DID TRUMP DECIDE TO RUN FOR PRESIDENT, AFTER HE WAS RIDICULED BY PRESIDENT OBAMA?

….The G7 conference in Japan

 

Between Obama & Trump: “Politics does not stop at the water’s edge”.

 

You may recall that old, un-written rule that “Politics and partisanship stops at the water’s edge”, that rule was thrown away during the George W. Bush administration and then it became even worse in the last election when Mitt Romney visited Great Britain and Europe in the 2012 campaign.  His comments while traveling in the middle of that campaign were showing up in all the national news programs and foreign publications.

 

In our new global world, and the way every nation follows the American presidential elections, it is no longer appropriate to think that our politics today can stop at the water’s edge.

 

This is especially true with the new Republican presidential nominee coming to us in the form of a loud-mouthed Donald Trump.

 

Many world leaders have commented negatively about the former reality TV billionaire mogul, and as President declared in a press conference at the G7 meeting in Japan,  “Foreign leaders have been rattled by Trump’s declarations and Trump had displayed either an ignorance of world affairs or a cavalier attitude about them.”

 

Now that the GOP has a real nominee like the aforementioned Mr. Trump, the news conference in Japan pretty much obliterated the now-quaint political convention that “politics and partisanship stops at the water’s edge”. It also revealed a stark truth: “The world is worried about a potential President Trump.”

 

The billionaire, who has openly mocked foreign dignitaries for questioning his capacity to serve as the potential America’s leader, he remains unapologetic in the face of the president’s critique.

 

And Trump’s response to the president’s comment about the other world leader’s being “rattled” just begs for more questions and answers.  Trump’s response to this was as follows: “When you rattle someone, that’s good because many of the world, as you know, many of the countries in our world, our beautiful world, have been absolutely abusing us and taking advantage of us,” he said this at a news conference in North Dakota. Trump added: “So if they’re rattled, in a friendly way, we’re going to have great relationships with these countries.”

 

So, instead of the most powerful nation in the world coming across as a wise and thoughtful nation, Trump decides to accuse them of treating the US improperly as he also attempts to keep them on their toes.

 

The president may not be running for political office, but President Obama has a legacy to protect, particularly against Trump, who has called the president’s foreign policy approach weak and incoherent.

 

A number of presidential historians have commented how rare it is for a sitting US president to criticize by name, the foreign policy position of someone from the opposite party while traveling abroad.  But since the president has been asked by virtually every other foreign leader about Mr. Trump, and Trump has been name calling everyone in the Democratic party, this was probably inevitable.

 

Going back to 1960, President Dwight Eisenhower had thought John F. Kennedy was too inexperienced for the job of president, but the then president only made a vague reference to this idea at the end of the campaign between Kennedy and Richard Nixon.  “We need a leader who will not, one day, say that the United States government should intervene in Cuba and then retract it the next day,” Eisenhower said at the time.  But that’s all that he said against Kennedy.

 

President Lyndon Johnson had detested his 1964 GOP opponent, Barry Goldwater, but Johnson refused to mention him by name while on the campaign trail. Instead, according to history professor, Robert Goldberg, Johnson warned voters of his opponent being a “reckless” and “radical” leader that would have his hand on the nuclear trigger.  (Actually, that is one of the issues that voters should be concerned about with a Donald Trump in the White House.)

 

Yes, this old concept of the “water’s edge & politics” was then seriously discarded overseas in the 2012 campaign.

 

A close adviser to President Obama’s then-GOP rival, Mitt Romney, Mr. Glenn Hubbard, he actually questioned Obama’s economic policies in the opinion pages of a German newspaper.  This opened up the door for the president to respond.

 

Obama not only chastised adviser Hubbard for questioning his economic policies in the opinion pages of a foreign newspaper, he also added, “And I think, the notion has previously been that America’s political differences are supposed to end at the water’s edge.”

 

Donald Trump’s “Birther Movement” eventually removed any pretense that the president was ever going to treat Trump with any level of respect.  He made that clear when he went after Trump at the Annual White House Correspondence Dinner.  I actually think that embarrassing event for Trump was the event that caused him to decide to run for president.

 

Obama has explicitly criticized Trump several times this year, saying the presidency requires sober judgment.  Some of the world leaders have asked the president about Trump’s most controversial remarks. But the president apparently decided to go even further at the close of the G-7 summit. In response to a direct question, the president commented that foreign leaders are “surprised” by Trump’s nomination and that they “are not sure how seriously to take some of his pronouncements.”

 

“I can’t think of a prior post-World War II case in which a sitting president has questioned publicly and openly the fitness for office of a major party nominee.” This was a statement by Fredrik Logevall, a professor of international affairs at Harvard University.

 

For months, Obama has obviously operated on the assumption that Trump would simply not have a chance for becoming president. During a trip to Asia in February, he had said Americans are too “sensible” to elect Trump. In April, Obama mentioned how he had reassured one of his wealthy Hollywood donors, “Mr. Trump is not succeeding me.”

 

But as polls show a virtual dead heat between Trump and Hillary Clinton, and concerns about her use of a private email server at the State Department persist, the president has become increasingly vocal about the prospect of Trump taking the office.

 

And Trump’s political rise has upended all the traditional calculations both in Washington and the world’s capitals across the globe.

 

The Republican nominee has now suggested that Japan, South Korea and Saudi Arabia should consider developing nuclear weapons, because according to Trump, proliferation is “going to happen anyway.”  He argues for erecting a wall on the southern border to keep undocumented Mexican immigrants out of the United States and that the United States should have a “total and complete ban on Muslims until our country’s representatives can figure out what is doing on.”

 

British Prime Minister David Cameron called the proposed Muslim ban “stupid and wrong,” while Sadiq Khan, the new Muslim Mayor of London, said Trump is totally “ignorant” about Islam.

 

But Trump, for his part, called Khan’s comments “very nasty” and told ITV host Piers Morgan to convey a message to Cameron: “Tell him I will remember those statements.”

 

Atta boy Trump, let's insult and threaten the leader of our closest and longest ally.

 

Copyright G.Ater  2016