Fifteen Elephants and a Clown: The Donald’s life has been seven decades of buffoonery

If there was a good reason to distrust presidential candidate Mitt Romney, it had to do with his views on abortion. Not his position per se — as difficult as it is to understand the pro-choice tendency, there are people of good faith on both sides of the abortion question — but the fact that he arrived at that position so late in life and at a moment when his change of heart was politically convenient. Even if we assume that this was not simple cowardly political calculation, as in the matter of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama’s evolving views on gay marriage, the situation must give us pause: If a man hasn’t figured out what he believes about abortion by the age of 50 — after having been a father, a governor, a business leader, and an influential figure in an important religious congregation — it may be the case that he is not ready for the responsibilities of the presidency.

Donald Trump is looking at 70 candles on his next birthday cake, and his mind is, when it comes to the issues relevant to a Republican presidential candidate, unsettled.

If you are looking for a good reason to quit the Republican party (as I did some years ago), you can start with the company you are obliged to keep in the GOP: At the moment, about one in five Republicans are rallying to the daft banner of Donald Trump, heir to a splendid real-estate fortune and reality-show grotesque, who is a longtime supporter of, among other Democratic potentates, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who remains, for the moment, the candidate against whom the Republican nominee presumably will run. (Herself’s struggles are for the moment only an amusement, though they may someday prove to be serious.)

Trump has moved between the parties a number of times, but on the issues he is at home with the party of his good friend Chuck Schumer:

He is pro-abortion, he has proposed punitive taxes on the wealthy, he favors a Canadian-style government health-care monopoly, etc. A lifelong crony capitalist, he is an enthusiastic partisan of the thieving Kelo regime, under which government can seize private property in the name of “economic development” — for instance, throwing retirees out of their paid-for homes to make room for a casino-hotel with a large “T” on the façade. Until the day before yesterday, he took an indulgent view toward normalizing the status of illegal immigrants, perhaps mindful of the fact that Trump Tower was built in part by illegal-immigrant labor and that one of his associates was in fact jailed over the matter.

For the moment, Trump’s leading critic in the Republican field is former Texas governor Rick Perry, whose most famous public utterance is “Oops!” but who is Cicero next to Trump, Hyperion to a satyr. That Trump and Perry are received roughly as equals on the national stage is absurd, but politics thrives on absurdity. Perry has, to put it plainly, the best record of any modern American governor. Trump has celebrity and a knack for getting out in front of a parade, in this case ghoulishly grandstanding upon the corpse of Kathryn Steinle, a telegenic young white woman who was murdered by Francisco Sanchez, a Mexican illegal who had been deported five times and who apparently used a gun belonging to a federal agent in the killing. Trump has not offered even the outline of a serious program for stanching the flow of illegal immigrants, but he makes authoritative grunting sounds in the general direction of the southern border, which apparently is sufficient for one in five Republican voters. While the border crisis is indeed a national emergency, Trump makes it less likely rather than more likely that the federal power will be roused to do its duty, a fact to which Trump’s camp apparently is indifferent. It has fallen to the newly professorial Perry to instruct these idiot children, while the other candidate from Texas, Senator Ted Cruz, has mainly engaged in a sad me-too appeal to the Trump element. The contrast is telling, and is a reminder that Senator Cruz, for all his many attractive qualities, is a tyro.

