Building Walls.

President Trump's rally call, as a candidate, was the building of a wall with Mexico. A call that resonated with the America's blue collar workers who felt they had been disfranchised and lost jobs to illegal immigrants. Appealing to base emotions rather than facts Donald Trump accused the trade agreements for the loss of US jobs; strangely enough workers in German car factories in USA also nodding their approval for the xenophobic rhetoric that swept Trump to the White House.

While one may argue that the Trump camp lacks a cogent and cohesive foreign policy the reality is that within President Trumps mind there is a policy statement garnished with the slogan of Make America Great Again. In those four words a filter has been created and for Trump anything that does not meet his definition of greatness or erodes the edifice in his mind, it needs to be purged and replaced.

President Trump is an isolationist with a twist; isolationist to anyone who would question his view, isolationist to any process where he feels he is accountable, engaging only with those who will embrace his view of the world. Having manufactured consent on the back of building walls during the elections, he now is building walls, both visible (still to get budget funding) to invisible walls. Having drawn a line in the desert between Mexico and the US, he moved to impose tariffs on Canadian lumber, setting off a trade war of attrition.

For those of us who paused and said well he has got that out of his system and will now step into the role that behoves a world leader waited with abated breath for his first visit abroad. The Middle East leg went well from trumps perspective, away from the 'nasty fake' reporters in Washington, only to land in to Europe where the depth and resolve of a Trump doctrine on foreign policy, especially leadership of NATO was expected to unfold.

A dumbfounded world audience just watched Trump push aside a Nato member premier, have an uncomfortable handshake with President Marcon, and then alienated himself from NATO partners by going off in a golf cart on his own while they walked to a summit conference hall. The more hard nosed amongst us brushed these bizarre incidents as part of the idiosyncrasies that frame the personality of Donald Trump and felt the meat on the bone would be covered in due course.

From there on President Trump in each statement, each utterance, brick by brick started to build an invisible wall with the closest and staunchest allies of the United States. First he did not reaffirm America's commitment to Article 5 of the NATO alliance, a tradition that every US President has done since NATO was formed. Then as the discussion veered towards the Paris Accord on Climate Change, President Trump shocked the world by not endorsing it.

President Trump in those two fateful steps moved away from the leadership of the moral compass of the free world and put a wall between him and Europe. His discomfort in the company of the very allies he was dumping was obvious, perhaps lacking the intellectual depth to hold his own with them he took the one course he knows best, step as far away as possible.

It seems to be clear that his vision of making America Great Again is clearly not got its mind around the fact that America is great in its leadership of the world. For a country with 5% of the world population and 25% of the world economy and 20% of the worlds carbon pollution, it cannot just stand on the sidelines in isolation to march of 190 nations who are concerned about the world we will leave for the next generations. You cannot make America great by ignoring that NATO, with all its issues, is still the only bulwark to prevent Russia repeating the Crimea take over elsewhere in Europe. America's greatness comes from its world leadership and from a strong domestic economy.

In the vacuum that is thus created in Europe the role of Germany and France, with perhaps a resurgent UK, will be pivotal to the shape of world politics. It will soon be clear that if President Trump continues to build these walls he will have a great America, sitting on its on, having eroded all the effort of 60 odd years of world leadership.

Comeygate: Trump's quick sand?

President Donald Trump has achieved notoriety for his impulsiveness and of late the use of social media to make his opinions known. As he has hammered the press about ‘fake news’ he has compulsively ignored that he has been the architect providing the fodder for concern and confusion. Political positions change, policy stance can become less rigid but his flip-flops are simply bizarre. Expediency is a prerequisite for a politician to survive; even though he may claim he is not a political figure, once he jumped into the race for President he becomes political. However, to be expedient and to be brazenly contradictory are shamefully different and Trump has shown all that matters is his own image and his own ego.

The unfolding saga with the former FBI Director James Comey has a confrontational element to it that will plague President Trump and his team in a thornier manner than the Flynn firing. Since July of 2016, when James Comey announced the FBI had no further investigation into the Hillary Clinton email matter, Trump and Comey somehow got wedded into a symbiotic relationship which does not end with Comey’s firing.

