Okay, I was caught off guard by the Trump landslide. I'm less surprised by the Republicans keeping the House and Senate but I didn't see Trump astriding the Republican colossus. The real eye-opening part of watching last night's return: I kinda knew this but, man, I didn't realize how badly America hates Hillary Clinton. I knew she had her detractors, she had her doubters and she was an uncommonly dull candidate for a Democrat but I thought there was enough skepticism of Trump and enough of a left-wing groundswell to keep Hillary around for four more years. Nope. She is officially done as a public persona in America. And Donald Trump's career just took an unexpected setback. Trump is about to realize what I have long known: President of the United States of America is the ultimate dead end job. He could've been out making big money being a loud mouth political type, instead he's stuck actually governing. What a drag for that guy.
As I wrote in a previous post, the Congress runs the government while the President gets all the attention. We may think we just witnessed a revolution of the right wing weirdos but I would suggest the opportunity has swung back for the Republican establishment to treat Trump like a pinata for the next four years and purge the party of the loons. We'll see. To that end, I think the real winner last night was Paul Ryan: he has the job of herding cats (stupid ass Republican cats, no less) but if he can build a coalition within the House and a bridge to McConnell in the Senate, he can pretty well do whatever he wants for the next 2-4 years. I have a bold suggestion for each of the Republican leaders: McConnell should immediately affirm Merrick Garland (I kinda like him and I think he could bring a fascinating shift to the Court) and Ryan should immediately push through whatever immigration bill (*) he thinks he wants. I think its important for both houses of Congress to give an early thumb to the eye of the new President (that they don't actually like) by removing the only two things he might genuinely have an interest in. Encourage President Trump to reform NATO (yeah, go solve that Europe problem, Don, we'll take care of everything til you get back) and pick up where Michelle Obama left that obesity epidemic.
Since I'm hanging on the notion that last night was about vanquishing Hillary more than welcoming Trump, I am still skeptical of Trump's popularity. Who likes this guy? The guy just got 100 million votes and I still can't figure out who actually wants this man to be president--including the man himself! The idea that Trump is gonna clean up Washington is just straight foolish. He has no idea how to accomplish that task and who the fuck is gonna help him figure it out? Under Obama the Republican Congress just laid low but under Trump they'll have a mandate to do what they want with an Executive to rubber stamp their desires and offer little resistance. Trump didn't get rich by being a consensus builder and in DC he'll be so out of his element, he'll just yap and yap and do nothing at all. I think Ryan and McConnell will effectively control him behind the scenes and sponge off his popularity enough to look like real statesmen. Ideally, after four years Trump will be tired of being president and the Republican establishment will be back in control (look for Cruz to get marginalized and Rand Paul better do something bold or he'll be long gone by 2020), ready to take a real run at the White House (how about a Ryan/Rubio ticket in 2020?). Meanwhile the Democrats will have a few years of loudly suffering to develop some kind of hero by 2020 (sorry, kids, I don't think Elizabeth Warren is that guy and who drank more sad gulps of Chivas last night than Joe Biden?).
I'm not a political guy but I found myself more amused than I thought I would be by watching the liberals flounder and look all aggrieved. When they're in control their self-important smugness is unbearable, their moral pseudo-superiority is maddening and the way the fall prey to their own malformed observations is embarrassing. And, of course, political losers always portray the victors as...(fill in generational pejorative)...and themselves as kindly victims wondering why God lets bad things happen to good people. Conservatives are uptight assholes no matter what happens and George W. Bush was so tired of being president that I didn't get the same joy of watching the Obama revolution sweep out the last of red hot Cheneys.
Is Trump dangerous? Good lord, I think he'll be the most ineffective President since Carter--and I just thought that about the last guy! I see no scenario where Donald Trump wants to be re-elected in 2020. He'll enjoy the inauguration (legendary for executive blow jobs!) but by Day Two, he'll be ready to pull the ejector seat and get back to where he once belonged. Foreign policy-wise I think he could have some minor successes but they'll be the kind that disappoint his most ardent supporters. In short, Tuesday night was his absolute peak in this business, nothing but a black diamond slope in his future. And this Presidency will soak up what influence he might've had, as opposed to Obama who will be a beloved public figure for the next 30 years, Trump will be shown to be ineffective and useless and defeated. Coke-fueled benders in the White House are probably a total drag, no fun at all, and tweeting about fat chicks at 3 in the morning will eventually get him murdered by his bodyguards. Seriously, I'm kinda feeling sorry for the guy, his life is ruined! He thinks his parents are on vacation and he's got the whole house to himself but, no, he's gotta run the family business 24 hours a day instead. This ain't doggie heaven, it's doggie hell.
