The country has spent years asking and answering the question how crazy Trump has become, and we believed that answering that question would influence how people would vote.

The never-ending cycle of news about his behavior sold a lot of advertising, but I am certain that our attempts to answer that question did not reduce the number of votes he got from people who liked his defiant, norm-smashing style. Rather, it effectively distracted us from the needed national conversations about the important national and international policy issues.

I wonder how many of the voters who suffered hurricanes, fires, tornadoes or floods would have voted for leaders who deny that our history of energy policies are behind the worsening weather patterns.

There should have been a policy debate about the similarities between the period leading up to our finally entering WWII and what Russia has been attempting in Ukraine for the past couple years.

Do you suppose an honest, fact-based comparison between the post-COVID economic recovery of the other developed nations of the world would have perhaps put our past four years into clearer perspective?

And how is it possible that we could all have spent the last four years looking for employees, and never had a conversation about speeding up the process of welcoming people who have risked their lives for a chance to apply for those jobs?

George Seaver
Waldoboro