With every passing day, I am tipping towards one side of a bitter dialectic
One the one hand, I would like President-Elect Trump to succeed for all our sakes. Unlike Senator Mitch McConnell, who said when Obama was first elected, "We must do everything in our power to make this President fail," I don't fundamentally want Trump to fail, for if he fails, then we all do. I want to give him every chance to succeed.
I want President-Elect Trump to display the qualities he did during his 60 Minutes interview. He was articulate, sensible, and far more coherent than I've ever seen him. I want him to act as he did when he met with President Obama. He was not only respectful but genuine in his praise for the President. He was clearly awed, if not overwhelmed by the job he was to undertake.
I'm heartened that he doesn't want to do away with every aspect of Obamacare, or so he said during his interview. I want him to heal this bitterly divided nation. I want him to pass a jobs bill so that those who've been hurt most by the Great Recession can be put back to work. I hope fervently that he can help us to stop demonizing one another.
On the other side of the dialectic, I'm still smarting from Trump's god-awful insults and rhetoric during the campaign. It was the worst that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. But most of all, I'm deeply frightened that he's chosen someone like Steve Bannon to be his Chief Strategist. Bannon is undeniably a racist. Rudy Giuliani scares me no less. And, Jeff Sessions as Attorney General? The rats are coming onboard, not leaving, the ship of state!
Trump has time to tweet about Vice President-Elect Mike Pence's affront by the cast of Hamilton, but he doesn't have any time to disavow the worst White Supremacist hate groups that hail him with Hitler-like salutes.
He also tweets that his conflicts of interest with his far-flung businesses are due to the "crooked media." He just can't be civil. He can't let things go.
So where does that leave me? I would still like Trump to succeed, but I'm more dubious than ever that he is capable of doing so with every passing day. Maybe he'll resign or be impeached as some are prophesying, but that would leave us with the arguably even worse prospect of Mike Pence and his horribly restricted, punitive worldview.
I'm afraid that we're headed towards a Constitutional crisis. Trump clearly has no intention of divesting his numerous properties that is necessary to place them in a blind trust. It makes a complete mockery of the Clinton Foundation's supposedly "pay for play."
Try as I would like to give Trump every chance to succeed, he makes me angrier and more afraid every day.
Dialectic over!