Trump Frustrated With Failures, Anxious to Rig the System
Trump looked at his string of failures in his 100 days in office and decided democracy doesn't suit his autocratic expectations of getting his way like he did in his private life of wealth and luxury.
He's discovered the U.S. isn't a corporation where it's citizens are subordinate to the will and whim of the Executive, but a confluence of interests - and the government he's been chosen to lead is meant to reconcile those disparate interests and concerns from myriad, diverse regions of the nation into action or law.
Totally predictable to find Trump this week talking wistfully about his former life/job, and how much harder he finds the work of the presidency (how easy must his former job have been, considering how many weekends he's bugged out to his luxury resorts since he took office?).
Very much in character with his right-wing party to find Trump anxious to change the rules and rig the system to shortcut his way to getting what he wants.
Here's Trump in an interview with Fox News airing Friday night:
“We don't have a lot of closers in politics, and I understand why: It's a very rough system. It's an archaic system.”
“You look at the rules of the Senate, even the rules of the House — but the rules of the Senate and some of the things you have to go through — it's really a bad thing for the country, in my opinion. They're archaic rules. And maybe at some point we're going to have to take those rules on, because, for the good of the nation, things are going to have to be different.”
“You can't go through a process like this. It's not fair. It forces you to make bad decisions. I mean, you're really forced into doing things that you would normally not do except for these archaic rules...”
read/watch interview: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/04/29/trump-is-now-talking-about-consolidating-his-own-power/?utm_term=.0c9cf5f2abd7
Contrast that with Barack Obama in his farewell speech, wisdom from experience:
"– our democracy is threatened whenever we take it for granted. All of us, regardless of party, should throw ourselves into the task of rebuilding our democratic institutions. When voting rates are some of the lowest among advanced democracies, we should make it easier, not harder, to vote. When trust in our institutions is low, we should reduce the corrosive influence of money in our politics, and insist on the principles of transparency and ethics in public service. When Congress is dysfunctional, we should draw our districts to encourage politicians to cater to common sense and not rigid extremes.
And all of this depends on our participation; on each of us accepting the responsibility of citizenship, regardless of which way the pendulum of power swings.
Our Constitution is a remarkable, beautiful gift. But it’s really just a piece of parchment. It has no power on its own.
We, the people, give it power – with our participation, and the choices we make. Whether or not we stand up for our freedoms. Whether or not we respect and enforce the rule of law. America is no fragile thing. But the gains of our long journey to freedom are not assured.
In his own farewell address, George Washington wrote that self-government is the underpinning of our safety, prosperity, and liberty, but “from different causes and from different quarters much pains will be taken…to weaken in your minds the conviction of this truth;” that we should preserve it with “jealous anxiety;” that we should reject “the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest or to enfeeble the sacred ties” that make us one.
We weaken those ties when we allow our political dialogue to become so corrosive that people of good character are turned off from public service; so coarse with rancor that Americans with whom we disagree are not just misguided, but somehow malevolent. We weaken those ties when we define some of us as more American than others; when we write off the whole system as inevitably corrupt, and blame the leaders we elect without examining our own role in electing them.
It falls to each of us to be those anxious, jealous guardians of our democracy; to embrace the joyous task we’ve been given to continually try to improve this great nation of ours. Because for all our outward differences, we all share the same proud title: Citizen."
Amen.
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Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and Adams be damned!
And replace it with, I don't know--something like a one person rule, maybe! Maybe Kim Jung-Un is on to something!
