The Rejected Suitor

The Wall Street Journal stooped to a new low over the weekend with its, "Sizing Up the Next Commander-in-Chief," by Robert M. Gates, a long time government wonk. Here is the Journal's brief bio on Gates: "Mr. Gates served eight presidents over 50 years, most recently as secretary of defense under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama."

The article is suppose to be a comparison of the two presidential candidates to give readers the sense of gaining factual, fair and useful information. Mr. Gates, government bureaucrat that he is, is in full dress of the usual straw man technique such folks are so noted for, pointing out first the issues as he sees them facing a new president this January, then pointing out Hillary's shortcomings and then Trumps.

In this machete wielding job he could have saved a lot of news print and space, not to mention verbiage, and simply written: I'm for Hillary. Period.  There are too many issues to take issue with, so we'll just cover a few.

Mr. Trump, he writes, is "willfully ignorant about the rest of the world, about the military and it's capabilities, and about government itself." He accuses Trump of disdaining expertise and experience, referring his own council.

Two points. If what you and your colleagues have brought us over the last 50 years is an example of non-willful ignorance, we'll opt for new blood and the willfully ignorant every time. On the second point, disdaining expertise. This is most likely too close to home for you, but if memory serves, JFK after his abysmal Bay of Pigs showing, was quoted as saying all his life he knew not to trust the experts and questioned himself why he did it then.

Let's just take two of your former bosses, starting with President Obama. Notwithstanding his brief stint in the Senate, cite for us his experience with government, the rest of the world and the military. He's another bureaucrat, a former community organizer who's never held a real job. Or how about the latter Bush? What was his great knowledge of the military, government and the rest of the world, his brief military reserve status, his connection to his father or the Texas Rangers?

Gates says all the Presidents he served under surrounded themselves with independent, knowledgeable  advisors who weren't afraid to speak up. That's an interesting charge, but one he has no evidence that will not happen in a Trump cabinet. He's doing something no man can do, extrapolate the future. Also, extrapolate human behavior. He has no evidence that Trump won't listen and surround himself with qualified people. It's also an oblique knock against those advisors Trump has so far surrounded himself with and any future ones he plans to pick that are not public knowledge.

 It's just another straw man. Somewhere in the nation's history, a president said the man doesn't make the office, the office makes the man.  Mr. Gates is so ungracious, he assumes he's correct and the judgement of millions of voters in a so much ballyhooed, so-called democracy will be wrong. There's also more than the patina of ego here. Perhaps Trump has not bent over backwards in homage to Gates' long service but chosen other just as qualified sources of input? Don't try to tell us Gates doesn't have an ego. It blatantly present in this article.

But he can't have it both ways. Either the judgement of the voters about those eight presidents he served was correct or it was incorrect. Perhaps he would like publicly to name the presidents where voters were incorrect?  It's interesting that Gates calls "thin-skinned, temperamental, shoot-from-the hip uniformed commander-in-chief is too great a risk for America." If being such means calling BS what it is, where and when you encounter it, we welcome more of it.

Gates ends his public assassination attempt with this beauty.
At least on national security, I believe Mr. Trump is beyond repair. He is stubbornly uninformed about the world and how to lead our country and government, and temperamentally unsuited to lead our men and women in uniform. He is unqualified and unfit to be commander-in-chief.

Nearly everything Gates lists as being downfalls in the Trump candidacy meshes quite well with rejection of the status quo. What Gates just can't accept is that of the rejected suitor. They just can"t believe someone, anyone, would not buy what they're selling. That's what change is and should be about. Just one other point. If you say something bad about Trump, the most likely first response of your listeners is: "You must be a Hillary supporter." On the other hand, if you do the same about Hillary, you'll get a similar response: "You must be a Trump supporter."

Gates is a card carrying member of the elite. We hope we've made our point.