We should stop blaming Donald Trump.
As increasingly difficult as he, himself, makes it, between his continued tweeting tantrums, his inability to keep any reasonably professional, let alone intelligent and mature, Cabinet member working for him longer than a few months and his once appalling, no longer even surprising failure to master even the most rudimentary skill set of operating and governing, let alone leading, an entire nation on the planet Earth in the year 2019, Trump is, in the clear, bright light of day not where blame should be placed, assuming, for the sake of our discussion here, that blame need be placed in the first place.
Props to Mr. Shakespeare, the blame, dear Brutus and my fellow Americans, lies not with he.
Rather, it lies with we.
As in "..we, the people..."
Because, last time the job came open, more than any other time in this writer's life time, anyway, we didn't make clear exactly what it is we expect, no, make that demand, from the person that we hire to fill the position of President of the United States.
And we are all, in one fashion or another, doing an unprecedented amount of crying, screaming, moanin', pleadin', blusterin', bickerin' and bitchin' about what the current job holder is doing.
But not all that much in the way of making clear exactly what we expect.
No, make that demand.
First, a little history lesson.
Conventional wisdom, which turns out to be apocryphal anecdote, has it that when the Revolutionary War was winding down and the Founders were getting about the business of setting up the nation's business, an offer was proffered to the guy most Americans would have chosen as Time Magazine's Man of the Year in those days. You know, if there had been such a thing as Time Magazine. Or magazines, for that matter.
Talkin' bout the beloved chairman of all things cherry tree, George Washington.
The proffered offer, of course, had to do with being the duly chosen and/or elected leader of the newly originated nation. And, according to the conventional turned apocryphal, the offer came in the form of crowning, as opposed to inaugurating.
History buffs have been recounting the king thing for generations. Real live, credentials and everything historians, meanwhile, surface periodically to put a kibosh on king and put their professed approval on president.
Which is, of course, what we got.
Washington himself was not all that ardent an advocate of forming a monarchy. The debate on why or why not goes back a ways, as you might imagine, but I've never run across anybody voicing what I suspect might have had something to do with his declining to be down for it.
Given that at the time of the Revolutionary War, the leader of the nation with whom we were at war, (that's England for all you kids who know all the words to every Ed Sheeran song but wouldn't know Nathan Hale if he showed up with additional lives to give for his country), the King of England was George III who, for you Trivial Pursuit-sters in our studio audience, was the 3rd great grandfather of the current Queen of England, Elizabeth II who, if you draw a wig, beauty mark and Cleopatra eye liner on her picture on the 10 pound note, is a ringer for Amy Winehouse.
S.E.P. with Scott Edward Phelps. Come for the commentary. Stay for the entertainingly arcane trivia.
Meanwhile, back to George. The King, not the President. Well, actually, the President, not the King, too. And that's my theory about one minor reason Washington was bent on opting for inauguration as opposed to investiture.
After a long and brutal war and the hardships of getting a new nation up on its feet on the horizon, the last thing anybody needed was to try and figure out who the hell anybody in the Colonies was talking about when they said King George.
Which King. Our king? Their king. Our king. You mean George? Which George? Washington? Or III?
By the way, if you're interested in learning more about the whole president or king thing, just Google the name Lewis Nicola. The Irish born American military officer. Not anybody having anything to do with the cough drops.
Having fully digressed, let's wander back on the track.
Washington said stuff your sovereign in a sack, mister.
And from that moment forward, we were a United States of which there was a President.
So, how long has it been now that we have been a United States of which there is a President?
Well, I'm glad you asked, there, sparky, because it turns out the answer is one of those rounded off numbers that lends just a dash more drama to the presentation.
This coming spring, it will be 230 years.
Not so fast, though, sparkies and sparkettes. There's a tidbit of trouble with the math.
This coming spring, it will actually be only 228 years that there has been a United States of which there is a President.
And that brings us around to where this was all headed in the first place.
What it is we expect, no make that demand, from the person currently in the employ of the citizens of the United States in the position of President of those United States.
And how we have clearly not been as clear as we could be, should be and have totally got to start being when it comes to letting that job holder know what those expectations and demands are.
At this point, the temptation is to launch into what would undoubtedly turn into yet another entire program of the line item failures of that current job holder.
And we all know the drill from there. We get distracted and/or diverted from any real substantive conversation by becoming bogged down in an endless space/time loop of "I know you are, but what am I?"
The verbalization version of him escaping the lasso of justice by gittin' us townsfolk to shoot at each other.
Which, is, and has been, and, for the foreseeable, will continue to be, of course, the most successful strategic tactic, either intentional or inadvertent, he has employed since the day he descended from Mount Gold Plated Toilet Tower on his gold plated escalator and got the joint a'rockin with what spawned a hale, hearty, huuuuge laugh out of millions and millions of millions of we, the people: the announcement of an official presidential candidacy.
Insert he who laughs last grabs the Electoral College by the short hairs and knocks the nation more than just a little off its foundation here.
