Somebody he'll listen to needs to tell President Obama to stop slamming Donald Trump in all the wrong places.
Bad enough he campaigned against the Republican presidential nominee during a White House press conference May 5 falsely billed as a talk on the economy, last week he took his stump with him to trash Trump in a foreign land.
There he was at a press conference during the G-7 Summit in Japan, pontificating on the ongoing primary elections in America, including taking sharp jabs at a man who next year might be giving his own press conferences before the Japanese people.
Frankly, this isn't just egregious, it's dangerous.
While Obama might think his attacks on Trump’s “ignorance” and “cavalier attitude” will somehow help former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- as The National Interest magazine wrote in its latest edition, "(attacks on Trump) in fact diminish not only Mr. Obama and his office, but the country he has traveled overseas to represent."
Compare Obama's lame-duck conduct to George W. Bush's. What a difference. Bush refused to become involved in the 2008 election campaign. It was a classy act, I thought at the time, because even while Obama pummeled the president's leadership to further his campaign -- as all challengers to incumbent presidents do -- Bush stayed above the fray and simply got on with the job he was elected to do.
I'm reminded that eight years ago Bush had his own opportunity to criticize then-Sen. Obama from the podium at a G-8 Summit in Japan, but refused despite a journalist’s question that opened the door to such an opportunity.
Actually, when Obama lashed out at Bush after interpreting some of his comments during a speech in Israel as criticism, said National Interest writer Paul J. Saunders, "a White House aide explicitly stated that Bush’s remarks were not directed at Obama."
Here's the truth of the matter: Had Bush wanted to use his bully pulpit to kick Obama just as Obama just did to Trump, it would have been easy as pie. Bush could have wounded his successor by telling G-8 leaders about his ties to Jeremiah Wright and Saul Alinsky, emphasizing his radical left-wing views. Then President Bush could have run to the cameras with the reactions he provoked.
He never did that. Nor did he ever quote Israeli reactions to some of Obama’s statements during his trip to Israel.
Let's look at Obama's (lack of) manners and protocol and deportment. It's far more important than it sounds. If he succeeds in establishing this as a standard for presidential behavior during presidential campaigns, he will forever undermine America's image and all future successors, not just the one elected this year.
His effort to exploit an international summit for political purposes, attack the Republican nominee on an international trip, is plain reckless and disturbing.
First Obama is talking about bringing about world peace -- a new era in the world -- as he did in Hiroshima. Does he really think blasting Donald Trump's policies and stroking Hillary's will inspire a global wave of democratization?
As Saunders says, "A raucous year-plus process to fill a four-year job is bad enough inside our borders -- does Mr. Obama really want to extend it until it covers the globe? How does he think that new presidents will be able do their jobs after months of nasty attacks from their predecessors?"
Amen to that.
And now Obama returns home and what is the first thing he says? He says Trump's comments have "rattled" foreign leaders. "He is using those leaders -- in this case, our closest allies -- as instruments in a political campaign in a wholly inappropriate effort to imply that they endorse Secretary Clinton. This is damaging not only in importing foreign political preferences into U.S. elections (something that many Americans won’t welcome, especially when Donald Trump has suggested that some of the same allies are not paying their fair share for their own defense) but also in complicating U.S. efforts to work with those very leaders if Mr. Trump is actually elected."
Trump's foreign policy positions are not yet fully formed, and the ones that are aren't exactly precisely expressed.
But here's the thing: Donald Trump is the Republican nominee. He represents the will of a great many of the American people and is, therefore, fully legitimate -- like it or not.
If for nothing but the nation's honor, the president of the United States is honor-bound -- no, duty-bound -- to show Trump at least a public face of respect while he is representing the American people abroad.
Reach Nancy Smith at nsmith@sunshinestatenews.com or at 228-282-2423. Twitter: @NancyLBSmith
