well as on Ukrainian social media, with some Russian users posting images mocking the mutilated soldier.
This kind of brutality often evokes words of respect from Donald Trump. But he’ll disparage anyone who takes a knee at a football game. Everyone can see what Donald Trump is. But it’s his elected minions and copycats that are far more troubling.
I’ve been lucky over the course of a lifetime to live in several states where the rare moderate republican has been sighted: MA, NY and OR. But the sightings keep getting rarer.
It’s why I consider it imperative to turn out the vote for these midterms. Turning our heads and walking away can only ensure that our government, democracy and liberties are doomed.
Or will you just wait till they come for you and your loved ones?
Great piece, Kevin.