What’s the difference between a businessman-turned-president and a “progressive” liberal career politician?
One understands how to make things happen and the other specializes in screwing them up, or sitting back and doing nothing at all.
That might be the main takeaway from the Carrier deal in Indiana that appears to be the result of Donald Trump and Mike Pence intervening in what had seemed like a hopeless effort to keep jobs in this country rather than see them exported to Mexico.
Last June, in an appearance on PBS Townhall, President Barack Obama, who was a “community organizer” before he became an Illinois State Senator, before he became a U.S. Senator and finally the president, suggested that Trump could not make good on his promise to keep jobs here. But Obama exhibited his complete cluelessness when he commented:
“When somebody says, like the person you just mentioned who I’m not going to advertise for, that he’s going to bring all these jobs back, well how exactly are you going to do that? What are you going to do? There’s — there’s no answer to it. He just says, ‘Well, I’m going to negotiate a better deal.’ Well, how — what — how exactly are you going to negotiate that? What magic wand do you have? And usually, the answer is he doesn’t have an answer.”
Translation: Obama didn’t know how, but Trump evidently does.
While Trump appears to be saving jobs even before he takes office, liberal Seattle Mayor Ed Murray announced his plan for three new homeless camps in the Jet City. The contrast is stunning.
Critics of Murray’s administration are ripping him in the Seattle Times. Meanwhile, CNBC is quoting a Mexican official who says Trump is “telling the truth” about U.S. job losses.
Then comes the New York Times with this observation:
“And just as only a confirmed anti-Communist like Richard Nixon could go to China, so only a businessman like Mr. Trump could take on corporate America without being called a Bernie Sanders-style socialist. If Barack Obama had tried the same maneuver, he’d probably have drawn criticism for intervening in the free market.”
Actually, had Obama tried the same maneuver, he would likely have been steamrollered back to the golf course.
Trump’s announcement that he will nominate retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis as the next Defense Secretary signals he is going to take a new tack against terrorism, and it’s going to be unpleasant for terrorists.
His other picks for cabinet posts suggest that he’s interested in results, not rhetoric.
People who make careers out of “flying a desk” may be in for a hard four or eight years. Trump’s presidency may prove that what “progressives” are really good at is not making any progress at all.
