Heads and tails

Garth Meyer, Gazette Reporter | Aug 02, 20180

It's settling in. After eight years of one thing, we now have the flipside.

Millions of Republicans simply could not take President Obama and now millions of Democrats just cannot take Trump.

It's an even exchange, and it’s both of their fault. Whose transgressions are worse is beside the point.

Something about Trump really irritates many, many Democrats, just as something about Obama was tailor-made to make so many Republicans never accept him.

A few examples show it.

Obama's “eloquence” and presumptuousness to write two autobiographical books before he was any more than a state senator goes to the core of what conservatism recoils from. Trump's cheeseburger diet and men-are-still-mostly-in-charge view of the world rubs Democrats just as badly.

Obama, while in office, released his presidential playlist. What? A 50+ year-old man went out of his way let us know he likes Fiona Apple's one hit from '97? You could say he was just pandering for votes, but he kept “dropping” his playlist after he was re-elected. Then after he left office.

That's plain juvenile to millions of Republicans, not to mention a fair amount of Democrats and independents.

For Trump, his juvenile capacity is vast in another way; his tweeting, for one, about which press reports often characterize him as being “furious.”

Have you ever seen a look of genuine anger on his face?

Trump is to Democrats what Obama was to Republicans. So many Republicans could just never get there about Obama on anything.

Trump, similarly, when he tweets about a former Miss Universe gaining weight, a firestorm erupts that he's a cruel misogynist. Whereas, if he just put down his phone and said in plain words that he kind of expects Miss Universe to stay the same weight during her year-long reign as when she won the crown, most of the country would just nod (to themselves).

In early July, at a rally in Montana, Trump said in a very Trump manner that he breaks arena attendance records held by Elton John. Roughly translated in plain language, he said that a single speaker at a venue allows for more seating than a band performance or basketball or hockey game, because the staging takes up less space. Continuing the translation, Trump said he was not a musician and he attracted people with his mouth, and “hopefully” his brain. “The brain is the most important part,” he said.

On the “Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” the host played the clip, suggested that Trump was crazy and worked the audience with a riff about a man with a brain injury.

Either that, or Trump has a weird way of saying something that is a) 90 percent true and b) not a big deal.

The essence of the man makes what he does unpalatable.

On the flipside, for Obama, he could go around the Middle East and remind countries that usually America's decision-making is better than what took place for the Iraq War. He says that and to Republicans it's an “apology tour” and he “doesn't love America.”

But by the time of those speeches (2009), didn't about 85 percent of Americans believe that the Iraq War was regrettable (including Trump)?

And so it goes. Heads and tails.

What to do about it is unclear. Wait for the coin to flip again? Hope for a different kind of coin altogether? A different kind of electorate? The one thing that seems certain is this will last another two years, if not six.