And, besides, when it comes to more "oh, yes he is/ oh, no, he isn't" chapters and verses, just like too many cooks spoil the soup, too many examples strain the attention span.
So, let's keep eyes on the analytical prize here and zero in on the original indictment.
That, we, the people, stand accused of failure to properly and comprehensively inform, then, job applicant, and, later, new hiree to the position of POTUS exactly, to a pin point certainty what it was, and is, we expect, no, demand of him.
In simple employer/employee jargon, all full of chocolatey human resources goodness, it's called a job description.
There's our first problem.
In terms of laying it all out in easy to understand, do this and/or don't do that subject to being terminated with extreme prejudice, there really is no such thing as an "official" job description for this particular job.
The Constitution, our theoretical go-to source for clearing up what is and isn't, should and shouldn't be, must and/or must not be, is, damn the luck, pretty sketchy, at best, and absolutely nothing close to qualifying as an "employee handbook"
16 year olds hired at McDonald's are better informed about what's expected of them than is the man (and, hang in there, ladies, sooner or later, woman) who is given, among a whole shit load of other things, the power to ban the banning of polluting our air and water, the influence that can send the world financial markets into a tail spin and, oh, yeah, the launch codes.
"...faithfully execute the office of President of the United States..." is a charming, even noble iota of oration that actually spells out jack-squat in terms of exactly what the country wants, needs, expects and/or demands.
And, of course, "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States..." well, between giving neo-Nazis a little "wink, wink, know what I mean" and saving all his love for Putin alone, clearly the definitions of preserving, protecting and defending are not so much found in the bright light of freedom as they are in a little place we'll call "the gray area".
So, lacking any real documentation that provides us the leverage we need to spring the old "a-ha!" on him and send him and his creepy, crawly cut rate Corleone family back to the gold plated, primordial ooze from which they spawned, let me just get right down to a real nitty gritty here and try to zero in.
Yo, Donald.
No crown for you.
First, if as admired, revered, respected and beloved an American icon as George Washington said a polite, country boy "no, thankee" to being wrapped in royalty, there's not a ice cap's chance since you yanked us out of the Paris accords that we're going to put up with any king crap from, you, ace.
If for no other reason, a lot of us, a whole lot of us know of George Washington, studied George Washington and, dude, you're no George Washington.
You're not even a George Clooney.
In fact, don't even measure up to a Boy George.
But, by George, I digress.
And, by the way, there, MAGA fans from sea to now more threatened by pollution than ever sea, don't waste breath or drool coming back with any deceptively correct examples of how almost every president, at one time or another, has been accused of "king think". Lincoln, Jackson, Roosevelt (Franklin and Teddy, pick a Roosevelt, any Roosevelt), LBJ, Nixon, even the so amazingly animatronic it's hard to believe he was actually alive Ronald Reagan....even the George who would not be king were tarred with that brush from time to time.
The fly in the ointment of your logic there, Costco presidential scholars, is that while tough decision making and/or implementation can be compared to , even confused with, more a royal decree than a politely agreed to submission from the suggestion box, what's going on in year 2019 of the American timeline is a big whole horse of a different color. Yes, orange. But that punchline pretty much writes itself.
The difference is that all the other aforementioned executioners of the office of President of the United States were, all of their individual political stripes, perspectives and allegiances aside, believers and, critically more importantly, supporters of that foundation we mentioned earlier, including, but not limited to, its sacred institutions: the courts, from city to Supreme; the intelligence community from CIA to NSA with a little NCIS thrown in for drama; law enforcement, from FBI to DEA and, yes, ICE...but the ICE that protects and serves, not the ICE that kidnaps and sequesters. You're confusing that ICE with another ICE from a few years back. And that ICE was spelled GESTAPO.
And, again , with allowances for the human ego being what the human ego is, all of the aforementioned accused of being a "royal" pain in the ass presidents most certainly hoped, even wanted, to be respected, appreciated, admired, oh, what the hell, even loved, but none of them expected to be worshiped.
And, again, not because of any lack of ego. Simply because they were all, to varying degrees, pretty clear on the concept of what the presidency of the United States really is. And pretty comfortable in their own skins.
Not to mention being intelligent enough to know better than to tweet every thought, memorable or moronic, that came into their brain in the wee hours of the morning before Fox and Friends came on to make all the boo boos better.
But, enough already with the ain't no monarch gonna go round here manifesto.
And a last refocused zero-ing in on the subject of what's expected.
Donald.
Hi, how you are you? Getting along well in your new duties? Everybody welcoming and helpful? House and staff and limos and all that....okay? Somebody show you where the cafeteria is?
Good. Okay. Listen up.
You're an employee of the United States of America.
Think of the United States of America as a company. Well, yeah, a little like the companies that you're used to, but....honest....and successful....and, well, not saturated with the stench and slime of sociopathic self absorption.
