Month: August 2023

Pitching yourself to the reactionary base as a more competent, less legally encumbered version of Trump never looked like a winning strategy to me. But today, things have gotten even worse for DeSantis, because he has competition in the abjectly pro-Trump lane; Ramaswamy is even Trumpier than Trump in some respects. If the GOP electorate suddenly decides that Trump’s legal problems disqualify him, it may choose Ramaswamy over DeSantis. What is the Hungarian Candidate going to do now?

He can’t very well attack Ramaswamy on substance, since they are both completely aligned with the base, unless he is prepared to jettison his passive-aggressive approach to Trump and put his focus on winning over moderate voters. It is probably way too late for that. My guess is that he will engage in some mild criticism about Ramaswamy’s inexperience and hope that Christie, Haley, and Pence will discredit the guy without much help from him.

In other words, expect more of the same at the next debate.

A note to my readers: I will be on vacation next week. Regular posts will resume no later than next Sunday.

It is becoming increasingly obvious that Ramaswamy is running, not as Trump’s competitor, but as his even more extreme reactionary surrogate. To what end? What does he want?

As far as I can tell, here are the possibilities:

1. To increase his profile in an effort to become a reactionary media star;
2. To become Trump’s VP, and inherit the party in 2028; or
3. To become the leading figure in the party in 2028, but from the outside–i.e., to avoid all of Trump’s baggage.

No sane person would want to be Trump’s VP. If you think that’s a great job, talk to Mike Pence. The first and third alternatives are not mutually exclusive. My guess is that it is #3, possibly mixed with #1.

Many commentators have opined that the Pence campaign is nothing more than warmed-over Reaganism, but I don’t agree. I think it is a combination of a Reaganesque view of foreign policy, anti-abortion extremism, and Trump with the adults in the room–the actual product of the first few years of Trump, not his Twitter rantings or January 6.

Pence is hardly the perfect vessel for this approach, since both the right and the left despise him for his actions during the Trump years, and his lack of charisma is painfully apparent every time he opens his mouth. That said, you can see how synthesizing the most popular elements of Trumpism and Reaganism could get you enough votes to win the nomination–pick off the resolute pro-lifers from the base, get lots of undecideds by supporting only the best parts of Trump, and unite the Never Trumpers under the Reagan banner. It’s certainly a better approach than refusing to attack Trump and hoping the base will somehow prefer you to the man on golf cart.

Germany was allied with two tottering autocracies during World War I: the Austro-Hungarian Empire; and the Ottoman Empire, commonly referred to as “the sick man of Europe.” They were almost more trouble than they were worth. If you’re looking for reasons why the Germans lost the war, that is a good place to start.

Assuming that the World War I analogy fits today and that China is the equivalent of the German Empire, who is the best available candidate for the new “sick man of Europe?” Wouldn’t it make sense to pick as your principal ally an unstable, aggressive autocracy whose only real economic asset is about to decline in value over the next decade?

That would be Russia, of course. Xi looks more like Wilhelm II every day.

In the 1960s, it was the Democrats–JFK and LBJ–who swaggered. JFK’s style, minus the womanizing, would probably still play today. In the 1980s, however, Reagan made the GOP the party of swagger, and the rest is history; the left has preferred cerebral metrosexuals to cowboys. Is there any possibility of reverting to the earlier type?

Fetterman and Eric Adams suggest that the answer is yes. Since most Democratic voters are women, however, it is more complicated than it was in the 1960s. Left-leaning swagger has to come with a side dish of #MeToo.

Trump wasn’t the only thing missing last night; so was the war on wokeness! What does that mean for DeSantis and his chances?

Wokeness was absent because the moderators didn’t think it was a big concern for most GOP voters. They were probably right. But without wokeness, DeSantis is a man without a brand–an angry Demosthenes crying in the wilderness. He has no special foreign policy experience, and no great interest in reshaping the economy for the benefit of reactionary workers, so there is no obvious reason to prefer him to, say, Mike Pence. He is a lost soul.

Poor little guy.

