Head or Gut?
You might think that the “Head or Gut” title represents a choice of voting with your brain or with your instincts. Or you might think “Head or Gut” represents the constant turmoil in the mind of Donald Trump, whether to go with his gut or to listen to outside voices asking him to turn his rhetoric down a notch.
Actually, the inspiration of the title comes from the 1991 movie The Last Boy Scout. In this film, Bruce Willis plays an alcoholic cop (yes, Willis has played that role often). Near the beginning of the film, Willis’ character comes home from an assignment one day early and finds that his best friend is sleeping with his wife. The two men “take it outside” and Willis asks “head or gut?” What the best friend realizes is that he’s choosing between getting punched in the face or in the stomach, really hard. That is what the 2016 presidential election feels like to me and tens of millions of other Americans.
Thanks to the infinite wisdom of the Republican primary electorate and the Democratic party establishment, we the American people are presented with the worst possible choices for the most important job in the world. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are the most deeply unpopular and disliked presidential candidates imaginable. An ABC News Washington Post poll released on Sunday found that a staggering 57% of voters were “dissatisfied” with the choice of major party candidates.
When polls are taken that include Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party candidate Jill Stein, Trump and Clinton are sitting at 79% combined. with the others accounting for 12% and 9% undecided or who say they won’t vote. This is America and we all have the right to vote our conscience, even if that vote is for somebody who has no chance to win. Right now I’m leaning towards Johnson. But let’s exclude the non major party candidates for a moment and turn this into a binary choice between Trump and Clinton. Head or gut? Who do you choose?
Well, to be frank, if you’re a lifelong Democrat, for most it’s a fairly easy choice. Despite her corruption, penchant for secrecy, bad judgement and lack of accomplishments as Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton is clearly qualified by resume for the job. If you feel that your party could have done better, I agree wholeheartedly. But it didn’t and Trump gives you an out. If the Republicans had presented somebody like John Kasich, I would be passionately writing that this would be the one election in your life to switch teams. But if you’re a Democrat supporting Hillary, I can’t make that case for Trump. It will be up to others to do so.
Now, for lifelong Republicans who feel as I do, it’s a more difficult choice. Most prominent members of the GOP who aren’t supporting Trump (Mitt Romney, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, the Bush family, and many others) are explicit that they will not vote for Clinton but won’t vote for Trump either. I would love to know what choice they would make in the voting booth if they had only two options and a gun to their head to choose one.
If presented with a binary choice and a gun to my head, I would choose Trump, for a variety of reasons. Be sure to read all the way to the end to see the last one!
First, when presented with two distasteful choices and no other options, I will always go with the choice from the party I’ve supported since 1980. It’s really as simple as that. If the Dems had nominated current VP Joe Biden, I might be inclined to switch sides. I may not agree with many or most of his policies but he’s an honest, honorable man and not wildly far left. Bernie Sanders is also an honest and honorable man, but his view of America is so far away from mine that I could never go there. When it comes to policy, I agree with Mr. Trump more often than I agree with Secretary Clinton.
Second, although he has a potentially significant downside, there is an upside to Trump. With Hillary Clinton, we know what we’re going to get: competence and four more years of gridlock. Assuming the Republicans hold the House, they will obstruct and block just as they have with Obama and they will have the mandate of those who voted for them to do just that. Let me explain what I mean about the mandate. When Presidents win elections, they proclaim that they have or act as if they have a mandate to enact every one of their policies, because they won! Barack Obama clearly did have a mandate in 2008 but, being inexperienced politically, used that mandate like a cudgel and poisoned any possibility of bipartisanship in his first few months of the Oval Office.
If Hillary wins, she will have no mandate. Just as her husband did in the 1992 three-candidate race (with George H.W. Bush and Ross Perot), Hillary will win with about 43% of the popular vote and a lot of that vote will simply be to keep Trump away from the presidency. Although she may have a greater willingness to work across the aisle than Obama, the Republicans, feeling that they blew the election, will be fiercely determined to make her a one-term president and we’ll have gridlock just as we have had for the last eight years. Most importantly, the Republicans will actually feel like they are justified in doing so because the Clinton presidency will be the result of an anti-Trump vote as much as a pro-Clinton vote. You can expect that virtually every Republican House and Senate candidate will outperform their party’s standard bearer in the election results. Secretary Clinton has campaigned on the promise that she will “demand” the House to vote on a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. Good luck with that Hillary.
Certainly a Trump administration could result in gridlock as well. However, because he’s not beholden to his party’s ideology, big donors or lobbyists the way most presidents are, there is a good chance of Republicans and Democrats working together to accomplish significant things. If a deal is there to be made, he’s not going to sweat the details or care one iota if he’s going against a campaign promise. He has called many of his campaign positions merely “suggestions” anyway. He believes in negotiation. He believes in compromise. He will see no difference in pissing off some Republicans versus pissing off some Democrats. That’s actually a good thing.
Speaking of those campaign promises, “suggestions” like a Muslim ban (now backtracked to “extreme vetting”), deporting 11 million illegal immigrants (which he may be flip-flopping on right now) and having Mexico pay for a wall on our southern border are never going to happen. Donald Trump knows these things won’t happen. This is the billionaire posturing and these positions are a signal to his supporters that he is going to be tough on illegal immigration and tough on terrorism. I’m sure there are some die-hard Kool Aid drinkers who actually think we’re going to get Mexico to pay for the wall but most of us accept it as a metaphor.
