What You Weren't Told about Mr. Hamilton

To the Editor:

I’m really glad that I wasn’t drinking a cup of coffee while reading the opinion piece in the October 31, 2019 [edition of the] Herald by Lee H. Hamilton.

Had I been enjoying a coffee, I would have likely had it spurting out of my nose when I read “… these days presidents appear only in highly structured circumstances, avoid specificity and candor, and side-step detailed discussion of the issues and policies they’re pursuing.”

Seriously? He’s kidding, right? Does Mr. Hamilton have a Twitter account? Geez! The one thing that rubs Trump haters’ fur the wrong way more than anything is that Trump says, or Tweets, whatever the heck he wants to. It’s “unpresidential,” they say.

Later in the piece, Hamilton also says “President Trump holds almost no solo press conferences.”

Perhaps he doesn’t get his information from the most-watched cable network. That network airs Trump’s solo – anything but “structured” – impromptu press conferences almost every time he walks out of the White House to board Marine One, allowing often-hostile reporters throw barbed questions at him while answering them with “candor and specificity” that probably makes his advisors cringe.

Again, seriously, is Hamilton kidding, misinformed, living under a stone or being intentionally misleading?

Well, the accompanying gushing biography of Hamilton paints him as a really smart guy, scholar of blah, blah, blah but the “about” note fails to mention one teensy little critical piece of information.

That little tidbit of info that managed to go unmentioned makes it extremely unlikely that Hamilton would ever give Trump a fair shake.

In fact, with that little scrap of info anyone with a rationally thinking brain would immediately be skeptical of anything Hamilton says about Trump, even wonder if he might intentionally overlook facts to make Trump look bad.

Hamilton, you weren’t told, is a lifelong Democrat.

Wayne A. Bush

Roaring Spring

Editor’s Note: The “about” information accompanying Hamilton’s columns is supplied by Hamilton himself, just as Mr. Bush’s “Author’s Note” at the end of his columns is provided by Mr. Bush himself.

The Herald believes that members of opposing political parties should work together, in mutual respect, for the betterment of the country despite differences of opinion on policy.

An example would be the 2010 tax deal in which then-President Obama signed a deal to extend tax cuts put in place by President George W. Bush. President Obama said of the deal, “it’s not perfect, but this compromise is an essential step on our road to recovery.”

Automatically assuming stonewall opposition and bad faith from all those in the opposing party does not permit progress in a country founded on a system of balanced powers.