Tag: joe-biden

VICE PRESIDENTS

Harris’s tough mindedness and potential are well illustrated in “107 Days”. America is ready for a woman to be President, but Ms. Harris may have too much baggage to be a successful candidate for President in 2028.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

107 DAYS

Author: Kamala Harris

Narration by: Kamala Harris

Kamala Harris (Author, former V.P. of the United States and former California attorney general.)

The obvious message of Kamala Harris’s book “107 Days” is that the Democratic Party lost the presidency because of the compressed time for Harris to mount her campaign. There are many reasons noted for Harris’s failure to get elected as President of the United States. She notes Biden’s weak candidacy, party disorganization, misinformation and disinformation, foreign policy controversies and protests, polarization and turnout problems, and cultural/generational messaging gaps. “107 Days” is a well written and narrated story of the difficulties that Harris had in her political race against Donald Trump. Her book is a compelling argument. However, it seems her most likely cause of defeat is time.

Donald Trump (President of the U.S., politician, media personality, born into a wealthy New York City family, has a B.A. in Economics from University of Pennsylvania.)

Retrospectively, Harris’s story makes many think she would have been a better President than Donald Trump. The story of her book reinforces that belief. However, that is misleading in the sense that Harris is faced with two burdens that are difficult, if not impossible, to overcome. One, America has never had a woman President and two, Harris is too closely associated with the administrations cover-up of Biden’s intellectual decline. There are many causes one can give to understand why Harris is defeated but time to know who she is seems the most crucial.

Vice President Harry Truman became President with the death of Franklin Roosevelt.

It seems most Vice Presidents of the United States are viewed as figure heads or pawns to increase votes for the person who is running for President. The duties of a Vice President today seem more like “gopher” jobs that give little visibility to the character of the person chosen to be Vice President. Only when that person becomes President, does the world find out who the Vice President is and what capabilities he (before Harris, they were all men) brings to the office. (For example, Trump’s successor, if it was his V.P., is unknown and unpredictable.) Harry Truman, retrospectively, is one of the great Presidents of the United States but no one thought a part owner and proprietor of a grocery store could be a competent President of the United States.

Five V.P.’s in history became Presidents of the United States.

Though there have been several Vice Presidents (John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Martin Van Buren, Richard Nixon, and Biden) who have successfully become Presidents of the United States their election was determined by campaigning. Regardless of whether time was the determining factor in Harris’s loss of the Presidency, her book shows she has the intelligence and ability to be America’s President. What that means to her and the future of America is unknown. One presumes Harris will consider running for President, but one suspects the burden of her loss to Trump is likely to diminish her chance of getting enough political support for her candidacy.

Presidents of the United States.

Harris’s tough mindedness and potential are well illustrated in “107 Days”. America is ready for a woman to be President, but Ms. Harris may have too much baggage to be a successful candidate for President in 2028.

TWO OLD MEN

Age is an existential risk that can only be managed by the checks and balances of others which is why America’s government has survived and prospered despite good and ethically or morally corrupt Presidents.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Original Sin (President Biden’s Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again)

Author: Jake Tapper, Alex Thompson

Narrated By:  Jake Tapper

Jake Tapper (Washington anchor for CNN.)
Alex Thompson (CNN political analyst.)

“Original Sin” is a hard-hitting expose by two tough minded reporters that convincingly explain President Biden did not have the cognitive ability to be America’s President in the last two years of his Presidency. This is a particularly hard pill to swallow because the current President of the United States is old while being at the opposite end of the political spectrum. At 74, this book reviewer is old. Age undoubtedly has an impact on this reviewer’s cognitive abilities and the cogency of what he thinks and writes. President Trump is 79 years old. The difference is that what a critic writes means nothing in respect to governance of the United States and the impact it has on American citizens and world events.

Trump’s decisions and actions have had great impact on U.S. relationship with other countries, American public policy, and the economic future of Americans.

Trump has directed the firing of thousands of government employees. Because of Trump’s authoritarian characteristics, he surrounds himself with sycophants who are more interested in pleasing him than managing the government’s responsibility for America’s welfare and role in the world. Authoritarianism is untrue of Biden who throughout his public career has been a consensus builder, not an autocrat. This is not to suggest Biden is not fundamentally wrong in not immediately supporting an alternative candidate for the Presidency. The authors of “Original Sin” clearly explain Biden fails America by waffling on his candidacy for a second term.

Old age is a risk for every manager of other people’s lives and opportunities.

Biden is not at fault for getting old but people who worked with him are guilty of negligence in their service to the American people. Tapper and Thompson offer numerous examples of Biden’s intellectual decline. The importance of their assessment of Biden’s failing capabilities is a warning to all managers of other people’s lives, employment, and family responsibilities. Age is a life circumstance that affects every human being. One who is losing their cognitive ability cannot see it in themselves. It is the responsibility of others to help older people relinquish responsibility for those things they can no longer handle.

Relinquishment by a man or woman who has great responsibility is a hard thing to accept. Age effects people in different ways. The catch 22 is that loss of cognitive ability is unseen by the person who loses it. It is the responsibility of those who rely on one who is losing their reasoning ability to manage the circumstance of that decline.

Putting politics of government aside, President Trump is old. The concern one has is the risk of relying on those who work for Trump, like many who worked for Biden, may see loyalty as more important than the public interest of America. Age is an existential risk that can only be managed by the checks and balances of others which is why America’s government has survived and prospered despite good and ethically or morally corrupt Presidents.

America will survive Trump but it will take time to reset America’s relationship with the world. America has had good and bad Presidents in both political parties but its foundation of checks and balances have kept it on course for the betterment of society. It is nations with leaders that have no checks and balances that threaten social and economic equality.

