Jimmy Carter’s funeral was revealing regarding the character and professionalism of the various guests, which included all of the living former and current Presidents, First Ladies and VPs. I wish I could embed videos of all of the interesting interactions among these figures, but WordPress won’t let me. I also wish a single video had the right angles and sufficient length to capture what went on, but if there is such a video, I can’t find it. I will have to make do with links. The revelations…
Barack Obama behaved the most presidential and professional of all the POTUS has-beens. The media seems stunned that he not only sat next to Trump but engaged him in what appeared to be lively and cordial conversation. Good for him. Obama, like Trump, knows the difference between what politicians say for public consumption and personal attacks that are sincere. Leaders of opposing parties should be able to rip each other up on the stump and have a beer together afterwards. It is not at all surprising that Obama, an assassin when it is called for, could go from calling Trump a threat to democracy to being chummy at an official event.
Donald Trump didn’t snub anyone. He was even formally cordial to Mike Pence, whom the media said “greeted Trump stiffly,” but Pence does everything stiffly. Trump’s estranged former VP might have taken his cue from Al Gore, who stood respectfully for Trump, and then Pence followed his lead. Al was raised to have good manners.
It sure looks like George W. Bush intentionally ignored Trump, while giving a jockish tummy-tap to Obama. The unmitigated fury of the Bush-Cheney gang toward Trump for his (needlessly) harsh words about Dick, Jeb and George in 2016 is petty and ridiculously continuous. Bush’s behavior at the funeral toward a President -Elect of his own party just makes him look petty. (Speaking of looks, Bush II looks terrible.)
And stop making me defend Kamala Harris! Everyone is saying she snubbed Trump, but she arrived late, and she didn’t really interact much with anyone. Funerals aren’t cocktail parties. I know people who are entirely focused on the solemn event at funerals. I’ll give Kamala the benefit of the doubt.
Bill and Hillary Clinton greeted the row behind them, but did not appear to make any effort to acknowledge Obama or Trump.
Michelle Obama chose not to attend.
Meanwhile the news media seemingly still can’t cover any event that involves Donald Trump without fanning the flames of Trump Derangement. Here are samples from an obnoxious and biased report on the funeral by Stephen Collinson:
- “Obama got what his fellow presidents might consider the short straw — the spot next to Trump.” Nice: the seat next to the incoming, popularly elected people’s choice as President of the United States is drawing the short straw. Verdict: Stephen Collinson is an asshole.
- “After all, Trump rose to power with a racist and false conspiracy about Obama’s birthplace.” As Ethics Alarms has repeatedly pointed out, Trump has used the claim that an opponent wasn’t born in the U.S. against others: the smear was a cheap shot, but it wasn’t racist.
- “As to the subject of [Obama and Trump’s] conversation — who knows? Perhaps it was golf, which may be the only obsession they share.”Right. I’d say national affairs and foreign affairs, as well as leadership and politics qualify as “obsessions” they both share, but to party hacks like Collinson, Trump has no serious interests.
- “…Mike Pence…greeted Trump with a stilted handshake that was a legacy of their split when the once-and-future President tried to steal the 2020 election.”The current President then was convinced that the election just completed had been illegally rigged, and his Constitutional oath mandated, in his view, taking action to slow the process of confirming it. Neither any court nor the U.S. Senate, nor the voting public concluded that Trump tried to “steal the 2020 election.” For this CNN propagandist to state as fact that is what occurred is irresponsible.
- “Carter’s former domestic policy chief Stuart Eizenstat delivered a gem that applies to each of the former presidents — and Biden especially. “’The test of American presidents is not the number of years they serve, but the duration of their accomplishments.’” “Biden especially?” What accomplishments? What’s the color of the sky on your planet, Stephen?
- “Given Trump’s impending inauguration and his legacy of trashing presidential norms, public courtesies and constitutional guardrails, the funeral honoring Carter, who was renowned for supporting global democracy and piety, was always going to take on an allegorical dimension.” Oh look, the Big Lie about norms again! The current administration has propped up a disabled President with the full complicity of news organizations like Collinson’s employer; Trump’s opponent was chosen without any of the normal nomination processes, nobody knows who’s been running the country for the last four years, and Trump is accused of trashing presidential norms.
