The Republicans had seventeen candidates to pick from, and, due to circumstances that seemed to start at pride and descended into an inability to get out of each other’s way or settle on an alternative, they ended up nominating the candidate with the least experience, the least competence, the least demonstrated ability to handle the office of any of those candidates it nominated back in those days when the party was “grand” and “old.” Barack Obama may be the most thin-skinned, egotistical, uninformed, unknowing and unaware presidents ever, but Mr. Trump would top him in every one of those categories. His biggest problem, aside from the fact that he is unprepared to be president, is that he finds it necessary to say what’s on his mind – not a bad quality, when one gathers evidence, listens to those who are knowledgeable, marshals facts and speaks precisely and clearly. It is a bad quality when one’s thoughts are undisciplined, when one reflexively lashes out and when one lacks command of the facts.
And in the face of the visible weakness of Mr. Trump as a candidate, the Democrats decided to nominate Hillary Clinton, someone who won the nomination thanks to 1) the number of “X” chromosomes she has; 2) thumbs on the scale by the party professionals; and 3) the “Super delegates” who lined up for her no matter how many votes her opponent received. Mrs. Clinton has been telling falsehoods as long as she has been in public life, up to and including this week, when the Washington Post gave her “Four Pinocchios” and Politico awarded her the “pants on fire” designation for the lies she told during an interview with Bret Baier. No one in America has a greater sense of self-entitlement than Hillary Clinton – she thinks Barack Obama “stole” the nomination that “rightfully” belonged to her in 2008, and she pulled the levers to make sure that misfortune did not befall her again. Mrs. Clinton won her nomination, the residue of more than thirty years of corruption, self-promotion, equivocation and shifting positions notwithstanding; and odds are that she will win the presidency as well, but her slender lead and the fact she trails in polls taken in several states that the Democrats normally win is evidence of her weakness, when one considers the weakness of her opponent (see above). Anyhow, Mrs. Clinton has spent the totality of her marriage disregarding her husband’s obvious infidelities, enabling him to commit them again and again, all the while denouncing anyone who tells the truth about him. Hardly the quality one expects in a Champion of Feminism, especially one who said she was not a “stand by your man” wife. She campaigns for “the little guy” but no one has raked in more millions of dollars from Wall Street, banks or hedge funds than Mrs. Clinton has. Hers is perhaps the most “stage managed” campaign since the age of television began, in which she spoke to screened audiences, was interviewed by tame journalists and answered planted questions, and, thanks to a compliant national media that somehow is convinced that “position held” is the equivalent of “accomplishment,” she succeeded. She is the anti-Trump, in the sense that he is a loose cannon and she is always scripted. If Mr. Trump is brutally honest, she is impulsively dishonest, and never seems to tell the truth when a lie would suffice. President Obama has said she is the most qualified candidate ever, but based on eight years in the Senate, with few accomplishments there, and four as Secretary of State, with a lengthy list of failures there, it would be easy to argue that the qualifications of most of the previous 44 Presidents were equal if not superior. Mrs. Clinton believes she is a master of policy, but what policy? Her positions on a few key issues may be 180 degrees from what they once were, but in face of a $20 trillion debt (that has doubled in the last seven years) Mrs. Clinton vows to spend more, regulate more, tax more and if that doesn’t work to double down on all three. And we haven’t even mentioned her “above the law” attitude, her private server, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation yet.
Yes, America can do better than these two candidates,both of whom may have reached their present station in life by shamelessly gaming the system; but these are the two we have, and victory in November could well go to the one which the voters find a bit less indigestible or a bit less repugnant. This could be the first election that we lose no matter who wins.