Posture Contest

Years ago a cartoonist at our local newspaper likened some failure in sports – football I think – to losing a good posture contest to Quasimodo.  That is exactly what the Democrats in Washington and their public relations agents in the traditional media have done in the last couple of days.  Last week Trump called Republicans who oppose him politically human scum.  He was properly criticized for it by people who saw it as illustrating his  immaturity, tendency to bullying, lack of respect for the office he holds, immense arrogance, bad manners, and simple lack of good sense vividly.   

Now though the Democrats and their assistants in the media have come up with one that so far out does Trump’s outburst as to make it seem unremarkable. Over the weekend US Army Delta Force soldiers  attacked an ISIS compound in Syria and killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the head of ISIS while suffering no human casualties and only one slightly wounded dog.  This was unconditionally good news in both moral  and geopolitical terms. The man needed killing, and his death damages the vile organization he headed.  It was a fine day for the world, the United States, and the US Army, and for justice and decency.

However one would not know it from the reactions of Democrats and people in the media. Pelosi and Schiff sniffed about not having been informed about the raid beforehand.  I do not know about Pelosi, but, based on his behavior over the last months, it would have been completely in character for Schiff to have leaked information about the attack in hopes of preventing something that people would see as a victory for Trump.  Others on the left, while perhaps allowing that getting rid of al-Baghdadi might have been something of a good thing, announced the real news story was Trump’s speaking too rudely of al-Baghdadi, his treatment of Schiff and Pelosi, or some other supposed breach of etiquette. Some including the Washington Post, which labelled al-Baghdadi an “austere religious leader” went so far as to whitewash the target of the attack. (The Post’s story led to some interesting imagined Post obituary notes on the internet. My favorite was “Adolph Hitler, Austrian vegan activist and landscape painter, dies at  56.”) . 

So the winner of the latest good posture contest is Donald Trump. Go figure.