Mitch McConnell is old, his job is to groom the next old white guy to dominate the Republican side of the Senate. But Paul Ryan could be the one, he's the ascendant star right now. And if he pulls the House Republicans together, he'll rule Washington for the next few years while the Democrats point all their weapons at hapless Trump.
(* Immigration is the ultimate pointless American debate: every 20 years or so since 1650 the locals have complained about interlopers and the local constabulary hems and haws and pretends to do something about it and the never does because deep down they kinda like the newcomers and are powerless to stop them anyway. Immigration is a function of economics not politics but political animals think nothing is beyond their entreaties. When the economy dried up in 2007 so did immigration to America, the rednecks didn't notice but the chances of them getting served by the political sphere is just as remote under Trump as it was under Obama. He'll give them a voice but will he give them actual power? Oh, come on, man! Remember Trump wasn't elected by rich white people, he was elected by poor white people--and even then it was only because the minorities where wary of Hillary)
Thursday, November 10, 2016
Thursday, November 3, 2016
Decision 2016
We're less than a week away from the next Presidential election. Hillary Clinton's lead had shrunk a bit recently because of (vague) news about new revelations in her email scandal. To recap: When Hillary was Secretary of State she chose to keep a personal email server rather than the gov't issue version. This is probably illegal though probably not unusual. What are the American people to think of this activity? I dunno. I know nothing about how the gov't keeps its emails and I don't know why I would know or would want to know. My instinct is that the Madame in Charge makes the rules of order and if she chooses to have email sent to her AOL account instead of her .gov account, it matters not to me. The gov't gets hacked all day every day so the argument that her machinations imperil cyber-safety doesn't really wash with me. The emails are the property of the American people and subject to FOIA requests and such, that's true. But I don't see how the serves itself makes any difference: if the sitting Secretary of State chose not to release certain communications, I don't know what the New York Times or the American people are gonna do about it. That's not a function of Hillary Clinton or her predecessors or successors, it is the cold fact that Executive Privilege is beyond the citizenry and that's just how it lays, bro.
The President could go on TV tonight and explain every intricacy of...say, the tax code...but who would watch and who would understand it anyway? The White House could not possibly give a complete accounting of its day-to-day affairs even if it wanted to and why would it want to? Donald Rumsfeld at the height of the occupation of Iraq could calmly explain the ins-and-outs of policy to the American people but how would that make his job any easier? How would that make the American people safe or more secure? Or even more well-informed? Knowledge is a malleable commodity and your politicians want to mall-u as much as they can. We can pretend that the Blue Guy is more trustworthy than the Red Guy or vice versa, but that's hopeless bullshit and you know it. Politics, like tic-tac-toe and global thermonuclear war, is a losing game and the only way to win is not to play. (Said it before I'll say it again: if they wanted to take away my right to vote, I'd vote against it; until then I think voting is not merely a dumb waste of time but a deluded and quite possibly dangerous way to engage in the civic sphere. The idea that is your duty is absurd nonsense and an indication that we are doing it wrong as a people)
This election has been backwards in the sense that it is the Republican who is the fiery rabble-rouser while it is the Democrat who is the staid old hand who preaches a stay-the-course philosophy. And to continue the backwardness: I believe a Trump presidency would look like an Obama presidency (zero foreign policy interest, no support from the Republican Congress, able to win people over with press conferences but not much else) while a Hillary presidency would look like the George W. Bush administration (active military, sucking up to elderly voters, defiant and defensive in the face of criticism). So do Trump supporters really want change because I don't think they'll get it; and do Hillary supporters really want more of Obama because I don't think they'll get what they want either. The electorate is been turned inside out--thank goodness Americans don't actually pay attention once the election is over.
My previous post was about the steady rise of an executive branch that wants to communicate more directly with the American people leading to a rise in responsibility without any commensurate rise in actual power. This has led to elections where people increasingly put unrealistic expectations onto the candidates. For example, this election seems like a referendum on women's issues where Hillary represents womens' reach for more power while Trump represents the recalcitrant old ways. But I would suggest this embodiment is entirely skin deep. Once the President is chosen, women will possess no greater power under one than they would have under the other because the President doesn't have much control over how women live their lives in this society. African-Americans may have believe that an Obama Administration would make everything obviously better for black people but after 8 years is anything really different for minorities in this country? Perhaps. Perhaps a black president inspires black people to take more professional control or be more bold in their social dealings but does any of that really come from White House policy? America is run by the culture and the economy, not the government. The government is there to safeguard our basic freedoms, not make anything better. We can ascribe symbolic significance to our leaders but that's not the same as leaders actually having transformative powers.
