RUTHFULLY YOURS

On Monday, Donald Trump stopped the wisecracks and laid out a serious plan to jumpstart the nation’s limping economy. He proposed tax cuts, regulatory relief, unfettered development of coal, oil and natural gas, and fairer trade pacts. One item in his plan will do more than all the others to get the nation working again–cutting corporate taxes. Trump pledges that “under my plan, no American company will pay more than 15% of their business income in taxes.”

Immediately, Hillary Clinton pounced on Trump’s “tax breaks for big corporations.” Her class warfare rhetoric reminds us that in this election voters have to decide between Hillary’s politics of envy or Trump’s agenda of economic growth for everyone.

First the facts: the U.S. corporate tax rate is 35% — highest in the developed world. Even with deductions, companies here pay on average 27%, which is more than in most other countries. Since 2000, nearly every industrialized country has cut corporate taxes to compete for business – except the U.S.

Consider Ireland. It’s not just shamrocks making that country green. Money’s been pouring in from around the globe, since Ireland slashed its corporate tax rate to 12.5%, one of the lowest in Europe. In 2015 the country’s economy grew three times as fast as the United States. Companies from the U.S. and across Europe hurried to set up operations there.

Closer to home, Canadians of all political stripes — Liberals, Conservatives, and Progressives — put their ideological differences aside and agreed to lower the country’s corporate tax rate from 42% to 26%. They decided that fighting over a bigger economic pie beat arguing over how to divvy up a smaller one.

Last year I arrived early for a lunch address by Gen. Michael Hayden, who ran the National Security Agency and later the Central Intelligence Agency in the George W. Bush administration. Hayden was already there, and glad to chat. The conversation turned to Egypt, and I asked Hayden why the Republican mainstream had embraced the Muslim Brotherhood rather than the military government of President al-Sisi, an American-trained soldier who espoused a reformed Islam that would repudiate terrorism. “We were sorry that [Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohamed] Morsi was overthrown” in July 2013, Hayden explained. “We wanted to see what would happen when the Muslim Brotherhood had to take responsibility for picking up the garbage.”

“General,” I remonstrated, “when Morsi was overthrown, Egypt had three weeks of wheat supplies on hand. The country was on the brink of starvation!”

“I guess that experiment would have been tough on the ordinary Egyptian,” Hayden replied, without a hint of irony. As Tommy Lee Jones said in “Men in Black,” Gen. Hayden has no sense of humor that he’s aware of. He repeated the same point verbatim a few minutes later in his speech: It was a shame that the Muslim Brotherhood government of Egypt was overthrown, by acclaim of the majority of Egypt’s adult population, which had taken to the streets as the country careened towards ruin. Hayden, like Sen. John McCain, the Weekly Standard, and the majority of the Republican foreign policy establishment, believes that America should try to foster a democratic version of political Islam. It lionized Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood in Washington, nurtured Turkey’s dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and armed “moderate Islamists” in Syria as a supposed democratic alternative to the Assad regime. Hayden’s specialty was signal intelligence, and by all accounts he was good at his job. He is clueless about foreign policy.

Gen. Hayden was perhaps the most prominent signator of a letter from fifty former national security officials who served in Republican administrations, declaring that Donald Trump “lacks the character, values and experience” required of a president and, if elected, “would put at risk our country’s national security and well-being.”

Trump responded, “The names on this letter are the ones the American people should look to for answers on why the world is a mess, and we thank them for coming forward so everyone in the country knows who deserves the blame for making the world such a dangerous place.” That is exactly correct. He might have added that they are incapable of learning from their mistakes and doomed to repeat them if given the opportunity.

The Republican Establishment believed with fervor in the Arab Spring. Weekly Standard founder Bill Kristol went as far as to compare the abortive rebellions fo the American founding. It backed the overthrow and assassination of Libya’s dictator Muamar Qaddafi, which turned a nasty but stable country into a Petri dish for terrorism. It believed that majority rule in Iraq would lead to a stable, pro-American government in that Frankenstein monster of a country patched together with body parts taken from the corpse of the American empire. Instead, it got a sectarian Shi’ite regime aligned to Iran and a Sunni rebellion stretching from Mesopotamia to the Lebanon led by ISIS and al-Qaeda.

