Susan Salzberg: A minority-rule president

Regarding Eugene Robinson’s March 18 column “A bellicose budge in Trump’s own image”: Robinson said, “We get what we pay for – rather, what we elect.” He was commenting on the president’s first budget attempt, which Robinson stated will make America “dumber, dirtier, hungrier and sicker” rather than “greater” as the Republicans promised.

Was our electorate intelligent enough to know what they were electing?

One of my favorite books, Madeleine Albright’s “Prague Winter” tells about Czechoslovakia’s 1946 election. Swayed by clever propaganda, the population gave the Communist Party enough votes to win a majority in parliament and a Communist Prime Minister. That was the last free election until the 1989 Velvet Revolution.

Caveat emptor ... rather caveat suffragator: We know we don’t always get what we pay for, and in the case of President Trump it seems we got what a minority of voters elected. A “democratic government” is not always majority rule.

Let’s remind this government that it does not have a mandate, and hopefully we will not have to wait 40-plus years to undo this mistake.

This story was originally published March 23, 2017 at 8:39 PM with the headline "Susan Salzberg: A minority-rule president."