On Friday, the country inaugurated Donald Trump as it's 45th President, so history will now include him as an equal to George Washington, John Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan and most recently, Barack Obama. And yet his path to the White House was decidedly different for all the reasons we know and aren't necessary to repeat today, with one exception, that being that the country has now elected its first business person and someone who has never run for public office before, as its president.
By itself, this is an astounding fact. During the recent presidential election, there was much said about having Hillary Clinton (for whom I voted) possibly becoming the country's first female President, but there was proportionately less of a focus on Mr. Trump being a businessman and proportionately more of a focus on him, well, just being The Donald. Now, this was all Mr. Trump's doing. But the more interesting question for me is - could he have still won the White House if he ran a more civil campaign ? Could we have all been spared the needless episodes of Season One of his new realty TV show staring Lazy Jeb, Little Marco, Lying Ted And Nasty Hillary? Could he have shown more respect for John McCain and less for Vladimir Putin and still won? Based on the fact that his win was such a surprise and because he was running against such a flawed opponent (more on this topic another day), yes, absolutely, he still could have won.
And in the process, we could have avoided all the needless, wasteful and very painful noise that became such a large part of the presidential campaign. Enough Americans were feeling left out and ignored by a larger world, and the hope and change offered by Barrack Obama failed to materialize for them. Frustration with a government that wasn't getting anything done was permeating a large part of middle America. So while a business person may not have been a super hero, it was the next best thing to those voters who so badly wanted real change.
By itself, electing our first business person president would not have led to led the bigger news, which occurred on day two of the new administration, the Woman's March on Washington, but we elected more than a business person, we elected the Donald, and because of that... the March was on.
(commentary on the March to follow tomorrow)
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