Countless millions of Americans have watched our quadrennial celebration of the quiet transfer of national leadership, a thing of extreme rarity on the globe. Predictably contentious—that is part and parcel of being a free society—talking heads, the media commentators, have taken amazingly differing views of the new president’s acceptance speech. Some have given it high marks, while others were stunned. Chris Matthews called it “Hitlerian” and Rachel Maddow called is “Putinesque.” Still others thought it was really bad!
To put things simply: it is easy for critics to find—even in a speech of only sixteen minutes—much to be displeased about when, rightly or wrongly, they hold serious antecedent prejudices against the speaker.
Would there be so much negative screech against Mr. Trump had he said things differently? What if he had said, for instance:
- “America first? Nah, fifth or sixth is OK with me.”
- “No country seeks its own best interests, and neither should we.”
- “We simply must raise, in drastic fashion, our foreign aid to peoples who hate us, and we dare not ask anything of them in return.”
- “There are some 300 million poor people south of our border, and we are morally compelled to welcome them all in fully funding all their needs.”
- “Wall? What advanced nation cares about walls anymore; look at Europe!”
- “We must not maintain anything more than a police force as a military lest we be seen as bullying other peoples; enough already with having the strongest military on earth!”
- “Yes, we are twenty trillions of dollars in debt, but I see no deleterious effect in doubling it.”
- “True, some of our cities have become killing zones due to endemic poverty and maladministration, but that’s simply to be expected in an advanced society.”
- “Yes, over ninety-four million Americans no longer look for work, but what’s to worry about?”
- Or finally, “Please forgive the producers of this event for allowing open references God and Jesus so often, and myself as well, for recognizing we exist under His providential care; all of that—as our prescient commentators say about the entire event—was so different from the ‘norm’ for such occasions?”
How about this for a peroration, “Ayn Rand characterized socialism as holding that as long as a Patagonian girl had no shoes, no American girl should have two pairs. I say (with fitting Trump gesticulations and bluster), “As long as any Patagonian girl has no shoes, neither should any American girl!”
If his speech had gone that way, we’d be, well, precisely where we are—talking heads screaming about the outrage of it all.
It reminds me of the man who was determined to be angry with his wife. Having told her to fry one egg and scramble another for his breakfast, and upon her graciously obeying his order, he yells at her for “scrambling the wrong egg.”
This is no hagiographical screed for our new president or his team; they may prove to be dramatically less than we hope and pray. It is to say that, in any and every case, we may daily expect to hear that they have scrambled the wrong egg.
Bill Anderson
Grapevine, Texas