Politics is a dirty game. How many times have we heard it over the years? Politicians are a breed of their own. Not everyone is meant to spend their lives in public service. However, not all politicians are all born leaders too. Some win by sheer charm alone or because they are good talkers but that does not mean they are meant to be a leader. It can also be that they can lead others but in a different way, in the world of business perhaps but not necessarily as a public leader holding an official function in the government.
We can’t deny that President Donald Trump won the election fair and square. And for several months now, he has been leading all Americans into the future – what kind that is, we don’t know yet. Despite his undeniable success in the poll, people are now complaining as to the type of leader he has become. Many are even doubtful that he’ll be able to realize his promise of making America great again when he has done nothing really of immense value so far aside from issuing lots of travel bans, trying to abolish the Affordable Care Act, and holding lavish meetings with world leaders in his exclusive clubs, etc.
He threatened. He tweeted. He lost.
President Donald Trump might be forgiven for thinking he could bully U.S. senators to vote for a measure even GOP lawmakers said they did not actually want to become law. They needed a win, the president needed a win and the bare-knuckled tactics had worked before, helping him to win the presidential election.
Instead, Trump was hit with a major loss in the wee hours of Friday morning, when three tough-as-nails Republican senators joined a united Democratic caucus to defeat a partial repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Republicans promised that the so-called “skinny repeal,” which would have eliminated the health insurance mandate of Obamacare, was just a vehicle to force a negotiating session with the House on a more comprehensive package.
Despite winning the presidency, he still hasn’t let go of his fascination with Twitter. His tweets were always mostly controversial and Trump’s actions continue to divide the country instead of uniting everyone in rebuilding the greatness of America. It’s quite confusing now what his intentions really are and how he sees the presidency and his role as president of the country. Even the ones who voted for him during the last election isn’t exactly quite happy with the way he is leading the US so far.
In the end, nothing was more damaging to the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare than President Donald Trump himself. His performance in handling the first major legislative initiative of his administration was a complete failure of leadership. Had this been an episode of “The Apprentice,” someone would be sitting around the boardroom table telling the commander in chief, “You’re fired!”
Yes, it is difficult to dismantle any major piece of social policy. Once Americans become used to a program, no matter how controversial, taking away those benefits often fails. History is filled with examples, such as Social Security, where battles to retrench the social safety net go down in flames. But the Senate Republicans fell only one vote short of the number needed to keep the repeal effort alive.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is blaming the Democrats for the defeat that makes him look like much less than a master of the Senate.
Yet in this case the President must bear a huge part of the burden. This was an epic fail. With united government, a stunned Democratic Party and a promise to repeal that had been the rallying cry for the GOP since Congress passed the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Republicans faced pretty good odds that they could get some kind of bill to the President’s desk.
Since the campaign, Trump was adamant in abolishing Obamacare – former President Obama’s legacy to the US. While flawed in itself, it does not mean that Obamacare isn’t serving its purpose. And besides, even the new healthcare bill being cooked up by the Republicans isn’t as great either with many Americans on the verge of losing access to basic health care services and insurance coverage if passed. But despite his immense power as the US President, even the simple act of updating the nation’s healthcare system is a total failure so far as he failed to gain the necessary votes from legislators. President Trump always took to social media to air his sentiments and perhaps the people are finally seeing his real color and capacity as a leader that’s where all this chaos and conflict is coming from.
