In a special broadcast. “Graduate Together: America Honors the High School Class of 2020” dedicated to classes graduating in the midst of the current coronavirus pandemic, President Barack Obama implored the graduating seniors to be more responsible than some of their elders as they venture out into the world for the first time:
“Doing what feels good, what’s convenient, what’s easy — that’s how little kids think. Unfortunately, a lot of so-called grown-ups, including some with fancy titles and important jobs, still think that way — which is why things are so screwed up. I hope that instead, you decide to ground yourself in values that last, like honesty, hard work, responsibility, fairness, generosity, respect for others. All those adults that you used to think were in charge and knew what they were doing? It turns out that they don’t have all the answers.”
A week earlier in remarks which were leaked to the press, President Obama was more direct. While speaking on a conference to over 300 former staffer members he was highly critical of Trump’s handling of the current crisis:
“It’s part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty,” Obama said. “It would have been bad even with the best of governments. It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset — of ‘what’s in it for me’ and ‘to heck with everybody else’ — when that mindset is operationalized in our government.”
“This election that’s coming up – on every level – is so important because what we’re going to be battling is not just a particular individual or a political party. What we’re fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy – that has become a stronger impulse in American life.”
Of course the thin-skinned narcissist currently occupying the White House who is intensely sensitive to any criticism, especially that coming from his predecessor, was quick to respond. “Look, he was an incompetent president, that’s all I can say. Grossly incompetent,” Trump said responding to a question at a press conference about the growing feud. This followed a new conspiracy theory pushed by Trump that President Obama was guilty of some unspecified crime which should be prosecuted. He called this new product of his imagination, “Obamagate”.
Trump later clarified his accusations saying that members of the Obama administration improperly “unmasked” Michael Flynn’s name in intelligence reports on the monitoring of telephone calls between Flynn and former Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. That accusation fell apart when the Washington Post revealed evidence that Flynn’s name was never masked in those reports in the first place.
Trump also accused President Obama and then Vice President Joe Biden of having prior knowledge of the FBI’s intention to interview Flynn concerning his calls with Kislyak. That conspiracy theory was also debunked when evidence emerged to the contrary.
Attorney General William Barr said Monday that he did not expect an investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation to lead to criminal probes of either President Donald Trump’s Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, or former President Barack Obama. The entire matter was officially laid to rest when Trump’s Attorney General (who Trump views as his personal lawyer) stated that the Justice Department would not respond to political pressure to investigate the Trump’s political opponents in an election year. Barr claimed that the “criminal justice system will not be used for partisan political ends.”
Of course, any slim chance that Trump would extend President Obama the traditional honor of having his portrait unveiled at the White House, as is customary for former presidents, has evaporated in the heat of this recent confrontation. However, while Trump is well known for attacking anyone who dares to criticize him, but this time he has engaged in a fight he has no chance of winning.
It is an axiom of politics that politicians shouldn’t engage unnecessarily in a fight anyone who is more popular with the voting public than he/she is, but Trump simply can’t help himself. When Barack Obama left office his job approval rating was 53% or 59%, depending on what poll you favor, while his disapproval rating ranged between 37% to 44%. The former president also has maintained that popularity over time. Two years later in 2018 his favorability rating was 63%. Today, with Trump driving partisanship to the brink, President Obama still maintains a 56% favorability rating with only 32% negative of him with10% neutral.
On the other hand Trump’s job approval numbers have never been above 50% since he took office and when all of the recent polls are averaged only 42.3% approve of the job he is doing while 52.8% disapprove. This is in line with his ratings of how he has handled the COVID-19 pandemic. Only 43.7% approve of how Trump has handled the crisis while 53.5% disapprove. Even more telling, among independent voters (who often decide presential election), only 38.9% approve of his handling of the pandemic.
So when Trump essentially compares himself to President Obama by criticizing him, he could potentially anger more than 50% of the voting population. And when he tries to deflect the blame for his poor handling of the crisis up front by saying that the previous administration left him nothing to work with, he draws an even starker comparison with the President Obama. One only needs a few facts to realize how poorly the Trump administration measures up.
Obama’s team left Trump’s administration’s 69 page pandemic “playbook” which Trump’s people obviously discarded because it wasn’t followed and worked with Trump’s team during the transition period on pandemic exercise whose lessons were soon forgotten. The Obama administration formed a 19 person team under the office of the National Security Advisor to investigate and hopefully contain a disease which had the potential to become a pandemic before it spread and to prepare the country to deal with such an disease if it arrived on our doorstep. Trump’s people fired the leader of that group and disbanded the organization. They also fired the person appointed by Obama whose team was responsible for organizing the effort to create a vaccine for “disloyalty”. The Trump administration also allowed the contracts for maintaining the ventilators in the national stockpile to lapse; none of those ventilators worked when they were needed. (And the list goes on.)
Trump shouldn’t have allowed himself to get pulled into a public battle with President Obama because he comes out so poorly in comparison. Oh, it will definitely please the Trump base, but his base is no longer big enough to get him reelected. Who do you think the voting public would pick if they had a choice right now between him and President Obama to lead the country through this crisis? Heck, I’ll bet that Americans wouldn’t even choose Trump if the choice were between him and George W. Bush. Much as I disparaged ole W., I would choose him over Trump in a heartbeat. So choosing Obama over Trump is a no-brainer.
Long after it came into use, the phrase, “Don’t pick a fight that you can’t win,” still applies. That is obviously yet another lesson Donald J. Trump never learned.
Cajun 5/21/2020