These candidates have legendary negative ratings from the electorate. Again, though, this strikes me as false. The idea that Trump would be a dangerous president doesn't really account for the checks and balances of the American system. I think Trump would be a largely ineffective president, neutered at best. The President's only real clear power is in foreign policy and so far Trump has shown no acumen or philosophy for dealing with foreign affairs. He has an old timey Republican bluster about being a powerful foreign presence but his bluster is the talk of a guy who has never had to do any of this shit before and I suspect if he was in power he would be every bit as reticent to send troops abroad or drop bombs on other countries as Obama has been. And the idea that Hillary is some crazed socialist ideologue misses that I think she would actually be a coldly calculating pragmatic politician that America hasn't seen since the days of Bob Dole as Majority Leader. I think she would be much more likely to reach out to the Republican Congress than Obama (or Trump) and I think she would give them the opportunity to make deals more than the popular consensus realizes. I think Hillary gets how Washington works more than any President since HW Bush, maybe even Nixon. Hillary will be an active executive and will force Congress to act in a way that Obama never had any appetite for.
I think the next four years will be brutal on whoever wins this election. I think Trump doesn't really even want to be President and this is all the perfect setup for a new network to compete with Fox News: he's discovered his core audience who thinks the system is rigged, that Hillary is a criminal and that the Republican Party (and Fox News) is too soft to be of much use any more. Winning the election would be a major career setback for Trump and, let's face it, good god this guy would suck at being president. As for Hillary, I've long thought the she would be the next president and I also long thought that she would not run for reelection in 2020. I think her health is not as strong as she likes to make us think, I think she has no stomach for another election run, I think the next four years will see a lot of international and economic challenges (I'm hoping my next blog post will be on that topic) and I think giving herself only four years will keep her high intensity each day in office. As much as the commentary as suggested the political parties are tearing themselves apart, I suspect four years from now we will have long forgotten what a clusterfuck this election season truly was (no Trump, no more Bushes or Clintons, no Christie, no Sanders, no Pence, I see a completely new slate of challengers).
I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president and I'd like to think she'll be good. Like I said, I think she'll be a measured and pragmatic (and stonewalling) executive. I think she'll alienate her supporters with her active foreign policy, I think she'll look to make deals in Congress (my dream is Social Security reform, which has to come from a Democrat) and she'll try to restore the presidency to the unfun office it used to be. I think she'll be able to use Bill as the perfect sponge for controversy, look for Bill to put on the clown suit whenever the focus needs to go somewhere else. As for Trump, he'll be off to be a TV star and randomly appearing on Fox News or Twitter won't be enough for him. Pillorying Hillary will be fun for a while but soon enough he'll move on to other things, puncturing the presidency will always be low hanging fruit but he'll find other things to keep the audience watching.
The good news: America is fine. We waste a lot of resources, a lot of time and money, but in general its because we are rich and can afford to. The day will come when we can't afford it any more but hopefully that'll be a hundred years from now. The reason everything looks bad is because we're looking at all the bad parts (partisan politics) and acting like its way more important than it actually is. If we'd just deflate the pompous megalomaniac political motherfuckers we'll all be better off. I don't vote because I don't like any of these people and I don't feel like any of them truly represent me. Fortunately I don't feel like I need these people to pander to me. Ignore the politicians and give them less money--SPEND THE MONEY ON WHAT YOU WANT IT SPENT ON INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR CONGRESS TO PLEASE YOU!--and America will seem like a much more egalitarian and enlightened place. We have resources, we have opportunity, we have fun and sexy lives. Live healthy, live smart and don't wait for others to make your dreams come true and all will be well.
The President could go on TV tonight and explain every intricacy of...say, the tax code...but who would watch and who would understand it anyway? The White House could not possibly give a complete accounting of its day-to-day affairs even if it wanted to and why would it want to? Donald Rumsfeld at the height of the occupation of Iraq could calmly explain the ins-and-outs of policy to the American people but how would that make his job any easier? How would that make the American people safe or more secure? Or even more well-informed? Knowledge is a malleable commodity and your politicians want to mall-u as much as they can. We can pretend that the Blue Guy is more trustworthy than the Red Guy or vice versa, but that's hopeless bullshit and you know it. Politics, like tic-tac-toe and global thermonuclear war, is a losing game and the only way to win is not to play. (Said it before I'll say it again: if they wanted to take away my right to vote, I'd vote against it; until then I think voting is not merely a dumb waste of time but a deluded and quite possibly dangerous way to engage in the civic sphere. The idea that is your duty is absurd nonsense and an indication that we are doing it wrong as a people)
This election has been backwards in the sense that it is the Republican who is the fiery rabble-rouser while it is the Democrat who is the staid old hand who preaches a stay-the-course philosophy. And to continue the backwardness: I believe a Trump presidency would look like an Obama presidency (zero foreign policy interest, no support from the Republican Congress, able to win people over with press conferences but not much else) while a Hillary presidency would look like the George W. Bush administration (active military, sucking up to elderly voters, defiant and defensive in the face of criticism). So do Trump supporters really want change because I don't think they'll get it; and do Hillary supporters really want more of Obama because I don't think they'll get what they want either. The electorate is been turned inside out--thank goodness Americans don't actually pay attention once the election is over.