And, oh, yes, this company has had its ups and downs and each new day there are new challenges that we have to overcome, but, you know, Donald, can I call you Donald?....you know, the United States of America, if you will, has managed to survive all those challenges for almost 243 years now. And, I gotta tell ya, that's a long damn time in company history time. I mean it's longer than Apple or Microsoft, even longer than Colgate and DuPont and Remington and Jim Beam....yeah, really...and way, way, way longer than those "businesses" run by that guy from New York, you know, the steaks...and the vodka.....the casinos....oh, and the university, what a total scam.....I'm sorry, what?
Oh. My bad.
Anyway, you were hired, through a process that, frankly, we're taking a new look at because apparently, there's some kinks in that garden hose, you know?..but that's not your problem....you were hired to contribute the skills, abilities and energies you told us you had when you applied for the job to making the nation a better nation.
Yeah, I know. These abstract, hard to nail down terms. What's a "better" nation, right?
Well, here at the United States of America, it turns out that we actually have a pretty clear concept on what makes for a better nation and what we expect of those who come to work for us to help make that happen. And that's kinda why we asked you to come in and sit with us and let us clarify some of that, because, to be honest, Donald, we've been hearing there are some problems with your job performance. So, here's a real quick, clear the air thing...it'll take just a minute.
We expect you to put in a full day's work. We hear tell that you're inclined to spend a lot of time in the morning watching cable news, which, I suppose, if you're trying to broaden your perspective and get more of a real feel for how all Americans are feeling and thinking and needing, that's okay, but apparently you watch and listen to only one station and that means one mindset and,well, that's just not the American way, man. We are an inclusive company. With liberty and justice...that's right...for all.
We expect you to show courtesy and respect, at all times, to all of your co-workers and most especially to every single one of your employers. Yeah, I know that can get confusing. Let me see if I can unmuddy that water for you. Every citizen of this country gets a vote on who gets chosen to do the job you've been hired to do. Now, naturally, once the "vote" has been taken, there are going to be a lot of folks whose choice wasn't chosen. And from what we hear and read and see of your approach, apparently, you've confused this position with that of, say, the head coach of a football team. We don't want someone who gathers only "his" team around him to go out and crush the other guys. We expect you to keep your people productive, but to also bring in those "other guys" and make them feel like their part of the team, too. Capice? Get my drift?
Well, apparently not, because your public comments...and your interviews...and the tweets...oh, good golly, the tweets. Pretty rude. Not inclusive or inviting or, frankly, acceptable. The United States of America is...you may have heard this saying somewhere along the way....is a melting pot. It's not a stirring pot where the goal is to keep things in a constant state of chaos and conflict. Seriously, I gotta say, given the number of times you've tried that approach and it's fallen flat on its ass, I'm very surprised you're still using it. You know, the steaks and vodka and casinos....yeah.
We expect you to be a company man at all times. Simply put, there are other companies in the world, like the Saudi Arabia.....the North Korea....oh, of course, the Russia. We all have to do business in the same big market, right? Of course, we do. But those folks are our competitors and we don't sell their products for them, you know what I mean? Yeah, apparently not. This is a real hot button issue in our company. And, since you seem to be a guy who likes straight talk, let me be straight with you. You need to decide pretty much right now which company you'd most like to work for.
We expect you to show compassion, concern, caring and co-operation at all times. We don't tolerate sexism, racism, misogyny. We don't acknowledge, let alone endorse, harmful, toxic people or groups of people like the Klan...or, yeah....neo-Nazis. I'm not going to intentionally embarrass you here, but, "very fine people?"...really?
I could go on, but I'm gonna take a chance on you and assume that you're a little clearer on the concept now.
Oh...we expect you to inspire, not incite. We expect you to lead, not bully. We expect you to play to people's strengths and virtues, their better angels, if you will. There is to be no preying on their fears and flaws and weaknesses. This talk we're hearing of a wall. Come on, we both know that's just cheap shot scare tactic stuff. We're not on board with that. And the children. Being kept in the pens. Again, you are employed by the United States of America.
And that's not the American way.
One last, very important thing.
The position that you have been privileged to be offered is one of enormous authority, power and prestige and it's very, very easy....frankly, way, way, way too easy...for someone being offered all that authority and power and prestige to make the mistake of thinking that it's, well, say, like being a king.
The position you have been privileged to hold, up until now, is not king.
Yeah, looking over your contributions so far, I'm thinking that you've really fallen victim to that misunderstanding. That's why we needed to have this chat.
And just so there's no doubt as we finish up here, let me say this plainly.
We, the people who make up the United States of America don't work for you.
You work for us.
Since you fancy yourself a savvy businessman, let me put it this way.
Think of us, all of us, not just red-state, Fox News, red-cap, love, adore and praise worshipers, but all of us....
...as your board of directors.
Because the company is the United States of America
And the job you've been privileged to hold, up until now, is president.
Not king.
We should stop blaming Donald Trump.
Because nobody seems to have made him crystal clear on what it is we expect of him.
No.
Make that demand.
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