My bet is that Trump, in using his bully pulpit, will teach American politicians from coast to coast how to communicate with our fellow citizens. And thank God for it. Here is an excerpt from a National Journal article posted at ConservativeByte.com:
President-Elect Donald Trump shows that he already has the skills and inclination to use the bully pulpit. He wll be able to talk directly to the public, and use the light of day and of reason to move his policies forward. Theodore Roosevelt was a champion at this and he did not even have the advantage of Twitter.
As Written by Charlie Cook for National Journal
A tweet by Donald Trump earlier this week caused eye-rolling among people with an even cursory knowledge of constitutional law. “Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag—if they do, there must be consequences—perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail,” Trump pronounced. Burning the flag is pretty despicable, but it’s a form of protected free speech, which was made clear by Supreme Court decisions in 1989 and 1990. Even uber conservative Justice Antonin Scalia concurred. But the tsk-tsking among elites amounted to another example of the phenomenon that Salena Zito observed in The Atlantic back in September: “The press takes him [Trump] literally, but not seriously, his supporters take him seriously, but not literally.” He says things for effect, such as “there ought to be a law” or “it ticks me off when people do this.” The simple fact is that there are a lot more Americans who agree with Trump that people shouldn’t be burning flags than there are people who are parsing Supreme Court decisions.
But this week something else happened that got much less attention, but arguably is much more important. Carrier, a unit of United Technologies, announced that it was reversing its plan to close down an Indianapolis furnace-building plant that Trump had made a big fuss about, potentially saving the Hoosier State 1,000 well-paid manufacturing jobs. Trump’s public lambasting of the planned job shift, along with behind-the-scenes maneuvering by the governor and Vice President-elect Mike Pence, saved the day. Apparently there were a package of incentives offered the company if it stayed put.
Read more: ConservativeByte.com
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