In 1984 Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign produced a very successful television ad entitled “Morning in America” featuring happy couples marrying, families buying new homes, cars, and enjoying a life that was nothing short of paradise.
Fast forward to 2020. George Conway, the husband of White house advisor Kellyanne Conway, with a number of disenchanted Republican friends, produced an ad that draws on Reagan’s and is entitled “Mourning in America”, an exposé of all that has gone wrong under the “leadership” of the incompetent Donald Trump. Conway and friends are working to defeat Donald Trump in November under the guise of an organization called “The Lincoln Project.”
Strangely, Donald Trump seemed somewhat disenchanted in the Lincoln Project’s take on his leadership. He responded, “Their so-called Lincoln Project is a disgrace to Honest Abe," Trump added, referring to revered Civil War-era president Abraham Lincoln.
"I don't know what Kellyanne did to her deranged loser of a husband, Moonface, but it must have been really bad."
No, Don, she did nothing to George. George penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post that read,
“It may strike you as deranged that a sitting president facing a pandemic has busied himself attacking journalists, political opponents, television news hosts and late-night comedians — even deriding a former president who merely called for empathy and unity in response to the virus. It may strike you as nuts that Trump bragged about his supposed Facebook ranking in the middle of a virus task-force briefing, asserted that millions would have died were it not for him, boasted that “the ‘Ratings’ of my News Conferences etc.” were driving “the Lamestream Media . . . CRAZY,” and floated bogus miracle cures, including suggesting that scientists consider injecting humans with household disinfectants such as Clorox.
“Now, it’s more obvious than ever. Trump’s narcissism deadens any ability he might otherwise have had to carry out the duties of a president in the manner the Constitution requires. He’s so self-obsessed, he can only act for himself, not for the nation,.”
The Pandemic is more than a war of words now. We hate each other. The Trumpies want the country back no matter the cost; the rest of us want to preserve our health. The Trumpies are willing to sacrifice lives of the elderly, the infirm, and the poor so that they can return to their shopping malls. The rest of us don’t buy it.
To call this a “troubling time” is to understate the very seriousness the pandemic and Trump’s sociopathy have on the country that we’ve known for three quarters of a century. Thousands have died. Untold thousands more will die. We can possibly hold out another six months before the 2020 election, but if Trump should win again in 2020 it could be the end of America.
Reagan’s ad concludes, “Why would we ever want to return to where we were four short years ago?” Oh, that we could.