Now it's Trump's America, But Can He Deliver?
I and numerous other commentators criticized him as a flawed messenger for otherwise legitimate issues, but now I eagerly wait to see how well he delivers on his grandiose promises.
With that in mind, it was a relief to hear the softened tone of his acceptance speech. He did a darn good job of praising Clinton's public service which he repeatedly ridiculed as "just words" in their debates. Maybe he won't appoint a special prosecutor to go after her for allegedly mishandling classified material in her emails.
We'll see.
I appreciated his call for unity and a binding of wounds with people from both parties, many of whom he had trashed. And I can hardly wait to see his outreach to Muslims and immigrants whom he repeatedly stereotyped as murderers, rapists, etc.
But I really look forward to how he is going to "repeal Obamacare and replace it with something terrific," as he has promised the millions of people who now rely on President Obama's Affordable Care Act for health insurance coverage.
I look forward to how he is going to "open the coal mines again" and "bring our manufacturing jobs back from overseas" and other miracles.
And I want to see how he is going to "defeat ISIS and do it quickly." After all, he says he knows "more about ISIS than the generals do," right? But he can't tell us how he's going to do it until after we elect him. OK, Donald, it's your move.
Trump even became something of a culture warrior, when he wasn't bragging about groping women. He battled against political correctness and pinned breathtakingly obnoxious nicknames on his rivals, like "Lyin' Ted," "Little Marco," "Low-energy Jeb" and "Crooked Hillary."
The Manhattan billionaire is, in short, a class clown who -- to everyone's great astonishment -- has been elected class president.
"Now it's time for America to bind the wounds of division," he said in his acceptance speech, using a voice of reason that we seldom have heard from him before. "We have to get together. To all Republicans, Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people."
Right. Now that he has mercilessly trashed those who dared to get in his way, he want us to come together. Fine. But a bigger job soon will rest on his shoulders. Whether he ever really expected to get this far or not, he now has to deliver.
Otherwise he risks disappointing and even offending the folks who elected him. Yet some already have told me they don't really expect him to make good on all of his promises to bring back the coal mines and steel mills and build a border wall and "make Mexico pay for it."
Whether he delivers on that or not, they say, they're just happy that Trump, unlike his more conventional office-seekers, was willing to say what they've been thinking.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)
(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
