Douglas Whaley

THE HAPPY COUPLE Newt Donald Trump has gotten where he is by trusting his instincts to outpace the common hoard by doing outrageous and over-the-top things to attract attention, demonstrating he’s a very different candidate than those the Republican party has forwarded since Lincoln, its first.  Therefore it’s interesting to watch him make a mistake when choosing a vice presidential mate and going for what he assumes is the “safe” and “responsible” choice, as traditional Republicans urged him strongly to do.  My guess is that Donald’s gut pushed him to tap Newt Gingrich, upsetting a lot of responsible Republicans but in keeping with Trump as Trump.  Gingrich (intelligent, experienced, half mad) would have filled the usual role of VP candidate job as “attack dog” with canine ferocity approaching “wolf.” Mike Pence is more poodle.  Sure, on cue he’ll yap fiercely, but he has all the gravitas of a vaguely animated corpse, not quite alive, tr...

For Donald Trump to become the President of the United States in 2017 more than 50% of the people who vote in this November’s election must decide that he not only has the wisdom, experience, and gravitas to fill that exalted office, but that he’s also the best of the two likely candidates to be chosen president and, in effect, run the world for the following four years.  The chances of that are small.  Sure, a major number of people voted for him in the Republican primaries, and those people believe he has the right qualities, or that, even if he doesn’t, he’ll at least be better than the usual politicians who become president and don’t make their lives appreciably better, so what the hell!  Plus they hate Hillary Clinton. But even if Trump held the votes of all those people (and he won’t) they lack the numbers (even if they all vote, which they won’t) to win him the office.  Trump must also attract big numbers of new voters to his camp, and that is...