I gave a talk last night to approximately 80 members of the local Lincoln Club, a group within the Republican Party of California. The topic was “President Trump’s Economic Policies: A Balanced Assessment.”

After giving some basic background about myself, I showed them a poem that summed up my talk. I’m hereby copyrighting it.

There was a president,

Who had an orange curl,

Right in the middle of his forehead.

When he was good

He was very good indeed,

But when he was bad he was horrid.

–David R. Henderson (with apologies to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow)

 

The very good indeed was the tax cut and deregulation and slowing of new regulation.

The horrid was international trade (tariffs), immigration, and government spending (the last with help from Democrats.)

 

In discussing why I thought the cut in the corporate income tax rate was so good, I came up with a new poem, basically a rewrite of the last lines of Emma Lazarus’s poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty:

Give me your over-taxed, your wealthy,

Your frustrated investors yearning to breathe freer,

The unwelcome savers of your teeming shore.

Send these, the footloose, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside Dallas, Houston, San Jose, and Miami.

I’m copyrighting that too.

By the way, the biggest pushback from the audience was (no surprise) on immigration but the talk was well received overall.