Throwing Poxes September 29, 2016 Ask your Trump-leaning friend to listen to Mike Morell: I Ran the C.I.A. Now I’m Endorsing Hillary Clinton During a 33-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, I served presidents of both parties — three Republicans and three Democrats. I was at President George W. Bush’s side when we were attacked on Sept. 11; as deputy director of the agency, I was with President Obama when we killed Osama bin Laden in 2011. I am neither a registered Democrat nor a registered Republican. In my 40 years of voting, I have pulled the lever for candidates of both parties. As a government official, I have always been silent about my preference for president. No longer. On Nov. 8, I will vote for Hillary Clinton. Between now and then, I will do everything I can to ensure that she is elected as our 45th president. Two strongly held beliefs have brought me to this decision. First, Mrs. Clinton is highly qualified to be commander in chief. I trust she will deliver on the most important duty of a president — keeping our nation safe. Second, Donald J. Trump is not only unqualified for the job, but he may well pose a threat to our national security. . . . [HIS POWERFUL ARGUMENT CONCLUDES:] My training as an intelligence officer taught me to call it as I see it. This is what I did for the C.I.A. This is what I am doing now. Our nation will be much safer with Hillary Clinton as president. Your Trump-leaning friend will not find former CIA directors taking the other side of the argument — endorsing Trump. There is no other side to the argument. Likewise, the extraordinary Clinton endorsements by the Dallas Morning News, the Cincinnati Enquirer — papers that had never before in my lifetime endorsed a Democrat for president. And now the Arizona Republic, which hasn’t done so since its founding in 1890. (And the Detroit News, failing to endorse a Republican for the first time since its founding in 1873, calling Trump, “unprincipled, unstable and quite possibly dangerous — he can not be president” and endorsing instead the guy who didn’t know what Aleppo was.) This is not a trivial thing for these newspapers to do — not least because their Republican owners knew it would cost them subscribers (as it has) at a time when their industry is struggling. As for your friends who can’t abide Trump but plan to vote for Johnson or Stein (or stay home), refer them to the New York Times endorsement, which aims “to persuade those of you who are hesitating to vote for Mrs. Clinton.” If they’re millennials, ask them if it isn’t worth voting “D” to be able to refinance their federal student loans at today’s low rates — something the “R’s” have blocked? Yes there’s lots broken in Washington your friends are right to want to shake up. But “a pox on both their houses” is the wrong prescription and does not fit the facts. The facts are that, for all our flaws, Democrats have been willing to compromise; Tea Party Republicans have prided themselves on not being willing to — on blocking the American Jobs Act that would have put millions to work revitalizing our infrastructure and boosted our economy with jobs that can’t be outsourced; on blocking the minimum wage hike that economists agree would have reduced inequality (and welfare payments) while boosting the economy for everyone else; on blocking the comprehensive immigration reform the Senate passed 68-32 and that economists also agree would have boosted the economy. The facts are that during the last Clinton Administration, 23 million new jobs were created, as prosperity increased for people at every income level; the budget deficit was turned into a surplus; and American lives were not lost at war. The facts are that during the Obama administration, we’ve had 78 months of private-sector job growth (15 million more net new private-sector jobs, versus fewer than one million in the past 12 Republican years combined); the Bush deficit has been cut two-thirds so that our National Debt is once again growing slower than the economy as a whole; median household income is finally rising again, up $2,798 last year; and the body count of American soldiers is no longer nightly news. So it’s not equivalent. If you’re going to throw poxes around, please don’t throw them on both houses; just one. We need to win by a landslide: to reassure the world we’ve not gone nuts; to take the wind out of the sails of conspiracy theorists Trump has already primed to think his loss could only have been “rigged”; and to win back Congress so we can do the obvious things most Americans want us to do to shift the economy into high gear: most importantly, those mentioned above. Click here to vote, here to volunteer, here to contribute — and here to see what Republicans are saying about Trump and Clinton.