PRESIDENTIAL DECORUM

We in America have invested our President, not only with the duties of a prime minister but with certain trappings of royalty as well.  This is why decorum in a president is important.  President Kennedy was very aware of this and played it to the hilt.  When given a cowboy hat as a gift, he held it in his hands and did not put it on, for example.

But decorum in the president is "out the window" now.  Someone like Sen. Flake* can have a 97% approval rating as a conservative and still have only 18% poll rating in Arizona largely because of his critical remarks about the lack of decorum by the president.  Flake after all voted for ALL the "health care" measures rapidly thrown together in the Senate no matter how awful.  That should be enough to endanger his reelection, but it is not the reason.

True, Flack, like me, finds our President scary on foreign policy.  He is sympathetic to illegal workers, and opposed to the WALL.  The latter is enough for Trump lovers to hate Flake by itself.

But the problem with our President goes beyond him.  Proposals being put forth by Republicans in the Senate and House are depressing.  The House narrowly passed the "budget" bill that blasts open the deficit by an estimated $1.5 trillion.  To pay for this deficit, Republicans will try to take away various benefits people are getting from Medicaid and Medicare.  Can we afford health care for the people in America?

Our big hope is for Trump to screw up  the tax reform.  I would be OK with a 10% cut in the corporate tax rate from 36% to 26% and see if it pays for itself.  I'm also OK with a tax rate of 10% on foreign earnings returned to America for companies that legally agree not to buy back stock for at least five years.  Buying back stock in most cases is just a waste of money by companies that don't know what to do with their excess earnings.  It is hardly certain that companies will either increase the number of employees or increase their wages as neither of these happened in the 2004 tax Holiday.

* http://www.cnn.com/2017/10/25/politics/flake-speech-trump-gop/index.html
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/michael-barone-jeff-flake-is-the-senator-from-the-wrong-state/article/2638593