"We are the nation that won two world wars, that dug out the Panama Canal, that put a man on the moon and satellites all over space. But somewhere along the way we started thinking small. I'm asking you to dream big again, and bold and daring things for our country will happen once again." President-Elect Donald Trump, Cincinnati, December 1, 2016
November 30, 2016
By: Linda Case Gibbons, Esq.
Eat your peas, say please and thank you. And keep your elbows off the table.
It's manners. Moms used to insist on them.
After Donald Trump asked voters to vote for him, he wanted to go back and thank them. He called it his "Thank You Tour." That was nice, wasn't it? But lots of people didn't think so. It created a firestorm.
Especially with the media.
And when the president-elect slipped out of Trump Tower to take the family to dinner at 21, lots of people didn't like it.
Like the press. They felt left out.
They didn't see The Donald decline to be seated in a private room, choosing his usual Table 11, ordering a hamburger, well-done. Just being himself. They always miss that.
I don't know if he kept his elbows off the table. But it created a firestorm anyway.
Since the election, the media and Democrats haven't found much to like about the new president-elect.
The media gave a collective yawn to the deal with Carrier which saved 1,000 jobs from going to Mexico, were appalled at his acceptance of a congratulatory phone call from the president of Taiwan, and claimed Campaign Manager Kellyanne Conway waged a campaign based on white supremacy.
As for PEOTUS' ahead-of-schedule Cabinet picks, New York Sen. Gillibrand has already announced she'll block Trump's pick for Secretary of Defense, Gen. James Millis.
Their objection to Trump is that he is unpredictable, but what they really mean is he is Politically Incorrect.
And the people love it. They love he lives in the same real world they do, and they are proud of the financial success he has earned. It gives them real Hope.
They like that he talks directly to them. That he told them they were an integral part of his team, and that he knew "saved jobs" meant a Merry Christmas for real people. That they could pay their mortgages, something the Left forgot, if they ever knew.
That's why he won.
But politicians on the Left, the media and Hillary Clinton never bothered to reflect on why they lost. It was because they forgot.
They forgot it wasn't blocks of voters, or red or blue states voting. It wasn't Latinos, black Americans, independents or women voting. It was people.
These politicians, with arrogance, thought checking in to ask for votes every four years, then leaving until the next election, was enough to "energize the base." That the voters would keep on voting for them even when they didn't keep the promises they made.
But Donald Trump didn't forget.
And the people he remembered loved his Post-Campaign rallies. They knew he was coming back to catch them up on the latest news, just as he had done during the campaign, in every part of the country. And they loved that he came back to say "Thank you."
It showed good manners.
But most of all, they loved that he was politically incorrect. Some of the most successful men have been that way.
New York City's Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a Republican, read the "funnies" to kids on the radio. That's what he is most remembered for. But he didn't read Dick Tracy for the heck of it. He read the comic strips to prod striking newspaper carriers into a settlement.
FDR, a Democrat, gave his Fireside Chats, which encouraged a war-torn nation to stay strong.
And Harry Truman, a Democrat, wasn't your typical presidential president. No shrinking violet, Truman defended his daughter's singing performance at Constitution Hall from a critical critic, Paul Hume. Harry dashed off a letter to him, which read, in part: "It seems to me that you are a frustrated old man who wishes he could have been successful...Some day I hope to meet you. When that happens, you'll need a new nose, a lot of beefsteak for black eyes, and perhaps a supporter below."
Successful politicians come in all shapes, sizes and political affiliations, but all of them are unpredictable. All of them give hope to the people they serve.
If the media had checked their history books, they would have noticed that Sen. Robert Kennedy, a Democrat, had a message that was much the same as that expressed by Donald Trump in his speech in Cincinnati this week.
"Some believe there is nothing one man or one woman can do against the enormous array of the world's ills," Kennedy said. "Yet many of the world's great movements, of thought and action, have flowed from the work of a single man.
"A young monk began the Protestant Reformation; a young general extended an empire from Macedonia to the border of the earth; a young woman reclaimed the territory of France; it was a young Italian explorer who discovered the New World; and a 32-year-old Thomas Jefferson who proclaimed that 'all men are created equal.'
"Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change."
Both men, Kennedy and Trump, one a Democrat and one a Republican, but alike in spirit, embody the words, much favored by Kennedy: "Some men see things as they are and say why, I dream things that never were and say why not."
Hold the line, America.