We wonder how many remember the soliloquies of Chris Mathews (of MSNBC) about American political ethics vs. Third world electocracy. Mathews used to get sad on his show about how, in the Third World, losing politicians don’t gracefully acknowledge the victor, promise to support the victor and quietly fade out of the political limelight. Then he would highlight the American tradition of all saying we have only one President. The case he often used was Richard Nixon refusing to contest the electoral victory of John F. Kennedy.
That was when Mathews was sure about Hillary Clinton winning the election. His big worry then was Trump’s refusal to acknowledge & accept defeat. So he would highlight American tradition to preach the virtues of the losing side gracefully accepting the winning side in the interests of American democracy.
You can’t find that Chris Mathews anywhere today. The new Chris Mathews has fully embraced what he used to deride as Third World politics in which the losing side immediately & stridently goes to war with the winning side. It is a sad spectacle. We used to watch Mathews because he was such a passionate fighter for his side while understanding that Trump was a better candidate with a powerful message. Now he is at risk of becoming a caricature. Frankly, reruns of Two & Half Men show more intellectual honesty than this new Chris Mathews show. So sad!
Of course, Chris Mathews is not alone. But he may be getting increasingly lonely at his own network. NBC seems determined to get back on the right side of the election, first with the high profile acquisition of Megan Kelly from Fox and second with the hiring of ex-Fox anchor Greta Van Susteren. With MSNBC & NBC gently moving mainstream, what will CNN do? Will they elect to remain the only anti-Trump cable network, the old MSNBC stance?
Everyone is beginning to see that Mr. Trump meant what he said during his campaign. His chosen team demonstrates that & so do his actions in the past two months. In that theme, what was it that he said constantly? That he had great temperament; that he has true Presidential temperament. That is proving true almost every day.
We have never seen such a strident & persistent attack on a President Elect like the one we see on TV networks against Donald Trump. There is actually an air of desperation to it. It is as if they feel an urgent need to totally discredit or even politically maim Mr. Trump before he takes power and begins to dismantle what has been put into effect for the past few years. This desperation is evident in President Obama who has taken steps to damage the plans of Mr. Trump while he still can.
Look back 4-5 decades & you will see that every single President left Washington DC after his term to give the new President political room to enact his agenda. We mean “every” literally – W. Bush, Clinton, H.W. Bush, Reagan, Carter, Ford, Nixon, Johnson. This is American political tradition and a strength of American democracy.
In contrast, what does President Obama plan to do? Media reports suggest that he plans to continue to live in Washington DC and involve himself in leading Congressional Democrats in an open revolt against President Trump. This is pure Third World. No one in the Third World accepts the results of any election because no one in the Third World ever worries about their country or the health of their political system. Every Third world leader believes he or she is the sole messiah of the people and that the people would see that if they had the smarts to see that.
This just goes to demonstrate what we have been saying since 2014 that the 2016 election was a mandate both for President Elect Trump and a clear mandate against President Obama. Mr. Obama knows it and that is why you see his desperate attempts to invalidate the election mandate and create as many problems for President Elect Trump as he can. And Chris Mathews is OK with that, the same man who was so publicly worried about Third World evils before the election.
That reminds us of the previous passionate crusade of Chris Mathews – against warmongering of the American elite. Everywhere you look on TV, you see a well constructed hysteria about Russia. It reminds us of the anti-Saddam hysteria on 2003 and the deep desire to go to war against Saddam’s Iraq. That was bipartisan and so is the current war mongering against Russia. Both NeoCons & NeoLibs hate Putin passionately and want to attack Russia with all non-nuclear means possible. It also happens to be a smart way, they think, to attack President Elect Trump.
With all this swirling around him, Donald Trump seems almost unflappable. He has gently prevented Congressional Republicans from doing stupid things like shutting down the Ethics office. He has also warned them against rescuing Democrats from their Obamacare mess.
The biggest challenge before President Trump will be to cool down House Republicans from snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. It was crystal clear during the campaign that Mr. Trump’s agenda is not the agenda of House Republicans. After enduring 8 years of President Obama, they seem stridently eager to go to the other extreme. It is one thing to repeal Obamacare sensibly with perceived deliberation and totally another to do it hysterically.
We hope President Trump can corral these crazies & begin to enact the people’s agenda. That should begin with getting American monies held overseas back into America and passing a corporate tax reform act. Obamacare will die its own death and once that becomes evident in a year or so, repeal will become politically easier to enact.
The story of the Trump campaign was that Mr. Trump consistently outperformed expectations and that story keeps getting stronger. He has assembled a superb team for his administration, a team rich in expertise & accomplishment, a team as hungry to win as he is. It is probably the best team we have seen. Add to that his dedication to his agenda & the results he is getting with Carrier, Boeing, Lockheed Martin & Ford.
And he has done it via Twitter, the best way to get his message out without dealing with the swamp of a hostile media. He has kept his cool during the media storm about the “menace” of alleged Russian hacking. And he has proved his point that hacking had nothing to do with his victory in the Presidential election. Isn’t that what they call temperament?
A good beginning to the New Year, we think.
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