It might be useful to narrate the record on this relationship because it will perhaps be a case study for students of crisis creation in the future:

July 5, 2016 Comey recommends that the Justice Department not prosecute Hillary Clinton on the private email server issue. Trump immediately reacts with the following words, “Today is the best evidence ever that we’ve seen that our system is absolutely, totally rigged. It’s rigged.”

October 12, 2016 at rally in Florida he says of the suspended investigation, “..furthermore we are going to investigate this phony investigation. It’s a phony investigation.”

October 31, 2016 James Comey announced that the investigation into the Clinton emails is being reopened. Trump immediately announces:

"It took a lot of guts. I really disagreed with him. I was not his fan. But I'll tell you what, what he did, he brought back his reputation. He's got to hang tough, because there's a lot of people who want him to do the wrong thing. What he did was the right thing."

November 6, 2016 James Comey tells Congress the FBI has not changed its position on not charging Hillary Clinton and clarifies that the investigation was reopened only in terms of the Huma Abedin emails backed up on a private computer. Trump immediately responds with his rigged system comments.

"Hillary Clinton is guilty. She knows it, the FBI knows it, the people know it. She is being protected by a rigged system. It's a totally rigged system."

January 22, 2017 , and two days after being sworn in as the 45^th President of the United States, Trump at a reception at the White House says  "Oh, there's James, he's become more famous than me," before patting him on the back and shaking his hand.

March 20, 2017 James Comey confirms to the House Intelligence Committee that the FBI is investigating links between the Trump campaign team and the Russians. Sean Spicer is asked if the President still has confidence in James Comey, and he answers, "there's no reason to believe he doesn't [have the president's full confidence] at this time".

April 12, 2017 When speaking to Fox news Trumps says "it's not too late" to fire Comey. "But, you know, I have confidence in him. We'll see what happens. You know, it's going to be interesting."

We know the events of since then resulting in the firing of James Comey on May 9^th 2017 with the comments that everyone has lost confidence in Comey and this was based on recommendations of the Deputy Attorney General, a statement since watered down by Trump himself stating he never was comfortable about Comey and would have fired him anyway.

It is known that Trump does not have extensive discussions with his key team members before he ‘tweets’ or makes important decisions, especially those that concern matters that irritate him. This is borne out by the comment that his surrogates who speak to the press are not always going to be up to date on matters!

The fact that the President of the United States would go on record with a veiled threat about taped conversations with Comey is unbelievably insane. James Comey’s response that he would testify to Congress but only in ‘public’ clearly means he is willing to throw down the gauntlet. Trump and Co may release parts of the taped conversation, which considering the FBI director would speak of many issues and may seem compromising to Comey, it also carries the double edged sword that there could well me comments not to the liking of the Trump cause.

More importantly Trump by bringing up taped conversations has played a fatally wrong card as Congress can subpoena those tapes and cause a confrontation with the White House. Trumps assertion that Comey told him ‘three times’ that he (Trump) was not under investigation with respect to links with Russia during the campaign will come to the forefront. It is very likely that what he may have said was ‘based on the current information with us you are not the subject of this investigation.’ This does not exclude that possibility that if evidence comes up then the net would spread wider.

Trumps style of dealing with allegations that come too close to his skin are always deny and then attack. In his brazen belief that firing Comey would be seen as a positive ‘cleaning the swamp’ move seems to have back fired because it is done in the backdrop of the Russian investigation and no matter what the spin comes out of the White House the Comey firing carries the hallmark of getting rid of an irritant FBI Director.

The take away from the Comey issue is that is has all the signs of becoming a crisis that will overshadow Washington’s attention. Already key GOP figures are running for cover and realize that their man in the Oval office has created a crisis he could well have ignored and let the Russian link investigation continue its course.

Here is how this game could play out:

·      Congress cannot ignore the Russian connection and now link it to the Comey firing. In a sense the firing has given the Democrats the teeth to the investigation.

·      Comey will testify in public and will cause further headaches for Trump leading to a public spat which will only make Trump look more defensive than he should be.

·      No matter who is chosen as the new FBI Director it is impossible to stop the Russian link investigation.

·      Michael Flynn suddenly could play a key role and Congress may grant him immunity in return for his story, which seems would add fuel to the fire.

