As a reluctant supporter of Hillary Clinton, due to the fact that my preferred candidate never got in the race, I was very concerned going into Monday’s debate. This is because I know Donald Trump was the more likable of the two. This is part of what made him such successful media and ultimately reality TV personality. It is this charisma that allows him to go on several racist rants, such as questioning a judge’s ability to be impartial because of Mexican ancestry or insulting gold star parents who lost their son, without the normal social consequences that would typically befall a candidate. No matter what he says a good portion of his supporters brush it off like they would some random statement their crazy uncle made. “He may be politically incorrect but at least his heart is in the right place. He is not really racist he just says occasionally things that men of his generation say.”[1]
American
presidential election history has shown when a more likable candidate goes
against a person who perceived to be more experienced they have a built in
advantage. They don’t have to win the debate;
all they have to do is look presidential and the voters will go with who they
like. Examples include Kennedy vs. Nixon
in 1960 and Bush vs. Gore in 2000. In
both cases the more likable John F. Kennedy and George W. Bush were able to
strengthen their candidacies against the incumbent Vice President, Richard
Nixon and Al Gore[2]. In both years the incumbent party was coming
off a popular presidency and they were expecting triumphant victory but what
they got was a close race and the White House going to the challenger[3].
So I was concerned that Donald Trump would follow this
pattern. Fortunately America ended up
seeing the worst debate performance in presidential history, surpassing even
1976 when Gerald Ford seemingly forgot the Iron Curtain existed.
For me,
the most important part of this debate was not Trump admitting he doesn’t pay
taxes, his frequent interruptions of Clinton when it was her turn to speak, admitting he didn't pay taxes, or coming unhinged while claiming he had great
temperament. To me the issue was his
birtherism, and how he is so proud of himself for creating enough noise in the media
to get Obama to release his birth certificate.
The
reason I find this so important because I remember it when it first
happened. Trump flew in down in one of
this Trump helicopters stood in front of reporters and announced how deeply
proud of himself that he had harassed the first African-American President to
the point he had to show his papers. Here is a video of that day.
When this
memory was triggered another memory immediately popped up. Trump’s replaying his pompous pride of his
birther roots brought back not only the memory of his foolish helicopter press
conference, but a more pleasant memory of national nightmare ending when in
less than a week after Trump’s prideful announcement President Obama announced this:
He was
dead. The number one of the United
States of America in the 21st century, Osama Bin Laden was dead. U.S. Seal Team 6, acting under the orders of the
President, went into Pakistan and killed him.
Just as then-Senator Obama had promised to do during the 2008
campaign.
 |
| Bin Laden |
So while Donald Trump was looking in Hawaii for a birth certificate for a man whose birth
was announced in the local newspaper nine days after he was born, our President was hunting down the most
horrific terrorist in U.S. history. He
wouldn’t stop with Bin Laden either.
So talk about priorities! While Trump worked on his TV show and mounted
a campaign saying one hurtful remark after another, President Obama was making
America safe from its enemies by crippling the organization of al-Qaeda by
killing off all its leaders. It was
quite an improvement over the previous president who vowed to bring them to
justice but got lost in Iraq. President
Obama took the fight right to the enemies by, in his words, “using a scalpel not
a hammer” to solve problems.
Donald
Trump was proud of himself for his work as birther, I however am proud of
my President.
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[1]
Those are the least scary of his supporters, the worst ones are those who
hear his bigoted statements and get excited by them.
[2] To be fair both Nixon and Gore also made
serious errors in their respective debates. Nixon refused
to wear makeup not understanding how that would reflect on his appearance on television and
Gore kept sighing and going on about his “lock box.”
[3]
Although in Gore’s case he won the popular vote.
