If Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s acceptance speech was full of gauzy platitudes with few real policy specifics, President Trump’s 49-point second-term “agenda” is even more of an insult to voters’ intelligence.
It’s not an agenda. It’s a magic wish list. Trump might as well be promising voters he’ll sprinkle fairy dust on them to make them all princes and princesses.
The lack of specifics is even more objectionable in light of the Republican National Convention’s decision to produce no new “platform” other than “supporting President Trump.” Without a platform, the party becomes even more of a cult of personality, and Trump’s outlandish agenda promises make him even more like the Wizard of Oz, pledging things he cannot practically deliver while his Republican allies stand slack-jawed in ill-merited awe.
The first seven agenda items come under the rubric of “jobs.” The first is typical: “Create 10 million new jobs in 10 months.”
Yes, that’s it. There is nothing about how he would “create” such jobs. Trump promises the moon and the stars without even identifying the type of jet fuel, much less designing the rocket.
Likewise, Trump promises to “create 1 million new small businesses” and to cut even more taxes without specifying which ones. And in response to COVID-19, Trump promises to “develop a vaccine by the end of 2020” and “make all critical medicines and supplies for healthcare workers in the United States.” Yeah, just like that. Easy as pie. His magic wand is really powerful. Of course, that’s not really an argument for reelecting him, since if he can develop a vaccine by the end of this year, it won’t be an issue at all by the time he starts his new term on Jan. 20, 2021.
Under a separate section on China, the agenda pledges to “hold China fully accountable for allowing the virus to spread around the world.” It doesn’t say how. The agenda promises to “cut prescription drug prices.” It doesn’t say how, nor does it say how it will do that while simultaneously managing to “lower healthcare insurance premiums” — not just slow the increase in premiums, mind you, but actually cut them.
On and on goes this tommyrot, until finally concluding with two great policies related to national security. First, “wipe out global terrorists who threaten to harm Americans,” and then “build a great cybersecurity defense system and missile defense system.”
Gee, why didn’t Biden think of those things? Biden must really be a dolt. Only by reelecting Trump will we be awarded the executive order that wipes out global terrorists. After all, everybody knows that “eradicate terrorists” executive orders are unconstitutional in a president’s first term but not in the second. Otherwise, Trump would have done it already. Still, we can trust him to do it in 2021, because it says so in his agenda.
What a relief!
Now, we can all live happily ever after.
