Missing from both party conventions: Making jobs great again
But as much as we expect lies in political rally speeches, the bigger surprises came from such rising nonpolitician stars as Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who gained fame from a viral video of them waving and pointing guns at Black Lives Matter demonstrators marching past their St. Louis mansion. Never mind the controversial shootings of unarmed African Americans that led to the rise of movements such as Black Lives Matter.
On an evening dominated by Trump, we cannot forget Donald Trump Jr., who in the fashion of his father, claimed against all evidence that Biden and Harris want to “cancel the founders” of this nation. Catchy, but false.
But Junior was outshouted by his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle, who endorsed Trump Senior at top volume, as if speaking to a stadium crowd instead of an empty room.
By comparison, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley sounded blessedly sane, although hardly free of bombast. Saying the vision of such moderate Democrats as Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California was socialist (“and we know that socialism has failed everywhere”) echoed Ronald Reagan among others, arguing against such now-popular programs as Social Security and Medicare.
But Haley and fellow South Carolinian Sen. Tim Scott, currently the Senate’s only Black Republican, offered the most memorably appealing reminder of the pre-Trump Republican Party’s voices of reason. Remember those days?
I won’t point fingers. There’s plenty of blame to go around in both parties. After Hillary Clinton lost touch with the long-term jobs issue, Trump has raised more divisive questions than solutions. Election years can be a terrible time for our political leaders to try to come up with good answers and real solutions to complex problems. But we have to start somewhere.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
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