THE BUCK DOESN'T EVEN PAUSE THERE

          By Robert P. Bomboy

Americans in 1945 were proud to know that President Harry Truman had a sign on his desk that declared 'THE BUCK STOPS HERE.'

            I've heard that President Donald Trump has a sign on his Oval Office door that reads: BUCK DETOUR, with a bright yellow arrow pointing outside the White House.

            Trump's record since he took office in January is a crawling pusillanimity of dodges and swerves. I took Latin in high school and I remember that the word pusillanimous came from the Latin roots that meant "very small spirit."

            President Pinocchio lies every day, and when he doesn't lie, he dodges. With Trump it's always someone else's fault.

·       Trump led a years-long crusade, the "birther" movement, falsely claiming that President Barak Obama hadn't been born in America. He wrongly blamed Hillary Clinton for starting the rumor.

• He blamed Obama for a nonexistent wiretap of Trump Tower that never happened, according to the investigation of 17 intelligence agencies and testimony to Congress.

• He blamed on Obama the failed January 29 U.S. counter-terrorism raid in Yemen, even though Trump approved the raid as his first military strike, hardly a week after his inauguration.

·       Trump wrongly blamed Obama and “his people” for widespread public protests against the administration, its Muslim travel bans, the Unaffordable Care Act, and Russian interference in last year's election.

·       He blamed airport protests of his travel ban on a Delta Air Lines computer system problem and on “the tears of New York Senator Chuck Schumer.”

·       He preemptively blamed future terrorist attacks on the judge who blocked the first travel ban and on the court system. Observers see Trump's lashing out at Judge James Robart, and the judiciary in general, as the calculated attacks of a demagogue ready to profit from crisis.

·       He blamed "voter fraud" for his second-place showing in the popular vote during last November's election, even though university studies show voter fraud to be so rare as to be almost non-existent. It's more likely that an American will be struck by lightning than that he will impersonate another voter.

·       He blamed President George W. Bush for the 9/11 attacks.

• He got in trouble with his woebegone Trump University. Whose fault was it? "The students," he said.

·       He wrongly accused Senator Ted Cruz’s father of being involved in the Kennedy assassination. Where did he get that idea? He read it in the NATIONAL ENQUIRER garbage paper.

·       Throughout his 2016 campaign, Trump blamed Mexico for exporting criminals to this country. Not true, say researchers at the University of Massachusetts: First-generation immigrants have a significantly lower crime rate than that of the overall U.S. population.

·       He blamed a mysteriously unavailable audit for his refusal to release his tax returns.

• He blamed Democrats, among others, for the failure of the first Republican healthcare bill this spring in the House of Representatives.

• He has repeatedly blamed Democrats for the investigation into his contacts with Russia.

• He fired FBI director James Comey last week and blamed him as a "showboat" and a "grandstander," though he confessed on TV that he was thinking about Comey's investigation of his campaign's possible ties to the Russians.

• He fired his national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, after 18 days of dodging, but blamed the decision on U.S. intelligence agencies, Democrats, and the news media. He blames everything on the media.

·       He blamed Senate Democrats for failing to confirm his nominees, even though he still hasn't even nominated anyone for hundreds of key government positions.

·       He blamed the failure of the first Republican health-care bill on Democrats, moderate Republicans, conservative Republicans in the House of Representatives' Freedom Caucus, the Heritage Foundation, the Club for Growth and, indirectly, House Speaker Paul Ryan.

·       He blamed his White House staff for giving him bad information when he falsely claimed that, in the 2016 election, he had the largest electoral-vote victory since Ronald Reagan.

He could learn a lesson from President Reagan who, in 1987, owned up to his administration’s shady dealings during what is now known as the Iran-Contra scandal. “As angry as I may be about activities undertaken without my knowledge, I am still accountable for those activities,” Reagan admitted. “As disappointed as I may be in some who served me, I’m still the one who must answer to the American people for this behavior. And as personally distasteful as I find secret bank accounts and diverted funds - as the Navy would say, this happened on my watch.”

Stand-up guys take responsibility. President George W. Bush years ago spoke of ushering in a new “era of personal responsibility.” Since his inauguration, Trump has redefined "personal responsibility": Everything is the responsibility of other persons.

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