Mountain Views News, Sierra Madre Edition [Pasadena] Saturday, September 15, 2018

OPINION

B3

 Mountain Views News Saturday, September 15, 2018 


JOHN L. MICEK

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ALL TALK, NO ACTION: A 
REPUBLICAN METAPHOR

Congressional Republicans continue to abet and excuse 
Donald Trump’s relentless assaults on democratic norms 
and the rule of law. But if we were to focus on one particular 
guy who best embodies that spinelessness, someone who is a 
veritable metaphor for a party in moral eclipse, I strongly nominate Ben Sasse.

 The junior Republican senator from Nebraska has been furrowing his brow about 
Trump ever since the 2016 campaign, tut-tutting in high-minded language about 
how the paranoid narcissist is a clear and present danger. But rarely in modern times 
has such eloquent rhetoric been twinned with such hapless inertia. He talks like a 
sane person, but whenever the chips are down, he enables Trump’s insanity by doing 
nothing.

 After everything that’s happened over the past week, I can’t listen to Sasse anymore.

 When an anonymous senior Trump administration staffer wrote in The New York 
Times that aides are working overtime to protect America from an amoral loon, Sasse 
confirmed the substance of the piece. He said it was “similar to what so many of us 
hear from senior people around the White House, you know, three times a week.” 
Well, that’s nice to know. The so-called commander-in-chief is mentally unhinged 
and policy-ignorant, and Sasse and his colleagues learn this anew “three times a 
week.”

 When Sasse surfaced on “Meet the Press,” he continued his lament: “The president 
was elected in 2016 because he wanted to disrupt everything … The question is, 
disruption to what end? … It’s pretty clear that this White House is a reality show-
soap opera presidency … Right now, it just feels like there’s way too much drama 
every day.”

 But what is he prepared to do about it? Nothing, except to pine for a Trump regime 
that will never be: “What you’d like is… a policy process where a president can in a 
dispassionate way deliberate about lots of information and lots of advice and wisdom 
and counsel and then make a long-term decision.” Trump needs to focus on “long-
term vision-casting for America … 10 years in the future, not 10 hours in the future.”

 Right. All that will happen on the same day that unicorns cavort on the South 
Lawn.

 And when Brett Kavanaugh was grilled last week by the Senate Judiciary 
Committee - and it became obvious that he has lied under oath about his past use 
of hacked Democratic emails, and that he won’t recuse himself from cases involving 
Trump – did committee member Ben Sasse voice a desire to stop Kavanaugh’s ascent? 
Nope. He’ll vote yes, along with the rest of the Senate GOP. His big contribution to 
the hearings was an unprofound assessment on day one about how the confirmation 
process has become “an election battle for TV.”

 Sasse, a Yale history PhD and former small-university president, constantly depicts 
himself as a free-thinking soul who claims not to care whether he gets re-elected in 
2020. And he likes to fret publicly about how Trump has ruined the Republican brand 
(he said in July, “I think my party is in a bad way”). But if that’s how he feels, and if 
he’s truly indifferent about re-election in a state that Trump carried by 25 percentage 
points, why not put his words into action?

 The GOP barely holds the Senate, 51-49. The chamber could be tied in knots if only 
Sasse joined forces with Jeff Flake and Bob Corker. Like Sasse, Flake and Corker talk 
big about Trump and do nothing. And they have less of an excuse, because they’re 
2018 lame ducks who will be gone in January. Three renegade Republican senators, 
backing their words with action, could arguably hold up Kavanaugh’s nomination 
- or halt other Trump priorities - unless the Senate leadership first agrees to move 
the bill, currently in limbo, that protects Robert Mueller from being fired; or move 
the bill, currently in limbo, that curbs Trump’s ability to unilaterally start a war; or 
move a bill, currently in limbo, that would better protect our elections from foreign 
cyberattacks.

 But Sasse’s refusal to use senatorial leverage renders his words hollow. History 
will be harsh on those who saw danger and shrank from confronting it. Trump is 
counting on all Republicans to remain gutless. 

 As the philosopher John Stuart Mill warned in an 1867 address, “Bad men need 
nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do 
nothing.”

-

Copyright 2018 John L. Micek, distributed by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate.

An award-winning political journalist, Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political 
Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him 
on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and email him at jmicek@pennlive.com.


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LEFT TURN/RIGHT TURN

MAKING SENSE 

BY MICHAEL REAGAN

TOM PURCELL


RECALLING 9/11: WE’RE NOT 
SO DIVIDED AFTER ALL


On Sept. 11, 2001, I was driving along the Beltway to a Falls 
Church, Va., office building when a radio announcer said a 
plane had flown into the North Tower of the World Trade 
Center in New York City. 

“What a horrible accident,” I remember thinking. 

I was doing communications work for a big technology company. I parked my 
car and just as I was getting situated in my cubicle inside the office building, I 
heard the television blaring in my client’s office.

 He told me a second plane had flown into the South Tower of the World Trade 
Center. Soon, we learned that a third plane had flown into the Pentagon. 

We took the elevator to the top floor with several others. Only 9 miles from the 
Pentagon, we could see smoke billowing into the sky.

 Radios and TVs were turned up. Local announcers were relaying reports of 
additional attacks, many of which would turn out to be untrue. 

 Dulles International Airport was under attack? Reagan National Airport? The 
White House? The Capitol? How many more hijacked planes were out there? 
Where would they strike next?

 It was total chaos. Here I was in an impersonal office building as people cried, 
called loved ones, even prayed aloud. 

 We all experienced the horrific events of 9/11 in different ways and there 
was nothing special about my experience — except that I was living in the 
Washington, D.C., region when it happened. 

 Lucky for me, I had been regularly attending St. Joseph’s Catholic Church in 
Alexandria, Va. 

