Extra: Snow Job and the Seven Dwarfs
DRAGUIGNAN, France — My guess is that Donald Trump can’t win again even if he eludes federal prison or the Georgia state pen. Gullibility, greed and apathy have their limits. But consider that Fox “News” debate among eight others lusting after the job.
Here are a few ways the world changed because Americans didn’t laugh off a narcissist nutjob who declared in 2016 only he — a very stable genius — could save them from Mexican rapists, Muslim terrorists and European hangers-on by walling out reality:
Paris climate accords Trump renounced would have done much to head off killer heat, drought, wildfires and catastrophic storms — the new normal in America and beyond. Instead, yet more fossil-fuel use is raising temperatures beyond worst-case predictions.
Barack Obama’s worldwide posse of scientist-diplomats would have spotted the Covid threat before it spread from Wuhan, as they did with other deadly pathogens in Asia and Africa. Trump brought them home as a needless expense.
Hillary Clinton, who looked Putin in the eye and saw a snake, knew what to expect in Ukraine and the Russian periphery. Hindsight reveals Trump’s attempt to extort Volodymyr Zelensky as a blatant crime against humanity.
Clinton was crucial to lining up China, Russia and U.S. allies for that accord to curb Iran’s race for the Bomb. Trump scrapped it. It would have opened the West to a sophisticated ancient society. Now Mullahs lead it in the other direction.
Diplomacy would have prevented hardline Zionists from squeezing Palestinian families into a shrinking apartheid substate. That imperils Israel. It feeds terrorism, hostility to America and virulent antisemitism across the world.
In sum, the world would see an America they knew before George W. Bush’s Iraq war shattered Pandora’s Box. If hardly perfect, it respected treaties, global accords and truthful reporting. It sought peaceful coexistence with China, not hair-trigger hostility.
The debate, mostly about America First or America Only, reflected the national mood. Nonstop analysis dwells on domestic affairs, guesswork based on fast-changing polls by everyone from shopworn old faces to twenty-somethings who say stuff like, “Well, in my experience…”
But beyond those insulating oceans, reality is clear. Like it or not, Earth’s future largely depends on a single superpower committed to basic human values. This is no time to bench a trusty old pro.
It’s not complicated. If a Super Bowl comes down to a final field goal, you don’t want some eager rookie on the bench yelling, “My turn!” The winners take home gold and glory, then fade into the record books. The next elections are about human survival.
Only one candidate has a tenuous claim to foreign-affairs experience, and Frank Bruni dismissed her in the New York Times under this headline: “When I Tell You Nikki Haley Is Pathetic, That’s an Understatement.” And that, in my view, is an understatement.
In the 2016 debate, she said Trump was everything she taught her children not to be. And, later, everything a governor does not want in a president. After dropping out, she backed Marco Rubio, then Ted Cruz, before declaring Trump the most qualified candidate.
In her two years as U.N. ambassador, with no diplomatic experience, she alienated allies with extreme pro-Israel positions. Her threats to North Korea and Iran hardened hostilities. But she treaded a careful line, with measured criticism of the president.
Haley, Bruni wrote, displays whatever façade fits the moment: “They’re all constructs, all creations, malleable, negotiable, tethered not to dependable principle but to reliable opportunism. That’s the truth of her. That’s the hell of her.”
The “hell,” he explained, was her glib delivery — authority mixed with humanity — that excites voters who believe what she says. After Jan. 6, she said scathingly, “(Trump) went down a path he shouldn’t have, and we shouldn’t have followed him, and we shouldn’t have listened to him. And we can’t let that ever happen again.”
Three months later, Haley told the Associated Press that she supported Trump and would not run if he sought reelection. Yet here she is.
At least she is firmly behind Ukraine and knows why Putin must be stopped. She eviscerated Vivek Ramaswamy, the preposterous little pipsqueak who at 38, with only a business background, revs up crowds with absurd simplicities. Americans should be helping Maui, not Ukraine, he says, as if it is not possible to do both.