·      Eventually if there is a slightest hint of Trump acting to either protect key targets of the investigation or indeed steer questions away from himself GOP doubters will increase resulting in a crisis of confidence in Trump as never seen before.

In short Trump and his tweets have stirred up a hornets nest and he just has to hope they are not heading his way. It might be useful for him to give the blue bird that tweets a bit of a rest.

The Korean Missile Crisis.

In October 1962 a young President J K Kennedy faced the Cuban Missile Crisis which, in the words of some, put the world a blink away from a nuclear war. The 13 day crisis was defused finally but not after a level of brinkmanship which has remained a text book case study of crisis management. Today North Korea's King Jong Un and President Donald Trump are enacting a dance of brinkmanship that, without a doubt, is possibly going to dwarf the Cuban Missile Crisis. There are stark differences between the two conflicts, and yet the similarities are to the extent that a possible nuclear confrontation could get out of hand.

Without discussing the 1962 crisis in too much detail, one thing was clearly obvious in that crisis was that the Russian movement of missiles to Cuba in a sense posturing by Moscow to get the US to roll back its Jupiter missile deployment in Turkey. Indeed, as the crisis rolled out the posturing could have resulted in outbreak of hostilities but one can argue that given the Russian motives there was a line they did not want to cross.

In contrast the current crisis is not something that has suddenly surprised the world. North Korea for some time now has not been secretive about its desire to have both a nuclear weapons capability and to have a credible delivery system. A study of nuclear proliferation shows that once an aspiring nuclear country crosses a certain point in its development system the roll back of the system through pressure and threats begins to fail. We saw this in the case of Israel, India and Pakistan, and North Korea is no exception to that process. Theoretically a nuclear capability is easier to achieve that back during the 1940's Manhattan Project, the two big challenges are to develop a delivery system and to then be able to reduce the size of the nuclear weapon to then be carried as a warhead.

While there is no conclusive evidence that this warhead capability has been developed by North Korea, there is a capability with them to drop a dirty nuclear bomb from conventional means, i.e aircraft or a crude warhead. Irrespective of the effectiveness of such a capability there is no doubt that a dirty bomb or a sophisticated warhead the threat to the world is present and dangerous. So let us assume that North Korea does have the capability to cause considerable trouble.

On the current crisis it is evident that the crisis and the outcomes will be influenced by the personality of the two principal players in the sordid drama; Kim Jong Un and Donald J Trump. Let is first see the Korean leaders stance, personality and posture.

Kim Jung Un is clearly an autocrat who has absolutely no restraint on his actions from within his government or its functioning system. He has demonstrated clearly that he does not tolerate dissent and more often than not will eliminate opposition even on the basis of a hint of discontent towards him. He seems to have a stubborn streak and tends have a tit for tat mentality without regard for the stakes involved in his actions. he is on record to have said recently that he has no issue to attack American military capabilities in the region and even said he soon expects to have an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of hitting mainland United States of America.

To Kim Jung Un the goals seems to be to continue his missile testing without restraint and to continue play a game of brinkmanship with President Trump. The Korean leader is posturing as if in a game of chess and relishing the standoff perhaps believing that without the support of Congress it would seem unlikely that Trump would up the ante to a first strike on North Korea. Kim Jung Un could be making a fatal mistake as it is obvious that President Trump might be impulsive enough to order a first strike without warning. All one could then hope for is that his military brass are correct in assuming a first strike could disable North Korea's entire missile system.

Should such a first strike take place it will have to assume that China, who seems to have agreed to work with Washington to defuse the situation, may step back from being neo-neutral and change its posture. Secondly, one cannot assume that Russia would stand back in the event of a US first strike against North Korea; for them there would be distinction between a missile strike in Syria by the US with an all out first strike against North Korea.

Donald Trump has approached this crisis with a degree of aggression and bravado that is atypical of the Presidents office. The fact that Trump has said he does not rule out hostilities with North Korea is a chilling statement and while it may well be designed to give a strong message to Kim Jung Un, it was greeted with a missile launch by North Korea the very next day. Diplomacy is not one of Trumps strong points and one would imagine sane voices in his Administration would have suggested that China be asked to deliver the message of US resolve.

