I have to admit that this thought has occurred to me more than once and that, as the public courtship goes by day after day after day without an announcement, it seems more and more possible to me that it’s true:
http://www.cnn.com/2016/12/01/opinions/trump-romney-romance-setup-cupp/index.html
I’ve been told several times over the past week or two how big and great-souled a man Mr. Trump’s apparent reconciliation with Mitt Romney shows him to be. In this, I’m assured he’s a far more noble character than the disloyal Mr. Romney, who stabbed him in the back by publicly and unfairly criticizing him during the campaign.
I see things rather differently. Public criticism seems to me quite appropriate during a public presidential campaign. And everything that Governor Romney said was true. Nothing in Mr. Romney’s speech has been suddenly falsified by the fact that Mr. Trump came within 2.5 million ballots of winning the national popular vote.
One thing will be evident should it become clear that Mr. Trump has merely been playing with Mr. Romney, setting him up for public humiliation: It will show that Mr. Trump is still the vengeful and insecure little man that his lengthy public record has suggested him to be, and it will be a bad omen for the next four years of American history.
I trust that the ardent Trumpists out there won’t misread what I’m saying: A serious president-elect might well decide, for serious reasons, to choose David Petraeus, or John Bolton, or even Rudy Giuliani as Secretary of State over Mitt Romney. And I hope that Mr. Trump’s election has awakened him to the gravitas of the office he’s about to assume, and that he will rise to the occasion. But if it becomes somehow apparent that this was merely an exercise in petty vindictiveness, that will confirm one of the very many reasons that some of us had for opposing Mr. Donald J. Trump as unfit for the presidency.
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In