Race is about what’s right, not left vs. right

Sunday, July 31, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Now that the Democratic and Republican parties have wrapped up their nominating conventions, there are 100 days left before Election Day.

But the vote might as well be tomorrow. What happened in Cleveland and Philadelphia, combined with a couple of key developments on the periphery, made it more clear than ever that there’s only one legitimate candidate for the White House. That would be Hillary Clinton.

In terms of common decency, history of public service, depth of knowledge, the art of compromise, experience and demeanor, Clinton is the only candidate worthy of the vote. Donald Trump not only stoked fear with his acceptance speech, but followed up by yet again going into his nightmarish carnival-barker act — suggesting the Russians should hack Clinton’s email account, reiterating his support for waterboarding terrorism suspects, insulting some of our NATO allies, etc. ¶ With good reason, a growing number of experts and observers are stating the obvious: this man is unfit to serve as president. Coming out of the conventions, the contrast between Clinton and Trump couldn’t be more stark. Let’s explore.

Choice of Clinton is clear already, and it will only get clearer

In rationalizing who should next sit in the Oval Office, there are obvious criteria by which to judge candidates.

A presidential search committee for a major corporation, for instance, would not put forward a candidate whose background includes a series of bankruptcies and a flood of lawsuits as well as public displays of sexual harassment, racial bigotry, religious intolerance and condescension toward those who worked for him. (And the fact that voters chose such a person in Donald Trump to represent the Republican Party, no matter how frustrated they might be with Washington, is bewildering.)

The White House job calls for overarching respect for all citizens of the United States and a reverent understanding of the responsibility that comes with the job, a deep-seated desire for public service, experience with our political system, familiarity with other nations’ governments, level-headed calmness, thoughtfulness, strength without arrogance, the ability to compromise and the humility to seek the counsel of others — a sense of “we” versus “me.” Judging by his tweets and rhetoric, Trump is severely lacking in these areas.

Hillary Clinton has become the first woman in the nation’s history to be nominated for president because she meets these criteria. She is everything Trump is not, starting with possessing a selfless desire to help others. Why else would a standout graduate of Yale Law School eschew a high-profile skyscraper job and instead work for the Children’s Defense Fund, going door-to-door in New Bedford, Mass., to investigate how children with disabilities got short shrift in their education? And then, at 30, she co-founded Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families — hardly a glamorous, high-profile job, but the organization exists to this day to help children and their families get resources and opportunities to lead healthy and productive lives.

As first lady during Bill Clinton’s administration, and bruised by her efforts to promote universal health care, she nonetheless advocated for a national health insurance program that won bipartisan support and today serves 8 million children from low-income families. She can and does work both sides of the aisle. And she showed chutzpah, addressing a worldwide conference of women in Beijing in 1995. She directly challenged China’s oppression of women, saying, “It is time for us to say here in Beijing, and the world to hear, that it is no longer acceptable to discuss women’s rights as separate from human rights.” Conference attendees applauded, cheered and banged on their tables with approval.

After she lost her campaign in 2008 for president, Hillary Clinton was asked by Barack Obama to be secretary of state, a role in which she carried her campaign for gender equality to 112 countries.

Prominent among her achievements was getting Congress, European countries and even China and Russia to adopt sanctions against Iran as it was pushing forward with nuclear weapons research that it had started during the George W. Bush adminstration. The sanctions, which triggered severe economic consequences in Iran, were lifted after a treaty was signed last year among six world powers that is intended to stall Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. Experts said getting such disparate world powers to agree on the sanctions was a nearly impossible mission.

Clinton also negotiated a cease-fire in Gaza that stopped Hamas from firing rockets into Israel and helped win ratification of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, aimed at limiting the number of deployed strategic nuclear warheads in the United States and Russia. The treaty also requires provable data and inspections, providing new information about the other’s strategic forces.

The choice already is clear, and will become even more so in the ensuing months and the upcoming presidential debates: Hillary Clinton has a full grasp of the job’s requirements and won’t shrink from the presidential task or act irrationally. She has experienced the tension in the White House Situation Room when Navy SEALs were given the go-ahead to take out Osama bin Laden. She has sat opposite Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and understood him as the adversary he is to this country and Europe. She knows the politics of Capitol Hill and how to finesse bipartisan agreements. She will uphold the values of our country, celebrate the diversity of its people and champion a struggling middle class that has suffered at the hands of the one-percenters, and she will continue to work mightily to keep our nation safe. And she will do these things with the grace and dignity the office demands.

