Finally, we find out if Trump was the right pick
Jan 20, 2017, 6:01 AM | Updated: 9:19 am
Every time America changes presidents there are dire predictions. But that’s the nature of elections.
When I ran for Congress there were attack ads implying I would plunge America into nuclear winter. Which was not true — nuclear autumn maybe.
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The point is as long as we have elections, which I hope is a long time, candidates will use fear to win campaigns, and it will leave a lot of people genuinely scared of the winner.
Bush was scary, Obama was scary, and Trump can be especially scary.
But I like to remind myself that the Constitution was deliberately designed to handcuff the president. And it can be really good at slowing things down. It’s called gridlock if you support the president. If you don’t, you call it wisdom.
The Constitution won’t always prevent mistakes. If you have a timid or gullible Congress, you can end up with a war in Iraq.
But there’s a saying that it takes experience to avoid mistakes, and it also takes mistakes to gain experience. So I like to think we at least learn from the screw ups.
There’s another check. It’s not in the Constitution, but it’s pretty effective. I call it arithmetic. You can promise prosperity all you want, but the national debt has an exact number. Job creation has an exact number.
Plus, all of the House and a third of the Senate is up for election in 2018. And if things go badly it’s amazing how quickly minds can change.
Did you see the latest Fox News poll on Obamacare? It’s actually getting more popular!
So, I hope things go well. But if they don’t, the same people who chanted “lock her up” could easily change the pronoun.
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Tune in to KIRO Newsradio weekdays at 5am for Dave Ross on Seattle's Morning News.
