OPINION - Guest column

Capable political leaders needed

I can understand how Donald Trump, with significant help from Vladimir Putin, was elected president of the United States. What baffles me is the level of public support that he retains after daily exposure of his character weaknesses and his chaotic leadership.

When I talk about Trump to friends around the country, I am sometimes surprised by their attitude. Like many people, I am alarmed by the damage the president is doing to America's influence around the world and by the threat he poses to U.S. democracy. But some of my friends--successful, intelligent, and informed--are not so worried.

"Jim, calm down," they say. "The stock market is up, taxes are down, everybody has a job, and Trump's taking on some long-standing problems like illegal immigration and lopsided trade deals. You're right, he's disgraceful and sometimes an embarrassment, but so far things are looking up for the U.S. He might even get a deal with North Korea."

My problems with Trump start with my professional background in national security and foreign relations. After graduating from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro, I completed a 28-year career in the U.S. Army, and both Republican and Democratic presidents appointed me to serve as a U.S. ambassador. I am convinced that this president's foreign policy consists primarily of crude nationalism and militant threats and is destructive to U.S. national security.

His policies abandon the promotion of democracy and human rights abroad while blurring the differences between democratic allies and international adversaries. He discredits NATO and international organizations in general. He breaks with America's allies over climate change, trade, the Iran nuclear agreement, and Israel-Palestine. The president and his senior policy advisers are openly hostile toward diplomacy and are eviscerating the career diplomatic capability of the nation.

The United States and democracies around the world have flourished for 70 years within a common commitment to democracy and a multilateral approach to international affairs. Unilateral nationalism has never been an effective policy for the United States, and it is not a path to greater strength and security today.

No one expects the president to be a saint, but character and integrity matter in presidential leadership. Domestically, Trump appeals to our darkest impulses--fear of Muslims, immigrants, race. He is shattering all the standards of presidential leadership on corruption, nepotism, compulsive and constant lying, racism, and the abominable personal treatment of women.

The belief that Trump represents Christian values may be one of the biggest religious cons of the century. The president also is using his bully pulpit to wage a political war to undermine public confidence on the very institutions that are critical to American democracy, including a free press and the rule of law.

Trump seeks to protect himself at all costs from a legal investigation into the real possibility that the president of the United States and his most senior advisers were compromised financially, personally, or politically by Russia, a hostile foreign power. These matters are the most serious allegations against a U.S. president in American history, and they must be completely investigated without political interference.

The president's supporters also use the sinister-sounding term "deep state" to discredit career government professionals who are sworn to uphold the Constitution and laws of the United States and who stand, inconveniently, in the way of Trump's authoritarian impulses.

If the president's strategy succeeds and Americans lose trust in the U.S. justice system, the FBI, the intelligence community, and the free and independent press, then American democracy will be in grave danger, and we could become no better than corrupt authoritarian governments like those in Russia, China and Turkey.

The lack of a suitable alternative leader may help explain Trump's continued public appeal. The Republican Party, terrified of Trump's popular base and corrupted by corporate and other special interests, is prostrate before his bluster. The Democratic Party, whimpering and self-righteous as the media breathlessly chases every distracting tweet from the president, is hardly an effective opposition. Democratic leaders in Congress are stale and out of touch. Except for Joe Biden, age 75, the party has lost its ability to talk convincingly to many normal Americans.

The long-term Trump effect on the economy is debatable. The spectacle in Singapore gave respectability to a tyrant and major concessions to North Korea, and undermined Trump's own sanctions regime. Kim Jong Un's commitment on nuclear disarmament was the repetition of hollow promises his predecessors made to previous American administrations. The president now has dumped responsibility for the real task of achieving a nuclear deal on Secretary Pompeo.

The publicity stunt in Singapore, tax cuts, jobs, and the stock market cannot begin to justify the president's efforts to compromise American democracy, the decline in the nation's international leadership status, and the destruction of a world order.

The future of American democracy and the legacy we leave to our descendants are stake these days. When the history of this decisive period is written, I want to be counted among those with experience who spoke out sincerely about the damage being done to the nation by Donald Trump. I will also be on the alert for stable, capable political leaders with a clear and rational platform that reflects democratic values and provides a path to repair the damage.

James Pardew, a Jonesboro native and graduate of Arkansas State University, is a former military officer and ambassador. He wrote Peacemakers: American Leadership and the End of Genocide in the Balkans, published this year, about his experience as a special envoy in the negotiations for the breakup of Yugoslavia.

Editorial on 06/24/2018

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