Hillary Clinton appeals to women on the myth that she will shatter a “glass ceiling” that impedes women from high office. But that glass ceiling has already been shattered by women more talented and more courageous, who have fought political battles in male-dominated tribal nations where women are derided.

Hillary is no Ellen Johnson Sirleaf.

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf is president of Liberia. An economist by profession, she was educated in the United States and returned to Liberia to serve in the ill-fated administration of William Tolbert, who was killed in a coup in 1980. For the next 25 years, she lived in exile while Nigeria was ruled by Samuel Doe and subsequently by Charles Taylor, a brutal dictator and warlord convicted of war crimes. In 2006, after opposition to Taylor, she won election. Her presidency has been focused on fostering human rights and reconciliation and modernizing Liberia’s economy. In 2011, Sirleaf was awarded a Nobel Peace Prize.

Hillary Clinton is no Margaret Thatcher.

Margaret Thatcher, the “Iron Lady,” led Great Britain’s economic renewal and regained stature as a world leader during the Cold War. She shepherded Great Britain with principles of “Thatcherism” – economic freedom and individual liberty, personal responsibility and hard work. She broke the power of the labor unions and forced the Labour Party to abandon its commitment to nationalized industry, redefine the role of the welfare state, and accept the importance of the free market.

Hillary is no Golda Meir.

In 1948, Golda Meir was one of the signers of Israel’s declaration and was appointed diplomatic minister to Russia. That same year, she was appointed minister to Moscow, but when Israel was attacked by neighboring Arabs, she returned and was elected to the Israeli parliament. Israeli prime minister David Ben-Gurion sent Meir on a secret mission, disguised as an Arab, to plead with King Abdullah I not to enter in a war against Israel. Abdullah declined. At age 68, tired and ill, Meir contemplated retirement but was drafted to lead her party. When Prime Minister Levi Eshkol died, she served out the balance of his term and won election in 1969, becoming Israel’s fourth prime minister, the world’s third woman with that title. She was a tough woman with a tough job in a vulnerable and continually threatened democracy.

After two American soldiers were murdered by an Islamic terrorist in Afghanistan while a crowd of protesters shouted “Death to Americans” and “Death to Infidels”, General Allen visited his men.

“There will be moments like this when you’re searching for the meaning of this loss. There will be moments like this when your emotions are governed by anger and a desire to strike back,” Allen pleaded. “Now is not the time for revenge, now is not the time for vengeance.”

General Allen had already apologized to the killers for the “desecration” of the Koran by American soldiers who had been destroying copies of the hateful document being used by Taliban prisoners to send notes to each other. “I offer my sincere apologies for any offence this may have caused, to the president of Afghanistan, the government of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan, and most importantly, to the noble people of Afghanistan,” he had whined.

The “noble people” of Afghanistan were the ones chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Infidels”.

Meanwhile General Allen was telling the American soldiers grieving the loss of their own that the real tragedy was the destruction of the terrorist books. “Now is how we show the Afghan people that as bad as that act was in Bagram, it was unintentional and Americans and ISAF soldiers do not stand for this.”

Then Allen said that he was “proud” to call General Sher Mohammad Karimi “my brother”. Karimi, was the Afghan military strongman who had defended previous attacks on NATO troops and demanded that the American soldiers be put on trial.

“We admit our mistake,” General Allen cringingly continued. “We ask for our forgiveness.”

Then he praised the “Holy Koran”. Six American military personnel faced administrative punishments for doing their duty in order to appease the murderous Islamic mob in all its nobility in Afghanistan.

This was typical of General Allen’s disgraceful tenure. It is also typical of his post-military career which has included a prominent spot at Brookings and a speaking slot at the Democratic National Convention. After his enthusiastic endorsement of Hillary and attacks on Trump, Hillary has insisted that anyone who criticizes Allen is not fit to be president because Allen is a “hero and a patriot”.

If there’s anyone who is an expert on heroism and patriotism, it’s Hillary.

Donald J. Trump really knows how to stick his foot in his mouth. And then his calf. And then his thigh. If he keeps going, he will be in real trouble.

