When we look to the veracity of the two men the difference is stark. According to the New York Times, Trump told six times as many lies in the first ten months of his administration as Obama did in his complete eight years at the helm. Yes, we are not that naive to think that politicians don't stretch the truth, but as a good friend of mine says, "don't piss on me and tell me it's raining," and that's exactly what Trump is doing to the American people.
Truth is an absolute
The latest tally from the Washington Post has President Donald Trump at 9014 false or misleading claims over the first 773 days of his administration. In Saturday's speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee annual gathering in Washington, D.C. he told 200 misleading or false claims in a two-hour speech. Despite this, thirty-five to forty percent of the population is unmoved. The objective truth that Trump is lying is chalked up to "fake news."
The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan was fond of saying, "everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not their own facts." Apparently, in Trump's America, Trump and his supporters are entitled to their own set of facts. It is much easier to make an argument when you start with the argument and then move to the facts than to use objective facts and tailor your argument to those facts. By contrast, it is impossible to have a constructive argument or discussion if you can't agree on the facts.
Let's turn to baseball for a quick analogy. Here are a couple of quick, objective, and easily verifiable facts. Outfielder Barry Bonds hit 762 home runs over the span of his 22-year baseball career and Shortstop Ozzie Smith hit 28 home runs over the span of his 19-year career. Once we agree on the number of home runs each player hit and the positions they played, it would be foolish to argue that Smith was a better home run hitter or that Bonds was a better shortstop, however, if you believe that Smith hit 800 home runs and Bonds won 18 gold gloves at shortstop, we could argue all day long on the aforementioned propositions.
When did we lose our way
Since the solidification of the two-party system in the United States (probably the election of 1860,) the two major parties have had their disagreements on a wide array of issues. Their positions have changed on some issues and their basis of support has changed over the years, but since the founding of the Republic, we have been a nation which knows how to compromise when it comes to getting things done. Our Constitution is rooted in some major compromises, such as the creation of two houses of Congress, the apportionment of House seats, the separation of powers which all came about through negotiation and compromise.
This idea of compromise helped us make our way through the past 200 plus years. We have addressed issues and come to solutions by taking two divergent points of view and forging something which wasn't always the solution that either side originally envisioned. This was possible because parties generally agreed on the facts or at least the major facts. Today, it seems like the problem is not coming to a compromise agreement, it is agreeing on the facts to start working to that solution.
Republicans and Democrats have almost always disagreed on how to solve a particular problem, but in most cases, they were able to distinguish fact from fiction. They also realized that most people involved in the political process were in it because they love this country and truly want to do what they see is best for their constituents. A lot of this changed in 1994 when Newt Gingrich grabbed hold of the soul of the Republican party, and this change was exacerbated in 2010 when the Tea Party movement began. The final descent into the rabbit hole was the election of Donald Trump in 2016.
We need to get back on track
The only way that we will forge ahead in this great nation of ours is if we start agreeing on the facts. We need to realize that even our political enemies may have a point now and then, and believe it or not, those same people love America just as much as you do. Buzz and I were not big fans of George W. Bush, but we never doubted his patriotism. And, Bush's biggest mistake was not made because he made up facts and flat out lied to us, but because he believed faulty intelligence. 20/20 hindsight is a great thing, and we can now look back at the Iraq war disaster and realize it was based on bad intelligence.
In Trump's America, the truth is not objective. It's whatever Trump says it is. Did Russia try to influence the 2016 Presidential election? Nope. The intelligence agencies say yes, but Trump says no because Vladimir Putin said Russia didn't. Was Kim Jong Un responsible and aware of the torture of Otto Warmbier? Experts say yes, but Trump says no because Kim Jong Un says he didn't.
We cannot continue like this. We need to accept that certain things are verifiable truths. This is serious stuff that affects the American people. This is not Trump padding his wealth to jump up a few spots on Forbes' list of the wealthiest people or continually using superlative adjectives that categorizes everything he does as "the biggest, the largest, the best, or the most." We expect politicians to paint things in the most positive light, but we don't expect or deserve them to continually lie about things that any rational person sees as outright false.
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