- “As [Ted]Mondale praised Carter for his early recognition of global warming, a force that is fueling murderous fires in Los Angeles, Trump, a climate change denier, stared at his order of service as he sat beside future first lady Melania Trump.”There is no evidence that “global warming” is causing the fires in California, though there is considerable evidence that Democratic Governor Gavin Newsome’s water policies and Democratic mayor of L.A. Karen Bass’s cutting the fire fighting budget made the disaster worse.
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“Given Biden’s antipathy to his predecessor and successor, it was hard not to see deliberate criticism in his eulogy.’We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor. And to stand up to what my dad used to say is the greatest sin of all, the abuse of power,” Biden said. “We’re all fallible. But it’s about asking ourselves, are we striving to do things, the right things? What value – what are the values that animate our spirit? Do we operate from fear or hope? Ego or generosity? Do we show grace?’” Wow, what satirist wrote that? Grace, like calling supporters of the President -Elect “garbage.” What is calling your political opponent an existential threat to democracy, fear or hope? Funny, this sure looked and sounded like hate to me…
….because that’s what it was designed to fuel. Abuse of power!—you know, like trying to use a state of emergency after the emergency has passed to block landlords from getting the rent they are owed, or like forgiving student loans via executive order, or like siccing your Justice Department on your primary rival for the Presidency.
No bias in that piece! Just straightforward, objective reporting…
Ethics Alarms 
V1 – video 1 (For easy reference)
I hate to say this, since obviously a lot of work went into creating this post, but the material in it is at the point where it’s becoming predictable and boring. That’s because it’s gone on for so long in the same way.
Yes, Bush and his allies hate Trump for essentially shoving them aside and seizing the top spot. They probably can’t wait for his second term to end so they can make a move for the top spot again. No, they aren’t letting go and it’s kind of foolish to expect them to at this point, because if they were going to they already would have. They’re like the group of kids at school who won’t move on after something stupid, at some point it becomes their problem and not yours. Yes, Bush the younger does not look too good. He’s moving farther into his 70s now and the stresses of being president in wartime together with his previous history of alcohol abuse are probably catching up to him.
Yes, Pence was very stilted in his meeting with Trump, both of them see what happened 4 years ago in a different way and Pence probably thinks Trump set him up, whether intentionally or not, to be murdered. His wife ignored Trump outright, and she’d probably have preferred her husband do the same, but, as you say, he was taking his cue from Gore. Michelle Obama was thousands of miles away in Hawaii and chose not to make the trip back, presuming that the fact that her husband was there would be enough.
I wish I could say I was surprised by the material in the CNN review of the event. I am not. Over the past few years many of the legacy media have gone Michael Moore and cannot pass up even a single opportunity for a cheap sneer or jeer especially when Donald Trump is the target. In all fairness, they had started getting there during the administration of Bush the younger. They also don’t pass up chances for more substantive criticism even when it is irrelevant. When Paul O’Neill died, the former Bush treasury secretary, the obituaries made a point of including that his criticism of that administration’s policies turned out to be well founded.
Of course they talked about Carter like he had achieved great things. He had become nearly a saint in their Pantheon. The fact is that he did not achieve great things as president and did not really achieve much after he was president other than continual campaigning for the Nobel Peace prize.
Of course they also talked in terms of the current wildfires in California being due to climate change. That way they get to plug one of their pet causes and take a swipe at Trump at the same time. There is no evidence that climate change had anything to do with these fires. There is, however, a fair amount of evidence that environmental policies that diverted water and prevented controlled burns to eliminate highly flammable undergrowth and dead trees both contributed to the current horrible conditions. Karen Bass could not even answer questions about her policies, like cutting 17 million from the fire department budget, after all, her department has the first and only lesbian fire chief in the country and that counts for something, right?
The fact of the matter is that the Democratic parties obsession with DEI and perhaps inability to move past 2020 is now starting to affect National security and public safety. I think there is a police that as long as the people on the ground deliver the services, it’s perfectly okay to use the top ranks to showcase diversity and firsts, and worry about leadership later.
Anyone who has read military history can tell you otherwise. I say that because public safety services are often organized in a paramilitary way. Pretty much all of America’s major wars have opened with incompetence at the top, especially the Civil War and World War II. The union only started to win the civil War when Grant (who McClellan initially refused recommissioning), Sherman, Sheridan, and Thomas emerged to lead the effort. It didn’t take as long in World War II for the competent commanders to push the incompetent aside, although we had some embarrassing moments before that. The War of 1812 shows a little bit of that because of the incompetence and cowardice at the top until Winfield Scott and Andrew Jackson emerged, almost too late to matter.
