The media, even less than the current Democratic and
Republican presidential nominees, simply does not give a hoot about approval
polls directed at them, which are worth pausing over none-the-less.
Since 1972, Gallup has been putting the following question
on a yearly basis to the great unwashed, and the graph below traces the decline
in media approval from 1997 to 2015:
Any politician – perhaps with the exception of Connecticut
Governor Dannel Malloy, whose current approval rating, according to the most recent Quinnipiac June 2016 poll, is 24 percent, near bottom in the nation – might be alarmed by the negative drift
in approval since 1997 from 53 to 32 percent.
Consider the Hartford Courant’s recent endorsement of
Hillary Clinton. Frequent readers of Courant endorsements will understand that
the paper’s rather warm embrace of Mrs. Clinton was a forgone conclusion, even
in April 2015, when she first announced her bid for the presidency.
The paper’s current endorsement
was, so to speak, written in the stars, and her Republican opponent simply did
not figure into the paper’s endorsement calculations. Possibly if Jeb Bush had emerged from the
Republican Party primary rough and tumble as the nominee of his party, the
Courant might have had a pang of conscience in delivering its endorsement to the
badly tarnished Mrs. Clinton. The emergence of Donald Trump as an unexpected
victor in the primary made the Clinton endorsement a slam-dunk. But the warmth
radiating from the paper’s endorsement is inexplicable.
The Courant easily disposes of Mr. Trump in its editorial
lede: “The problem with this election isn't that Donald Trump is
racist. The problem is that we are.”
To be sure, the Courant here is not using the royal “we.” It
would be a viperish untruth to conclude that the paper’s editorial board is a
nest of racists. No, the Courant is subtly suggesting that what Mrs. Clinton
has dubbed “the deplorables,” those who have in their heart of hearts endorsed
Mr. Trump, are racists. This volatile charge lies like a scorpion’s sting in
the paper’s larger proposition: We are all racists now; but most especially are
those racists who, for whatever reason, will vote for the racist Republican
nominee for president.
Well now, Courant simpaticos doubtless will argue, Mr.
Trump, who has recklessly deployed hyperbole in his campaign, certainly has it
coming to him.
But really, are all Americans racists – even those who
deplore Mr. Trump’s reckless hyperbole?
Apparently so; it is difficult to put any other construction
on the paper’s lede : “The problem with this election isn't that Donald
Trump is racist. The problem is that we are.”
The Courant has turned a phrase made popular in 1888 by British
politician William Vernon Harcourt (“We are all socialists now”) and later deployed by Nobel economist Milton Friedman
against the Keynesians (“We are all
Keynesians now”) in a widely misunderstood 1966 Time Magazine article. Mr.
Friedman was being sardonic, he later explained: “In one sense, we are all
Keynesians now; in another, nobody is any longer a Keynesian.”
But the Courant is quite serious. The paper really does
believe that “in one sense” we are all racists. And if this is true, how do we
extricate ourselves from the coils of the racist serpent?
Easy: We do it by resting comfortably in the propositions put
forth by Mrs. Clinton -- an unrepentant Keynesian, if not a socialist like
Bernie Sanders -- whom the paper has fulsomely endorsed. An assent to Mrs.
Clinton’s politics, however ruinous, marks our distance from the racist
serpent. The Courant in its editorial does this with moral energy and dispatch
and professes some misgivings that, considering Mrs. Clinton’s opposition,
matter not at all.
Read the following with a jeweler’s eye. First come the
obligatory disclaimers:
“Her track record as secretary of
state is mixed. The aggressive policies that tried to force regime change in
troubled parts of the world have had questionable results, arguably generating
a backlash that helped fan the growth of the Islamic State. Even though she was
not found personally culpable, the attacks at Benghazi happened on her watch.
It is debatable whether the Middle East is any safer than it was before her
tenure at the State Department.
