Wednesday, July 17, 2024

The Obvious and The Not-So-Obvious

I think it's a natural inclination, when there's an assassination attempt, to lean towards supporting the person who got shot at.  We are supposed to decide these things through votes and when someone tries to steal a democratic right from millions of people and replace it with a single violent act, we recoil against this.  This is the obvious take, but I think this is illogical:  The candidates are the same as they were before the attack and you should support whomever you think is best.  

The not obvious but true take, is that at multiple levels, the event and its aftermath reveal incompetence and lack of leadership at the top, the presidency.

  1.  As president you have a huge advantage in an election:  You're running things.  One of the most important things, is to make sure that the election is fair and orderly.  If you let your opposition be killed or almost killed, you have failed to properly administer the executive branch.
  2. It's not just a fluke or a well planned attack.  The USSS made just about every mistake that could be made and got foiled by a single 20-year old.  It was dumb luck that Trump happened to move his head at exactly the right moment.
  3. The attack was Saturday, it is now Wednesday.  Nobody has resigned or been fired!  There is a chain of command from the site commander right up to the president.  The site commander should have resigned on Saturday or Sunday, or been fired on Monday.  If not, by Tuesday, the site commander and his immediate superior should both have been fired.
  4. If Biden had already fired people, he could have shown leadership.  He did not, he needs to be fired.

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