HILLARY'S TRUMP OF GLOOM

I began watching the returns coming in on CNN last night, and it certainly was interesting. The pundits for the most part acted like they were at a wake. CNN held off calling Trump the winner in states where he obviously had won as their vote-count expert examined the states county-by-county desperately looking for some hope that Hillary could pull it out. It went something like this “Well, here in Transylvania, with 97 % of the vote tallied and Trump holding a 100,000 vote lead, Clinton can still pull it out because they haven’t finished counting the votes in Precinct 37 of Philharmonica, a historically Democratic stronghold.” Never mind that there were only 10,000 votes in Precinct 37 of Philharmonica.

I started swapping around between CNN and MSNBC, and the guys at MSNBC seemed to be taking it a little better, but they were still dragging their feet on calling states where Trump seemed to hold a commanding lead. Swapping over to FOX, I saw less gloom and doom, and more willingness to call states for Trump. An online check with a neutral source (the BBC) tended to validate FOX’s courage in going ahead and calling states for Trump.

Then somewhere between 2:00 and 2:30 John Podesta came out and told the somber crowd at the Clinton “victory” party to go home, that Clinton would have a statement the next morning. The next thing that I remember happening is some pundits talking about Clinton challenging the election results, and the illegitimacy of a Trump presidency because Clinton was probably going to win the popular vote. Seems to me like just a few weeks ago, Donald Trump had undermined the very foundation of American Democracy by suggesting that he might challenge the election results. I guess whether democracy is undermined depends completely upon who is challenging the election results.

Before we go any further, let it be known that I did not vote for Trump. I didn’t vote for Clinton either. I voted for the guy who thought Aleppo was a brand of dog food. In doing that, I have found common ground for agreement with Colin Kaepernick, who voted for None of the Above.

I really was upset that Trump got the Republican nomination, because I believed that he was Hillary Clinton’s best shot at getting elected president. I kept saying to myself and anyone else who would listen “If the Republicans had nominated a decent candidate, we’d have a Republican in the White House for the next four years.” I felt that Clinton was so marred by scandal that only someone who was obviously unqualified could lose to her. I was wrong. She was so marred by scandal that even someone who was obviously unqualified could beat her. I wonder how many Democrats this morning are saying “If we had nominated a decent candidate, we’d have a Democrat in the White House for the next four years.”

That’s one of the two things that I haven’t heard the Wednesday morning experts talk about as a factor in her defeat—her trail of scandal from Whitewater through Benghazi to the email fiasco with stop-offs at other scandals too numerous to mention. My fear of a Trump presidency almost persuaded me to vote for her, but her record of scandal was too great and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it.

Another major factor that nobody seems to be talking about is the Second Amendment. I’m not talking about the NRA—I’m talking about the Second Amendment. The media demonizes the NRA as a powerful lobby which whips up public opposition to gun control. The NRA isn’t creating that public sentiment, it’s getting out in front of an already-existing public sentiment. The public knows that Clinton, like many “gun control” advocates, doesn’t want gun control, she wants gun elimination. If she had been elected president and gotten the opportunity to appoint four Supreme Court Justices, that is quite possibly what we would have gotten—gun elimination along the lines of Australia and England. The specter of that possibility almost, but not quite, persuaded me to vote for Trump.

So now, because the Democrats fielded such a flawed nominee, we have the least-qualified President-elect in history. He can, however, become one of the most successful Presidents of the Twenty-First Century if he does two things: (1) He must gather around himself a cadre of the most qualified people he can find to run the various executive offices, and (2) he must get out of their way and let them run the country. It would be nice if Trump assumed as great a role in running the United States government as Queen Elizabeth takes in running the United Kingdom's government. He could show up for ribbon-cuttings and other public ceremonies while people who knew what they were doing actually ran the country.

HAVE YOU EVER TOLD A LIE?

The Washington Post is emoting over an answer Hillary Clinton gave in an interview with CBS’s Scott Pelley. The pertinent line of questioning was:

PELLEY: You know, in ’76, Jimmy Carter famously said, “I will not lie to you.”

CLINTON: Well, I have to tell you I have tried in every way I know how literally from my years as a young lawyer all the way through my time as secretary of state to level with the American people.

PELLEY: You talk about leveling with the American people. Have you always told the truth?

CLINTON: I’ve always tried to. Always. Always.

PELLEY: Some people are gonna call that wiggle room that you just gave yourself.

CLINTON: Well, no, I’ve always tried —

PELLEY: I mean, Jimmy Carter said, “I will never lie to you.”

CLINTON: Well, but, you know, you’re asking me to say, “Have I ever?” I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever have. I don’t believe I ever will. I’m gonna do the best I can to level with the American people.

The Post had this to say about Clinton’s answer:

I mean, what? W-H-A-T?  "I've always tried to" tell the truth?  On what planet is this a good answer for a politician?

The answer, of course, is on no planet. While I am less familiar with politics on Mars than I am with those on Earth, I am pretty sure that being unable to simply say, "Yes, I have always been truthful with the public," would be a problem on the Red Planet, too.

I don’t disagree that Clinton gave a bad answer, but Pelley asked a bad question. His question was basically, “Have you ever told a lie?” I really think such a question is impertinent and doesn’t deserve an answer. Not only is such a line of questioning impolite, it would be held inadmissible in a court of law. The law recognizes that nobody tells 100% of the truth 100% of the time. 

When Jimmy Carter flashed his toothy smile and famously said “I will not lie to you,” he was making a feel-good statement, but he was most likely lying. I remember a contemporary comedian paraphrasing Carter’s famous statement like this:

I’ll never tell a lie, and that’s the truth

For every time I lie, I grow another tooth.