Trump has moved between the parties a number of times, but on the issues he is at home with the party of his good friend Chuck Schumer. The Trumpkins insist that this isn’t about Trump but about the perfidious Republican establishment, which is insufficiently committed to the conservative project. Fair enough. But what of Trump’s commitment? Being at the precipice of his eighth decade walking this good green earth, Trump has had a good long while to establish himself as a leader on — something. He isn’t a full-spectrum conservative, but he seems to have conservative-ish instincts on a few issues. What has he done with them? There are many modes of leadership available to the adventurous billionaire: Sheldon Adelson, the casino magnate who is the less famous and more competent version of Trump, is directly involved in campaigns, while Charles and David Koch have engaged in electoral politics and done the long-term (and probably more consequential) work of nurturing a stable of institutions dedicated to advancing the cause of liberty, and Bill Gates has put his billions behind his priorities. Trump has made some political donations — to Herself, to Harry Reid, to Nancy Pelosi, to Schumer — and his defense is that these were purely self-serving acts of influence-purchasing rather than expressions of genuine principle. There is no corpus of Trump work on any issue of any significance; on his keystone issue, illegal immigration, he has not even managed to deliver a substantive speech, a deficiency no doubt rooted in his revealed inability to voice a complete sentence.

Donald Trump, who inherited a real-estate empire worth hundreds of millions of dollars from his father, has had every opportunity to involve himself in the consequential questions of his time. He has been a very public figure for decades, with a great deal of time, money, celebrity, business connections, and other resources to put in the service of something that matters. Seventy years in, and his curriculum vitae is remarkably light on public issues for a man who would be president. One would think that a life spent in public might inspire at least a smidgen of concern about the wide world. He might have had any sort of life he chose, and Trump chose a clown’s life. There is no shortage of opportunities for engagement, but there is only one thing that matters to Trump, and his presidential campaign, like everything else he has done in his seven decades, serves only that end.

Perhaps we "conservatives" might consider what it is we wish to "conserve" in order to pass on the beacon of liberty to future generations. Even more importantly, what kind of qualifications are required of a leader in order to best assure the future of liberty?

Any American President's "agenda"--whatever it is--is intended by "the People's" Constitution to be subject to that Constitution's limits and bounds! An American President's "agenda," first and foremost, should have as its primary goal a strict adherence to and respect for that Constitution as the "supreme law of the land."

We might first look at the second President of the U. S., John Adams, a signer of the Constitution, who, in his First Inaugural's closing paragraph, laid out his understanding of the qualifications for the Office of President.

Inaugural Address of President John Adams

- (Excerpted & reformatted final words)

Philadelphia, March 4, 1797
“. . . as something may be expected, the occasion, I hope, will be admitted as an apology if I venture to say that
- if a preference, upon principle, of a free republican government, formed upon long and serious reflection, after a diligent and impartial inquiry after truth;
- if an attachment to the Constitution of the United States, and a conscientious determination to support it until it shall be altered by the judgments and wishes of the people, expressed in the mode prescribed in it;
- if a respectful attention to the constitutions of the individual States and a constant caution and delicacy toward the State governments;
- if an equal and impartial regard to the rights, interest, honor, and happiness of all the States in the Union, without preference or regard to a northern or southern, an eastern or western, position, their various political opinions on unessential points or their personal attachments;
- if a love of virtuous men of all parties and denominations;
- if a love of science and letters and a wish to patronize every rational effort to encourage schools, colleges, universities, academies, and every institution for propagating knowledge, virtue, and religion among all classes of the people, not only for their benign influence on the happiness of life in all its stages and classes, and of society in all its forms, but as the only means of preserving our Constitution from its natural enemies, the spirit of sophistry, the spirit of party, the spirit of intrigue, the profligacy of corruption, and the pestilence of foreign influence, which is the angel of destruction to elective governments;
- if a love of equal laws, of justice, and humanity in the interior administration;
- if an inclination to improve agriculture, commerce, and manufacturers for necessity, convenience, and defense;
- if a spirit of equity and humanity toward the aboriginal nations of America, and a disposition to meliorate their condition by inclining them to be more friendly to us, and our citizens to be more friendly to them;
- if an inflexible determination to maintain peace and inviolable faith with all nations, and that system of neutrality and impartiality among the belligerent powers of Europe which has been adopted by this Government and so solemnly sanctioned by both Houses of Congress and applauded by the legislatures of the States and the public opinion, until it shall be otherwise ordained by Congress;
- if a personal esteem for the French nation, formed in a residence of seven years chiefly among them, and a sincere desire to preserve the friendship which has been so much for the honor and interest of both nations;
- if, while the conscious honor and integrity of the people of America and the internal sentiment of their own power and energies must be preserved, an earnest endeavor to investigate every just cause and remove every colorable pretense of complaint;
- if an intention to pursue by amicable negotiation a reparation for the injuries that have been committed on the commerce of our fellow-citizens by whatever nation, and if success can not be obtained, to lay the facts before the Legislature, that they may consider what further measures the honor and interest of the Government and its constituents demand;
- if a resolution to do justice as far as may depend upon me, at all times and to all nations, and maintain peace, friendship, and benevolence with all the world;
- if an unshaken confidence in the honor, spirit, and resources of the American people, on which I have so often hazarded my all and never been deceived;
- if elevated ideas of the high destinies of this country and of my own duties toward it, founded on a knowledge of the moral principles and intellectual improvements of the people deeply engraven on my mind in early life, and not obscured but exalted by experience and age;
and, with humble reverence, I feel it to be my duty to add, if a veneration for the religion of a people who profess and call themselves Christians, and a fixed resolution to consider a decent respect for Christianity among the best recommendations for the public service, can enable me in any degree to comply with your wishes, it shall be my strenuous endeavor that this sagacious injunction of the two Houses shall not be without effect.
With this great example before me, with the sense and spirit, the faith and honor, the duty and interest, of the same American people pledged to support the Constitution of the United States, I entertain no doubt of its continuance in all its energy, and my mind is prepared without hesitation to lay myself under the most solemn obligations to support it to the utmost of my power.
And may that Being who is supreme over all, the Patron of Order, the Fountain of Justice, and the Protector in all ages of the world of virtuous liberty, continue His blessing upon this nation and its Government and give it all possible success and duration consistent with the ends of His providence.” - John Adams, First Inaugural

