America the Beautiful… I’m guessing that most of us who are Americans don’t think about what a blessing it is to have citizenship in a country that is clearly a democracy.  The elected leaders of the country have traditionally wanted to strengthen the democracy.  In my experience as a citizen with the word Democrat as the name of the political party to which I belong, I have rarely had deep reservations about the motivations of the person who has been named to lead the country as its President. I didn’t like Ronald Reagan well enough to wish I could know him personally, to want to go fishing with him, to sit down and have a talk with him.   I suspected Richard Nixon was inadequate when he was elected, and I was not surprised that he was secretive and supportive of “dirty” political dealings that he thought would make him look better than he was. I didn’t like the war that President George Bush initiated.  I thought Bill Clinton should have known better than to let his sexual behaviors soil his career and embarrass all of us who who had voted for him. I am old enough to have lived through the presidencies of eleven people.  I voted for six of the eleven. Although I disagreed politically with some of the men who held the office, I never felt until now that the country was in danger of losing its way as a democracy.  The President-elect who will become President in January 2017 worries me because he seems not to understand, or if he does understand, he seems not to value some of the things about America that make me very glad to be a citizen of this country.  He is choosing people to be included in his administration who seem inadequate for the jobs to which they are being assigned. The country seems to be at the edge of a time in history when we need someone in the White House who understands and values the democracy that is the United States of America.  Donald Trump is clearly not that person.  He seems to value his own “stuff” more than he values the idea of democracy for all citizens.

Margaret and I had a wonderful dinner tonight with Ruth and Bill DeRisi at their apartment.  Jim and Irene Fudge were also with us.