By Ken Houston

At 73 years old, I voted for our president very reluctantly in the last election.

I have always voted for Republican presidential candidates, but I found Donald Trump was special.

After 10 years as a combat Army veteran and 30 years in the corporate world, I thought Trump was ignorant, poorly educated, immoral and an egotistical nut case, but like millions of others, I voted for him because I detested the alternative.

The president’s policies have generally been in line with mine and he has had great success on most issues that have concerned me, but his execution is horrific. He is his own worst enemy with his mouth; his lack of fundamental English grammar is disgusting.

Trump seems to have missed his history and geography classes in his supposed education. Finally, if Trump worked for me in my final years as a vice president of a multi-billion-dollar, international corporation, I would have fired him for being a maker of chaos.

Like many in the 1980s I read his “Art of the Deal” (was it written by him?) and found it very good at that time. However, all real deals are based on a win for the seller and a win for the buyer.

Where are the Presidents deals? The new version of NAFTA is merely a rewriting of the old one with a few advantages to us. China, North Korea, the Pacific, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Russia and more have no ongoing deals. The president, frankly, can’t negotiate his way out of a paper bag; his mouth gets in the way.

Once again, I have a decision to make in 2020. Again, as I’ve seen all my life, it is a “critical” election. In my local and state elections, as a conservative, I will vote Republican for the most part.

As I see it now, I have three choices for president:

• The current president. If he can act more presidential and less chaotic, it’s a done deal.

• A Democratic candidate. The party has horrified me with this impeachment process that is totally biased, but it has exposed the media for what they are. They are way too far away from my beliefs. However, I might consider Joe Biden as a caretaker for four years or Michael Bloomberg, a solid manager. Bloomberg would be my first choice.

• Don’t vote at all for a presidential candidate. That’s a remote possibility.

Before the president was elected, I told some friends that if he was, Congress (especially Republicans) could always remove him early in his presidency for his incompetence. The economy boomed and that’s always most important to the American people.

Now, here’s the most concerning issue. If President Trump is reelected, will he continue his pattern of disrupting and corrupting our political system? He will probably be re-elected and, once that happens, let the Democrats and Republicans remove him from office quickly when he goes over the edge.

Vice President Mike Pence is a good, honorable man and could carry on the policies I believe in.

Let us all keep in mind that, as it stands now, we are living on borrowed time — our government is in debt to the maximum and we cannot sustain continued spending.

Ken Houston is a former combat-decorated Army major who retired as a vice president of sales after 30 years in the packaging and paper mill industry.