Month: April 2018

Obamacare was the product of a long and tortured legislative process.   It was oversold in some respects, and the MSM gleefully ran lots of stories about the relatively small number of losers.  Technical mistakes in the roll-out and relentless partisan opposition made matters even worse.  As a result, the program made a bad first impression, and remained unpopular for years, in spite of its successes in increasing coverage and lowering costs. However, when a concerted effort was made to repeal it, the public became more aware of its virtues, and its popularity increased dramatically.

Sounds like the tax cut, doesn’t it?  There is a cautionary message for Democrats here;  just because the public correctly continues to be skeptical about it doesn’t mean that anyone will welcome a tax increase when push comes to shove. Parts of the bill were egregious (i.e., the extent of the corporate tax cut and the treatment of pass-through businesses) and should be rolled back, but most of the changes in the individual rates and the treatment of deductions should probably remain in place.

Richard Nixon and Donald Trump shared a number of personality traits, including the following:

1.  Thin skin;
2.  A chip on their respective shoulders;
3.  A lack of respect for the truth;
4.  Tactical flexibility;
5.  A loathing of the MSM; and
6.  A willingness to abuse power.

The differences are also striking, however.  Nixon had far better reason to carry the chip on his shoulder than the millionaire developer’s son.  He violated legal and political norms, but he at least understood them and pretended to respect them.  Most importantly, he was an experienced politician who knew what he was doing. Basic competence, alas, is not one of the man on golf cart’s attributes.

Richard Nixon was the first Republican culture warrior.  Prior to him, the GOP consisted of PBPs, CLs, and a few CDs; the Reactionaries, for historical reasons, were Democrats, which gave the Democrats a huge advantage on a national level. Nixon’s dog whistles on issues of race and culture started a major shift in the system.  After his resignation, however, Carter was elected, and things appeared to be returning to normal.

Reagan changed everything.  He brought swagger and a direct appeal to white Christians to the GOP.  The Reactionaries, and the remainder of the CDs, changed parties and voted for him.  That’s where we are today.

It comes as no surprise that Comey thinks Trump is a liar.  What’s more interesting is that he thinks many of the lies are pointless.  Is he right?

No.  The lies that aren’t intended to deceive serve a purpose, too.  Some of them are intended to bind his supporters closer to him.  Some of them are designed to force people to choose sides.  Some of them are expressions of dominance over the people around him.  Finally, some of them appear to be efforts to pump himself up, like a salesman talking to himself in the mirror in the morning.

That doesn’t make them any less deplorable, however.  The norm must continue to be that our head of state tells the truth.  If we don’t continue to call him out when he lies, that could change, and we will be much the worse for it.

My wife and I went to see an excellent local production of “Cabaret” last week.  I had never seen it on stage before; it struck me as being more raw, powerful, and directly political than the movie.  It’s timely, too;  you can’t avoid thinking about American culture wars when you watch the interactions between the characters in the cabaret and the Nazis.

A large part of the problem with our culture wars is that both sides identify themselves as victims.  How can that be overcome?

With some humility and honesty.  The blue side has prevailed in the culture wars. They need to understand that the righteousness of their cause is not as self-evident as they think, to show more tolerance of traditional culture, and to avoid pressing their advantage to the limit.  The red side, for their part, needs to understand that their lost ability to impose their values on others is not “oppression,” that they are not the victims in this story, and that any hope of using the political system to bring back the golden age of white Christian patriarchy is going to backfire spectacularly with the American public in the long run.

In other words, demography tells us that tomorrow does not belong to them.

On the new secretary named Mike.

There isn’t a whole lot to like.

Enabling Don

Means that all hope is gone.

We’ve no fingers to stick in the dike.

The first phase of the war is nearly over; Assad has regained control over virtually all of the urbanized areas in the west, and the IS “caliphate” is just about finished.  Humanitarian, political, and great power issues loom.  Here are the major issues, with my predictions:

1.  Will Israel engage in a major shooting war with Iran?  No.  Netanyahu’s end game is to fight Iran to the last American, not the last Israeli.  He’s just a few months away from getting his wish.  Why screw it up now?

2.  Will the Turks succeed in setting up a small buffer state in north Syria?  Yes. The Kurds don’t have the military clout to stop them, and the other major powers don’t care.

3.  Will Assad succeed in regaining effective control over the entire country? Doubtful.  The Russians have already accomplished their objectives; they aren’t going to subsidize wars in the desert that create the potential for conflict with the Americans.  Iran and Hezbollah are already stretched to the limit.  There is only so much he can do on his own.

4.  Will America fight, negotiate, or withdraw?  It’s Trump, so who knows?  Probably all three at once.

Ross Douthat had a column in the NYT about two weeks ago in which he divided GOP thought on foreign policy into four groupings:  neoconservatives (use force to promote American values abroad); paleoconservatives (isolationists); realists (national interests prevail over values); and hawks (use force as a first option for almost any reason).  His model has merit.  The questions for today are:

1.  Do his divisions correspond to my four GOP factions?
2.  Where does Trump fit in?

My responses are as follows:

1.  Yes, they do.  Neoconservatives are CDs.  Paleoconservatives (a small minority) are CLs–think Rand Paul.  Realists are, of course, PBPs.  The connection between Reactionaries and hawks is a little more tenuous, given that the Reactionaries tend to turn against lengthy wars which involve “nation-building,” but Reactionaries do tend to respond as requested to displays of swagger.
2.  The only thing you can say for sure about Trump is that he isn’t a neoconservative.  He loves bluster, but he hates nation-building, and he definitely wants to use American military and market power to make deals that involve money.  The inconsistencies that plague our foreign policy are largely attributable to this confusion.

