As a general rule, Americans aren’t open to advice from any outside source.
But when it comes to electing a president, I think it is time they were.
Because this campaign, which has now run for about 16 months all told, has become torture for candidates and voters alike.
And even for many who are looking on from outside their country, Canadians for sure.
I think we prefer our system of elections, which usually is run and done in about six weeks, last year’s three-month campaign being the exception.
In talking to Canadians about the U.S. election I find most are in the same mode I am, tired of it, even loathing it at times, but so fascinated by it and caught up in it that we keep switching to CNN to get the latest.
By the latest, of course, we are looking for any new screw-ups in the mouthings of Republican nominee Donald Trump or any new revelations about Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and her “damned emails” or anything else the FBI is throwing at her.
And don’t be mistaken, the FBI is throwing things at her, Director James B. Comey’s letter to Congress regarding the reopening of the investigation of her emails a case in point.
FBI agents, investigating Anthony Weiner for his involvement with a young girl on the Internet, discovered some emails on his computer that they believed belonged to his wife, Huma Abedin, a close confidant of Clinton’s.
Comey, a Republican, wrote Congress that the “emails appear pertinent to our investigation” yet he also said that “given that we don’t know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression.”
Didn’t want to create a misleading impression? A little late for that, I would say. He had already poisoned the well and drew condemnation from both sides for providing such little information, the Democrats wanting more to be able to present an informed answer, the Republicans wanting more to be able to attack Clinton on a controversy that has dogged her throughout the year.
I think the only thing in Comey’s future should be resignation for interfering in the electoral process.
Actually I hold no brief for either candidate in this presidential race; I would prefer that neither were there.
But since they are, I will say this, I prefer Clinton to Trump by a large margin.
I just can’t see Trump sitting in the Oval Office and making decisions as commander-in-chief.
I don’t think he has the diplomatic smarts or the temperament for it. When he gets ticked off with something someone says about him now, he responds with a vicious attack. It is something he has been unable to curb on the campaign trail and I doubt he will be able to curb if he has the power of the oval office behind him.
Can the Americans really afford that?
Considering the race is so close I guess a lot of them think they can.
Trump has apparently tapped into the anger of many who find their lot in life not what they would like it to be.
But when I listen to the man, I don’t think I could vote for him even if I had nothing. I listen to him spew untruths over and over as he obviously operates under the belief that if you say something often enough that people will believe it.
And even though his lies are pointed out time and again with the use of video, it obviously is working for him, at least with his so-called base.
Clinton never should have called half of Trump’s supporters a basket of deplorables, but if you have caught the words and thoughts of some of these people in interviews, you probably have come, as I have, to the conclusion that she was not far off.
The Daily Show decided to interview some people at a rally to see what they had to say. Here is some of what it found.
One person made some fairly outrageous claims, then stated her sources were “Facebook and Twitter”. Another said Hillary “could have AIDS” because her husband “fooled around with Magic Johnson”.
The Daily Show’s correspondent who conducted the interviews, Jordan Klepper, also took along two identical photos of Hillary Clinton and asked people outside the rally to guess which was the real one and which was a body double. They managed to find differences between the two, despite the fact that they were completely the same.
But the story said perhaps the most shockingly of the awful allegations came from one man who said Barack Obama “played a large part in 9/11” because he took too many holidays and wasn’t in the Oval Office when the Twin Towers were attacked. The story pointed out, as it hardly needed to, that it would have been pretty hard for him to be there since he wasn’t inaugurated until seven years later.
Appointments to the Supreme Court is one of the main issues in the campaign, Republicans worried if Clinton is elected she will nominate liberal judges who will thwart their plan to overturn Roe vs Wade, which protects a woman’s right to choose, and swing the court to the left for years to come.
I have long believed that what is wrong with the U.S. Supreme Court is that is political, that many of its decision are ideological driven rather than on the basis of what is right. The court at the moment is split 4-4 between conservative and liberal, although Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Kennedy will occasionally break ranks.
I think fairness and the law would be better served in future if the justices were nominated on the basis of skill, knowledge, competence, etc., with ideology playing no part in the process.
In any event, on Wednesday we will be free of it all, the candidates and what is sometimes more irritating, their whiny surrogates and the political pundits who have said the same thing possibly a hundred times and counting.
Ah, welcome peace.
Doug Millroy can be reached at dmillroy@gmail.com.
