Challenging? Yes, but I have hope

Next month will mark three years since Jim Tressel’s name was propelled by community leaders as the desired candidate for president of Youngstown State University.

Support for him was strong.

But so was opposition; it was actually stronger.

“A football coach cannot possibly lead a university” was among the many cries.

Concerns came from many corners of the community; even from folks who loved him as a coach.

It also came from many corners on campus. It’s a funny sight today – some who are the proudest of where YSU is now, were also some of the loudest against Tressel.

So where is YSU?

It is a different place in just three years. The expanding $10 million deficit in 2014 is now erased, and this year’s YSU now pays for this year’s YSU.

More housing surrounds the campus than any would have believed. So much in donor funds is coming in ($3 millionish then vs. $20 millionish now), foundation boss Paul McFadden has Brinks trucks affixed to his office.

A Rhodes Scholar. A championship football team. New roadways.

Such pace is not the totality of the last four YSU presidents combined in about 15 years of service. Yet it is the totality of one president in less than three years.

And he is a person who could not possibly be president, claimed the establishment.

Somewhere buried in Google is a 2014 column from me that expressed immediate support for the idea of a “President Tressel.”

Now, we have another man who “cannot possibly be president,” and he took office Friday.

I’m as nervous and itchy as most average folks about many of the off-putting things Donald Trump has said and done.

But what I also feel about Trump, same as I did for Tressel in those first days in 2014, is immense belief in two areas:

What we have been doing has not been successful enough.

Leaders live among us everywhere and not necessarily within prescribed establishments.

Trump’s speech Friday was not the norm, nor will be his presidency.

What I liked most of what he said Friday is what he said earliest:

“For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left and the factories closed. The establishment protected itself, but not the citizens of our country.

Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital, there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land.”

He said it about Washington.

But you can find examples from his theme littered across the Midwest and the Valley.

This is where I struggled most with the potential of a Hillary Clinton presidency. I would have felt the same way about a Jeb Bush presidency.

The elected and the government-entrenched are becoming America’s new elite; new royalty. Fittingly, some of the most prosperous income growth in the country the last generation has happened in Washington, D.C., said The New York Times.

That elitism and affluence are here too.

Mahoning County Democrats actually wanted the most embattled, investigated and intoxicated county official back in office a couple years ago and could not muster the courage to say “Sit one out.”

Niles is a fiscal mess, and the allegations of mayoral gambling rings make you wonder what business was more important there.

In Michigan, the government elite let the impoverished drink polluted water.

In Ohio, our leaders let earthquakes roll under us.

In Pennsylvania, a crooked judge conspired with a developer to wrongfully imprison teens.

In California, city leaders enriched themselves for years through schemes and false job titles.

President Trump will be a challenge for us.

But he also will be a challenge for the establishment, and therein, I have hope.

There will be problems.

But there have always been problems.

What is most concerning is the public’s “Not my president” animosity and subsequent protests.

When the right took this stance after President Obama’s election, the left was appalled.

So the left would act differently when posed with the same challenge, right?

Ummm, nnnnooo.

There’s no doubt much of the animosity is that Trump is a bombastic person. A President Romney or Kasich would be less offensive to the left.

But it is odd that people so believing in President Obama cannot follow his lead at this point in our country.

Of all the things history will adore about Obama, one for sure will be how he managed Friday and the last few weeks.

This country and this democracy are bigger than this single election. Obama led the way toward a “peaceful transfer of power” – even though that power is in the hands of someone he never imagined would have it.

Many in Youngstown never imagined the power of a university in the hands of a football coach. And we’re now better than OK.

This newest unconventional presidency deserves the same time to prove itself out.

Todd Franko is editor of The Vindicator. He likes emails about stories and our newspaper. Email him at tfranko@vindy.com. He blogs, too, on Vindy.com. Tweet him, too, at @tfranko.