Judgment: Neither Candidate Has A Whole Lot

Judgment: Neither
Candidate Has A Whole Lot

By

Leonard Zwelling

         In the televised Commander-in-Chief forum on September 8, we
saw the true Hillary Clinton and the true Donald Trump. My guess is that
neither changed any minds. She retained her supporters and he retained his. If
you want experience, she’s your candidate. If you want a fresh face with some
untested ideas, he’s your man. If you want an alternative, the fact that Gary
Johnson was unaware of what Aleppo is will give you no comfort by voting Libertarian.
Maybe Mr. Johnson thought Aleppo was the lost Marx Brother.

         But if you want good judgment, you may be staying home.

         Mr. Trump is a loose cannon. He thinks he knows more about
defense than the current generals advising the Obama Administration.  He doesn’t. Even saying he does is an insult
to our military.

         He was for the War in Iraq and he was against it. Ditto
Libya. He wants Muslims out of the country unless he decides they are fit to
come in and he wants to deport 11 million people. And of course there’s the
WALL.

If
Mr. Trump weren’t rich, he could not even pass the laugh test as a Presidential
candidate. I know he beat 16 other candidates, but what does that say about
those 16 others? Not a whole lot.

         So in the case of Mr. Trump, we have to infer from his
pronouncements, that his judgment is not very good. That he should say anything
except “No Comment” about his national security briefings suggests he is not
trustworthy with secrets. And we do know that Mrs. Clinton likes secrets. So Trump’s
performance Wednesday night was unrevealing other than to feed the notion that
his judgment is at best fluid and at worst poor.

         As for Hillary, there is no need to infer the paucity of her
judgment. The Iraq War vote (for) and the emails say all that needs to be said
about her ability to think clearly when clear thinking is exactly what is
needed. She is clearly brilliant, but seems to come down on the wrong side of
issues a bit too often to be considered a keen analyst. In other words, in so
many ways, her judgment isn’t very good either and no inference is needed to
understand that. The evidence is overwhelming and confirmed by a source as
reliable as the Director of the FBI.

         It is thus a question of whether or not Mrs. Clinton has
learned from her mistakes or Mr. Trump can grow into the job—fast.

         When asked about what she learned from her Iraq vote and how
she applied it in the case of Libya, her answer was evasive at best. My firm
hope has always been that Mrs. Clinton has learned from her life experiences,
but the email controversy puts that in great doubt. All we can do is hope that
if she is elected her thinking has matured since last week and she will
surround herself with advisors to whom she actually listens.

         In Mr. Trump’s case, I find similar sentiments misplaced. He
listens to no one and loves to shoot from the lip far too often to be the
leader of the free world.

         I do believe this is the worst choice for President that the
American people have had in almost 30 years. But this is what the system spit
out and this is the choice we have to make.

         Unfortunately, it is not at all likely that good judgment
will be a prime character trait of the next inhabitant of the Oval Office.