Michael Gerson was a speechwriter for President zgeorge W. Bush.
He does not admire Trump, to say the least.
Here, he offers advice on dealing with a president who is out of touch with reality, impulsive, uninformed, has no ability to steady or unite the nation, and is unfit to lead.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Rhetorically, are the people who voted for and defend Trump also unhinged, or unable to recognize personality disorders or, merely desperate to get out of the abuse of an oligarchy?
Today, compared to 1980.
In 1980, the richest 0.1% had 7% of US personal wealth. Today it’s 22%. If the bottom 90% were in proportionate 1980 economic conditions, the average household in the group would have $120,000 more wealth today.
LikeLike
I think that the Republican supporters of Trump are people who just want to be cleansed of Obama era policies and keep money flowing into one-party rule by any means possible, no ethical concerns placing limitations on that. In fact the explicit and implicit acceptance of unethical and irrational conduct is documented daily by the general silence of Republicans.
I think many voters for Trump accepted the parts of his messaging and agenda they wanted to hear. Many are probably unaware of how cleverly Steve Bannon and Steve Miller (among others) carefully crafted those messages or how Trump is functioning not as a political leader but an experienced performance artist addicted to constant attention. Much of that is achieved by fly-by twittering.
LikeLike
I can agree Trump supporters are on the lower end of the intellectual scale. A Fox executive said his viewers don’t want to be informed. They want to feel they are informed. Republican voters are also, notably, more selfish than the general public.
LikeLike
Actual Trump campaign rally sign: “Thank you, Fox News, for keeping us infromed.” 🙂
LikeLike
People all across the intellectual spectrum voted Republican in the past election.
I am reminded of a comment I heard back in 1972, after Nixon beat McGovern, when Nixon carried 49 states, and McGovern carried Massachusetts and WashDC.
A reported interviewed a college professor, and the professor remarked “I cannot understand why Nixon won. No one I knew, voted for him.”
LikeLike
Charles,
Comparing a true landslide election (Nixon) with one in which more Americans nationwide voted for Hillary Clinton than Trump is nonsense. In fact, there WERE more people voting for Clinton.
And post election research showed that Trump voters were not highly educated. The real disconnect in who voted for Trump is that white voters with the most education did not vote for him. Hillary won white voters with college degrees. Trump won white voters without a college degree. And that is a huge difference from the people who voted Republican in the past.
LikeLike
@NYC public school parent: You are missing my point. I am pointing up the fact, that academicians and other people out on the “loony left” were just shocked, that Nixon won re-election in 1972.Similarly, academicians, feminists, liberals on both coasts, leftist newscasters, pundits, unionists, pacifists, and others out on the “loony left” were just shocked out of their socks, that Donald J. Trump won election in 2016.
It does not matter that more people voted for the “anti-Christ in a skirt”, our electoral college system, puts a check on the mob.
LikeLike
Chas,
Hillary received nearly 3 million votes more than Trump.
LikeLike
Your alleged “anti-christ in a skirt” was the only candidate of the two final contestants that has a long history of doing good for women and children. In fact, she even attempted to bring about campaign finance reform.
https://votesmart.org/bill/3144/11319/55463/campaign-reform-act-of-2001#.WWesMenauUk
Hillary Clinton conspiracy theories are a generation in the making
Jill Abramson
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/06/hillary-clinton-conspiracy-theories-far-right-jill-abramson
LikeLike
Gersen must be an expert on Presidents who are out of touch with reality if he wrote speeches for George W. Bush.
I wonder: Did he write the “Mission Accomplished!” speech that Bush gave on the aircraft carrier?
LikeLike
Or how about the “speech” W gave when he was looking for WMD under the Oval Office couch?
LikeLike
Did his dad, coin, “…points of light…”, “compassionate conservatism” ? Trump recognized the facade of caring, was an unnecessary diversion for his voters. Fronting concern for the poor isn’t even popular with the pseudo Jesus followers from the religious right.
LikeLike
Gerson is a master craftsman at forging lies!
LikeLike
“George Bush’s Speechwriter”
If lies were the mission
Then “Mission accomplished!
The George Bush position
Required an accomplice
LikeLiked by 1 person
It is urgent for Americans to think and speak clearly about President Trump’s inability to do either,” Political commentator George Will wrote in The Washington Post.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-a-dangerous-disability/2017/05/03/56ca6118-2f6b-11e7-9534-00e4656c22aa_story.html?utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosam&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_term=.c532adf431a1
Will warned that Americans have put “vast military power at the discretion of this mind.”