Then there’s also the question of World War I, where the question of incompetent leadership at all levels came into play. Initially a lot of the Allied leaders were clueless, leading to the meat grinder that was the Western front. The Russian leadership was useless and we saw what happened as a result. Even the highly organized Germans suffered of crisis in leadership when a few too many royals pushed for the attack on Verdun that ended up destroying their small unit leader corps and tanked their army’s competence.
Even the greatest armies can lose if they are badly led, as they often are when politics or non-operational issues become paramount in importance. The same holds true of paramilitary forces like the police or the firefighting service. Bad leadership kills morale and leads to the experienced and the competent going elsewhere. As a result, quality suffers. It’s one thing to be a cop who gets killed because he tried to be a hero. It’s another to get killed because there is no backup. It’s one thing to be a fireman who dies in the line of duty because he tried to go the extra mile. It’s another to die in the line of duty because the water supply conked out.
The media are already working overtime to try to make excuses or cover for the Dem leadership, but there’s no hiding what happened here. The burned out area of Los Angeles county is a basis for ads that write themselves
“the Democratic parties obsession with DEI and perhaps inability to move past 2020 is now starting to affect National security and public safety.”
Gay Choirs, Trans Cafes And Social Justice Art: What LA Spent Money On While Cutting Its Fire Budget
PWS
Did anyone but me notice how very shaky President Clinton was?
But he kept smiling!
I thought the pastor in the little church in Plains, GA did a really nice job at that service. Talk about being thrust onto the world stage. Their organ player was having some real problems with some of the music.
“Leaders of opposing parties should be able to rip each other up on the stump and have a beer together afterwards. It is not at all surprising that Obama, an assassin when it is called for, could go from calling Trump a threat to democracy to being chummy at an official event.“
Even on the spectrum of commenting on your opponent ranging from “genuine friendship” on one end and “this guy is literally the son of Satan and Adolf Hitler and wants to personally kill you” on the other end. That somewhere there’s a cutoff…somewhere that maybe calling someone the “end of democracy” might lie beyond? And therefore it is hypocritical to then be “chummy” with the accused in private?
Oh, it shows that Obama’s rant was BS, but it was a David Manning Lie, a lie that anyone with a brain new was a lie when Obama said it. And he proves it here. Yeah, I think as political theater goes it was below the belt, but at least O knows when to drop the mask.
So, am I to understand the “The Donald is Satan” trope is just that, trope and all political theater? Seems so, right? Otherwise, Obama should have whacked him right before the funeral service started to save the country from his pure evilness.
jvb
“Obama should have whacked him right before the funeral service started to save the country from his pure evilness.”
The Lefty blogosphere is cutting Hope-n-Change a new one for dancing with the devil.
PWS
Again – I don’t see how you can pretend like “it’s just theater” when that particular type of rhetoric, in our republic, either must have the meaning it conveys or the speaker must never say it. It has an effect on the population.
So if he said it….he *MUST* mean it. No way around this. Even if in his inner heart he doesn’t mean it….he MUST mean it if it is spoken in our government.
That makes his “cordiality” gross hypocrisy and his comments worse than lies but wretchedly intentional destruction.
Someone should really teach Trump how to sit up, I know he doesn’t give a damn but slouching is really unbecoming.
…but she arrived late…
Not sure this is fair. She may have been seated later, but I doubt she arrived late. Watching them all file in, the VP row was filled first, then the former president row was filled from most recent (Trump) to least recent (Clinton), then the current administration was seated, VP first and then POTUS.
It did seem like a very coordinated entrance and seating, so that gives me pause when I read “she arrived late”.
(Sorry to nitpick!)
I just realized: Carter was eulogized by two other one-termers: Ford and Biden, as several two-termers sat in the audience.
Clearly Carter did not want to be upstaged at his funeral; and a dead Ford and a live Biden could not accomplish that.
-Jut
Pols shoould try to be cordial, of course, and even friendly if they have shared interests. Too much it seems that “opposition” is theater for the constituents back home, before they get together to divy up the featherbed jobs like whose son is put on the Amtrak board (hello, Hunter) and whose daughter gets a gig on the National Council on the Arts, etc.