IMAGINE IF TRUMP WERE A NORMAL PERSON

We're being told that President Trump should get the credit for the successful vaccine rollout under President Biden.

Former Operation Warp Speed health adviser Dr. Moncef Slaoui claimed that 90% of the current administration’s coronavirus vaccine rollout plan is the same as what the Trump administration had laid out – despite claims that Biden inherited "no plan." ...

"I do think we had plans," Slaoui told CBS’s "Face the Nation" on Saturday. "In fact, 90% of what is happening now is the plan that we had."

Imagine if Donald Trump were a normal human being. Imagine if, after losing the 2020 election, he conceded like a normal person and cooperated with the incoming president on the transition. Imagine if, given the severity of this particular crisis, he met or spoke with the president-elect more than once on the continuing health crisis, and urged his advisers -- including those who weren't political operatives, like Dr. Slaoui -- to cooperate fully with the incoming Biden team. Imagine if he filmed his vaccination and participted in that vaccination ad featuring the other living former presidents. Imagine if he were promoting the vaccines now.

Regardless of the truth about the rollout, he'd be finding it much easier to persuade the country that he deserves some of the credit for what's working now.

But one of Trump's many neuroses is that he can't share credit with anyone he considers his inferior, which is pretty much everyone on earth, with the exception of certain tycoons and global dictators.

And this neurotic inability to play well with others dovetails perfectly with the ideology of the Republican Party. If you're a Republican, you must never cooperate with Democrats on anything, even saving the lives of your own grandparents.

It makes me wince to watch George W. Bush palling around with Bill Clinton and the Obamas, but you can't blame him -- it's been very good for his public image. Wouldn't doing something similar be good for Trump's?

But Bush is capable of some normal human feelings, and he represents an older GOP, which was bad in his time but is even more pathological now.

Trump can't be like Bush. His brand is "I am one of the greatest human beings who's ever lived!" And the modern GOP's brand is "Death to collaborators!"