Jim, I don’t disagree in any particular about that Bush video, but consider: 1999 may seem like a long time ago to a young man such as yourself, but it isn’t, really, in the life of a man who soon will be 70 years old.
People change their minds about things from time to time: My beliefs about taxes are not today exactly what they were when I was 25. People learn, and people change. That’s all to the good.
But if a man who aspires to be a significant figure in the public life of the most important country in the world has not figured out what he thinks about abortion by the time he is 53 years old — which is what Trump was in 1999 — then his mind is likely to be unsettled on practically any issue. That was a fair criticism of Mitt Romney, too, and one that I made, though Trump has been a weather vane on any number of key issues: abortion, taxes, immigration amnesty, his assessment of the woman he would likely be running against.
I am glad when such men come over to the angels’ side of the issue, but I am skeptical when ambitious men experience a sudden saltation in the direction of political expedience. Given Trump’s undeniably low character as attested to by his treatment of everyone from wives to business partners, it is difficult to think of a good reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.