If you don’t know how the election turned out, look it up on Google.
I have one further thought.
It wasn’t entirely my fault.
I predicted eleven times we had nothing to fear but fear itself, which turned out to be quite a lot. Without malice and charity for all, I told the worrywarts he would drop out of the race before Election Day. He had been more than successful in getting the publicity, the press coverage, the TV face time, the oxygen he needed to survive. Not even he thought the people were so stupid as to elect a totally inexperienced, unqualified, failed businessman as the commander in chief and president of the most powerful nation in the known universe.
In the unlikely chance that I might be wrong, I was so sure his administration would be short-lived, I had taken the liberty of starting work on my president’s farewell address, suitable for delivery at the end of his first twenty-nine days, or after the reading of the last line of the Inaugural Address, or when he could no longer take the heat in the kitchen and was getting out, whichever came first.
For the good of the nation, my first draft explained, for the good of his party, for his family, especially his latest favorite wife, Melania, who has enrolled in night school and is considering becoming a professional presidential speechwriter, and following doctor’s orders—his doctor had warned that a combination of his bone spurs and high cholesterol numbers due to addiction to fast food makes him a threat to national security—he has decided to step down, effective (date blank) . . .
His fans will never forget him, I assured the ex-president. “Remember the Mane!” could be a popular bumper sticker for his 2020 campaign, when he can run as an experienced, qualified candidate, based on his previous public service record.
Well, I was wrong.
I predicted he would drop out after the playing of the 2005 Access Hollywood video several thousand times on cable network news, in which the candidate gave his theory about how a then-fifty-nine-year-old fat rich man sweeps damsels off their feet. Being such a charming, hot celebrity, it gave him the freedom to do anything he wanted with women. In his own words, anyone he found attractive he could “kiss and grab their pussy.” Consent was not an issue.
Well, I was wrong.
Some pundits actually thought having such a nominee might affect the Republican Party’s strength as the party of family values, ignoring the possibility it could appeal to voters who also used the technique or fantasized about doing so.
As the number of gropees grew by the hour on cable network news, telling of their experiences with the Rudolph Valentino of his day, the potential groper in chief accused all of lying, and said he would see them in court.
Reminding voters of the Republican film classic Knute Rockne, All American, starring Ronald Reagan as George Gipp, a.k.a. the star too sick to play, the coach exhorted his boys to win one for the Gipper, I suggested Trump’s remaining supporters might be told now “To win one for the Groper.”
Then came another October Surprise. A contestant from Arizona in the Miss Teen USA TV beauty show, which Trump owned, accused the candidate of being a Peeping Donald. He came into the dressing room to inspect the merchandise in their underwear, she charged.
Little did I know then that candidate Trump was shameless.
With his character being sullied, I predicted he could never win the primaries in the Bible Belt, where Evangelical Christians were a core constituency.
I especially couldn’t believe that good Christians in the Iowa Caucus, which usually knocks out unlikely fringe candidates, would consider a man who is a bigot, a pathologically narcissistic, politically schizophrenic, misogynistic, ethically and morally bankrupt, hypocritical, excessively vain, draft-dodging, p***y-grabbing charlatan.
Who ever dreamed God-fearing Evangelical conservatives would not, ipso facto, turn a deaf ear on the preachments of a thrice-married sinner, a prevaricator, fornicator, facilitator, a flimflam artist, a playboy with New York values—and we all know what that means—a man who can sell you the Brooklyn Bridge, if you haven’t already bought it on your last trip to New York with your high school senior class, a man who can’t even quote passages from the Bible correctly—as their candidate for president of your Christian United States!
He’s promising to fix the economy. Everybody will have jobs. Forget a chicken in every pot, as Hoover promised in 1928. Trump will build a golf course in every community, and all your sons will get jobs as caddies.
What does he really think of ethanol? Didn’t he once date her? Or was that Ethyl?
Or farm subsidies, those onerous government entitlements that weaken moral fiber by giving you money to not plant peach trees so you can go to Florida or play vingt-et-un (twenty-one) at one of his fancy Atlantic City casinos?
Surely, the party would not nominate a man like that at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in August.
Ted Cruz, a real conservative, was still the leading alternative candidate. The only Canadian American in the race, Cruz also was the only senator who had gotten down on his knees in the Senate and asked all members to join him in asking God to repeal Roe v. Wade.
True, Lyin’ Ted, as Mister Veracity called him in the debates, came across as nasty, like Pat Buchanan. “Elect me,” he seems to say, “and I’ll give you free root canal treatment. No Novocain. Just a root canal.”
“Cruz or Trump,” explained Sen. Lindsey Graham, a perennial Republican presidential candidate. “It’s a choice between being poisoned or hanged.”
The highlight of the opening day ceremonies in Cleveland was the creative writing award going to Trump wife number two or three, the immigrant from Slovenia. Melania stole the show with a speech that will be remembered in the annals with William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold speech of 1896. Apparently, there were oddities in Melania’s moving paean to her husband. Googlers found word-for-word similarities to Michelle Obama’s 2008 convention remarks.
Scholars and respected authors call it “research” or “homage.” Others call it plagiarism. I was the pundit who came to her defense. Look, shit happens. In my opinion, it was still a remarkable piece of work for a recent émigré who had studied writing by reading the Style section of the New York Times and other political journals like Vogue.
There was a rumor that Melania, who some people still think is the name of a nation somewhere in the South Seas or Asia, would be delivering a revised version of her Opening Day remarks, correcting the record as members of Congress amend their speeches in The Congressional Record.
Melania’s new short speech, in her own words this time, my usually reliably informed source explained, began “Four score and seven years ago . . .”
There were so many good reasons why a man who had the knack for putting both feet in his mouth wouldn’t win. I was especially impressed with his skills as a campaigner when, while still basking in the accolades from his amazing victory in Cleveland, he began his victory tour by attacking a Gold Star Mother.
Psycho-politico scholars might question making political capital of the mother of the fallen hero, Capt. Humayun Khan, who happened to be of the Muslim faith.
Letting her husband explain the grief the family is enduring at the Democratic convention, our candidate argued, is a clear sign why it’s okay to ban all Muslims. Don’t ask me to follow the logic of any of his remarks; I’m not that smart.
This is a political tactic known as kicking the Gold Star Mother when she is down. Nobody had ever tried it before on national TV, so we don’t know its effectiveness.
He had warmed up for this attempt to boldly go where no candidate has gone before in running for office by taking a shot at John McCain’s war record. A hero, the Republican nominee explained, is not captured.
A greater hero might be a presidential candidate who wasn’t a draft dodger, if I can use that term loosely. No reliable document—including the podiatrist’s letter to the draft board, requested by his landlord, Fred C. Trump, attesting to the most famous bone spurs in military history—is available.
Excuse me for not repeating his equating a family’s sacrifice on the Stephanopoulos interview on ABC (This Week With George Stephanopoulos, July 31, 2016)—trumpeting his sacrifice during the Vietnam War in creating all the jobs that made him rich while stiffing the working people who built his palaces. Not to mention his patriotic contribution by not catching a social disease in the Battle of Manhattan Nightlife. It was either a case of terminal insensitivity or the man has gone bonkers. Either way, it is disconcerting.
In his defense, it could be argued, he’s been a nutjob all the way through the primaries. That is what may have appealed to the 34.9 percent of his base.
I am not questioning our candidate’s patriotism or popularity here, only his sanity.
Enough of this bragging about my record of perspicacity.
Where did I go wrong?