“So, it is up to the public to quarantine this presidency,” he wrote, “by insistently communicating to its elected representatives a steady, rational fear of this man whose combination of impulsivity and credulity render him uniquely unfit to take the nation into a military conflict.”
He made it clear recently on a tv interview, that he does not wish to offer a psychological analysis for a distance, so he offers just the observable reality …what anyone can see — that the man who leads
“This seems to be not a mere disinclination but a disability. It is not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.”
“As this column has said before, the problem isn’t that he does not know this or that, or that he does not know that he does not know this or that. Rather, the dangerous thing is that he does not know what it is to know something.”
Will went on to criticize Trump for some of the comments he made before assuming the presidency, pointing to his remarks on the nuclear triad and the “one China policy.”
LikeLike
yeah it is LONG BUT SO WORTH THE READ!!!!!
and, I have posted this before , and will continue to do it, because it is WONDERFUL AND TRUE. from a column by Thomas Friedman, comes the voice of Dog Seidman who nails the issue of THE ABSENCE OF MORAL AUTHORITY…. you know the kind of leader that gives us FAIRNESS!
BY Dov Seidman, author of the book “How” and C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies and leaders build ethical cultures, and asked him what he thought was happening to us.
“What we’re experiencing is an assault on the very foundations of our society and democracy — the twin pillars of truth and trust. With shared truth debased and trust in leaders diminished, we now face a full-blown “crisis of authority itself,” argues Dov Seidman, who distinguishes between “formal authority” and “moral authority.”
“While our system can’t function without leaders with formal authority, what makes it really work, he added, is “when leaders occupying those formal positions — from business to politics to schools to sports — have moral authority. Leaders with moral authority understand what they can demand of others and what they must inspire in them. They also understand that formal authority can be won or seized, but moral authority has to be earned every day by how they lead. And we don’t have enough of these leaders.”
What makes us Americans is that we signed up to have a relationship with ideals that are greater than us and with truths that we agreed were so self-evident they would be the foundation of our shared journey toward a more perfect union — and of respectful disagreement along the way. We also agreed that the source of legitimate authority to govern would come from ‘We the people.”
“But when there is no “we” anymore, because “we” no longer share basic truths, “then there is no legitimate authority and no unifying basis for our continued association.”
“We’ve had breakdowns in truth and trust before in our history, but this feels particularly dangerous because it is being exacerbated by technology and Trump.”
“Social networks and cyberhacking are helping extremists to spread vitriol and fake news at a speed and breadth we have never seen before. Today, we’re not just deeply divided, as we’ve been before, we’re being actively divided — by cheap tools that make it so easy to broadcast one’s own ‘truths’ and to undermine real ones.”
“This anger industry is now ‘either sending us into comfortable echo chambers where we don’t see the other or arousing such moral outrage in us toward the other that we can no longer see their humanity, let alone embrace them as fellow Americans with whom we share values.’
Social networks and hacking also have enabled us to see, in full color, into the innermost workings of every institution and into the attitudes of those who run them, and that has eroded trust in virtually every institution, and the authority of many leaders, because people don’t like what they see.”
In fact, we have so few we’ve forgotten what Leaders with moral authority look like! They have several things in common:
* They trust people with the truth — however bright or dark.
* They’re animated by values — especially humility — and principles of probity, so they do the right things, especially when they’re difficult or unpopular.
*And they enlist people in noble purposes and onto journeys worthy of their dedication.”
“Think how far away Trump is from that definition. In Trump we not only have a president who can’t lead us out of this crisis — because he has formal authority but no moral authority — but a president who is every day through Twitter a one-man accelerator of the erosion of truth and trust eating away at our society.
We saw that play out between Trump and James Comey, the F.B.I. director There’s an adage that says: “Ask for my honesty and I’ll give you my loyalty. Ask for my loyalty and I’ll give you my honesty.” But Trump was not interested in Comey’s honesty. He only wanted Comey’s blind loyalty — delivered free because Trump thought he had the formal authority to demand it. “But true loyalty can’t be commanded; it can only be inspired,” says Seidman.
In the long run, the only thing that will save us is if more people — no matter what age, color, gender or faith — build moral authority in their respective realms and then use it to do big, meaningful things. Use it to run for office, start a company, operate a school, lead a movement or build a community organization. And in so doing you can help put the “We” back in “We the people.”
LikeLike
DOV Seidman not ‘dog’. I hate not being able to correct errors!!!!!!
LikeLike
Trump doesn’t have a hinge. He’s like a door just waiting to fall on top of you and crush you if you dare to open it to see what’s on the other side. If you survive, you will discover a deep darkness on the other side of that opening and the sound of victims being tortured in the fires of hell.
LikeLike