by Monreale
We are told
that Obama is everything Trump is not, usually said with the intent to
diminish Trump. They are, indeed, very different and the differences were
apparent right from the beginning of their presidencies.
Obama seems a fine
fellow and a good husband and father. If I were looking for a cultivated,
cosmopolitan, intellectual dinner companion he'd be high on my list. But
his charm and smoothness have not disguised how out-of-pattern he is as an
American and how his long search for an identity, as told in his book, Dreams
From My Father, have influenced, some would say warped, his view of the
world.
We should have seen the
problems coming. Here's a man who worked as a community organizer, a state
senator, and a less than one term US senator. He's never held a paying, private
sector job. He was "Barry" until college but then began to insist
upon his given name, Barack, to the discomfiture of his white grandparents.
Barack, a Kenyan Muslim name, was the name of his black father, a fallen idol
who abandoned him. His white mother took him to Indonesia where she married a
second time and then essentially abandoned him to his grandparents in Hawaii.
Both black and white, then, at a certain point his blackness began to dominate.
Religion had little role in his life until he met his teacher and mentor
for 16 years, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, who officiated at his marriage.
Wright was a notorious black racist, bigot and anti-Semite who condemned
America in the strongest terms. Obama associated with Bill Ayers, a
former Weatherman leader who has never disavowed his youthful violence. What he
found in that association has never been explained. Not until age 44 did wife
Michelle Obama say, "For the first time in my life I'm proud of my
country." At first Obama refused to wear the customary flag pin in his
lapel, a narcissistic take on a simple symbol that gives comfort to many. So
when, at the very beginning of his presidency, Obama proclaimed his intention
of "fundamentally transforming the United States," we should have
been afraid, very afraid.
Trump on the other hand
is in many ways a type of ordinary American. We've all known Trump types, a man
of contradictions. He's a braggart and a blowhard but in certain ways unusually
disciplined. He doesn't smoke, doesn't drink, doesn't do drugs but his sexual
drive has taken him through three marriages. At the same time he's raised
extraordinary children who are all close to him. He's a clever man, a
self-promoter, one who willingly looks for and takes every advantage. He's also
a natural leader, charismatic, a man of enormous persistence and guts, able to
hold his own without help in the most knock down, drag out situations and come
out on top, a man who is fearless, speaks his mind, not afraid to surround
himself with accomplished, capable people who profess different ideas, a strong
patriot, a man whose charitable works are many, often done anonymously, a guy who’s
been knocked down but has come up fighting and won against tremendous
odds.
Of course he's a
businessman, a species that draws a knee-jerk contempt from the progressive
elite. He's not an intellectual at all but a classic American pragmatist
entrepreneur writ large. As president his priorities are crystal clear--he puts
American ideas, American people FIRST. Other countries, other people will be
well treated if they support American well being and if not, not. No
subtleties, no equivocation.
He'll make an unusual
president. The comparisons are to Andrew Jackson and there's something to that.
Trump has an unparalleled opportunity, with luck, to leave our country
much better off than the way he found it. He could also fail badly, even
disastrously, although the outstanding team he's assembled minimizes the risk.
He'll be working against an opposition that now seems close to fanatic. I'm
nervous but hopeful.