Here is Bruni again: “(Haley) treated his so-called foreign policy as so many nonsense words scrawled with crayon in a toddler’s coloring book. Then she tore the pages of that book to shreds, doing to it in mere seconds what she has done to her own reputation over the past seven years.”
Mike Pence has seen the world. But he is Mike Pence. Chris Christie had the courage to call out Trump for who he is, and he is no fool. But he is Chris Christie.
None shows promise for future statecraft. The World Series that matters is a free-for-all death match with no umpires. A leader needs to know a lot more than the players and the program.
Ron DeSantis’s early surge is shrinking fast. Colleagues who watch him closely say he uses his smarts to act dumber than he is, which plays well in Florida. That is the dead giveaway tell of a despot in waiting.
His foreign policy views are largely unknown — judging from his occasional remarks, even to him. Basically, he echoes Trump. He told Lou Dobbs on Fox that Obama’s push for the Iran nuclear deal persuaded Sunni Arabs to the Islamic State.
Iraqi Sunnis founded ISIS after humiliating torture and other U.S. folly during W’s senseless war. Sympathy for hardline Islamists and other jihadis grows because of Israel’s crackdown on Palestinians, which DeSantis supports.
In his book, “The Courage to Be Free,” DeSantis asked: “Does the survival of American liberty depend on whether liberty succeeds in Djibouti?” Apparently, he picked a funny sounding name in the sort of place Trump dismissed as a shit hole.
In fact, if his understanding of China went beyond orange chicken at a Panda buffet, he would see the obvious connection. After 2016, China built its first overseas military base in Djibouti, a vital crossroads in the Horn of Africa where Islamist fighters now thrive.
A French Foreign Legion base there since 1977 is increasingly important as France loses ground in West Africa. Djibouti is its largest foreign outpost. Camp Lemonnier, the only permanent U.S. military base in Africa, operates ships and aircraft from Suez to the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean.
A Chinese company runs much of the civilian port, keeping watch on 2,500 ships that call or pass through each day. Beijing’s long-term plans include a spaceport. Djibouti is a vital listening post as China keeps tabs on the world it expects to dominate.
None of this means much to a perverted Republican Party focused on tying America in knots and blaming it on Democrats. Their only platform is whatever might appeal to Trump-besotted voters.
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The presidency is only part of it. Josh Hawley, videoed running for his life on Jan. 6, wrote a book: “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs.” Just the names are laugh lines. Ted Cruz, for instance. Or initials: MTG.
Democrats have their own extreme elements, which damage them at the polls. Even now, faced with the most important elections in the world’s history, many take potshots at Biden in the circular firing squad Obama once lamented.
JFK’s enduring line — “Ask not what your country can do for you…” — is now “What about MY needs?” Trump, his inner circle and faithless politicians who campaign under his colors have a demonic approach: impeach Biden and prosecute his surviving son.
In the debate, Haley affirmed support for Trump if he is nominated but acknowledged what fork-tongued Republicans must know about federal spending excesses: “The truth is that Biden didn't do this to us, our Republicans did this to us too.”
Of course. The inflation and other disruptions that so many Americans blame on Biden are the direct result of the Covid pandemic Trump willfully ignored and his boneheaded foreign non-policy.
And now with bogus whataboutism he diverts attention away from the highest crimes and worst treachery in U.S. presidential annals. Here is a fresh post, a crazed mob-style threat straight from the horse’s ass:
“The Republicans in Congress, though well meaning, keep talking about an Impeachment ‘Inquiry’ on Crooked Joe Biden. Biden is a Stone Cold Crook-You don’t need a long INQUIRY to prove it, it’s already proven… Either IMPEACH the BUM, or fade into OBLIVION.”
The hypocrisy would be hilarious if this were only a Super Bowl with no actual impact beyond beer sales and bragging rights. But the global stakes are unthinkable. If Americans entrench MAGA magpies next year, there will likely be no turning back.