The danger remains that the two leaders could get embroiled in a ego war the cost of which will be borne in the loss of human life beyond our imagination. The solutions have to be offered for a quick deescalation of crisis and it would seem China's role in this is paramount. Already there is a mixed message out there with Trump saying there is a major risk of war and Secretary Tillerson not ruling out the possibility to sit and talk with the North Koreans. Indeed giving an escape route to the North Koreans to come to their senses is a plausible policy, but then one is not dealing with a rational human being. One additional problem is the maverick personality of President Trump which can only create uncertainty in the current climate.

On a closing note I wonder if Trump is reading up on the 1962 Missile Crisis and if Kim Jung Un is attending his anger management classes. Sad we are close to a stage where in one afternoon we can destroy all what God created on earth.

Trumpism: The Message

Donald J Trump promised he was going to be a 'different' President, none of us quite imagined 'how different?' Born into privilege, and not having held public office and his lack of finesse were givens that were known and not a revelation. Trump is not an avid student of constitutional law, like Obama, or holds a legacy of political inheritance, like Bush, or carries the charisma of a Kennedy, or the vision of Regan, but we all hope, somewhere within him is a philosophy of governance waiting to express itself. Thirty days into the Presidency the Trump administration has just not kicked out of campaign mode, and in more ways than one has shown weaknesses in its administration that wrestle logic.

Yes there is no denying that Trump spoke for the disfranchised workers, mostly white working class, and he spoke to them, during the election, with a political incorrectness that they liked and identified with. To them the ills of their economic and social plight lay with the Chinese and the Mexicans, and their insecurities came from the threat of Islamic terrorism. Trump, a candidate for the highest office, was speaking things they spoke in bars, he was not the smooth talking intellectual who has spoken to them for decades before. The fact his message was rhetoric, lacking in substance and policy, did not matter, the man was going to clean the 'swamp' in Washington and in some miraculous way change their destiny in their little hometown was all that mattered.

I am reminded of a very brilliant politician from my home country, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who in 1970's stepped up and promised everyone, yes everyone, in Pakistan 'roti, capra and makkan, i.e. 'bread, clothes and a house'. He swept to power in the first general election after years of military dictatorship, even though he did not command the majority in then East Pakistan, he worked to ensure he was in power and not the majority party from the East. Bhutto was a brilliant man, but a man who knew that his promise of bread, clothes and a house were false but it did not matter, he was in power. In sense Trump reminds me of that election promise, minus the intellectual power of a Bhutto.

Sadly the message that Trumpism is bringing to the forefront is that wrestling with the values of the constitution, dismantling the edifice of the separation of powers, judging the judiciary are all fine. Yes Presidents have lied before, yes Presidents have not delivered all their promises but never have they attacked the values of what we, from the outside, see as one of America's greatest virtues, the ability to hold people in public office fully accountable. It was these institutional values that brought Nixon and Bill Clinton to face their failures, not only as Presidents but as people in office expected to hold high standards of personal and moral conduct. While it would be unfair to characterize Donald Trump as a dictator in the making, most certainly there are deeply troubling signs of his definition of his own power, without recognizing its limits, that ought to bother the saner voices amongst us.

Having spent hours listening to his election speeches and those since he took office, one cannot see even an iota of an effort for the man to become Presidential! One can excuse his style of oratory, one can excuse his hyperbolic gestures, one can even find some of his utterances, (ala Sweden's terror attack last week, which never happened) as amusing, but then Mr. Trump where are the words that carry not a nation only but the world with you. Everything is not a 'deal' and even when you talk of a new deal between the Israeli's and Palestinians, you tell us what two decades ago was proposed by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia and endorsed by the Arab League.

This is where the message from President Trump gets all muddled up. Clearly he has no sense of history and certainly not a man who has read much of history or anything at all. His intake of intellectual stimulus supposedly comes from watching cable TV, and his prowess over words is limited to the 140 character or so that Twitter allows! I do not expect President Trump to be an authority on Plato and Socrates, or even America's own political history, but somewhere in those disjointed words I would expect some words of encouragement that we have a President leading the free world with some vision, some political insight that is more than on offer in a run down bar in the middle of nowhere in America.

