Let me put it bluntly: If you care for Ukraine, you cannot vote for Donald Trump. If you care for America, you cannot vote for Trump.
For Ukrainians and many others, Mr. Trump’s and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s mutual admiration is utterly alarming, starting with his proposal to pull the U.S. out of NATO. Doing so would undermine 75 years of a successful global security policy even as it would fulfill Russia’s strategic goal going back to Joseph Stalin.
Ominously, Mr. Trump has the team to make that happen. His campaign manager is Paul Manafort, a Washington lobbyist who specializes in representing dictators few others want anything to do with: whether Philippine autocrat Ferdinand Marcos, Congo despot Mobutu Sese Seko or Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych. According to The Washington Post, the Guardian, Politico and many other publications, Mr. Manafort reaped millions orchestrating Mr. Yanukovych’s return to power in Ukraine, he has close ties to corrupt Ukrainian oligarchs, Russian organized crime figures and, through those connections, to Mr. Putin himself.
One of Mr. Manafort’s hires as top energy advisor to the Trump campaign is Carter Page. In an article in the conservative National Review, “Trump: the Kremlin’s Candidate,” Mr. Page was revealed to be a consultant to and investor in Russia’s state-run gas company, Gazprom, with a direct financial interest in ending sanctions. He’s published articles charging the Maidan was a CIA plot and describing Ukraine as a runaway Russian province. Right out of Mr. Putin’s playbook.
As GOP nominee, Mr. Trump will get the customary national security briefing. This is causing enormous concern in America’s intelligence community. Buzzfeed, The Washington Post, Reuters, etc. cite U.S. intelligence officials who fear Mr. Trump’s brash style and his staff ties to Russia will lead to damaging leaks. As a result, CNN reports, the GOP candidate will get only a watered down, “vanilla briefing” on intelligence.
So again: no one who cares about America and its global leadership can vote for Donald Trump. On the other hand, how can a loyal Republican support a Democrat for president? It’s happened before. GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell voted for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 because he disagreed with his party’s candidate, Barry Goldwater, on civil rights.
And then, most famously, there’s the 1976 Ford-Carter race in which Republican incumbent President Gerald Ford in a nationally televised debate declared, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.” The moderator couldn’t believe what he’d just heard. “I’m sorry…what?” and gave Mr. Ford the opportunity to back off. Instead, he defended his statement and with that doomed his candidacy. Gov. Jimmy Carter called it “ridiculous” and in the days following rallied millions of ethnics to his campaign. Indeed, Ukrainian Congress Committee of America President Lev Dobriansky, a staunch Republican, lambasted President Ford’s position as “preposterous and shocking” and withdrew support for his own party’s candidate. Most Ukrainian Americans and other ethnics followed his lead and Mr. Carter won.
As president, Mr. Carter rewarded the Captive Nations Coalition, famously announcing that America’s policy toward communism would no longer be based on fear, implicitly contrasting it to the Ford administration deference to the Kremlin on dissident arrests and related issues. Guided by his National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Carter attacked the Soviet government at its greatest vulnerability: human rights and nationalities.
Robert Gates, who served both Republican and Democratic presidents, credits Mr. Carter with being “the first president during the Cold War to challenge publicly and consistently the legitimacy of Soviet rule at home… the first steps toward the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.”
Thank you, Dr. Dobriansky. Disregarding his own personal political interest, he acted on principle that affected not only ethnics but America’s national interests. Doing so, he helped to swing the election and change history.
How permanently damaging to him was that? In the1980 election, Dr. Dobriansky returned to the Republican fold to support Ronald Reagan, who took up the baton from President Carter for a relentless campaign against the Soviet Union. By the way, Mr. Reagan also appointed Dr. Dobriansky as an ambassador. His daughter Paula went on to a distinguished diplomatic career of her own in Republican administrations and remains active today.
I cite Lev Dobriansky as a profile in courage because America today, as it was in 1976, is confronted by a history-changing election.
But before I go on, I have to make a critical distinction. Mr. Ford had been a good president working to heal a nation traumatized by Watergate and crippled by inflation. He was eminently qualified to remain chief executive and commander-in-chief. And it was not just Mr. Ford and the 1976 election. I’m a partisan Democrat – a founding member of the National Democratic Ethnic Coordinating Council who campaigned for Democrats going back decades – but when Republicans won the White House, I accepted that they were capable leaders with a team that was ready to run the world’s greatest and oldest democracy.
2016 is different. By any measure, Mr. Trump is not qualified and not only because he’s Mr. Putin’s man. Here’s what his fellow-Republicans say about Trump: “a dangerous con man” (Sen. Marco Rubio); “pathological liar,” “utterly amoral,” “a narcissist at a level I don’t think this country’s ever seen,” “a serial philanderer” (Sen. Ted Cruz); “a cancer on conservatism” (Gov. Rick Perry); “a complete idiot” (Karl Rove). Sen. Lindsay Graham said: “I don’t think he has the judgment, the temperament or the experience to deal with what we’re facing.” And there’s more.
This election is a moment of truth for Republicans –including, and perhaps especially, Ukrainian Americans whose vote in November might well make the difference in battleground states like Ohio, Florida and Pennsylvania.
Lev Dobriansky, confronted with an existential challenge 40 years ago, showed what a great man he was. History has vindicated him and many other ethnic Republicans whose bedrock principles superseded party affiliation. Today, a growing number of Republicans, including Ukrainian friends of mine, have made it known they cannot and will not support Trump’s odious candidacy.
As I write this, the only person standing between America and a Trump presidency is Hillary Clinton. In my next column, I plan to write about her record and candidacy. In the meantime, I’m bracing myself for the July Republican Convention in Cleveland, my hometown.
The big date, though, is in November. Vote! Ukraine’s future, America’s future, the world’s future hang in the balance.