David Webb: Washington is open for business … or is it?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Washington D.C. is open for business … or is it?
2018 ended with a few exits and a shift in job responsibility in the Trump administration.
That was coupled with a partial government shutdown when Democrats (and some Republicans) refused to deliver on border security. Much of the breathless media reporting would have you believe the end of the world was imminent.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}YOU CAN WATCH "REALITY CHECK" EXCLUSIVELY ON FOX NATION. SIGN UP FOR YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW.
Planes were going to fall out of the sky, national parks would be swallowed by sinkholes and people would starve. Yes, it is a bit ridiculous, but you get the idea.
What does this new unreal and sometimes surreal political reality inside the Beltway mean for the country?
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
Time for a Reality Check…
Let’s begin with the world of the political appointee.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Political appointees are the president’s arms and legs in the vast bureaucracy. That’s the purpose of the appointee.
Whether you are Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State or just a secretary typing on a computer. The purpose, the only purpose you have is to further the president’s management agenda.
And if you don’t know what that is you can go to the White House website and see what the president thinks on the top 20 or 30 issues. Read them and then you can execute the president’s management agenda.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}It’s interesting that Democrats seem to understand this so well and Republicans do not.
And if you’re a Democrat who is serving in a Republican administration then doubly shame on you. If you disagree then you should simply say I disagree and resign, effective immediately.
Political appointees are the president’s arms and legs in the vast bureaucracy. That’s the purpose of the appointee. You don’t get to call your own terms, you don’t get to set your own policies. I think this is the greatest frustration for the president.
You don’t get to call your own terms, you don’t get to set your own policies. I think this is the greatest frustration for the president.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}He needs arms and legs to execute what he wants and he doesn’t need people telling him, for example, that we don’t need the wall we can do it with drones or technology. They need to execute the policy that the president of the United States sets down.
They had no problem doing that with Obama and if they didn’t, they were fired immediately. And everybody said, oh that’s great, they were fired because they didn’t do what Obama was elected to do.
But they will not give Trump the same rank.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}These are the rules of Washington.
Now … the party responsibility
You can have differences in policy opinion. But attacks disguised as analysis are transparent.
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Mitt Romney the incoming Republican senator from Utah penned an op-ed in the Washington Post. He makes some fair ‘policy’ points but also attacks Trump. Is he the new McCain, Flake, Corker combined?
He cites a 2016 Pew Research poll of how other nations citizens feel about America
“In a 2016 Pew Research Center poll, 84 percent of people in Germany, Britain, France, Canada and Sweden believed the American president would “do the right thing in world affairs.” One year later, that number had fallen to 16 percent.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Could someone please tell Mitt Romney that our republic is not governed by opinion, especially from outside our sovereign borders? Voters chose Obama over him, and voters chose Trump over Clinton.
The GOP is made up of we, the registered Republican voters. We are not subjects of the elected officials. We chose a new leader of the party and the country.
In 2010 I was in a documentary called “District of Corruption.”
{{#rendered}} {{/rendered}}Political and institutional bureaucratic corruption are once again on the rise in D.C. Our futures are being bought and stolen by influence and money is the center. How will the Beltway function in 2019? Will it be the hyper-partisan District of Corruption?
Adapted from David Webb's "Reality Check" monologue on Fox Nation.
YOU CAN WATCH "REALITY CHECK" EXCLUSIVELY ON FOX NATION. SIGN UP FOR YOUR FREE TRIAL NOW.