WORKER ABANDONMENT

Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.

Books of Interest
 Website: chetyarbrough.blog

Listen Liberal (Or, What Ever Happened to the Party of the People?)

By: Thomas Frank

Narrated By: Thomas Frank

Thomas Carr Frank (Author, political analyst, historian, and journalist)

How could the American people elect a billionaire felon as President of the United States? Thomas Frank offers a compelling answer to that troubling question.

Since WWII, the American people have been misled by the words, policies, and deeds of both Democratic and Republican leaders. No post WWII leader escapes Frank’s frank explanation. Not since Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman have any Presidents effectively reduced income inequality.

Frank embarrasses American voters for complicity in reducing the size of the middle class, ignoring the poor, and making the rich richer. He explains how Presidents of the last 70 years have made the middleclass smaller and the poor poorer. Frank particularly points to Bill Clinton and Barack Obama as examples of Ivy League’ wordsmiths that misled the public and instituted policies that moved America away from the working class and poor.

Clinton and Obama represented education as the primary measure of success in the 21st century. They largely ignored the working class that grew the American economy to be the most successful in the world. With that neglect the Democratic party became adjunct to the Republican party by diminishing the contribution and value of working Americans. Whichever party leads America no longer makes a difference to the middleclass’ and poor. Frank argues there is little difference between a Democratic or Republican President. The middleclass and poor realize those who are elected to lead make little difference in American worker’s lives.

Frank methodically dismantles Clinton and Obama administration’s policies to show how they diminished opportunity for the middleclass and poor. Clinton manages to balance the national governments debt on the backs of working America. Clinton’s welfare reform took many off of welfare by demanding employment as a requirement for any help by the welfare administration. That seems laudable but its impact on single parent households left children home alone and at the mercy of their neighborhoods. A child alone is left to the influence of neighborhoods festooned with gangs, drugs, guns and their societal consequences. In reducing the number of people on welfare, poverty increased.

Clinton’s programs for crime control massively increased prison building and prison populations that disproportionately affected African and Latino American communities.

Clinton repeals the Glass-Stegall Act and allows commercial banks to enter the derivative mortgage business that led to the near future financial collapse of America between 2007 and 2010.

Entry into the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) led to manufacturing job losses in America.

Frank admits Obama helped the middleclass and poor with Obama Care but argues he made the same mistakes as Clinton by supporting the rich at the expense of the middleclass and poor. Obama chose to follow the lead of George Bush’s plan to get America out of the economic ditch of the century by bailing out the financial industry while allowing the working class to fend for themselves. Many lost their homes as a result of banker’s lending greed and mortgage derivatives that came from Clinton’s decision to repeal Glass-Stegall. None of the banks were punished by bankruptcy because the federal government made a deal to keep them in business or subject to acquisition by bigger banks that became even larger. Poverty remained at the same level. Surprisingly homelessness was reduced by Obama’s “Opening Doors” initiative in 2010. However, the trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation and a working public.

The trend of aiding the rich at the expense of the working class is re-invigorated by emphasis on higher education and creativity rather than the nuts and bolts of economic prosperity that comes from job creation.

The glaring irony of Frank’s observation led to the election of a billionaire who lauds wealth and power and cares little about the middleclass and poor. Donald Trump, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton distorted the truth, partly by lying to themselves but also by purposely lying to the public with political policies and actions that did not make the lives of the middleclass and poor any better.

Trump directly distorts the truth but Obama and Clinton lie to themselves about the value of education as the singular path to improvement for the middleclass and poor. People are not only educated by school.

People are also educated by work and their experiences in life. Not every person in America or the world is interested in having a college degree. Shared economic productivity is the key to reducing income disparity. The brilliant oratorical skills of Obama and Clinton were refined by their intelligence and education but not everyone is blessed with the same skill. Trump is no Obama or Clinton, but he appeals to many who feel they have been left behind or can be benefited by his transactional view of the world.

One may agree that economic productivity comes from creativity, education, and work. However, it does not come from emphasis on one thing but on equality of opportunity for all to be employed.

Franks’ cynicism is overwhelming. By the end of his book, which is published before Hilliary Clinton’s political defeat by Trump, one is depressed by the truth of what he writes. The second election of Trump is proof of the failure of the Democratic party, and the Republican party, to live up to a belief in social equality and equal opportunity.

Creativity is an innate human quality. Education comes in many forms which are both formal and informal.

Being employed is a government, private enterprise, and personal responsibility. It is the job of governance to create public policies that support equality of opportunity for people to be creative, educated, and employed. Equality of opportunity ensures national economic growth and prosperity.

Trump is unlikely to help the middleclass and poor any more than some of America’s past Presidents, but he disrupts the status quo. That is Thomas Frank’s answer to why Trump was re-elected.

AMERICA’S DECISION

It is up to Americans to vote or not vote. The choice today is between two old men. American Democracy will not fail because of either man’s election.

America’s Presidential debate on June 27th, 2024, was a painful reminder of advancing age. Whether to choose Donald Trump or Joseph Biden to be the next President of the United States is a “Hobson’s Choice”. Americans are compelled to vote for one of these two men or stay home and do nothing. Doing nothing means other Americans will decide who will represent Democracy to the world for the next four years.

Getting old is a mixed blessing. On the one hand, living long may offer wisdom, experience, and relationship connections. On the other, living long engenders health issues, physical frailty, and diminished mental acuity. Underlying these mixed blessings are the way a person has lived their life, the decisions they have made, the way they have treated others, and the inner moral compass they have followed.

It is up to Americans to vote or not vote for a President of the United States. The choice today is between two old men. Either will have the help of the three branches of the American government to do their job. American Democracy will not fail because of either man’s election to the office of President of the United States.