Madness and potty mouth prerequisites for presidency

The unnamed emergency worker chose poorly from a drop-down box offering him the possibility of a test or the real thing. A slip of the mouse led to an hour of two of panic on the islands with the unfortunate worker frogmarched off to the dreaded counselling.

It had nothing to do with federal emergency response systems, let alone President Trump but CNN breathlessly reported on Trump’s every move throughout the accidental crisis (he was on the golf course at Mar-a-Lago) while other media outlets focused on Trump’s geopolitical sabre-rattling which again was irrelevant.

Those in the know say the greatest likelihood of a nuclear catastrophe will not arise from executive orders uttered in the White House but of systems failures of an ageing ICBM network that literally could go off at any minute by complete accident. If you understand that — and maybe it’s better you don’t — you won’t sleep well at night, I assure you. “Oops, sorry, we turned your country into a radioactive puddle.” I guess the good news is there won’t be too many people left to receive the official apology.

Even if we accept some of wilder claims in Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury and the almost interminable street corner shrink Op-Eds in The Washington Post, The NY Times and LA Times, that the POTUS is a narcissist (name one politician who isn’t), a sociopath, or a drooling man-baby, how does Trump measure up against his predecessors in the mental health stakes?

While a prodigious political talent, Teddy Roosevelt liked war just a little bit too much. Preceding and following Teddy, were presidents so lamentable it gives rise to The Simpsons’ tribute to the mediocre presidents — “We are the mediocre Presidents, you won’t find our faces on dollars or on cents. There’s Taylor, there’s Tyler, there’s Fillmore and there’s Hayes. There’s William Henry Harrison — ‘I died in 30 days.’”

By the beginning of Nixon’s second term he was a gibbering paranoid. We know now that Reagan had early onset dementia, and this probably was hastened by the assassination attempt late in his first term but at the time, Reagan was considered merely a doddery old man.

President Lyndon Johnson used fruity language pretty much all the time. He is widely regarded as a very fine president, albeit stuck in a conflict thrust upon him by JFK’s presidency, compounded by poor advice and dismal military leadership which thrust the US further into the bloody quagmire of Vietnam.

Madness and potty mouth are not likely to have a POTUS hurled from office. On the contrary they appear to be prerequisites for the job.

The fall of Trump via the 25th Amendment — where the vice-president and the majority of the Trump cabinet determine the POTUS is unfit to hold office — is a fantasy.

The other source of unhinged hope for a premature end to Trump’s presidency is the outcome of the Mueller investigation. This is a great unknown. So many opinionistas think themselves exclusively capable of unravelling the largely secret investigation before it actually unravels. It is more speculative fluff.

There is one reality you can bank on. No one besides special counsel Robert Mueller and a few of his most senior associates know where the investigation is headed.

This largely false hope provides a delusion for the Democrats, too. While Trump’s often odd behaviour is scrutinised ad nauseam, the Democrats have their own problems. If I must be thrust into the business of long distance psychoanalysis, I would say the Democrats are suffering a collective Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and remain in deep denial after Hillary Clinton’s failed candidacy 15 months ago. Little has changed. Failed players, Nancy Pelosi, 77, and Chuck Schumer, 67, remain at the helm and show no sign of wandering off into the sunset. The Clintons won’t take the hint and go away either.

It’s not unlike the Soviet politburo in the 1970s where a septuagenarian might be considered a whippersnapper.

Al Franken has left the stage. While many would say that he copped his right whack in the #metoo stakes, the most important element of his departure from the US Senate is that he was exposed by members of his own party, his congressional Democratic colleagues. That alone speaks of a party mired in factional and personality-based conflict.

As the November midterm congressional elections loom, the paucity of talent within the party is so stark that Oprah Winfrey sped to the top of a short pile of improbable Democrat presidential candidates after giving a speech to actors in a room where it was almost impossible not to get a standing ovation.

Oprah Winfrey as a Democrat presidential candidate? I can see it now. Oprah standing at the Democrat National Conference in 2020, and shrieking, “Everyone gets a car!!!”

The pickings are so thin the Democrats have at least pondered the temptation to replace one three ring circus with another rather than winning through voter engagement via ideas, force of policy and substance. You know, politics the old-fashioned way.

The mid-terms beckon in November. Perhaps the Democrats will win majorities in both houses. Perhaps they won’t. It is worth remembering that every two term President since Reagan has faced the same circumstance, a lame duck presidency. If the Democrats fall short of a congressional majority, it would be a spectacular failure.

If they do manage to gain a majority in both houses and pursue a process of removing Trump from office, where would this leave the rock solid 33 per cent of American voters who support Trump come hell or high water? How would they regard Democrat attempts to hurl Trump from office? The loss of confidence in political institutions, the courts and in the federal system of government would be catastrophic.

It’s difficult to envision where it might lead but it would not be good for the shining example of democracy the US has been to the world.

Regardless of where it ends and what one thinks of Russian interference in the American political system, the possibility of collusion between the Russians and the Trump camp, the great unknowns of the when, the how and most importantly the who, it is safe to say Vladimir Putin is rubbing his hands together with glee.

This article was originally published in The Australian 17 January 2018.