Friday, August 12, 2016

Does Trump need humility? Or should we apply Earl Bush rule to the Donald?

Power is dangerous unless you have humility” – Richard J. Daley, the mayor of Chicago from 1955-76.

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Would Mayor Daley have understood Trump perfectly?
A quotation I stumbled across Thursday while trying to find something else, and one that I thought particularly noteworthy these days in light of the fact that the one word that no one would ever associate with Republican presidential hopeful Donald J. Trump is humility.

As the New York-based real estate developer (when he’s not spending time at his gaudy Mar A Lago mansion in Florida) shows us as he repeatedly persists with his desires to do things his own way, no matter how offensive and tacky they show him to be.

IT IS A thought that perhaps we should all keep in mind as we approach Election Day and are called upon to make a decision.

We are going to have to decide the direction of our society that we allow our government to take it. Should we allow the Trump ego, which already has put its brand on a tacky-looking tower along the Chicago River, to be able to spread elsewhere?

I write this knowing there are some people who are opposed to the candidacy of Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton and keep telling themselves that the natural checks and balances of government would keep Trump from actually carrying out most of the absurd rhetoric he has made during his campaign.

But when you have a candidate who rejects the very notion of government as having a role in our society as Trump does, you wonder how much he envisions he can stretch things out.

BECAUSE HE COMES across as the ultimate example of a business executive fed up with what he thinks of as government interference with his corporate desires. So he envisions winning office so as to eliminate the middle-man of the government officials he has been forced to deal with all these years.

He can rubber-stamp his own business interests. Or at least he fantasizes he can do so.
 
Was Trump as equally incoherent as Mayor Daley?
We in Illinois have seen how the venture capitalist, Bruce Rauner, has managed to use his election as governor to try to implement his own agenda – only to have the General Assembly thwart his desires.

Unlike the Illinois Legislature, our Congress doesn’t have a veto-proof majority that would oppose itself to a “President Trump.” We do have a serious choice to make come the Nov. 8 Election Day.

DO WE REALLY vote for the guy whose vision of our society comes across as so over-the-top to satisfy his bloated ego, all because we don’t want to elect the wife of the man whose own presidency was bogged down in so much partisan political tripe?

Do we really give in to those people who have been waiting for years to vote “no” to Hillary Clinton just to appease their own politically partisan grudges?

It will be interesting to see which choice our electorate makes on the second Tuesday of November, and which person winds up freezing their keister off come January on Inauguration Day!

For those who feel tortured by reading this particular commentary, perhaps you’d feel better reading the Borowitz Report published at NewYorker.com, where author Andy Borowitz ponders a Trump who thinks it’s unethical and extremely unfair for television types to be recording his every word, just so they could air it publicly for the future.

HOW ELSE IS Trump supposed to be able to change his thoughts at a moment’s notice, depending on the crowd he happens to be facing in any given situation?

And for those who think this thought too ridiculous to be real, keep in mind that Mayor Daley had his long-time press secretary, Earl Bush, who told reporter-type people with a completely straight face that when it came to the inarticulate Richard J. they should, “don’t write what he says, write what he means.”

Only in the case of Trump, there are times when we question if even “the Donald” fully comprehends what he is articulating!

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