Closer one looks, the worse Trump appears

Donald Trump has certainly caught voters’ attention, what with his shoot-from-the-Twitter style of messaging and stump speeches brimming with insults, half-truths and outright lies. Yes, people do slow down to watch train wrecks.

But it’s time for voters to move on beyond the circuslike novelty of a Trump candidacy and try to seriously reconcile a Trump presidency, given his personality and experience deficits; his vain, I-alone-can-save-this-country ego; and the lacking of specifics in how he would execute his proposals, starting with his ill-conceived U.S.-Mexico border wall.

Voters need to ask themselves how Trump can pretend to espouse our bedrock American values — beginning with a fundamental respect for his fellow citizens — when he presents himself as a bombastic bully and belittler. Seriously, what pride can we take in a president, the leader of the United States of America, who brazenly insults women, mocks the disabled, challenges the character of immigrants, undermines our country’s strength overseas, blows kisses toward the Russian president, proposes killing not just terrorists but their entire families while complimenting terrorist strongmen for their leadership and incredibly characterizing President Barack Obama as ignorant, and boasts of financial successes that have come at the expense of his tradesmen, subcontractors and investors.

How can voters support a man who calls for the U.S. to reclaim its manufacturing roots, yet hypocritically turns to overseas factories to make his own Trump-branded merchandise? Or deceitfully promises tax reform for the middle class that will bust the federal budget and actually reward the one-percenters? And who won’t be forthcoming and ethically transparent by following the tradition of previous presidential candidates and turning over a copy of his tax returns so people can check his financial credentials? (Yes, he has something to hide. There is no other explanation.)

Something else that Trump’s tax returns would show: how financially connected his company is with Russia, a question with far-reaching implications that could turn the Republican Party on its head. It is a relevant question because Trump has shown an admiration for President Vladimir Putin that is widely seen as his efforts to gain a business foothold there, playing out against Trump’s ill regard for NATO, shrugging off Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2014 and showing his willingness to cede the Crimea and perhaps the Baltic states to Russian invasions. The inappropriateness of the Trump-Putin relationship has magnified in recent days, first with news that Russian agents had hacked Democratic Party servers and lifted 20,000 emails, then with Trump suggesting that Russia snoop around for Hillary Clinton’s missing State Department emails, and then on Friday with reports that Russia has hacked into Clinton’s campaign servers.

In a shocking turn of events, Russian agents engaged in a determined exercise in cyber espionage to benefit a grateful Trump. The Russians appear terrified of a Clinton administration that will firmly protect the interests of the United States and our allies, while Trump panders to the Kremlin and the oligarchs who invest in him.

The Washington Post has pursued the question of Trump’s motives in befriending Russia, citing a 2008 speech by his son, Donald Jr., at a real estate conference, at which he said, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

And this year, Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, told Washington Post writers: “I can tell you, as a company, we’re always looking at new developments. No question about it. We’re always looking to expand and do projects all over the world. I have no doubt, as a company, I know we’ve looked at deals in Russia. And many of the former Russian Republics.”

Trump’s Miss Universe Pageant was staged in Moscow in 2013, leading Trump to tweet, “Do you think Putin will be going to The Miss Universe Pageant in November in Moscow - if so, will he become my new best friend?”

Trump is such an embarrassment to his own political party — the party of Lincoln, the party of Reagan — few party leaders (and no former presidents) showed up at the Republican National Convention. Those who did appeared terribly uncomfortable. The only competing primary candidate to show up in Cleveland, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, properly admonished attendees to vote their conscience. And his own running mate doesn’t even agree with Trump on issues.

Trump is embraced by isolationists, bigots, chauvinists and those who are not comfortable with Clinton because of her handling of emails while secretary of state. His criticism of how she managed her emails is laughable, given his invitation to Russia to subversively hack Hillary Clinton’s personal server.

By all possible criteria, Trump — lacking any skills in diplomacy and betraying American values — is unfit for the White House. His election would put the United States in harm’s way.