320 Years of History
Gold Member
The battle between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has since it began been one wherein time and time again, we see a pattern from each of them.
So where we voters are having to choose between a candidate who knows the leadership, legal and political game -- the rules, the strategy, the tactics, and the players -- inside out and plays it like a chess grandmaster and a candidate who either doesn't know or doesn't care what game they're playing, much less be any good at playing it. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't care how romantic, how idealistic be the notion of "Trump the Businessman as President," neither the man nor his campaign team is ready for "prime time" on the political world stage.
With that as the framework for this thread's discussion, the central question is this:
Do you want a "grandmaster" in the White House or do you want a "reasonably good Monopoly player?"
From where I sit, that's about what the two major party candidates in this year's Presidential election race is beginning to look like.
- Hillary Clinton: She says often things that on the surface sound like they're sketchy, but when one puts in a lot of time and effort to get down to the details, one finds her statements are usually factually accurate.
Take her "email" issue. Mrs. Clinton is an attorney, no doubt a good enough one to know the difference between mens rea statutes and strict liability statutes. She played the "email" issue right up against that line and that kept her free from prosecution in courts, but she's taken a lot of heat for handling the matter in a way that doesn't really jibe with a non-attorney's understanding of legal theory and practice.
She was correct insofar as she didn't commit a prosecutable offense and that's been shown to be the case. One need not like that the law has a mens rea concept, but it does and because it does, and she knows it does, there's nobody to blame for her knowing that and relying upon it. Similarly, there's nobody to blame for non-lawyers not understanding that concept and how it plays out in legal proceedings. At the end of the day, the concept is there, it's a technical aspect of how the law works, and it's in force and that's that.
- Donald Trump: He says things that seem accurate or correct, sometimes even morally/ethically right and that makes some folks feel good about hearing a personage like Trump say them, but cursory analysis reveals that usually the man's statements are factually incorrect, or not verifiable/unverified, incongruous with his own stated objectives, or not ethically sound, or, worse, both.
Take any number of statements the man has made, some of which are below:
- his position on Iraq War II,
- the thousands of people he claims to have seen celebrating after the Towers fell,
- that crime is rising even as the gun lobby that supports him routinely notes that it's not,
- that we have a $500B trade deficit with China,
- that we always lose at trade deals, yet we have trade surpluses with a number of countries including Hong Kong, the Netherlands, the UAE and Australia,
- that healthcare premiums increased by 35% - 55% when the actual figure is ~6%,
- that he wants manufacturing back in the U.S., but he's not put his money where his mouth is re: his choice of manufacturer for his own clothing line, even though there are plenty of factories in the U.S. that can produce his clothing,
- his claim that he's being audited by the IRS yet he's not so much as produced the IRS notification document he would have received, thus showing that's true,
- his invoking Ronald Reagan's name/memory when Michael Reagan essentially says there's nothing about Trump and his way of doing things of which his father would approve,
- Using thousands of Trump foundation money to pay personal debts,
- his claiming he's not a racist, yet his remarks about Judge Curiel are the very definition of racism.
So where we voters are having to choose between a candidate who knows the leadership, legal and political game -- the rules, the strategy, the tactics, and the players -- inside out and plays it like a chess grandmaster and a candidate who either doesn't know or doesn't care what game they're playing, much less be any good at playing it. Well, I'm sorry, but I don't care how romantic, how idealistic be the notion of "Trump the Businessman as President," neither the man nor his campaign team is ready for "prime time" on the political world stage.
With that as the framework for this thread's discussion, the central question is this:
Do you want a "grandmaster" in the White House or do you want a "reasonably good Monopoly player?"
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