Half of us won’t mind if Donald Trump can’t keep promises
Nov 14, 2016, 5:46 AM | Updated: Nov 16, 2016, 8:53 am
I’ve been hearing from some very upset people since Donald Trump was elected president. Since last Tuesday, people have told me they feel like they’ve been living in an episode of South Park.
But now, Donald Trump is starting to walk back some of his promises. And the #NeverTrumpers are salivating for his comeuppance because they know he’s promised things that no president can deliver, and the only way he can succeed as president is if he fails at keeping most of his promises.
In fact, after President Barack Obama and Trump had their cordial meeting at the White House last week, press secretary Josh Earnest was asked about just that.
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Q: “When you and the President say that you hope Donald Trump is successful, given that you see his policies as a threat to Democracy, do you mean that?”
A: “That’s a good question.”
It is. For example, Trump’s promise to repeal Obamacare actually doesn’t include repealing one of its key features: the part that allows you to buy health insurance even though you’re already sick. That’s a big deal, because once he allows that, he’ll have to find a way to force everybody to buy insurance, otherwise people would just wait until they’re sick to start paying premiums, and the system would go bankrupt.
But would it be fair to bash him for that? Would it be fair to bash him for breaking a promise that would have hurt more people than it helped? And suppose he decides that the wall and that waterboarding are also not such good ideas? Would it be fair for his critics — who hated those ideas — to bash him for changing his mind?
Or would it be best to simply welcome the prodigal son back to the land of reality, and celebrate with a really nice Trump steak?
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