The Great Man Returns

It seemed fitting that President Jimmy Carter’s state funeral took place only days before President Trump’s second inauguration.  Carter has often been described as one of the nation’s worst executives — a pejorative epithet now firmly attached to President Biden’s name as well.  So it was painfully symbolic for the lost and confused outgoing president to eulogize his often-disparaged predecessor.

One could be forgiven for wondering whether, at the end of his remarks, Old Joe might try to scooch Jimmy’s body to one side and join him in the casket.  Both literally and figuratively, we buried two terrible presidents this January.

Of course, all of America’s living ex-presidents attended Carter’s funeral.  Sitting in the same pew at Washington’s National Cathedral, they appeared a perfect rogues’ gallery of corruption and failure.  Bill Clinton still looks like the “after” picture for a high school class on the consequences of contracting venereal disease.  George W. Bush has aged like a man whose conscience torments his waking hours.  Barack Obama resembles a worn photograph of a forgotten celebrity from a bygone era.

Seated among them were the former first ladies.  Well, not all of them.  Michelle Obama was reportedly so appalled at the thought of sitting next to President Trump (as protocol required) that she decided to ditch tradition and hang out with a wine box in Hawaii.  (Personally, I think she dreads having to spend time with her husband and probably resented the public expectation that she pay respects to a white Southerner — even if he was a Democrat.)

On the other side of the pew from Michelle’s void, bitter Hillary Clinton scowled while wedged between her lecherous husband and her “brother,” Dubya.  Hillary’s miserable and angry visage reflected the dark and damaged soul of someone who has given everything to the Devil for the promise of power only to see that power ripped from her claws.  Her glowering expression fairly represented the sordid group of exes as a whole.

Then there was President Donald J. Trump — no doubt a major trigger for Hillary’s shrewish ire — who almost looks younger and more spirited with each passing year.  The contrast in appearance between the vigorous Trump and the rotting Establishment that he has repeatedly outflanked was stark and revealing.  Indeed, the image of a happy and confident President Trump separated from a crusty “ruling class” in various stages of decay was difficult to ignore.

On a pew filled with failed former presidents, a returning president was most certainly not like the others.  All life gravitated toward the world-historical figure and his beautiful wife seated on the far end.  That makes sense.  Bill, Hillary, Dubya, Barack, and Old Joe represent America’s mismanaged past, whereas President and First Lady Trump are leading America away from decades of accumulated damage and toward a more promising future.

In an essay years ago, I asked a simple question: “What do Democrats fear in Donald Trump?”  I offered a straightforward answer: they fear his potential for greatness.  One look at the necrotic assembly present for Carter’s funeral provided visual proof for my asked-and-answered query.  The National Cathedral was packed with some of the most powerful Americans from the last half-century — presidents, military chiefs, intelligence heads, central bankers, and Wall Street titans.  Not one — aside from President Donald J. Trump — will be remembered as historically exceptional.

The decrepit club of failed former presidents attests to this point.  Bill Clinton will be remembered for cheating on Hillary with a White House intern barely old enough to legally drink alcohol.  He will be remembered for using the Oval Office as a bordello and renting out the Lincoln Bedroom by the hour.  He will be remembered for handing military technology and most-favored-nation trading status to the Chinese Communist Party in return for campaign cash.

He will be remembered for initiating the vast offshoring of America’s industrial and manufacturing jobs to third-world countries and the vast transfer of middle-class Americans’ wealth to foreign adversaries.  He will be remembered for privatizing the prison system and filling new cells with black Americans.  He will be remembered as a venal and lascivious liar whose proclivities for self-aggrandizement, fraud, and falsehood were surpassed only by those of his even more corrupt wife.

George W. Bush, I am sorry to say, will be remembered for only three things: (1) failing to prevent the worst attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, (2) launching a global “war on terror” that cost too many lives and too much money for questionable strategic objectives, and (3) constructing a post-9/11 national security surveillance state that trashed the Bill of Rights and turned every American into a criminal suspect.  By advocating for mass amnesty while using the PATRIOT Act to destroy Americans’ Fourth Amendment right to be secure from unreasonable and warrantless searches, Bush left Americans both less safe and less free.

Barack Obama forfeited his shot at greatness.  He could have united the country by framing his presidency as the visible culmination of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s worthy “dream.”  He could have offered his election as evidence that America is becoming a post-racial society that values character over skin color.  Had Obama done so, support for his brand of politics would have been so great that there might not even be a Republican Party today.  Instead, he and “wingman” Attorney General Eric Holder spent eight years rubbing salt in old racial wounds and dividing the country for expedient political victories.

Transforming the architecture of Bush’s unconstitutional post-9/11 surveillance state into a Deep State machine for monitoring, censoring, and criminally punishing political foes, Obama and Holder further dismantled the Bill of Rights and diminished America’s historic foundations in individual liberty.  Because petty vindictiveness has always blinded Obama, he squandered any chance at greatness.

The words “Joe Biden” and “greatness” look odd in the same sentence because Dementia Joe has always been an unimpressive politician of low character and even lower intelligence.  He is the poster boy for mediocrity, and the Deep State alone is responsible for his installation as president.  The Intelligence Community defrauded American voters during the 2020 election by claiming that Hunter Biden’s incriminating laptop was “Russian disinformation” and censoring the story.

Democrat officials ignored election security laws by allowing political operatives to flood Democrat-controlled precincts with unverified (and most likely fraudulent) mail-in ballots.  To this day, no mainstream news “reporter” can explain how President Trump could lose an election in which he won nearly every traditional bellwether county by double-digits.  No credentialed “journalist” can explain how Joe Biden — a man who struggled to win Democrat primaries — could wind up with more votes in the 2020 general election than any candidate in U.S. history.

No national pundit can explain why the “most popular” politician of all time would have to bow out of the 2024 race.  Americans know the truth, even if Establishment censors insist on telling lies.  Cheating his way into office precluded Biden’s achieving greatness of any kind.  Acting as a puppet for Barack Obama, in fact, precluded his even being a real president.

Sitting next to all those failures and frauds at Carter’s funeral, President Donald J. Trump stood out.  He’s faced the fire and pushed forward.  His enemies have thrown everything at him, and still he stands.  The Deep State allowed two separate assassins to threaten his life, and the man never stopped fighting.  Impeachments, Democrat-funded civil lawsuits, criminal trials, FBI raids, attempts to remove him from state ballots — the Establishment Class has done whatever it can to keep Trump from representing the American people.  Yet he returns to office with a huge political mandate.

This presidency will break the mold.  History will be made.  Buckle up.  Get ready.  This is going to be great.