The Republican presidential nominee’s protracted fight with Ghazala and Khizr Khan has been a wholly unnecessary and incredibly unhelpful distraction from the fight he needs to wage against Hillary Clinton and her collectivist dream: to preserve Obamaism and protect the policies that have enfeebled America overseas and slowed GDP growth to a near-standstill — 1 percent, on average, for the first half of 2016.

Trump’s battle with the mother and father of the late U.S. Army Captain Humayun Khan — who was killed in action in Iraq in June 2004 — is cold, foolish, and self-destructive. When the Pakistani-born parents of this American military hero condemned Trump’s proposed limits on Muslim immigration, he should have let their words roll away, like raindrops on an umbrella. Instead, Trump grabbed that umbrella and smacked the Khans with it — even as Republicans recoiled, and Democrats danced jigs of joy.

Trump should know what any candidate for fifth-grade class president already understands: Don’t attack the mother of a dead soldier. Trump must make it easier to keep the support of conservatives and Republicans who need him to demolish Crooked Hillary.

All of that said, Trump’s long-distance jousting with the Khans is nowhere as egregious as Clinton’s in-your-face lies to Patricia Smith — mother of Sean Smith, an American diplomat whom al-Qaeda-affiliated radical Islamic terrorists murdered in the September 11, 2012, Benghazi massacre.

Hillary stared right at this mourning mother as her son lay in a casket just feet away, at Andrews Air Force Base that September 14.

As Smith told the Republican National Convention, “When I saw Hillary Clinton at Sean’s coffin ceremony, just days later, she looked me squarely in the eye and told me a video was responsible.”

Hillary Clinton denies this. In fact, she questioned Smith’s mental capacity. The Democrat standard bearer told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, “I don’t hold any ill feeling for someone who in that moment may not fully recall everything that was or wasn’t said.”

However, strong evidence arose yesterday to corroborate Smith’s account and underscore the question with which she closed her emotional convention speech: “If Hillary Clinton can’t give us the truth, why should we give her the presidency?”

Early 20th-century modernism ignored classical rules of expression. But late 20th-century postmodernism blew up those rules altogether.

Barack Obama was a modernist candidate. He turned out vast numbers of young and minority voters, mastered new social media, and in 2008 overturned the old-guard Democratic furniture such as Hillary Clinton.

In contrast, Donald Trump has simply destroyed normal politics. Unlike Obama with his record Wall Street fundraising of 2008 and 2012, Trump has raised almost no money. He ignores endorsements from political kingpins. Trump has organized no serious voter registration drives. His convention was bizarre, showcasing his kids instead of party bosses and special-interest groups.

How about internal polling? Trump seems to have none.

Sophisticated opposition research? Zilch.

Standard talking points? Not so much.

Teleprompted speeches? Trump prefers ad hoc stream of consciousness.

Candidates are supposed to avoid the pitfalls of press conferences as much as possible — and prep for days when they are obligated to give them. Not Trump. He thrives on unscripted rants to the press without much worry about what he says.

Candidates dislike and fear reporters, and so seek to flatter them. Trump openly insults them and occasionally kicks them out of his press conferences.

Modern politicians generally avoid getting pulled into nasty, lose-lose fights. Trump welcomes brawls against all comers.

Hillary Clinton has taken huge quid pro quo contributions from rich people as she damns the influence of big money in politics. Trump cannot seem to find any big donors. He trashes crony capitalist insiders on the grounds that he used to be one himself.

Traditional politicians such as Mitt Romney were perfectly groomed and rarely appeared without tailored suits. Modernist politicians such as Obama like to be photographed on the golf links appearing young, hip, and cool, wearing shades and polo shirts.

But Trump defies both traditional and nontraditional tastes by wearing loud, long ties, combing his dyed-yellow hair over a bald spot, and tanning his skin a strange orange hue.

Politicians attack each other while faking politeness. The coolest do it with nuance. Not Trump. He uses taboo words like “liar” and “crooked.”

Modernist candidates voice platitudes about border enforcement. But only a postmodern one would demand that Mexico pay for a wall.