"Everything else is just commentary"
Tom Friedman nails it, again
In a March 20 New York Times interview with Patrick Healy, Tom Friedman captures the fundamental flaw of Trump’s presidency (if you can call it a presidency) and how that flaw will ultimately bring him down. The only question is how much damage he will wreak in the meantime. Let’s do all we can to make the “mean-time” short.
If you were to ask me, Pat, what’s the biggest thing that surprised you about what Trump has done? It’s the complete absence of any desire to pull the country together. And the complete desire to drive a completely partisan agenda.
I’ll give you a simple example. It’s the board of the Kennedy Center, this wonderful center for performing arts in Washington, D.C., that was always bipartisan, always had Democrats and Republicans. He came in and fired all the Democrats on the board and put his own people there.
It’s that “going to that next stage of where we’ve never gone before,” of “complete rule or die” politics: “When I’m in power, we get everything.” “It’s our time to eat and you get nothing.”
I think one of the many things Trump doesn’t understand, and what Democrats should be playing to, is that the most underappreciated political attitude in America today is actually the quest for unity. People want leaders who will pull us together, not pull us apart. I know division plays in 30 percent here and 30 percent there, but that’s not where the country is. And that’s why he is going to fail. Because we have big things to do, and big, hard things can only be done together.
As my friend Leon Wieseltier said about Benjamin Netanyahu, and it’s true of Trump as well: He’s a small man in a big time. Everything else is just commentary.
And let all of us never forget, no matter how mad we become: “We have big things to do, and big, hard things can only be done together.”
Diana- This is an important interview. I’ve lived in places with tyrannical order before. But there are always tell tale signs. The first one is impatience to success of own’s agenda. With the sweeping firing of entire groups altogether—that counts as such impatience. So glad you’re bringing this to light. On a lighter note: hope you’re making fun plans for the summer, Diana?