Standard strategies will not defeat Trump
They would have something to say about hopeless wars, hollowed out communities, families who have attended too many funerals. They would say something about how to recover.
They would have something to say about hopeless wars, hollowed out communities, families who have attended too many funerals. They would say something about how to recover.
What do you see in place of something real? “He loved life, and he wanted to experience all of it.”
Bush is not our first bad president, nor is he responsible for everything bad in American culture at the moment. Yet for him to set himself up as a critic of current morals is hard to abide. If he had brought such a critical eye to his own behavior, and most importantly to his own decisions, he might see less to dislike now. He might have been able to stop himself from leading his country into ruin.
One helpful reminder is that nothing Trump has threatened to do, however horrible or outlandish, comes close to the damage Bush and Cheney did when they started the Iraq war.
Trump’s election bears one loud message to Washington: stop! Stop what you are doing. Turn back. Donald Trump, however, is not the right leader for the message. He does not even understand it.
The world has entered a highly unsteady state, with no nation to enforce norms. In this environment, we need need good foreign policy leadership in Washington. We need a president who knows what he does not know.
No man worthy of the office of President should be willing to hold it if counted in or placed there …
Does it matter who we elect November 8? Before you answer, note these comparisons: Compare George W.’s foreign policy with Barack’s …
An end to alienation means a restoration of pride, a feeling that people don’t look down on you anymore. People need to belong, they need to be free, and they need dignity. That’s what this revolution is about.
Responding to a question from CBS moderator John Dickerson, who noted that Trump had once called for Bush’s impeachment over his decision to send American troops into Iraq, Trump said, “They lied. They said there were weapons of mass destruction and there were none, and they knew there were none.”
Yet you cannot lightly dismiss evidence that shows official accounts of 9/11 to be false, nor can you rely on a playground challenge to make the implications of those lies go away. When you get caught in an affair, saying “What difference does it make?” to your spouse does not repair the relationship. In a way, it is not a response at all. It just deflects reality.
The national security state that pretends to protect us will not do so. You cannot enter a struggle of the kind that has developed for fourteen years with deceit at your back. Falsehood offers no foundation for strength. Expressions of solidarity, though valuable, cannot compensate for chronic dishonesty. We have to acknowledge – and own – what we have done to extinguish the passion for death kindled in 2003.