This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2017, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
House Speaker Paul Ryan has confirmed what many have long suspected: The Republicans have finally succeeded in converting the presidency into a training institution for the incompetent and reality-challenged.
True, there were earlier "graduates" — the avuncular actor who knew his line (much of the time) and looked presidential but whose "voodoo economics" and union-busting policies triggered the ruin of the middle class. Then, the party gave us the father and son act, the father decent but addled, compounding our economic problems. And the son, well, the less said ...
But now, we have the most audacious specimen since "A. B. Normal" ever to escape, er, emerge from the GOP presidential laboratory, the Great Undoer. Instead of presidential character, he gives us caricature — Mussolini-like poses, bluff and bluster, those "undo" orders over the seismographic signatures, brazen nepotism in lieu of organization, plundering the environment and "vampire economics," sucking what's left of the life from the working and middle classes.
Rather than loudspeakers on every corner, we have Twitter tweeting his stream-of-consciousness nocturnal transmissions, however contradictory, untrue or mean-spirited.
It's all so Machiavellian, so Orwellian, so Ayn Randian.
Our democracy seriously imperiled, our foes rejoice.
Rodney Johnson
Farmington