If the first 30 days have not seen the man change, we can forgive him that, but then four years is a long time to endure this sort of political leadership. His confrontational style has called the press the 'enemy' the judges 'incompetent' and ensured that America's neighbors do not feel they want to be on the same continent. It is only a matter of time, and not too far down this rocky road, when he will clash with the Republican party itself, it is almost as predictable as the sun rising tomorrow. President Trump only you can change the course of this plane, only you can give it stability and direction that instills confidence and to do that you have to take three days off, sit alone and ponder on the simple question of how do you want to lead the nation and the world, and while doing that shut down your Twitter account.

Letter to President Trump: Some Common Sense advice.

Dear Mr. President,

First of all congratulations for making it to the Oval office, a year ago it seemed as remote as Donald Duck making it there, but you out foxed the GOP candidates and then contrary to what was expected worked on the fears of the people to get where you have. Well done. I doubt you read my blog, and if you do you may think I support the other camp! Well on the contrary I support humanism and empathy and care for the people, not rhetorical words, but actions, and in all earnest some of what you have uttered has been against the grain of my values. So yes in that sense I do not support you, but it does not mean I am a Hillary supporter. (its not a zero sum game, look it up).

Given the reality you are the most important man on the planet it might not be my place to give you advice, but then who knows in the sandpile of wisdom, or the lack of it, one never knows where the surfing of the net might lead the President of the United States.

So here is some honest advice, not because I admire you, but because I am scared you will mess up and cause some catastrophe from which human kind may not recover too easily. (Study history, read up Donald there were a few men in history who single handedly caused more damage than 100 divisions of crack troops could not.)

So this list might be something you want to put on your mirror and glance it each morning as you put that clump of strange colored hair into place.

1. Stop Tweeting: President's tweet once in a while, to inform and encourage, not to denigrate and ridicule.
2. The White House is not designed to promote business interests; let Ivanka's fashion line problems stay outside the Oval office, they are not your concern especially to stop during an intelligence briefing to tweet your anger at Nordstrum.
3. Stop Feeding the American population doses of fear. Terrorists kill more people in one week in the Middle East, Pakistan, Afghanistan and elsewhere then the entire number of people killed by them in the US.
4. Putin is NOT your friend, have the courage to condemn what he is doing in Ukraine before you launch an attack on other countries. He loves you because you are making America weak on the international stage. Here is what Putin thinks "Donald make American great again, and leave the rest of the world to me."
5. Mexico and Canada are your neighbors and for most of modern times have been good friends, dumping crap on them will not serve your cause, and a country with weak neighbors eventually becomes weak itself.
6. Take a language course, in English. There are more expressions in the english language than 'very very' 'bigly' etc etc.
7. Read the Constitution very carefully, your attack on the judges and your attacks on the press forget that there is a thing called the separation of powers.
8. Bring some empathy into your heart, this is not like some reality show and the country is not your personal company where you can do what you like, say what you like. Humility might help.
9. The elections are over so making false statements again and again don't make them true.
10. Most important learn to lead, not just have people sitting around agreeing to you, listen to the other view, there is merit in that, especially as the majority did not vote for you and you are now their President too.

Mr President, we look to you for leadership, not for entertainment, we want you to be a statesman not a character the comedy shows will lampoon week after week. This is a serious job, all the most because next to you is a suitcase with some nuclear codes and you can destroy in one afternoon all that God has created on Earth. So be careful with this power, you owe that to the next generation.


God Bless Humanity.

President Trump: The First 10 days.

A recurring question, during the elections, was whether Donald J Trump was competent to be the President and most argued that being a successful business, so they say, he certainly could do the job at the White House. In his first ten days in the Oval Office, President Trump and his cronies has not ceased to amaze one of their lack of expertise and their stubborn will to run the highest office in the US in a style that has even some Republicans wondering what the next three years and 355 days are expected to be like.  Clearly this will go down in history as 'The Twitter Presidency" given the propensity of Mr. Trump to use the social media as the means to announce policy, vent his anger and react to the criticisms.