The woman who calls herself Stormy

Said “Religious folks tend to deplore me.

I’m only once-born;

Make my life selling porn;

But the Democrats came to adore me.”

The bottom line is that this is a credibility contest between a man who lies so often, even the fact checkers have trouble keeping count, and someone who styles himself as a grown up Eagle Scout.  Realistically speaking, who is going to win that one?

Assume, for purposes of argument, that the GOP suffers a crushing defeat in 2020.  Where does it go from there?  Here are the possibilities:

1.  Shoot the messenger, not the message (Reagan Coalition:  Reactionaries/PBPs):  Sure, we apologize for supporting someone who was divisive, incompetent, and corrupt.  That doesn’t mean there was anything wrong with the mixture of tax cuts, deregulation, and conservative social policy;  we just need a more suitable vessel for that policy.  Someone who looks and talks like Reagan.

2.  The Tea Party, Part Deux (Goldwater Coalition:  CLs/Reactionaries):  We admit that we made promises about balanced budgets after 2008, and then violated them when in office.  This time we really, really mean it.  Trust us.

3.  Real populism, not the faux kind (Douthat Coalition:  CDs/Reactionaries):  Down with Wall Street economics, and up with the white American worker!  Wall Street will follow, because it has nowhere else to go.

4.  The return of compassionate conservatism (Romney Coalition:  CDs/PBPs):  Hey, it got George W. Bush elected twice.  After Trump, he doesn’t look so bad.

#2 and #3 won’t win general elections; #2 repels the center, while #3 turns off the donor class, without which the GOP has no future.  The ultimate answer will be one of the other two.

To my knowledge, there are three plausible explanations for Trump’s strange enthusiasm for Vladimir Putin:

1.  He views Putin coldly as an ideological ally in the battles against limp-wristed liberals and Islamic extremists.
2.  He simply admires Putin, because, like himself, he is an unpredictable strong man who bulldozes his opponents and gets things done.
3.  Putin is blackmailing him.

#1 was a reasonable explanation as long as Bannon, who clearly did believe it, was at Trump’s side.  He’s gone, and the fixation remains, which leaves us with the other two explanations.

If it’s #3, Trump will never change.  If it’s #2, he might, as Putin continues to get in his way.  We’ll see.

It seems that every pundit has a slightly different take on Ryan and his legacy. The latest is Ross Douthat, who calls Ryan a “party man” and insists that anyone who thinks he is an Ayn Rand acolyte in practice is “daft.”

Well, color me daft, because I think Douthat’s analysis, as usual, is incomplete.  Here’s why:

1.  It is true that Ryan has shown a degree of tactical flexibility.  When his “makers and takers” shtick didn’t go over well in 2012, he changed the message to “tough love” for the poor.  He never tried to shut down the government.  He gave up on BAT.  He always did whatever was necessary to keep the GOP in power and provide big tax cuts for rich people.
2.  But to what end?  Even today, he’s talking about pivoting to entitlement cuts in light of the explosion in the deficit that was caused by his tax cut. The difference between “makers and takers” and “tough love” rhetoric is in spin, not the actual measures he is proposing. For him, it’s all about afflicting people he views as being unproductive and giving money to the rich, because rich people are responsible for all of the good in the world, and the rest of us are just moochers. Keeping the GOP in power is the only plausible way of getting from Point A to Point B.  Hence, the tactical flexibility.

Notwithstanding Douthat, supporting entitlement cuts after 2010 wasn’t just the zeitgeist;  it was a choice made by the GOP at Ryan’s insistence.  That conversion, even if it has come to little in practice so far because the base doesn’t like it, will be his most enduring “accomplishment.”

If the mission was to prove that Trump is tougher than Obama without making any meaningful changes on the ground or provoking a military reaction from the Russians, yes.   Otherwise, no;  it was a useless gesture that made the man on golf cart look impotent.

The irony, of course, is that Trump is proving Obama’s point;  simply launching a limited air strike on chemical weapons facilities doesn’t change the political or military equation in Syria, so you have to be prepared to escalate if you want to satisfy the hawks, and where does that end?  That is why I have said consistently that Obama’s mistake was to create the red line–not to refuse to enforce it.

Mediocre world history textbooks frequently make reference to an “age of enlightened despotism” in the late 17th and early 18th centuries.   As the story goes, it was a time in which rulers were shaking off the shackles of religion and dragging their subjects, mostly kicking and screaming, into the modern secular world.  This typically involved the use of force.  Peter the Great and Frederick the Great are viewed as outstanding examples of enlightened despotism.

The fact is that most would-be “enlightened despots” fail.  If you’re going to succeed, you had better be clever enough to be called “The Great” when your reign is over.   Does MBS meet that standard?  Based on his record to date, it seems doubtful.