Trump Time Capsule #110: Diplomats, Boss, Enquirer
Today’s harvest of things that haven’t happened in presidential campaigns before:
1. Diplomats. As the Washington Post reported yesterday, some 75 former prominent former ambassadors and other diplomats, from Republican and Democratic administrations alike, signed an open letter opposing Donald Trump and, more strikingly, going on outright to endorse Hillary Clinton.
The full text of the letter and list of names is here. Sample of their argument:
We have served Republican and Democratic Presidents with pride and enthusiasm.
None of us will vote for Donald J. Trump.
Each of us endorses Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine. Because the stakes in this election are so high, this is the first time many of us have publicly endorsed a candidate for President.Very simply, this election is different from any election we can recall. One of the candidates—Donald J. Trump—is entirely unqualified to serve as President and Commander-in-Chief. …
We fear the damage that such ineptitude could cause in our closest relationships as well as the succor it might offer our enemies.
By contrast, Hillary Clinton’s handling of foreign affairs has consistently sought to advance fundamental U.S. interests with a deep grounding in the work of the many tens of thousands of career officers on whom our national security depends. Not every one of us has agreed with every decision she made (and the same would be true of every one of her predecessors), but we have profound respect for her skills, dedication, intelligence, and diplomacy.
If you’ve followed international affairs, you’ll recognize a lot of names on this list, including a number who were prominent under Republican presidents Nixon, Reagan, and both Bushes.
This statement follows similar anti-Trump and/or pro-Clinton statements by former intelligence officers, foreign-policy officials and scholars, military figures, and others, as summarized in dispatch #109. Some veterans of the foreign-policy world express their preferences during each election. I am aware of nothing comparable to this, from usually above-the-fray career diplomats. It’s a bookend to the also-remarkable statement from 50 Republican former cabinet members and other senior officials, who said Trump would be “the most reckless president in American history.”
2. The Boss. In some different political world, you might imagine Donald Trump being so authentic a vessel for the interests of left-behind America that Bruce Springsteen would want to tour with and support him. (This 2014 Politico article by Marc Dolan about Springsteen’s political evolution, from apolitical rock star to someone conscious of being a voice of the working class, is fascinating.)
Instead, in a new interview with Brian Hitt of Rolling Stone, Springsteen leads off by saying:
The republic is under siege by a moron, basically. The whole thing is tragic. Without overstating it, it's a tragedy for our democracy.
In the context of “under siege by a moron,” the brilliant teaser for Frontline’s The Choice is worth watching very closely. The final minute of this video has become famous in the past 24 hours, for Omarosa Manigault’s soliloquy: “Every critic, every detractor, will have to bow down to President Trump. It’s everyone who’s ever doubted Donald, who ever disagreed, who ever challenged him. It is the ultimate revenge to become the most powerful man in the universe.”
But the five-minute clip as a whole suggests that rage at being disrespected is a very important part of Trump’s drive right now. The clip focuses on Barack Obama’s relentless public mockery of Trump at the White House Correspondents Dinner five years ago. I was there at the time, in easy eyeshot of Trump, and I recall him looking even more steamingly bitter than you can see in this clip. Frontline suggests that those few minutes of public ridicule played more than a small part in the “siege by a moron” predicament the U.S. confronts today.
Whether or not that stands up, it’s obvious that the quest to dominate, to be seen as dominant, to humiliate, to get revenge, plays an even larger part in Trump’s mixture of motivation than for politicians as a whole. The theme of “I’ll show them!” is of course familiar in our politics. Lyndon Johnson was going to show the Ivy-League boys who looked down on him. Richard Nixon was going to show everybody. Jimmy Carter was hyper-conscious of anti-Southern snobbery. And on down a long list.
But what we’re seeing with this man is something new.
3. Enquirer. In installment #97 I noted that the Dallas Morning News, whose editorial page is as reliably conservative as any in the country, came out and endorsed Hillary Clinton. The also-very-conservative Richmond Times Dispatch took the halfway-house step of endorsing Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson.
Today the Cincinnati Enquirer, a rival to the DMN for most-conservative title, joined it in an editorial titled “It has to be Hillary.” Sample of the argument:
The Enquirer has supported Republicans for president for almost a century—a tradition this editorial board doesn’t take lightly. But this is not a traditional race, and these are not traditional times. Our country needs calm, thoughtful leadership to deal with the challenges we face at home and abroad. We need a leader who will bring out the best in all Americans, not the worst.
That’s why there is only one choice when we elect a president in November: Hillary Clinton.
I am a Democrat by voting history and small-l liberal in most policy preferences. My esteem for small-c conservatives and capital-R Republicans who are willing to recognize the reality of Trump steadily rises. If Trump had remained a Democrat and somehow became that party’s nominee, I would swallow hard and vote for any sane-world Republican who ran against him. Thus I respect the conservatives and Republicans who are taking the counterpart step.
So it stands with 45 days until the election, three days until the first debate, and still no tax data forthcoming from Trump—a point the Enquirer addressed this way:
His refusal to release his tax returns draws into question both Trump’s true income and whether he is paying his fair share of taxes. Even if you consider Trump a successful businessman, running a government is not the same as being the CEO of a company. The United States cannot file bankruptcy to avoid paying its debts.