If there were any hopes of a more mature and sober President to emerge from the skin of Donald J Trump these were quickly dashed when Sean Spicer, the White House spokesman, appeared before the press and basically told them they were wrong in the way they reported the inauguration of the 45th President and then presented 'alternative facts' to support his, and his masters, view that the crowds were indeed the largest ever in history. About the same time President Trump was at the CIA headquarters informing his audience that the Media are horrible people and in effect he will be at war with them, presumably as he sees them as the 'enemy'.

President Trump also then signed an executive order withdrawing USA from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade bloc of the Pacific Rim countries including Canada. While the agreement would only take effect in Feb 2018, subject to 86% of the countries ratifying the agreement, Mr, Trump really killed the agreement before it even reached the stage of being blessed. While major modifications to the agreement were warranted scraping the agreement only plays into China's trading strategy given that the Chinese have, in the last 2 years, made commitments of investing $368 billion into the Latin American countries. While some may argue that bilateral agreements could recover the lost ground without giving the concessions that the TPP gave, the fact remains bilateral agreements will take years to put into place.

Next in line was approving the Keystone Xl pipeline which is to run 1900 KM from Alberta Canada southwards to connect to other pipelines to take Canadian oil to the Gulf Coast. Other than to upset the environmental lobby the pipelines will not necessarily benefit the US economy directly and explains why the Canadian Prime Minister was quick to welcome the decision. However the executive order by President Trump ignores the years of work done in various government agencies to ensure the pipeline does not damage a fragile ecosystem in the areas it is supposed to go through. It was interesting that about the time the order was being signed a 'gag order' was issued to the US EPA disallowing anyone from making any public statements or press releases.

The following day the big election promise of building the wall on the border with Mexico was turned into an executive order, with the small print that initially the US will pay for the wall and then later Mexico will reimburse the US. Mexico was quick to respond that there was no such agreement and the forthcoming visit of the Mexican President was cancelled by the Mexicans, (even though the Trump camp tried to make out the cancellation was a mutual decision). Clearly the backlash of American taxpayers having to pay for the wall was not going down too well with his supporters and before any noise could be heard the Sean Spicer suggested that the White House was considering a 20% tax of Mexican imports which would be more than enough to pay for the wall. Indeed, Mr Spicer clearly is not a student of economics because such a tax is always paid by the importer of record, which in this case is the US company importing the goods, so in the end the consumer would pay for the wall, not the Mexicans.

It would seem that things were getting a bit too stuck for the new team in the White House so the final coup de grace was then administered when President Trump signed the order banning people from seven countries (all Muslim) from entering the United States. While this was not 'a total and complete ban on all Muslims,' it certainly was the most ill conceived of his decisions. Yes the President has the right to make the borders secure, and yes he can pass such an order, provided it does not violate the constitution but here is the chilly aspect of it all; he never consulted the Justice Department, or the Homeland Security or the State Department on this order and certainly none of them were taken into confidence to be prepared for the effects of it.

Insofar as these are the decisions he made we must step back from them an look at some of the issues of style and substance in putting these executive orders out. Also by seeing what has happened since then we have to certainly wonder what lies ahead. When senior State Department officials, who are career diplomats, voiced their concern and dissent over the last order, through an age old tradition used by career diplomats, the quick response was to hint to these career technocrats that they are free to leave office. Unlike other government agencies generally the career diplomats in the State department are retained by every new president and only some ambassadorial positions are allocated to the incumbent President to allocate.

While the acting Attorney General may well have been in the right about questioning the legality of the immigration executive order, she may well have been wrong to question the policy, the whole affair was badly handled. Yes she should have sought to meet with the White House and express her reservations before going public, but irrespective it would seem that without a prior consultation on the new executive order the acting Attorney General may well have felt like someone being ordered to do whatever the White House wants.

The troubling aspect of this new President is that he has shown a clear inability to trust anyone and certainly not to lean on them for advice. Its almost an arrogant self belief in himself and while this may work within the executive branch of the government it is going to be a different matter when dealing with Congress in this style and manner. On a lighter note one can only be amazed at how President Trump can embellish facts to suit his own motives to the verge of lying. A case in point is when asked about the chaos his travel ban imposed he 'tweeted' that it was really the Delta airlines computer glitch that caused the chaos and his order was working 'very very nicely'. Well President Trump the Delta airlines computer glitch was 24 hours after your order went into effect.

