“In a normal election, the FBI and WikiLeaks factors might be disqualifying for a presidential candidate”

Author Date

In a normal election, the FBI and WikiLeaks factors might be disqualifying for a presidential candidate. As final evidence of how bad are our choices in 2016, Trump’s liabilities, especially on foreign policy, outweigh hers.

We are entering a period of unprecedented threat to the international order that has prevailed under American leadership since 1945. After eight years of President Obama’s retreat, the three major revisionist powers — Russia, China and Iran — see their chance to achieve regional dominance and diminish, if not expel, U.S. influence.

At a time of such tectonic instability, even the most experienced head of state requires wisdom and delicacy to maintain equilibrium. Trump has neither. His joining of supreme ignorance to supreme arrogance, combined with a pathological sensitivity to any perceived slight, is a standing invitation to calamitous miscalculation.

Charles Krauthammer, “Final Days, Awful Choice”, Washington Post (3 November 2016) [https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/final-days-awful-choice/2016/11/03/bd052402-a1dd-11e6-a44d-cc2898cfab06_story.html]

Related posts:

  1. “…to his supporters,” Trump’s “unpredictability is a selling point rather than a flaw”
  2. “Seldom in a modern presidential campaign has the selection of a running mate mattered as little as it does for [Clinton]”
  3. “This is not going to be a ‘there’s no difference between the candidates’ election”
  4. “It was possible, in the early days of Trump’s probable nomination, to imagine his general-election campaign unfolding as a radical experiment…”