OPINION:
The good news: Voters this year have a chance to elect a presidential candidate who represents the best traditions of the once-proud Democratic Party. The shocking news, at least for some, is that it’s not Joe Biden. Not even close.
The real John F. Kennedy “Democrat” is none other than Donald Trump. Instead of gagging and choking on that assertion, the Never Trumpers would do far better to consider the historical record. JFK’s efforts to avoid the quagmire of full-scale escalation in Vietnam provoked a big pushback from Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and National Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, who completely reversed his intent immediately after the assassination, with utterly disastrous results. President Trump’s orders to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan were bitterly resisted by those occupying, ironically, the exact same two Cabinet posts (Mattis and McMaster, respectively). But instead of applauding the Kennedy-like efforts of Trump to prevent global conflicts, the mainstream media and Democratic Party leadership lavished praise on Mattis and Company, calling them “the adults in the room.”
Nothing better encapsulates the Trump administration’s affinity for JFK’s tremendous moon mission than its successor’s name: Artemis, the sister of Apollo. But the determination to set up an industrial base on the moon as the launch point for a later, manned trip to Mars stands in total contrast to the aversion of the Obama-Biden administration for any such undertakings, an attitude that can be fairly described as been-there-done-that. And their 2010 shutdown of the Constellation system set all of NASA on life support until its present revival.
Like JFK, Mr. Trump is a staunch supporter of peaceful nuclear energy, and has pursued innovative options, such as the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, that represent major advances in both safety and efficiency. Starkly unlike JFK, today’s Democrats, under the rubric of the ultra-Malthusian Green New Deal, exhibit a revulsion for atomic power rivaled only by their disdain for oil and coal. Yet while they preach energy conservation, they sure seem to expend a lot of it scolding the rest of us for eating meat, driving cars and even having kids. Perhaps we can call their policy The Old Frontier.
JFK made powerful enemies on Wall Street for daring to propose taking the power to print U.S. currency away from the bankers’ private fiefdom (the misnamed Federal Reserve) and restoring it to the actual government agency, the Treasury. President Trump’s (admittedly limited) attempts to rein in the Fed’s omnipotence were met with a flurry of denunciations, many from leading Democrats clearly intent on “earning” the hundreds of millions their party has garnered in recent years from Wall Street and its Silicon Valley offspring.
I cannot swear that if he had the chance today, President Kennedy would vote for Donald Trump — although I certainly think those who cherish his legacy should. But it is beyond dispute: If he got a whiff of what Joe Biden’s Democratic Party has degenerated into lately, he’d spin in his grave.
DOUG MALLOUK
Baltimore
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