Dear Mister President-Elect,
Congratulations!
As you can probably guess, I didn’t vote for you. And yeah, many of my crowd supported your opponent and, as you’ve put it, said some things about you that were not so nice. But let’s put that behind us and remember that once shared some common ground: in a long-ago world where Bill and Hillary attended your wedding, we actually kind-of dug your brand.
It’s true. I used to live in Chicago and thought that the skyscraper you put up along the river complemented the city nicely. When I was a kid on my first trip to New York City with my parents in the 1980s, we went to Trump Tower, which had just opened on Fifth Avenue. I get it: I’m a big-city northeastern boy too, raised on subways and tall buildings. And all of us want to see this Republic succeed. So how do we do that?
I know, you scored a lot of points by making friends with those Breitbart folks, and it sure won you a lot of popularity in some parts of the country. Although most of us in blue America hated a lot of what you said, you did hit on some stuff we liked: while we have a military filled with honorable women and men (something we were all reminded of this Veterans Day), we waste that talent policing problems around the globe that we often make worse by sticking our nose in them.
You touched a nerve with that — and you’ll find many Bernie Sanders lefties flocking to your side on that point. So put your money where your mouth is, and shut down wasteful, stupid military spending. Focus our troops on targeted, important things, but keep things lean and mean. I bet our armed forces could be just as effective and cost half as much — and imagine how much money that’ll save our people. And that’s just good business sense, right?
Focus our troops on targeted, important things, but keep things lean and mean. I bet our armed forces could be just as effective and cost half as much.
I read your book when I was in high school and liked it. Oh, forget about your co-author bitching about it, and you. My favorite takeaway from the book was how you had a rep in New York for building stuff on time and on budget. That’s awesome! America’s in desperate, desperate need of new stuff built, and it’s just the kind of thing a President with a background in construction can kickstart: highways, bridges, airports, trains.
You’ve probably been to Europe or China and seen how they’re beating us with trains. We need to win with trains. Tell those whiny Republicans to shut up about them being a socialist idea. You’re from New York, you know how a great city works. Build America some fast trains to ease the horrible crowding we have at our nation’s airports, Mister President-elect, and we’ll love you for it.
Back to those Breitbart people for a second (like you, I have a tendency to go off on tangents). I know they helped you win, but let’s face it, most of them aren’t helping the conversation and you know it. So do a Night of the Long Knives (not literally, of course), and lose them. Go back to being the New York libertarian you always were. You hate the Republican establishment and they hate you right back. Heck, you don’t even agree with them on much… so why toe the party line? You want to renegotiate trade deals? You want to fix immigration? Actually not a bad idea! And both are more connected than you think.
You hate the Republican establishment and they hate you right back… so why toe the party line?
I came here from Canada thanks to a NAFTA work visa — which is part of what’s good about NAFTA. Most trade deals right now aren’t great because they benefit countries with cheap labor but screw over our people who have no freedom to either move or retrain. Well, how about we set up something in this country so workers can train for new and better jobs if they want them — kind of like how the GI Bill helped the World War II generation. We bake into our trade deals the ability for our workers and workers from other countries to easily and legally work where they want. I don’t think anybody, liberal or conservative, is against good, honest people coming to this country to work (or vice versa). If you make that process easier — something so many Presidents have promised but couldn’t make happen — then all that extreme vetting you talked about during the election won’t be much of an issue.
Then there’s some other big stuff: tax cuts, climate change, the LGBTQ. For the first one, there’s such an easy solution Republican types keep overlooking: if you don’t want to raise taxes and don’t want to make it all government’s job, then do what your ancestors did, the Carnegies, the Rockefellers, the Mellons, and all those guys who came to New York before you. They built libraries, schools, and Rockefeller Center. Make it easier for this generation of America’s wealthy to do the same. Get them together and make them do it.
Don’t believe all this right-wing think tank hooey about climate change being a Chinese hoax — come on, you know it’s real. Remember Hurricane Sandy nearly taking down your city? Plus there’s lots of money to be made in new energy tech, just as there was in oil circa 1885. Fighting climate change could be good business.
Next, please, listen to Ivanka and Melania, who no doubt have tons of colleagues and friends in LGBTQ-land. Blow off Mike Pence and his calls for bathroom laws and conversion therapy. Those guys don’t get it. You’ve lived in New York your whole life. You’ve traveled across America for this campaign. You know we’re bigger than that.
Blow off Mike Pence’s bathroom laws and conversion therapy. You’ve lived in New York your whole life. You’ve traveled across America for this campaign. You know we’re bigger than that.
And finally, if you really want to unite the country the way you said in your acceptance speech, then go rogue and fill your cabinet with people nobody expects. Put Bernie Sanders in the Treasury Department. Make nice with Elizabeth Warren and put her on Indian Affairs. If there’s one thing we’ve learned about you, Mister President-Elect, it’s that you know how to entertain, and you’ve got a sense of humor. Use those to bring us together, put this ugly, awful campaign behind us and begin the process of becoming One Nation, Indivisible once more.
Yours,
David Jedeikin