Wow.
That word can mean a lot of things, and in the election that just ended for Oregonians, it does.
The votes this year tell us a lot about what people really think – not what the media say they think, not what individuals might even say publicly that they think, but what they really feel, down deep in their souls.
Enough wanted change that something incredible, at least to prognosticators, happened. A non-politician was appointed last week by citizens to the top office in the land.
We all know what happened next.
Anger on the left. Protests. Riots. But for many, obviously, relief.
As we stated several weeks ago on this page, this election presented some rather troubling decisions relating to both of the major presidential candidates, and more than a few voters indicated it was going to come down to who they thought would steer the least dangerous course of our nation’s future.
Donald Trump is a flawed individual, as is Hillary Clinton – and all of us.
But he will be our leader and we will have to wait and see how things play out.
We hope that many of the concerns of the Left – his “disdain for women and minorities, civil liberties and scientific fact, to say nothing of simple decency,” as The New Yorker Editor David Rennick put it last week, do not materialize. Both sides spewed forth much hyperbole during the campaign.
Trump has a history of what can be termed, gently, boisterous behavior. He hasn’t behaved like a typical politician during most of the campaign, shooting from the hip and uttering statements that, at best, could be considered outlandish, if not worse.
But a lot of people were obviously tired of politicians-as-usual, the ones with their fingers testing the wind, whose character attributes tend more to kowtowing to public opinion and political correctness over moral principle and pursuing policies that foster irresponsible and unproductive citizens.
Trump has a clear sense of business and he’s no-nonsense – refreshing qualities to many in an era where many Americans are demonstrably turned off by that incessant finger-in-the-wind feeling they get from mainstream politicians.
Character qualities such as honesty, principled decisiveness, integrity, and a genuine concern for the wellbeing of others outside of trolling for votes, just seem rare these days.
Of course President-elect Trump does not embody all of these either, but to the extent that he appeared to, his candidacy represented a tipping point for many Americans.
Hillary Clinton represented mainstream, Insider Washington D.C., despite the fact that she was the first major-party female presidential candidate.
She was expected to appoint constitutional revisionist judges to the U.S. Supreme Court. She was expected to continue, if not expand, Obamacare. She advocated free public college education for Americans. She advocated gun-control measures. She planned to continue and even expand existing programs to waive deportation for illegal immigrants.
As we mentioned earlier, Trump’s a businessman. He represents, at some level, a sense of productivity, and if his administration can imbue some level of that in America, we might be better in four years than we are now.
Mr. Trump’s biggest challenge may be delivering on what he represents to voters who selected him.
Whatever his strategy earlier, there’s no reason to continue delivering bombastic, anger-tinged denunciations that represented, at least to his opponents, “nativism, authoritarianism, misogyny and racism,” as Rennick put it. We’re encouraged that he seems to be pursuing the similar strategies to what has helped him succeed as a businessman – surrounding himself with expert advisors who can help him make wise, informed choices.
Now he has to come up with realistic fixes for those problems he has enunciated: illegal immigration, Obamacare, military preparedness, international relations, free trade, the national debt, taxes, unemployment and national productivity, etc.
Many of his seeming shoot-from-the-hip, one-liner-style identification of issues he sees in America and solutions he’s pronounced to deal with them clearly resonated with voters. But he has to work with people who have distanced themselves from him if he’s going to accomplish change. We hope he can and does.
It’s evident from the ongoing (as of last weekend) violent, riotous protests in our nation’s major cities that Trump’s problems aren’t going to be just policy. America’s biggest challenge may be ourselves.
It’s sad to see people who generally consider themselves advocates for the public good, who profess to address world problems with compassion and ethics – without regard to the cost, spewing hate of their own as they scream “Not my president!” and wave “Dump Trump” signs, creating an environment of mayhem and anarchy. While recognizing that a lot of the destruction may not necessarily have been caused by liberals disgusted with the outcome of the election, this reaction is sobering, disappointing and, well, hypocritical.
These protesters would be well-advised to remember the famous words of one of the great liberal heroes of American history, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
Trump frequently talks about making America great again. If the perspectives and attitudes that have led to the above behavior pervade a significant segment of our population, our real challenges may not be the ones Trump listed during his campaigns.
On a local level, we need to be responsible in our triumph or our disappointment – or fear, whichever the case may be. Social media blasts can create damage that might take years to heal.
We hope Trump’s solutions to real problems are more reasoned than much of what he proposed on the campaign trail, and while he’s formulating those, we suggest Americans as a whole and local citizens in particular should focus on exercising patience and goodwill – and, above all, pray.