The essential question we have to ask is whether this man is competent to understand that while he is the most powerful man on earth there are checks and balances to his power and these come from Media, the Judges and the Congress. Yes Judges can strike down his executive orders if they violate the existing laws, and yes the Media can question his decisions. This is something that we will need some getting used to.

For the record I did not support Hilary Clinton but rather felt Bernie Sanders would have been the best choice for the US. Alas we now have to stop following the media, even though I doubt he can muzzle it, and follow something called Twitter. Welcome to the Twitter Presidency.

Obama Farewell, Meryl Streep and Trump: A Thought.

US Presidents have, over the many decades, had varying degrees of send offs; some inglorious and shameful, some quiet and unnoticed, and then there is President Obama’s farewell, which stands out as emotional and moving. I listened to his farewell speech in Chicago three times, not because I wanted to record some facts, but simply because tenor, depth and resonance of those words needed to heard again and again. There are many too who would criticize the man for being good on words and short on deeds, and as he put it, this is the hallmark of a democracy; the right to disagree. In equal measure those who accuse him of being decisive would find it hard to find fault in his message of unity and togetherness.

Leaders are not expected to be perfect and all that is asked of them is to be genuine and true. Obama has had his faults and short comings too; an economic expansion that ignored some segments, the inability to condemn the 65 civilians killed in drone strikes, the silence as Israel slaughtered 2000 Palestinians in 50 days (of those killed 550 were children), and the list can perhaps go on, but we cannot fault him for not trying to make a difference. Obama is often accused of sheltering the Muslims at the expense of the nation, a claim that needs to be examined at length; suffice to mention here there is nothing wrong when he says, “Do not blame Islam for the actions of a minority of so called Muslims.”

 Obama, it would seem, came to office with more expectations of him than any other president before him. I guess this comes with the burden of being ‘the first’ in any field. In a sense this may explain his constant effort to appease all sections of society and, in the eyes of some, falling short with each section. Yet when we look at legacies we need to stop counting trees and see the forest as a whole. We need to see not only what our part of the agenda was fulfilled but what the essence of the persons legacy means to us.

President Obama, along with his charming wife, Michelle, brought wholesomeness to the White House that it seriously lacked. The reaching out and the genuineness that flowed from the portals of that esteemed residence were not just photo opportunities but one could feel the warmth, concern and care for people was deep rooted. There was intellect in the Oval Office, there was humor, there empathy, perhaps the most important ingredient in a man’s arsenal of what we call Character.

Yes amongst us there will be some who will say Obama handed Trump the election victory by not delivering on his promises. First all as measures go he delivered on most of his promises in substantial strides of success. Secondly, the people elected Trump, go blame yourself for what you have put in the White House, no one put a gun to your head and said vote Trump. In so far as contrasts go for me the biggest thing I will miss is the eloquent speeches of President Obama, which will soon be replaced by the vocabulary lacking, wobbling utterances from a new President whose command of the English language is just about enough to get a Twitter message out.

On to Meryl Streep, an actress who oozes talent, and steeped as she may be in liberal politics, her remarks about a man of power mocking a disabled reporter had nothing to do with liberal politics; it was about decency, compassion and empathy. The fact that Mr. Trump’s only reaction was to call her an ‘over rated actress’ shows either man is living on Mars or is a total buffoon. You do not get over 127 acting awards and nominations in your career and remain ‘over rated’. Yes celebrities should speak of issues of social consciousness, they are icons of the young generation and if they do not have empathy for society then who will?

Sadly we must adjust to the new times where the new President will be twitting at all times of the night his outrage at reporters, world leaders and celebrities when they ‘dare’ to criticize him. What is bloodcurdling is that in a democracy to wear a skin that thin and then to sit in the White House as the most powerful man and tweet your temper out portends a mindset of immaturity or intolerance, or perhaps both. We must this week take time and listen to President Obama’s speech and Meryl Streep’s speech a few times and absorb the message of each word, each sentence a little more deeply. Sadly we know that such oratory will not will coming from the White House after January 20^th, so Meryl its all up to you.