Danger

Donald Trump is a guy who is difficult to defend, and I won't try to do it. He can be a coarse, bombastic demagogue who has little grasp of policy details, who makes promises that reality tells us will be very hard to keep, who has difficulty expressing himself in ways that are clear and concise, and who is a narcissist and a bully—all rolled into one. But as the trained hamsters in the media follow their chosen candidate's narrative and characterize Donald Trump as "a danger to the country," it might be worth stepping back just a bit and considering how a continuation of the current administration's policies isn't a considerably more predictable danger.

Hillary Clinton has committed to continue Barack Obama's approach to both domestic and foreign policy—essentially to become Obama 3.0. On the domestic front, she poses a real and present danger to our democracy. Why? Because, (as I noted in my last post) dishonesty and more importantly, corruption, is a "rot" that can destroy our confidence in government and those who lead us. On the foreign policy front, a continuation of Barack Obama's approach to the world would be catastrophic. Richard Fernandez provides a brief review when he writes:

The Era of Hope and Change has been one prolonged act of suicide. If anyone had said that Obama would manage to alienate Israel and the Philippines, lose Turkey, pay Iran a hundred billion dollars, preside over the loss of a won war in Afghanistan, lose billions of dollars in military equipment to ISIS, watch a consulate burn [and then lie about it], restart the Cold War with Russia [when he stated in the 2012 debates that Russia wasn't a concern], cause Japan to re-arm and go the knife's edge with China, would you have believed it? If someone had told you in 2008 millions of refugees would be heading for Europe and that the UK would leave the EU after Obama went there to campaign for them to remain would you not have laughed?

He promised "smart diplomacy" and the restoration of American prestige in the world. How did it come to this?

In her ubiquitous TV ads (I live in a battleground state), Clinton uses the hundreds of millions of dollars she's raised from the media and business elites to characterize Trump as a "danger" who is unfit to lead. The funny thing is, she might be right. But what she leaves out (they're her ads, after all) is the very real danger she poses. Hillary is a congenital liar. She is irretrievably corrupt. And just as bad, she will be Obama 3.0. That's at least as dangerous as the blowhard who is running against her.