“Mrs. Clinton has other flaws. She
was wrong to use a private email server in her home while working at State, and
she took far too long to apologize for it. The Clinton Foundation has always
been seen as a way to buy her influence, no matter how many firewalls are put
up. She's taken large speaking fees that could make her feel beholden. She is
too close to Wall Street. She can appear arrogant and distant — traits that do
not serve a national leader well.”
This is followed by a crash of cymbals endorsement:
“But even with those flaws, Hillary
Clinton and Donald Trump are not even in the same ballpark. Critics though she
may have, Mrs. Clinton is a smart, compassionate leader. Mr. Trump is a showman
whose act is regrettably playing well on Main Street.”
The attentive reader will notice the micron-thin dusting of
disapproval.
The “aggressive policies” that “tried to force regime
change” in various unmentioned parts of the world arguably have had
“questionable results.”
Arguable indeed! Some would argue that the “aggressive”
Middle East policies of the Obama-Clinton administration were not aggressive enough. Mr. Obama’s “lead from behind” posture in
foreign policy was and is, in most important respects, an abdication of
political responsibility. Some Middle
East nations, formerly friendly to the United States, now making cooing sounds
in the direction of Russian President Vladimir Putin, have reluctantly
concluded that the Obama-Clinton “strategy” in the Middle East lacked spine and
intellectual rigor. The word “tried” as used in the Courant endorsement points
to a massive failure. And the “results” of the Obama-Clinton Middle East
strategy, or lack of it, are not at all “questionable.” Indeed, the murderous results of Mr. Obama’s
withdrawal from Iraq, largely the result of a diplomatic failure, are painfully
obvious. The inevitable consequences of Mrs. Clinton's Libyan policy -- let’s
come, conquer and kill Muammar Gaddafi
– are evident in the smoldering ruins of the American Embassy Compound in
Benghazi, Libya. It is the Obama-Clinton Middle East policy, the absence of a
long range strategy in the Middle East, that failed. The obvious results of
this failure were predictable.
It is quite true that Mrs. Clinton’s “flaws” are not in the
same ballpark as those of Mr. Trump – because Mrs. Clinton’s disastrous term as
Secretary of State reveals real-time ruinous consequences flowing like a rush
of blood from her character flaws, the most prominent of which is a disposition
to bend reality to campaign rhetoric and to substitute campaign promises for a
cogent and responsible Middle East foreign policy.
“It is debatable,” the Courant avers in its Clinton
encomium, “whether the Middle East is any safer than it was before her tenure
at the State Department.”
Debatable? No, it is not at all debatable. The Middle East
is soaked in the blood of martyrs, both Christian and peaceful Islamic martyrs,
slaughtered by Islamic terrorists.
Homosexuality used to be “the sin that dare not speak its
name.” In the modern world, the name is now shouted approvingly as a boast and
a challenge. We ought to be glad of it; it was entirely unnecessary to throw
Oscar Wilde on the pyre prepared for him by the Marquis of Queensbury. But
among those who tolerate the failed policies of Mr. Obama and Mrs. Clinton – on
pain of being called racist -- Islamic terrorism, even when it strikes its
deathblows at the marrow of the core beliefs of American culture, may be the
last remaining sin that dare not speak its name -- among politicians on the left.
The terrorists themselves, of course, never tire of shouting their terrorism
from the rooftops.
We ought to thank Mr. Trump, among others, for blowing up
this dangerous pretension. Islamic terrorists and ISIS especially, much more potent now than it was when Mr. Obama dubbed the terrorist group a “JV team,”
continues to destroy Christian Churches, execute both priests and so called
“pagans” – death to the kafir! -- uproots the structure of the modern feminist
movement, defended aggressively by Mrs. Clinton, and throws gays to their
deaths from rooftops, in accordance with Sharia law. Iran adopted the
extreme punishment of execution for sodomy in its 1991 Constitution: “Sodomy is a crime, for which both partners
are punished. The punishment is death if the participants are adults, of sound
mind and consenting; the method of execution is for the Sharia judge to decide.”
