WHAT AMERICA NEEDS NOW: A PRESIDENTIAL DAY OF ATONEMENT

At some time or other, everyone screws up in life. I certainly have. Haven’t you?

Men screw up. Women screw up. Even kids screw up.

Presidents screw up. Not just Democratic Presidents or Republican Presidents, but ALL Presidents screw up, at one time or another. And if a sitting President screws up seriously enough, then that President should be impeached, tried, convicted, and removed from office.

But what about former Presidents? Should the nation’s justice system go after Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, or Barack Obama for any actions they took while in office, even if those actions were unlawful or harmful?

Now Donald Trump has been indicted, and additional charges might follow. It seems to me that this is a bad precedent to set. The politicians and prosecutors from one political party are going after a politician from the opposing party – who is no longer in office – for his past actions while in office.

Maybe his indictment would not have occurred if Trump weren’t running again for President. Who knows? I don’t, though I can speculate as to whether Trump is being charged now so as to derail his attempted return to the Oval Office. It’s not a legal argument, but there is a logical argument to be made that if Donald Trump has no respect for the law, then it would be unwise to allow even the possibility of him re-occupying the position of the nation’s chief law enforcement officer.

I voted for the guy, twice – in large part because I did NOT wish to see Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden become President. I still don’t want Biden in the White House, and I hope someone other than Biden or Harris wins the Democratic nomination in 2024. Perhaps I would vote for that person.

America could use a solemn holiday – a National Yom Kippur – an annual day of atonement for the sins and detrimental actions of our federal government and of our President. Wouldn’t that be something – for a sitting President of the United States to publicly acknowledge that he has, at times, acted unkindly, ungenerously, ignobly, perhaps even unwisely – everything short of illegally? After all, copping to having committed illegal acts could land him in jail, or at least get him removed from office.

Imagine an even broader mandate for a POLITICIANS’ DAY OF ATONEMENT – a time for local, state, and national-level candidates, politicians, and office-holders to acknowledge and express regret and remorse and to request forgiveness for all the things they have said and done which they now realize they should not have said and done.