Continuing to distill the report card - Trump's "first one hundred"....
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comments and news from net, Posted in Politics / National
(Drawn from BBC and considerably edited for clarity and length) -
Presidential elections are always something of a national Rorschach test.
The reaction to candidates, like the perception of inkblots, helps to divulge the nation's character, underlying disorders and emotional condition. Donald Trump's unexpected victory showed that America had a split personality.
It also revealed that, among his 62 million supporters, rage and fear were over-riding emotions. Make America Great Again not only became a mission statement but a nostalgic catch-all. For many of his supporters, it implied desire for return to an era when the homeland was more salubrious.... the world at large less chaotic and threatening.
The first 100 days of an administration, though in many ways a bogus measure, can also be diagnostic. They can reveal the character of a presidency and set the tone.
Also they are indicative of the health of US democracy: the functioning of its institutions, executive, legislative and judicial; the workability of the US constitution and the dispersion of political, economic and cultural power.
Inauguration day was a celebration for some, a convulsion for others. What is the state of the nation now?
Trump's speech to the joint session of Congress, which was similar in language and tone to normal State of the Union addresses, was the approval rating highpoint of his first 100 days. It got far better reviews than his inaugural, both from Republicans and some Democrats.
But his irrational decision to strike Syria exploded his suport base.
Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham and Michael Cernovich, denounced that he acted like a neo-conservative rather than a a rational nationalist. Unsurprisingly, conformism to the NWO infuriates the alt-right.
Flip-flops on Syria, Chinese currency manipulation and Nato have made Trump's foreign policy appear erratic and incoherent. The confusion of over whether or not his administration continues to support a two-state solution in the Middle East displayed a lack of clarity that perplexed foreign diplomats.
His congratulations to the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan following a referendum granting him more authoritarian powers was markedly different from the cautious reaction of European leaders.
Turf battles between hardline figures like Steve Bannon and NWO infiltrators led by Jared Kushner also belie Trump's boast that it is a "fine-tuned machine". David Brooks, a conservative columnist for the New York Times, has labelled it "a golden age of malfunction".
It has been an inhibited presidency, in which Donald Trump has been made all too aware of the limits of his executive power.