It was the Obama-Clinton administration that fashioned a
nuclear deal with Iran that a) will not prevent the country from developing
nuclear weapons, and b) would not have been possible had not the Obama-Clinton
administration paid billions of dollars in cash to a regime that hopes to
become a hegemonic power in the Middle East, so that it may destroy Israel,
whose Premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, beseeched the Obama administration not to go
forward with the deal. Mr. Netanyahu also warned the Congress – Dick Blumenthal
in attendance – that its implementation would be a disaster for the West. For
all his pains, Mr. Netanyahu might have been Cassandra warning the Trojans
concerning Greeks hidden in a wooden horse.
Iran could easily buy with the cash transported to Iran in the dead of
night in a modern Trojan horse any weaponry it wishes to purchase from
America’s traditional enemies, Russia and China, to wreak havoc in Israel, making
full use of its proxy Hamas terrorist forces in Lebanon – poor Lebanon, a
country overmastered by the friends of Iran.
A few months back, this writer took a course in fresco at St. Michael's Institute for Religious Art at Enders Island a stone’s throw from
Mystic. The teacher, a master artist in fresco and Icon writing, was Lebanese. When
I said to him, “Poor Lebanon,” he said, “Yes. The Muslim terrorists in Hamas
march into villages and ask you your name. If it is a Christianized name –
John, Mathew, Mark – they cut your head off in the public square. It sends a
message.”
Dick Blumenthal and other members of Connecticut’s U.S.
Congressional delegation – all Democrats who endorsed the Obama-Clinton Iran
deal, which ended a successful embargo and opened Iran to the usual corporations
that do not scruple to march through blood to make a profit – should have a
talk with him, or any of the other Christians who have suffered a Neronian persecution
at the hands of terrorist Islam. But they won’t. Every one of them knows that
the number of Syrian Christians among refugees fleeing Mohammed’s sword, blessings be
upon him, and admitted into the United States is only three percent or less. Perhaps
the Congressmen do not want their mercies to be read by Islamic terrorists as a crusader
response.
Mrs. Clinton’s most glaring flaws may be seen most clearly in
the smoking ruins of the American embassy in Benghazi, the terrorist attacks in
Paris, the rapes of German, Belgian and Swedish women, the terrorist attacks in
the United States by radicalized Muslims, Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea and
his ardent defense of Bashir al Assad in Syria, where once Mr. Obama drew a “red
line” that quickly disappeared when Mr. Assad, every bit as ruthless as his
father, used chemical weapons on his opponents. And Mrs. Clinton’s narcissistic
flaws peek out at us like grinning devils from her e-mails, purloined by
hackers and containing, despite Mrs. Clinton’s false denials, top secret
treasures that would not have been shared with the world had Mrs. Clinton, fully
schooled in security matters when she was a U.S. Senator, not put the safety of
her country in jeopardy by using a private server.
“But even with those flaws,” the Courant's endorsement of
Mrs. Clinton concludes, “Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are not even in the
same ballpark. Critics though she may have, Mrs. Clinton is a smart,
compassionate leader. Mr. Trump is a showman whose act is regrettably playing
well on Main Street.”
Bill Buckley thought Mr. Trump was a deeply flawed
vulgarian, and a video taped eleven years ago showing a younger Trump trash
talking about his sexual prowess has proven Mr. Buckley right. But given Mrs.
Clinton’s record in defense of her vulgarian husband and her foreign policy as
Secretary of State, neither of which can bear close scrutiny, one may agree
with the paper that both are operating in different ball parks. There are no
smoking embassy ruins atop Trump Towers, and Mr. Trump, despite his deeply offensive
locker-room talk, never raped Juanita Broaddrick
or had sex in the White House with Monica Lewinsky, who even today is recovering from Mrs. Clinton’s psychological bite marks. (A search on the Courant's site for a report on Ms. Lewinski's recent visit to Connecticut, where she held a talk on bullying, produces no coverage of the event.) In
this regard, Mr. Trump is a JV player; the Clintons are Big League. And if the
editorial board of the Hartford Courant had its moral Geiger counter
recalibrated, it might have noted in its editorial endorsement of Mrs. Clinton the
differences in their ballparks.
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