Barack Obama is driving us and the world at breakneck speed for the yawning chasm of a washed out bridge. The question is, is there time to avoid the calamity, or must we plunge into the abyss. In either case it will take the same kind of man to avoid the catastrophe as we will need to dig us out of one. And that man, in my considered opinion, is Donald Trump. We are aware that prior acts, positions and statements mean little as a determinate of future actions under entirely different and likely extreme conditions and events, but they are all we have. No one knew Churchill was Churchill until he was called. And so I will set out my reasons for thinking that of the available candidates, Donald Trump comes closest to what is required of the next president.

AN ABILITY TO FACE THE FACTS, HOWEVER UNPLEASANT THEY MAY BE. A man does not get to be a multi-billionaire entrepreneur without facing the facts on the ground. Granted, Trump has not faced facts as dangerous to himself or to the country as he will face as president, but he has, at least, faced the facts attendant upon making business decisions that could break him if he ignored the facts. He has surrounded himself with smart people and he listens to them. He knows how the economy works, unlike a senator, and he sees what needs to be done. In foreign policy he will find his Kissinger and listen to him.

AN UNSWERVING PATRIOTISM. There is no known test for this. We must take it on faith that every one of the Republican candidates has an unswerving patriotism for this country. One cannot say that for the current president, nor for many members of the current Democratic Party. This one is a wash.

NERVE. Again, this is a quality that cannot be measured beforehand. We won’t know if any of the candidates has it until he is faced with it. None of the candidates has ever been faced, so far as we know, with a life or death decision requiring instant and correct action. The closest would be Trump, who at least bet his money and reputation on real estate gambles that could have cost him everything. Putting your money and reputation at risk takes nerve of a sort, but again, we don’t know how Trump or any of the others will react to a gun put to his head with a madman about to pull the trigger. This too is basically a wash because we simply cannot know.

INTELLIGENCE. All the candidates are intelligent. Dr. Ben Carson is a brilliant man, and if intelligence could be accurately measured, which it cannot, Dr. Carson would likely score highest. The others are intelligent in their own way, but Donald Trump is intelligent in a way that benefits the country. He is a graduate of the most prestigious school of business in the country, the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. The American economy is broken and we need a man who knows how economies work to fix it.

Of these four requirements, and others may have more, in my view Donald Trump has the edge in two of them, ability to face the facts and a superior working knowledge of market economics, with two being a wash because untestable. I will add a fifth attribute that has been ascribed to Donald Trump in the past. His kids were born to wealth and privilege, yet they all had to work at an early age, and they were taken to Walmart for their school supplies. There are published police reports of his stopping his limousine to intervene in a mugging, tales of his quiet generosity to strangers and friends alike and his major contributions to charity. I believe a man who goes out of his way to raise his children right despite the temptations of wealth and privilege that could have set them on the wrong path will have the same concerns for the country. This is why I am voting for Donald Trump, and if he is not the eventual candidate I will happily vote for whoever the candidate is. We cannot allow the country to be just another failed democracy, living still, yet not alive, like some modern day Rome under the barbarian emperors.

The world and country face a time
Of crisis where a leader’s word
Must rise above the dirty grime
Of politics and truth be heard
The truth will hurt but must be told
The danger lies on every side
To counter it we must be bold
And if it’s force we must decide
That if it comes we fight to win
Survival of the nation takes
A president who goes all in
A man who understand the stakes
We know not who that man might be
A Lincoln, Churchill’s what we need
We choose and hope that we will see
A man who’s wise in word and deed