An Embarrassment or a Catastrophe?

Sometimes a commentary is difficult to write; this one is heart-rending.  A little more than a year ago during the first republican primary debate in Milwaukee, Nikki Haley said – “We can’t have, as Republicans, Donald Trump as our nominee.  He can’t win a general election.  That’s the problem.  We’ve got to go and have someone who can actually win.”  Nikki Haley, who is easily the most qualified person in politics to aspire to the presidency since George H.W. Bush, spoke the truth, and her words fell on deaf ears.

Haley epitomizes the American dream.  The daughter of immigrants and a minority, she worked in her family’s business, she became treasurer and then president of the National Association of Women Business Owners and was elected then re-elected to the South Carolina House of Representatives.  During her third term she was elected as first female governor of the state.  During her time as governor, she received national attention for leading the state’s response to the 2015 Charleston church shooting.

She resigned as governor in 2017 to become U.S. ambassador to the United Nations for the Trump administration and was confirmed by the U.S. Senate  96–4.  As U.N. ambassador, Haley advocated for Israel, defended Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deeply flawed Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement, which has not met a single one of its benchmark goals.  She oversaw the withdrawal of the U.S. from the United Nations Human Rights Council whose members include human rights stalwarts such as Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Algeria and Vietnam calling it “a cesspool of political bias.”

Meanwhile the RNC supported by the republican primary voters felt it was more important to support their hero Donald Trump than to win an election threw away a winning hand.  Now America is faced with an election controlled by the democrats.  So, let’s be clear – Trump-Harris means it’s Kamala’s election to lose, when a Haley-Harris match-up would have Nikki Haley ahead by 7 to 10 points and Haley’s election to lose.

In a recent post using the sobriquet, E.P. Unum, integrity was defined as the touchstone characteristic of leadership.  Integrity is the practice of being honest, trustworthy, and reliable and acting in accordance with one’s words and values. Integrity means consistency between words and actions.  Strong leaders act with integrity and have the ability to clearly communicate their message.  Strong leaders are accountable, have vision, act with courage and excel in decision-making, which empowers others, fostering creativity, while motivating and inspiring those around them.  And Nikki Haley qualifies on every count.

A woman, a minority, the daughter of immigrants, an accomplished businesswoman, a leader, a former governor and someone well-versed in international affairs – and equally important a pragmatist and a patriot who is willing to bend for the good of the country.  I make this last statement because in spite of her disagreements with Donald Trump, she’s agreed to stump for him because she knows if you think things are bad under Biden-Harris, well, under Harris-Walz, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet!

~ “It’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the ballots” – Josef Stalin ~

There are three reasons why Trump will lose unless Kamala shoots herself in the foot, which the democrats are not likely to allow her to do.  First, Donald Trump has an approval ceiling under 50% and most likely closer to 47%- 48%, and that’s not enough to win an election in a two-person race.  Second, democrat electioneering, of which they are masters, beginning with mail-in ballots.  And the democrats love mail-in ballots, why, because mail-in ballots don’t just invite opportunities for fraud, it guarantees it.  Look no further than who the current president of the United States is, a man with no major accomplishments after 40 plus years in Washington and who never left his basement, yet still garnered 81,000,000 votes, the most ever cast for a candidate in a U.S. Presidential election – that’s more than either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton received, the first black and female candidates respectively – c’mon.  Third, and perhaps the most importantly, the media despises Donald Trump.

If you watch the political ads, we are told that as San Francisco District Attorney, Kamala was tough, and as Attorney General for the State of California, she stood up for children who had been victims of sexual abuse.   OK- what are the specifics, are there any metrics?  At the convention Biden said Harris, “shared in his achievements,” but what were those achievements and how did they affect the quality of life of ordinary Americans?  Is your life better than it was four years ago? Were food prices lower, was gasoline cheaper, were our streets safer, was the world more peaceful?

Harris has been in politics for decades, yet we have yet to hear of any major act of leadership or decisive action, yet we’re told that she is ready to lead the nation.  My wife Bobbi has a nephew who made the following post on Facebook – “It’s about time we had a woman of color to lead the nation”  And that dear readers is the very mentality that will lead this country to ruin.  I wonder if his youngest daughter needed a heart valve replaced if he would insist on finding a female heart-surgeon of color to perform the operation.

The NFL season is about to begin, and excitement abounds, but there’s an old expression that the truly knowledgeable about the game understand – the real NFL season (and run for the playoffs) doesn’t begin until Thanksgiving.  A similar dynamic exists in politics – the real campaign season doesn’t begin until after Labor Day – and here we are.

A million things can happen between now and November 5^th, but unless there’s a black swan event of some kind between now and then, the first woman president of the United States is going to be Kamala Harris, and the best we can hope for is that her administration will only be an embarrassment for the nation and not a catastrophe.