{"id":4171,"date":"2016-03-07T17:19:30","date_gmt":"2016-03-07T15:19:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/?p=4171"},"modified":"2017-11-14T21:27:38","modified_gmt":"2017-11-14T19:27:38","slug":"inside-the-looking-glass-the-race-for-the-u-s-presidency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/inside-the-looking-glass-the-race-for-the-u-s-presidency\/","title":{"rendered":"INSIDE THE LOOKING GLASS: THE RACE FOR THE U.S. PRESIDENCY"},"content":{"rendered":"
Certainly on the Republican side, the presidential race has crashed through the looking glass into Alice\u2019s Wonderland replete with Mad Hatters and tea parties.\u00a0 The Republican debate last Thursday reaffirmed this condition, dare we say in spades.\u00a0 Three of the candidates are incredulous and most likely unelectable.\u00a0 The fourth was the only adult on the stage and hence unlikely to win the nomination.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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How America got to this point is useful in informing how we extricate ourselves from the grim electoral prospects that lie ahead especially if the leading Democratic candidate is indicted for mishandling classified material on private e-mail accounts.\u00a0 Only in America\u2026.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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Donald Trump is, at present, in a post-position to become the Republican Party\u2019s nominee.\u00a0 That he is massively ignorant in terms of policies and issues and seemingly invincible to even the worst publicity is one of the most stunning contradictions of this year\u2019s race to the White House.\u00a0 Conventional wisdom explains that anger, fury and frustration have empowered Trump along with the Democratic Socialist Bernie Sanders except that Donny boy is jet propelled.\u00a0 But that wisdom is wrong and symptomatic of the larger ills.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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Americans are insecure, frightened and filled with anxiety about the future.\u00a0 This is manifested in widespread anger and frustration with Washington and a badly broken government.\u00a0 However, unless solutions are found to correct the larger causes of our malaise, treating symptoms won\u2019t work.\u00a0 Neither Trump nor Sanders understands this fundamental difference. Hence, if Trump had any prescriptions, each would fail.\u00a0 Sanders is living so far inside the looking glass that his proposals could be those of the Red Queen.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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Inconceivably, Trump has promised that, if elected, he will be a felon.\u00a0 By embracing torture and killing terrorist families, whether deterrent or revenge, Trump will break both US and international law and become a war criminal.\u00a0 Imagine a scene in the White House where the Attorney General, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs and Director of Central Intelligence tell President Trump that they will not and cannot carry out his illegal orders.\u00a0 And Trump\u2019s response is that he will convince them otherwise.\u00a0 Good luck.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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Unfortunately, (\u201cLittle\u201d) Marco Rubio and (\u201cLyin\u2019\u201d) Ted Cruz, in Mr. Trump\u2019s lexicon, lack the experience, maturity and understanding to be effective presidents. The forcing question posed by the Fox moderators about how each would deal with the crises confronting Detroit where the debate occurred was telling. Trump and the two senators provided further descriptions of the city\u2019s dire straits.\u00a0 Only Ohio Governor John Kasich however gave a real answer. His was a compelling response in how he turned around Cleveland, a city with problems similar to Detroit\u2019s.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
Sadly, because the governor is the adult and prepared for the presidency as much as anyone can be, he has not tapped into American\u2019s insecurity and anxiety. The public prefers hearing incendiary slogans that magnify their outrage rather than practical means to resolve these legitimate fears. Perhaps the character of the campaign will change.\u00a0 However, for the moment, Alice reigns and common sense is left behind.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/div>\n
Cruz also has other problems.\u00a0 While the law is not settled, there are strong grounds that he is not constitutionally qualified for the presidency being born in Canada.\u00a0 The Constitution specifically distinguishes between the requirement of being a \u201ccitizen\u201d for election to Congress and a \u201cnatural born citizen\u201d for the presidency.\u00a0 Unmentioned, while Cruz\u2019s mother is a U.S. citizen, the laws specifies certain domicile rules within the U.S. if citizenship passes on to children born outside the United States.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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On the Democratic slate, only Hillary Clinton can lose the race. After the March 15th<\/sup> primaries, almost certainly she will be the presumptive nominee.\u00a0 But the e-mail debacle remains a Damoclean sword.\u00a0 And while Hillary\u2019s web site\u2019s descriptions of the key issues facing Americans are comprehensive, they have two flaws.\u00a0 First, none addresses the fundamental factors of insecurity and fear.\u00a0 And second, her policy prescriptions are either insufficient to the task or focused on the symptoms and not causes of the nation\u2019s problems.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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None of this augurs well.\u00a0 Of course, the hope and strategy on the Republican side is to force a \u201cbrokered\u201d convention in which the Mad Hatters of the party are rejected and Alice is returned to Kansas with an electable alternative.\u00a0 That may happen.\u00a0 And Democrats are hoping that the e-mail mess will die a quick death.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
<\/u>\u00a0<\/u><\/div>\n
The sad and even tragic consequence for the nation is that hope is never a basis on which to bet the presidency of the United States.<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
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_________________________________________________________________<\/u><\/u><\/div>\n
Harlan Ullman is UPI\u2019s Arnaud de Borchgrave Distinguished Columnist. He is Senior Advisor at the Atlantic Council and at Business Executives for National Security (BENS) and chairs two private companies. \u00a0<\/i>His latest book is A Handful of Bullets:\u00a0 How the Murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand Still Menaces the Peace.<\/i><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Certainly on the Republican side, the presidential race has crashed through the looking glass into Alice\u2019s Wonderland replete with Mad Hatters and tea parties.\u00a0 The Republican debate last Thursday reaffirmed this condition, dare we say in spades.\u00a0 Three of the candidates are incredulous and most likely unelectable.\u00a0 The fourth was the only adult on the stage and hence unlikely to win the nomination. \u00a0 How America got to this point is useful in informing how we extricate ourselves from the grim electoral prospects that lie ahead especially if the leading Democratic candidate is indicted for mishandling classified material on private e-mail accounts.\u00a0 Only in America\u2026. \u00a0 Donald Trump is, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65,76],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog-en","category-harlan-ullman-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4171"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4172,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4171\/revisions\/4172"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cass-ro.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}