Menu
Donald Trump a buffoon candidate, but will the birthers go away? by Marjorie Arons-Barron
The entry below is being cross posted from Marjorie Arons-Barron’s own blog. Check it out.
Donald Trump takes credit for President Obama’s release of his full birth certificate, saying he’s proud that he (Trump) was “able to do something that no one else was able to do.” Well, if you say so, Donald. Guess you’re a can-do guy.
I’d like to think that this puts an end to the birther movement, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see supporters a) claim collusion between Obama and the Honolulu registry that produced the document; b) return to the assertion that the Barack Hussein Obama is a Muslim (slurring the President’s credibility as a Christian and implying the unacceptability of all Muslims in the process; c) find some equally meaningless basis on which to condemn the President.
There are other reasons the attitude, if not the issue, won’t go away. Jerome Corsi, he of Swift Boat fame, is coming out with a book “proving” that Obama is not a U.S. citizen. Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is not Eligible to be President will be available May 17. It was #1 on the Amazon best seller list last week but dropped to #27 following the release of the birth certificate.
One wonders why the President didn’t put out the birth certificate earlier and put an end to the issue. Is it too cynical to think he delayed because it made sense politically to let these idiots build up their momentum, only to snuff them out at the time of Obama’s choosing. Enter the Donald, a buffoon who nonetheless moved the issue to page one again. As one writer put it, the birthplace challenge was “ the primary wind beneath the hairwings of Donald Trump.” So what will the Donald do next?
A Trump candidacy seems both ludicrous and unlikely. Bill Maher and David Letterman (on the Letterman show) each bet a week’s salary on whether Trump would actually run. Maher said yes; Letterman, no) Would Trump really want to submit his financial records to the kind of scrutiny a serious candidacy would require? But the mere possibility, not to mention his first-place standing in some polls, has to be an embarrassment to the Republican Party, even if it is the party of Sarah Palin. Candidates like Mitt Romney or even Mike Huckabee are serious and, despite their occasional reliance on mindless slogans and contrived 30-second sound bites (as do most candidates), they’re perfectly capable of debating policy differences rooted in different political philosophies. Trump is decidedly not.
No doubt Trump is building a bigger audience for the end of The Apprentice season. If that’s his goal, more power to him. As the great American journalist and essayist H.L. Mencken wrote,” no one has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people.”
The political process is sometimes entertainment, but not always. For entertainment we can watch the royal wedding or the Red Sox. We need serious and thoughtful debate on the issues of the day, and political jokes should not trump political policy discussions.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments section below.
Trump may be a media clown, but the people cheering him on represent something ugly in the civic culture. The Civil War started 150 years ago and is supposed to be over. A man born to a black father from Africa and a white mother from the American midwest and who identifies as an African-American is President of the United States. He should not have to show his papers to prove who he is to a wealthy bully and a hateful mob. Yesterday was not a good day for the nation.
Yes, this circus continues, but I think that throwing in a slur against Ms Sarah Palin doesn’t raise the level of discourse. And, as to “occasional reliance on mindless slogans and contrived 30-second sound bites”,which you attribute to “most candidates”, can you name an exception?
The racism charge would be more impressive if we hadn’t had years of this sort of thing with Chester A Arthur. And Mitt’s father and John McCain and Barry Goldwater.
But, this sort of thing is best dealt with by good humor and early disclosure.
Regards &mash; Cliff
Cliff, Your question about whether I can identify the exceptional candidate who doesn’t occasionally rely on mindless slogans and contrived 30-second sound bites is a very interesting one. One who comes to mind, perhaps, is Alan Khazei, but maybe I haven’t heard him often enough. Wonks don’t really make it in the political process thanks to the equally mindless requirements of the technology and of my former brothers and sisters in the media that the candidates provide easily quoted quips and other statements that are easy to edit.