Winners don't ask how

President-Elect Donald Trump told his fans that if he won, he wouldn’t question the outcome of the election, but if he didn’t, it would be only because the election was rigged. Heads I win; tails I win. He won, and he lost.

He won because forever more he’ll be the outsider who overcame the odds to win the filthiest campaign in most people’s memory, and despite errors and incidents that would have doomed and did ordinary candidates of the past, he was re-markedly untouched and seemingly untroubled to any extent by the seriousness of charges leveled at him. On the way to a successful conclusion, he has reformed the respectable Republican Party into a populist activist party eclipsing even the Tea Partiers in the pursuit of the pragmatic simplicity of twenty word solutions to massively complicated issues.

He’s the only candidate in our history who pledged to eliminate, erase, and replace eight years of time and effort by a predecessor. In so doing, he will be reinventing a wheel which has already worn out many tires rolling over people who got in the way. Immigration, health care, education, foreign relations, deficits, poverty, etc. are just some of the problems he gets to face now. It’s called governing, and it truly isn’t a reality show.

He lost because forever more he’ll be the outsider who overcame the odds to win the filthiest campaign in most people’s memory, and whenever and wherever such a style of campaign is waged, it will become Trumpic. No slogan, chant, innuendo, or sarcastic and snide comment will be too low or scurrilous. No boast or exaggerated claim will be too high a bar to reach. Not to worry; passing under the bar is much easier.

President Lincoln is known by the citizens of the union he saved as “Honest Abe”. President-elect Trump’s nickname is yet to be determined, and while 50+ percent of the voters of 2016 are skeptical of his delivering on his promises, he has a blank slate upon which to write the story of his presidency. May he write clearly and well.