My previous post was about the steady rise of an executive branch that wants to communicate more directly with the American people leading to a rise in responsibility without any commensurate rise in actual power. This has led to elections where people increasingly put unrealistic expectations onto the candidates. For example, this election seems like a referendum on women's issues where Hillary represents womens' reach for more power while Trump represents the recalcitrant old ways. But I would suggest this embodiment is entirely skin deep. Once the President is chosen, women will possess no greater power under one than they would have under the other because the President doesn't have much control over how women live their lives in this society. African-Americans may have believe that an Obama Administration would make everything obviously better for black people but after 8 years is anything really different for minorities in this country? Perhaps. Perhaps a black president inspires black people to take more professional control or be more bold in their social dealings but does any of that really come from White House policy? America is run by the culture and the economy, not the government. The government is there to safeguard our basic freedoms, not make anything better. We can ascribe symbolic significance to our leaders but that's not the same as leaders actually having transformative powers.
These candidates have legendary negative ratings from the electorate. Again, though, this strikes me as false. The idea that Trump would be a dangerous president doesn't really account for the checks and balances of the American system. I think Trump would be a largely ineffective president, neutered at best. The President's only real clear power is in foreign policy and so far Trump has shown no acumen or philosophy for dealing with foreign affairs. He has an old timey Republican bluster about being a powerful foreign presence but his bluster is the talk of a guy who has never had to do any of this shit before and I suspect if he was in power he would be every bit as reticent to send troops abroad or drop bombs on other countries as Obama has been. And the idea that Hillary is some crazed socialist ideologue misses that I think she would actually be a coldly calculating pragmatic politician that America hasn't seen since the days of Bob Dole as Majority Leader. I think she would be much more likely to reach out to the Republican Congress than Obama (or Trump) and I think she would give them the opportunity to make deals more than the popular consensus realizes. I think Hillary gets how Washington works more than any President since HW Bush, maybe even Nixon. Hillary will be an active executive and will force Congress to act in a way that Obama never had any appetite for.
I think the next four years will be brutal on whoever wins this election. I think Trump doesn't really even want to be President and this is all the perfect setup for a new network to compete with Fox News: he's discovered his core audience who thinks the system is rigged, that Hillary is a criminal and that the Republican Party (and Fox News) is too soft to be of much use any more. Winning the election would be a major career setback for Trump and, let's face it, good god this guy would suck at being president. As for Hillary, I've long thought the she would be the next president and I also long thought that she would not run for reelection in 2020. I think her health is not as strong as she likes to make us think, I think she has no stomach for another election run, I think the next four years will see a lot of international and economic challenges (I'm hoping my next blog post will be on that topic) and I think giving herself only four years will keep her high intensity each day in office. As much as the commentary as suggested the political parties are tearing themselves apart, I suspect four years from now we will have long forgotten what a clusterfuck this election season truly was (no Trump, no more Bushes or Clintons, no Christie, no Sanders, no Pence, I see a completely new slate of challengers).
I think Hillary Clinton will be the next president and I'd like to think she'll be good. Like I said, I think she'll be a measured and pragmatic (and stonewalling) executive. I think she'll alienate her supporters with her active foreign policy, I think she'll look to make deals in Congress (my dream is Social Security reform, which has to come from a Democrat) and she'll try to restore the presidency to the unfun office it used to be. I think she'll be able to use Bill as the perfect sponge for controversy, look for Bill to put on the clown suit whenever the focus needs to go somewhere else. As for Trump, he'll be off to be a TV star and randomly appearing on Fox News or Twitter won't be enough for him. Pillorying Hillary will be fun for a while but soon enough he'll move on to other things, puncturing the presidency will always be low hanging fruit but he'll find other things to keep the audience watching.
The good news: America is fine. We waste a lot of resources, a lot of time and money, but in general its because we are rich and can afford to. The day will come when we can't afford it any more but hopefully that'll be a hundred years from now. The reason everything looks bad is because we're looking at all the bad parts (partisan politics) and acting like its way more important than it actually is. If we'd just deflate the pompous megalomaniac political motherfuckers we'll all be better off. I don't vote because I don't like any of these people and I don't feel like any of them truly represent me. Fortunately I don't feel like I need these people to pander to me. Ignore the politicians and give them less money--SPEND THE MONEY ON WHAT YOU WANT IT SPENT ON INSTEAD OF WAITING FOR CONGRESS TO PLEASE YOU!--and America will seem like a much more egalitarian and enlightened place. We have resources, we have opportunity, we have fun and sexy lives. Live healthy, live smart and don't wait for others to make your dreams come true and all will be well.
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