Columnist Wes Pruden, writing in the Washington Times, calls the presumptive GOP nominee an “uneducated lout.” But give him credit for balance: he also gives Hillary a hard time though he spares her any ad hominem insults. He finds the choice we face in the presidential election this November terrifying, and thinks we should, too. He is only half right.

Any sane person would be (should be) terrified at the prospect of the egregious Hillary becoming our next president. She simply does not possess the human virtues required of a president. Not remotely.  

As US senator, she did next to nothing for my home state of New York; as Secretary of State, she ran guns to Moslem extremists so as to overthrow the secular Bashar Assad, turned secular Libya into a haven for ISIS, and paved the way for the destabilization of Ukraine thanks to her mania for regime change. The result was the break-up of the country and thousands of fatalities in an unnecessary civil war. 

The flood of refugees from Moslem-majority countries that now threatens to capsize Europe is her doing thanks to her deliberate destabilization of the entire region, and support for removing such protectors of Arab Christianity as Gaddafi, Assad, Mubarak and Saddam.   

In nonsensically denouncing Vladimir Putin (who is presiding over the rapid re-Christianization of Russia) as a latter-day Hitler, she has demonstrated her manifest unsuitability for the presidency. Diplomats are meant to negotiate in the national interest, not gratuitously roil important relationships.

Her only talent, which she has demonstrated since her Rose Law Firm days, is her ability to stay one step ahead of law enforcement.  

If Mr. Pruden finds the prospect of Donald Trump’s victory terrifying; I do not. There can be no more positive agenda for the nation than border security, a markedly less interventionist foreign policy, and an end to the fast-track trade deals that have gutted our national economy.

Moreover, he is wrong to call Trump an “uneducated lout.” Trump is educated and is far from being a lout, although he can be brusque.

I do not see how you can be an uneducated lout and yet create a billion-dollar company, generate thousands of jobs, graduate from the nation’s leading business school (Wharton in Philadelphia), successfully switch careers from real estate to prime-time television, win the Republican Party’s nomination for president (handily) against its “deep bench” of sixteen candidates, and now stand on the threshold of ascending to the highest office in the land.

I wish my parents had raised me to be an uneducated lout, but somehow they went wrong.  

When Reagan ran in 1976 and 1980, he was also on the receiving end of a welter of ad hominem brickbats. He was a dangerous neophyte, ill-informed, detached, and too radical in his anti-Soviet rhetoric to be entrusted with the nation’s safety. He was lazy, too old, not terribly bright, a warmonger and a danger to the Republic.

And he went on to become the greatest U.S. president of the post-War period (with the possible exception of Eisenhower). History may well repeat itself in 2016.