Republicans are asking a horrific question: Is our president insane?

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

Republicans are asking a horrific question: Is our president insane?

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/topoftheticket/la-na-tt-president-insane-20170828-story.html

Top of the Ticket cartoon (David Horsey / Los Angeles Times)

David Horsey

 

On his 92nd birthday, March 8, 1933, retired Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes was paid a surprise visit by the newly inaugurated president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The two men chatted for half an hour and, after Roosevelt departed, a young clerk asked Holmes what he thought of the new man in the White House.

“A second-class intellect,” Holmes said. “But a first-class temperament.”

A good temperament has generally proved to be more important than brains in an American commander in chief. That is why Ronald Reagan, a man of modest intellect but sunny disposition, proved to be a very successful president, while the presidency of the brainy but brooding and paranoid Richard Nixon ended in scandal and shame. A first-class temperament guided John F. Kennedy through the Cuban missile crisis, while the intellectual Woodrow Wilson wound up a broken man after the failure of his grand plan to forge a peaceful, democratic international order following the First World War.

 

If the great Holmes were alive to render judgment on the current president of the United States, he would almost certainly sign on to the opinion being reached by more and more people, including many Republicans and conservatives: Donald Trump has a third-class intellect paired with a temperament that borders on mental instability.

 

Last week, the wild swings in mood and rhetoric displayed by Trump in a series of public appearances seems to have tilted public assessment of the president even more substantially toward this highly alarming view. Last Monday night, he read stiffly from a script as he outlined a rather undramatic but reasonably coherent shift in American engagement in Afghanistan, but, the next night, Trump ranted for well over an hour at a campaign rally in Phoenix, attacking the free press and members of his own political party, baying and barking like a wounded hound as he defended his contradictory comments about neo-Nazi violence in Charlottesville, Va.

After Trump’s Phoenix tirade, former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper went on CNN to question Trump’s fitness for office, calling the speech “downright scary and disturbing” and saying, “I worry about the access to nuclear codes.”

 

 

In a Sunday New York Times opinion piece, Peter Wehner, a veteran of the Reagan and the two Bush administrations, urged congressional Republicans to think of themselves as a “shadow government” to compensate for Trump’s “moral ugliness and intellectual incoherence.” He said Republican members of Congress acknowledge the rolling disaster that is the Trump administration. Those Republicans, Wehner said, are privately declaring the president a “child king” who is incompetent and unfit for office.

A few of those Republicans have gone public with their disdain. Tennessee Sen. Bob Corker and Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake have both offered tough critiques of Trump — and have been slammed by Trump in response.

 

 

[CaliCat 3,957]

If they are still asking the question, they are about 8 months behind the rest of the country. We already know the asnswer. The so-called president is a loonie. 

[JimandChristy 1,689]

Demented Donnie! Think it will catch on?

[CaliCat 3,957]

Just now, JimandChristy said:

Demented Donnie! Think it will catch on?

 

Orange is the new mad? LOL.

[IAMX 3,055]

 

[ready4ONE 5,400]

The Mad Hatter still has a few fan boys, but it's pretty clear that he is missing some French Fries and the toy in his Happy Meal.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

1 minute ago, ready4ONE said:

The Mad Hatter still has a few fan boys, but it's pretty clear that he is missing some French Fries and the toy in his Happy Meal.

i was promised that I could drive Ronald's Car!

[ready4ONE 5,400]

Donald: "There's only two nuggets in my Happy Meal and one has been bitten in half! Waaaa waaaa waaaa!!"

[Steeleballz 7,550]

1 hour ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

Republicans are asking a horrific question: Is our president insane?

 

 

    It's a fair question, although I wouldn't discount the possibility that it is being asked rhetorically.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

9 minutes ago, Steeleballz said:

 

    It's a fair question, although I wouldn't discount the possibility that it is being asked rhetorically.