 A small church in a rapidly gentrifying area, its mostly black congregation can 
be described in one word: cheerful.

 The first and third Sundays of every month, a 30-person choir belts out gospel 
music that would fill even the most cynical among us with hope and joy.

 Father McBready, an Irishman of the Josephite order, was the pastor there 
in 2001. His Irish lilt and wit produced many uplifting sermons — none more 
uplifting than on the first Sunday after the attack.

 The church was packed that morning, all of us feeling the same inability to 
comprehend the violence inflicted on so many innocents. 

 Father McBready began his sermon by telling us about a wonderful woman 
whose marriage he had presided over a few years before. She and her husband 
recently had been blessed with a son — and both she and her son were aboard 
one of the planes that struck the World Trade Center.

 He said that in the midst of such sadness, however, there is hope: Tragedy 
reduces us to our most basic selves, helping us renew our efforts to lead virtuous 
lives. It helps us escape the narrowness of ourselves to join together with others 
to help those in need. 

 After the choir sang joyously, 200 people held hands and prayed as one. Filled 
with a renewed sense of hope, we were eager to do something, anything, to help 
our neighbors in need — donate funds, make sandwiches for first responders at 
the Pentagon, volunteer our time, etc. 

 It’s been 17 years since the 9/11 tragedy. We appear to be a divided, cynical 
people, but I don’t buy it. 

 God forbid such an alarming event ever happens in America again. But if it 
does, millions of Americans from every walk of life will come together as one to 
help our neighbors in need.

 Just as we did after 9/11.

-

Copyright 2018 Tom Purcell. Tom Purcell, author of “Misadventures of a 1970’s 
Childhood,” a humorous memoir available at amazon.com, is a Pittsburgh 
Tribune-Review humor columnist and is nationally syndicated exclusively by 
Cagle Cartoons Inc. For info on using this column in your publication or website, 
contact Sales@cagle.com or call (805) 969-2829. Send comments to Tom at Tom@
TomPurcell.com.


RESISTANCE IN 

THE WHITE HOUSE 

The stories of chaos, craziness and betrayal going on inside the Trump 
White House are nothing to worry much about. 

 White House staffers attempting to influence, question or thwart 
a president’s ideas or goals are as old as George Washington, Richard 
Nixon – or Ronald Reagan. 

 As we’ve recently seen, it’s just a lot easier today for un-named White House insiders to get 
their criticism or embarrassing stories instantly published. 

It doesn’t matter how dubious the journalism is, or who writes it. If it’s anti-Trump, it’s always 
fit to print. 

 Bob Woodward’s gossipy best-seller “Fear” was built mostly on anonymous sources, 
unattributed quotes or second-hand anecdotes. Omarosa’s crazy White House tell-all 
“Unhinged” was only slightly less credible. 

 But the New York Times hit a new low in its war on Trump last week. 

 It published an anonymous op-ed piece written by a Trump adviser who claimed that he and 
some of his fellow White House “resistance” members were so concerned with the president’s 
actions and mental state that they contemplated using the 25th Amendment to remove him. 

 Maybe it’s all true. Maybe it’s all BS. We’ll find out the real story someday, but it’s certainly 
not new. 

 After my father was shot in 1981, some of his top advisers were seriously worried about his 
mental stability. 

 According to Bill O’Reilly in “Killing Reagan,” they considered using the 25th Amendment 
to remove him on grounds of mental incapacity and even gave him a test. 

My father passed the test with flying colors and, according to the history books, did his job 
pretty well afterwards. 

 No one read about those concerns my father’s advisers had about his mental state in a New 
York Times op-ed piece as they were occurring. 

Likewise, no one read about how he trumped his top advisers on his decision to invade 
Grenada. 

 When he called a White House meeting to vote on the idea, the final tally was 7-3 to not 
invade. My father was one of the three. 

 Two days later, the world woke up to see TV images of American forces capturing the island. 

 When one of his shocked advisers called and said, “Mr. President, I thought we had a vote 
and we decided not to go,” my father said, ‘Yes. we did. But my vote cancelled your seven.” 

 No one at the time read about that “fight” with his White House staff in the papers, just 
as they never learned how his advisers tried to prevent him from speaking two of his most 
famous lines. 

 They kept deleting “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down that wall” from his Berlin Wall speech and 
they also tried to stop him from referring to the Soviet Union as “the Evil Empire.” 

The most important “fight” my father had with his advisers came in 1986, however, when he 
met with Mikhail Gorbachev at the nuclear missile summit in Reykjavik. 

 Everyone in the liberal media desperately wanted him to sign a nuclear arms treaty with the 
USSR -- any treaty. 

 My father’s staffers were worried about his political legacy. Preferring a weak deal to no deal 
at all, they urged him to sign a treaty he did not think was good enough. 

 My father shocked his advisers, the media and most everyone in the Free World by saying 
“nyet” to Gorby in Iceland and walking out of the summit without signing anything. 

 Everyone in the liberal media thought he was nuts, of course. But his decision turned out to 
be a great geopolitical move that became a key turning point in the Cold War. 

 If the Washington Post had published an anonymous op-ed from one of my father’s worried 
advisers at the time, I bet history would not have turned out so well. 

- 

 Copyright 2018 Michael Reagan. Michael Reagan is the son of President Ronald Reagan, 
a political consultant, and the author of “Lessons My Father Taught Me: The Strength, 
Integrity, and Faith of Ronald Reagan.” He is the founder of the email service reagan.com and 
president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation. Visit his websites at www.reagan.com and www.
michaelereagan.com. Send comments to Reagan@caglecartoons.com. Follow @reaganworld 
on Twitter. 

 Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by Cagle Cartoons newspaper syndicate. For info on 
using columns contact Sales at sales@cagle.com.

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