What should Clinton have said in response to Pelley’s question “Have you always told the truth?” Maybe a Donald Trumpish “Have you?” might have been appropriate.

If it were proper for Pelley to ask such a question at all, he should have asked specific questions about specific issues, for example:

Q: Now, you’d agree with me that it’s wrong to mislead the American people, even if you are doing the misleading by making literally true statements which leave your hearers with a false impression?

Q: On the night of the Benghazi attack didn’t you email your daughter, and I quote “Two of our officers were killed in Benghazi by an Al Queda-like group”?

Q: After sending that email, when making a public statement about the Benghazi attack, didn’t you say: “Some have sought to justify this vicious behavior as a response to inflammatory material posted on the Internet. The United States deplores any intentional effort to denigrate the religious beliefs of others. Our commitment to religious tolerance goes back to the very beginning of our nation. But let me be clear: There is never any justification for violent acts of this kind”?

Q: Please explain to me how that statement wasn’t an effort to mislead the American people into thinking that terrorism had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack?

Q: Later, when speaking of the Benghazi attack, didn’t you say “We’ve seen the heavy assault on our post in Benghazi that took the lives of those brave men. We’ve seen rage and violence directed at American embassies over an awful internet video that we had nothing to do with”?

Q: Please explain to me how putting those two sentences together wasn’t an effort to mislead the American people into thinking that terrorism had nothing to do with the Benghazi attack?

Oddly enough, the Washington Post, in an article entitled "Is Hillary Clinton a 'Liar' on Benghazi?" looked into these statements by Clinton a while back and decided that they were not lies. Instead, the Post found them to be artfully stated truth.

Here's what the Post said:

Looking at Clinton’s public statements, it is clear she was very careful to keep the attacks separate from the video; the two incidents do not appear in the same sentence (unlike the controversial televised remarks by then-U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice).

For instance, in her Sept. 14 remarks, Clinton devotes one sentence to the “heavy assault” in Benghazi and then another sentence about the “rage and violence” over the “awful Internet video.” She does not say they are connected, although listeners may have gotten that impression.

According to the Post, Clinton wasn't "lying" because she put Benghazi in one sentence and the rage over the video in another. Listeners just got the impression that the video triggered the attack because the two sentences were together.

Now I ask the Post, "Why do you think Clinton put those two sentences together?" If she did it once, maybe it was happenstance. But she did it repeatedly. It sure looks to me like she wanted the American people to mishear what she said and believe that terrorism had nothing to do with the attack on Benghazi.

Hillary's thinking seems to me to be like the boy whose mother told him not to shoot the beautiful fox squirrel in the front yard. "But mom," he protested,  "I didn't shoot the fox squirrel in the front yard." And it was perfectly true. He chased the fox squirrel across the road and shot it in the pasture.

The Post seems to me to be straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel to bash Clinton for what she said in the Pelley interview and defend her for what she said about Benghazi. Apparently the Post thinks that literally true but misleading statements are not lies. Maybe they're not, but they're not the kind of statements that should be made by someone who says "I'm gonna do the best I can to level with the American people."

AMERICA'S FAVORITE PASTIME: LAMBASTING PRESIDENTS

Lyndon Johnson was looking forward to running for a second term when an ABJ (Anybody but Johnson) movement began. Public opposition to him and his policies hounded him to the point that he decided not to run for that second term. Richard Nixon was driven from office by the Watergate scandal. His successor, Gerald Ford, was ridiculed as an incompetent klutz who had “played too much football without a helmet.” Ford was defeated in the next election. Jimmy Carter was roasted as an incompetent and lost his bid for reelection. Ronald Reagan was reviled as a nincompoop, and his second term was mired in the Iran-Contra scandal. George H.W. Bush was so roundly criticized that he lost his bid for reelection. Bill Clinton’s second term was mired in the Lewinsky scandal. George W. Bush is still being blamed for perceived problems in our society.

America’s favorite sport is not football, it’s lambasting presidents. Critics of our presidents have attacked them for many and varied reasons. Sometimes those reasons have been laudable, sometimes not. I have to believe, however, that the vast majority of those criticisms leveled at our presidents were motivated by a sincere desire to advance the best interests of the United States.

We again have a president who is under fire, and it appears that his second term might be mired in a controversy over Benghazi. I have heard a number of persons spring to his defense, not by defending his policies and actions, but by accusing his critics of racism. He’s being criticized just as his predecessors have been criticized, and his critics are guilty of racism? I think not.

Besides, when we are evaluating criticisms of our public officials, the question should not be whether his critics are racists, it should be whether their criticisms are valid. What if a racist shouts, “The building is on fire! Head for the fire escapes!” Would you say “Pay no mind to him, he’s a racist,” and stay in the building?

Now, if the critic were to, say, manufacture a bogus student ID as “evidence” that the president was not a citizen of the United States, you might have reason to suspect that the manufacturer of the fake ID was a racist (and not very smart because the job was so poorly executed. See http://urbanlegends.about.com/od/barackobama/ss/Obama-Student-Id.htm). But you would reject the evidence of the ID because it was forged, not because it was being proffered by a suspected racist.

If there’s one thing I learned from 32 years as a trial lawyer, it’s the fact that valid evidence can be proffered by despicable people. When you reject a criticism out of hand by characterizing the person who voices it as a racist, you are not engaging in critical thinking. In that situation I’d say that one of two things is going on.  Either (1) you are not doing much thinking at all, or (2) You are hoping that your listeners are so gullible that you will be able to get them to reject the criticism without doing much thinking at all. I think the proper term is demagoguery.

We’ve come to a sorry state in this nation when the best we can do for civic discourse is to shout down a proposition, not by examining its validity, but by demonizing its proponent.