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Rep. Conor Lamb, D-Mt. Lebanon
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Dan Simpson: Trump’s performance not worthy of 4 more years

Steph Chambers/Post-Gazette

Dan Simpson: Trump’s performance not worthy of 4 more years

Now, let’s see: Halloween is Saturday, Election Day is next Tuesday. Americans apparently confused the two last time around, but — I hope — are unlikely to do so this time.

I have made no secret of the fact that, based on my more-than-I-like-to-admit years of experience dealing with the issues of foreign affairs, I have found the performance of President Donald J. Trump unconvincing in that area. It certainly does not serve as a basis for four more years of the same.

I hold the Democratic Party as responsible for Mr. Trump’s 2016 victory as I do the increasingly feckless Republicans. It is indicative that current discussion of the future — if any — of the GOP post-Trump is whether the party actually has a future. That, I find sad. My father and mother were firm Republicans. My father, an Ohioan, supported Sen. Bob Taft against Dwight D. Eisenhower. The Democrats paved the way for Mr. Trump’s victory by nominating a candidate whom an estimated 30% of Americans hated.

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Now here we go again. The most disturbing (for me) piece of this round is Mr. Trump’s repeated threat that the only way he can lose the election is if there is fraud. Mail-in ballots, the natural way for Americans to respect health precautions during the coronavirus pandemic and still vote, have given Mr. Trump a pretext for contesting a loss.

On the more encouraging side, I am told that there is in Washington, among serious legislators, an effort to organize an effective campaign, based on the Constitution, to deal with an attempt by a losing Mr. Trump to hang onto the presidency. It would be based on the 12th Amendment to the Constitution and would involve a process known as “a contingent election.”

For those of us in southwestern Pennsylvania, we should not imagine that this process would not involve us. One of the key races in assuring the success of an effort to block an unconstitutional Trump holdout in the White House would be the outcome of the current congressional race between incumbent Conor Lamb, a Democrat, and challenger Sean Parnell, a Republican. I personally think that Mr. Lamb has done a superb job of representing his constituency and this region in Congress for the past two years and deserves another term.

If Mr. Trump tries to get cute with Tuesday’s electoral results, I hope devoutly that Mr. Lamb will be able to join other members of Congress from key states in batting down Mr. Trump’s effort as effectively as the Steelers defense deals with opposing quarterbacks’ final quarter passes.

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A continuing problem is that no one seems to be able to say who would go into the White House and drag out the defeated president, Melania, Ivanka, Jared, Don Jr. and Mike Pence. The military doesn’t want to, the FBI work for corrupt Attorney General William Barr, the District of Columbia police probably aren’t up to such action, and we don’t know who the Department of Homeland Security forces that Mr. Trump sent to Oregon actually work for.

This constitutionally ghastly possibility is definitely a matter to follow closely, after the vote on Nov. 3, unless Mr. Trump acts like a president, as opposed to a failed casino operator.

It is encouraging to learn that there are at least serious people in government who are aware of the risk to the future or our republic and its democracy from amateurs like Mr. Trump. I do not think that the views of our presidents by foreigners should be decisive or even important. In a talk to the African Studies Association in 1980, I defended our election of President Ronald Reagan, even though I had voted against him, by asking the African representative who had complained about our choice when the last time was that his country had held elections. (I already knew the answer.)

Nonetheless I find it difficult not to believe that serious foreign leaders, even those who don’t like us much, wouldn’t be happier dealing with an American president with substantial foreign affairs experience, like Joe Biden, rather than a sometimes-befuddled clown who has the bad habit of lying and expecting people to believe him.

That, by the way, is how the country has fallen into such deep trouble in dealing with the coronavirus — the toll of infections, the impact of the countermeasures and the deaths. Based on the knowledge Mr. Trump had in January, he should have met the problem head-on with a full-scale national effort, leading the fight while wearing a mask.

Come to think of it, apart from his foreign affairs blunders, one of the most important reasons for my own vote against Mr. Trump, and for Mr. Biden, is a person lying in a nursing home in Ohio whom I can’t visit, basically because of Mr. Trump’s irresponsibility in dealing with the virus since the beginning of its assault on us.

Mr. Trump wasn’t up to dealing with the challenge. We all are paying the price of his inadequacies. It is far past time to move on.

Dan Simpson, a former U.S. ambassador, is a columnist for the Post-Gazette (dhsimpson999@gmail.com).

First Published: October 28, 2020, 9:00 a.m.

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