Now, let’s tackle the question about Trump being dangerous, that he likes the right temperament for the presidency. This is clearly a concern and it’s one that I share. Still, I think it’s overstated. If you listen to some of the most strident voices, you would think that Trump would start a nuclear war because some foreign leader insulted him. That’s silly. Trump has five children and eight grandchildren who he loves. He’s not going to end the earth over an insult. In addition, although it’s true that presidents have enormous power with the nuclear codes, the real nightmare is the shockingly limited time a Commander in Chief would have to order a retaliatory strike if a foreign power launched nukes against the U.S. This is a “world is ending anyway” scenario and it’s pretty terrifying. In that scenario, where the real danger is a computer glitch simulating an attack and there are only minutes to decide whether it’s real or not and whether to retaliate or not, there’s hardly anyone I would trust under that kind of pressure. Not Trump. Not Hillary. Not Obama. Not Bush.
When people talk about the danger of having Trump in charge of the “nuclear codes,” they are talking about him flying off the handle and launching a first strike. In such a first strike scenario, a General or Admiral or rank and file button pusher can countermand the president’s order if they believe it’s unconstitutional. No, I’m not worried about Trump deliberately obliterating the earth.
Now, there is no doubt that a Trump victory would make leaders around the world decidedly nervous. Personally, I think the rest of the world and some of our allies in particular kind of deserve a kick in the teeth. The rest of the world got the president they wanted eight years ago and what exactly has that gotten us? Trump is talking about putting America first and, although some of his foreign policy views are well out of the mainstream of U.S. foreign policy, it’s healthy to debate the issues about our troop commitments overseas and how we shoulder the vast majority of the freight of the 28-nation alliance known as NATO. If Trump is in the Oval Office, he will have a Cabinet and a team of advisers. If one of his ideas is truly dangerous to national security interests, he’s going to back off.
I’ll also say here that one of the biggest attack lines from Hillary and her surrogates against Trump is about how he “attacks women, a Gold Star family, mocks the disabled and our military veterans.” While Trump’s bluster makes me cringe, it’s not something I fret about. It proves that he can be a jerk sometimes, nothing more. It bothers me much, much more that he doesn’t seem to be acquiring more knowledge about the issues presidents face than the occasional childish insult. If I felt that he was using his intellect to read, study and own the issues, I would support him enthusiastically despite the occasional cringe-worthy comment or Tweet.
Finally, let me finish with my biggest reason that I would choose Trump over Clinton. If you are distressed by both choices but felt in advance that you would only have to stomach one option for 6 to 18 months while the other would occupy the office for at least four years, logic dictates that you would go with the short term choice. That’s what I feel we have here. I have believed from the beginning and continue to believe that Trump wrestles with his own mind about whether he wants to be the President. He clearly loves the adulation at his rallies and has such an enormous belief in self that he likely thinks he can accomplish great things. But I just can’t imagine that his heart will be in the day-to-day grind of the presidency for four years, much less eight.
So, in the unlikely event that Trump prevails in the general election, I’m saying right here, right now, that he most likely won’t serve four years. He might come up with some mysterious invented health ailment that forces him to resign. He might work really hard to accomplish some big things in his first 100 days and then turn over the reins to VP Mike Pence.
Or he might get impeached. In the U.S. Constitution, the president, VP or other civil officers may be “removed from office on impeachment for, and conviction of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.” Per the Constitution, the House of Representatives brings impeachment charges and the Senate holds a trial. For a president to be removed from office after the Senate trial, two thirds of both chambers must concur.
Treason. Bribery. High Crimes and Misdemeanors. It sounds like you have to do some pretty bad stuff to be impeached, right? No, not really. Late in 1998, Bill Clinton was impeached on the basis of perjury and obstruction of justice for alleged lies he told under oath about the Monica Lewinsky affair. This was a foolish gambit by the House Republicans because they were never going to get two-thirds of both chambers to remove the President. With Trump, however, it’s different. If he’s elected and starts to act like a dictator and members of Congress start freaking out, they can impeach, defining “high crimes and misdemeanors” as whatever they want within reason. It could be something as simple as an executive order that is deemed to be against the Constitution.
The point here is that, if Trump is president and goes off the rails in a truly damaging way, the House and Senate will dump him faster than you can say “rigged system.” Trump has no loyalty to the Republicans in Congress and they have no loyalty to him. Getting two-thirds on board where the outcome is President Pence instead of President Trump would create the greatest bipartisan consensus you’ve ever seen. Practically speaking, I doubt it would come to that. The threat of impeachment would get to Trump’s ear and he would just turn the reins over to Pence.
The only way I see a four year presidency for Donald Trump is if he surprises all the doubters like myself, wins the election and then actually does a really good job. The economy’s rocking, the border is more secure, ISIS is getting pounded and the American people start to get tired of winning all the time. If Hillary wins, we’re stuck with her for at least four years.
In the end, I don’t think either would make good presidents and certainly neither is deserving of the office. Trump doesn’t have the long-term knowledge base or intellectual curiosity for the job. Clinton doesn’t have the honesty or transparency for the job. I want you to imagine a world in which Richard Nixon got away with Watergate and was constitutionally allowed to run for re-election in 1976; that’s how I feel about electing Hillary in 2016.
Head or Gut? I’d rather get hit in the stomach with Trump than in the face with Clinton.
Thanks for reading.
Chris Bodig