Vincent J. Curtis
30 Apr 2017
On a CNN (Clinton News Network) Sunday talk show, David
Gergen was asked to evaluate the speech that Donald Trump gave in Harrisburg,
PA on Saturday night. Gergen’s reply
contained the following extracts:
“He played to their
fears…At the same time, to bring your campaign speech into the presidency is
something presidents rarely do. This is the most divisive speech I’ve ever
heard from a sitting American president…”
This is the sort of observation that infuriates Trump’s
supporters, and gives validation to the notion of “fake news.” To say such a thing, David Gergen must have
been asleep during the entire Obama presidency.
Obama became famous for his two faced talk and his constantly imputing
bad motives to his opponents. Obama
would complain about partisanship in one breath, and then indulge in it
wholeheartedly in the next. Obama would
go out of his way to infuriate his opponents.
What Trump’s supporters love most about the man is that he
gives back Obama’s crap with both barrels.
Where Obama smirked, laughed at, and mocked those of other views, Trump puts
on no air of superiority; he slugs it out with all the grace of a Rocky
Marciano fight.
Men of Gergen’s ilk, and worse – like Chris Matthews and
Steffy – will observe that Obama was opposed immediately by Senator Mitch
McConnell and House Republicans from the very start, and that this justifies
similar treatment of Donald Trump. Well,
if the game is tit for tat, then why hide behind the façade of
objectivity? And if it was wrong for
Obama, why is it not wrong for Trump?
Barack Obama was elected while promising to “fundamentally
transform” America. He wasn’t elected on
account of that promise, but because he was black, he was not Republican, and
the chance seemed there that America could finally put the issue of race behind
it. Few paid attention to it, thinking
it was just campaign rhetoric. Old Mitch
McConnell wasn’t fooled.
Obama’s political mates were Saul D. Alinsky, Bill Ayers,
Father Flager, and Jeremiah Wright. A
fundamental transformation of America meant a new constitutional order. The courts and the presidency would take over
the business of legislation. The
Congress would do as it was told, or face destruction at the next congressional
election. The new order would bring in a
reign of extreme progressivism, the effects of which are seen on college
campuses today. To say nothing of Black
Lives Matter, transgenderism, Islamophobia – mania, and many other nihilisms.
The American people were quick to deny Obama the compliant
congress he needed to complete his fundamental transformation. They returned a Republican congress at the
earliest opportunity. The American
people signed on to an Obama presidency in order that racial tensions be ended;
they did not sign on to an overturning of the constitutional order. Mitch McConnell, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity
were onto Obama from the first, and that is why they all hoped he would
fail. In contrast, sensible people – and
that excludes most Democrats these days – want Donald Trump to succeed in
making America great again, to return to the constitutional order, and to a
revival of the economy. And Trump is striving
to do exactly that. Trump is carrying
out his campaign promises to the best of his ability.
For David Gergen to say that bringing campaign speeches into
the presidency is something presidents never do, means that no president he is
aware of ever brought their campaign promises into their speeches as president. They were all phonies who talked one way but
did another upon gaining power.
Gergen must have been sleeping during Ronald Reagan’s first
inaugural, and through every speech he gave to Congress. Lincoln must never have spoken about ending
slavery in the Union once he was in office.
Gergen might have been thinking of George H.W. Bush and his “read my
lips – no new taxes”, a brief four years in the last forty when Gergen was
awake and aware.
As for the most divisive speech he’s ever heard from a
sitting American president, one could choose any of a number of Obama’s
speeches, and in particular his speeches during the 2016 campaign, when he made
America look like a banana republic.
The David Gergens of the world are why America needs Donald
Trump and why the media is held in such disrepute today.
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