Opinion: Egypt: An apprentice president
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Not to get too metaphysical, but sometimes events in this big old universe collide in the most unexpected ways.
On Friday, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down. The country’s new leader? TBA.
As it happens, just the day before here in the U.S., a new (OK, old) face put himself out there as a leadership force to be reckoned with.
Cairo, meet The Donald.
Donald Trump told a cheering audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference in D.C. on Thursday that “America is missing quality leadership. I am well acquainted with winning.”
Naturally, “America” was a slip of the tongue. The U.S. has a president. Trump knows that. He meant to say “Egypt.”
As savvy as The Donald is, I’m sure he had already phoned Mubarak with the dreaded news: “You’re fired.”
In his CPAC speech, Trump laid out his political vision:
“I will not be raising taxes, we’ll be taking back hundreds of billions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us, we’ll be creating vast numbers of productive jobs, and we’ll rebuild our country so that we can be proud.”
Which makes him perfect for the Egypt job. The U.S. has been funneling $1.5 billion a year or so to the country for years. Trump’s first order will be to reimburse us.
Won’t work, you say? The Egyptians won’t accept him?
Heck, the Egyptians once embraced Julius Caesar and then Mark Antony, and they were Italians. Plus, I know Cleopatra was good-looking, but have you seen the latest Mrs. Trump?
Think of this as training. Maybe Trump does want to be president of the United States someday. Let him try running Egypt first; you know, sort of an apprenticeship.
If he does OK, we can consider moving him up to bigger and better things.
Plus he can build a couple of nice golf courses around the Pyramids while he’s there.
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-- Paul Whitefield