Then, the Author of our Declaration of Independence and President of the U. S., Thomas Jefferson, in his 1801 Inaugural Address laid out what might be considered to be "qualifications" for the American presidency:

(Excerpt, "Our Ageless Constitution," p. xiv, reformatted)
"Let us, then, with courage and confidence pursue our own Federal and Republican principles, our attachment to union and representative government. Kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe; too high-minded to endure the degradations of the others; possessing a chosen country, with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation;
- entertaining a due sense of our equal right to the use of our own faculties, to the acquisitions of our own industry, to honor and confidence from our fellow-citizens, resulting not from birth, but from our actions and their sense of them;
= enlightened by a benign religion, professed, indeed, and practiced in various forms, yet all of them inculcating honesty, truth, temperance, gratitude, and the love of man;
- acknowledging and adoring an overruling Providence, which by all its dispensations proves that it delights in the happiness of man here and his greater happiness hereafter
—with all these blessings, what more is necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?
- Still one thing more, fellow-citizens—a wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
- This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities.
"About to enter, fellow-citizens, on the exercise of duties which comprehend everything dear and valuable to you,
- it is proper you should understand what I deem the essential principles of our Government, and consequently those which ought to shape its Administration. I will compress them within the narrowest compass they will bear, stating the general principle, but not all its limitations.
- Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political;
- peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none;
- the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns and the surest bulwarks against antirepublican tendencies;
- the preservation of the General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad;
- a jealous care of the right of election by the people—a mild and safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by the sword of revolution where peaceable remedies are unprovided;
- absolute acquiescence in the decisions of the majority, the vital principle of republics, from which is no appeal but to force, the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism;
- a well disciplined militia, our best reliance in peace and for the first moments of war, till regulars may relieve them;
- the supremacy of the civil over the military authority;
- economy in the public expense, that labor may be lightly burthened;
- the honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith;
- encouragement of agriculture, and of commerce as its handmaid;
- the diffusion of information and arraignment of all abuses at the bar of the public reason;
- freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeas corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected.
These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civic instruction, the touchstone by which to try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or of alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety."

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