1. The Fox News moderators made little effort to enforce the rules. Since all of the candidates were ignoring them, and the heated exchanges were revealing in their way, I thought that was OK.
2. Whether DeSantis was successful or not depends on your perspective. If his objective was to look like a logical successor to Trump, he failed miserably; he was a weird combination of overly aggressive and evasive. He didn’t in any way command the stage in the way Trump does, and he can’t really appeal to the reactionary base with Ramaswamy in the room. On the other hand, he didn’t take many shots, either, so if simply avoiding trouble was the goal, he was a winner.
3. Ramaswamy was definitely the group lightning rod. While he was consistently Trumpier-than-thou, my guess is that the elderly white base will hate him; he sounds like an extremely reactionary version of the Secretary of Transportation on way too much Red Bull. I think he will go down in the polls after the debate.
4. Tim Scott was a total zero. He doesn’t have the force necessary to win the nomination–not that I ever thought he did.
5. Mike Pence was surprisingly effective. He may turn out to be the most interesting Trump foil at future debates, if Trump shows up for any of them, which is hardly a given.
6. Chris Christie did his thing, but he didn’t really stand out. His attacks on Ramaswamy were more memorable than his attacks on Trump.
7. Nikki Haley, to me, was the most rational and persuasive of the candidates. But I’m not a Republican, so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
8. The rest don’t matter.

Trump poked Rupert Murdoch in the eye with a stick by refusing to debate and generating counterprogramming with Tucker Carlson. Will Murdoch retaliate by telling his moderators to toss softball questions to DeSantis? What will Fox do?

Nothing, I suspect, for three reasons. First, Fox has generally played it straight during debates. Second, debates involve multiple characters and are consequently too hard to control. Finally, Murdoch won’t cross the line and permanently alienate Trump. As he sees it, he has too much to lose.

The unification of Germany created a new and unstable balance of power in Europe. Bismarck knew it, and feared it. He did everything he could to keep France isolated and Europe peaceful while he was chancellor. But Wilhelm II sacked him and promoted a policy of aggressive imperialism; Britain and Russia were predictably alienated; and Europe was on the road to World War I.

In a similar vein, Xi’s predecessors did their best to promote peaceful development in China, but Xi decided to throw red meat to the nationalist base, and you can see the results. Europe and China’s neighbors (Russia excepted) are offended and frightened by Chinese provocations; they draw closer to the US; the Chinese whine about containment and lash out at their critics; and the cycle begins again. That makes Xi the new Wilhelm II and the opposite of Bismarck.

Actually, when you think about it, he sounds a lot like Donald Trump interacting with the American left, only on the international stage.

OK, we know that Trump swaggers. How do his opponents match up, based on my six indicators of swagger?

DeSantis meets the man test, and he has an athletic background, although it could be argued that baseball is no substitute for riding a horse and clearing brush on your ranch. He fails the other tests miserably. He exudes anger rather than self-confidence; he lacks an aura of celebrity or success; he seems more interested in policy than in pure exercises of faith and will; and he isn’t as big as Trump. If the two ever appear on a debate stage together, Trump will make every effort to dominate him, and will probably succeed.

With one exception, the rest of the field is no better. Nikki Haley doesn’t even pass the man test. Tim Scott is a black Mr. Rogers, not a force of nature. Ramaswamy is a nerd, and he doesn’t even disagree with Trump on anything. Not much hope there.

Christie is the exception. He meets several of the swagger tests. That’s what gives him a puncher’s chance.

What is commonly called a “debate” is hardly that; the candidates don’t disagree on very much, and there are no meaningful exchanges of ideas. It is more accurately described as a group job interview, and it functions more like a beauty contest–the idea is to stand out. Who looks and sounds the most presidential? Who can dominate the stage? Those are the real questions that will be answered tomorrow night.

Trump’s absence is both a challenge and an opportunity for DeSantis. The Hungarian Candidate will be competing, not just with the other candidates, but with Trump’s ghost. Can he control the stage the way Trump does? Will be look larger than life? Will the base look at him and conclude that they would be safe with him in office? Or will he just come across as an angry, sarcastic little man who likes to drone on about wokeness, to the infinite boredom of his audience?

I’m guessing the latter. If anyone has the ability to stand out in this crowd, it’s Christie. That represents his slight chance to unite the anti-Trumpers and win the nomination.

If you look at the elements of swagger that were listed in a previous post, it becomes obvious why Reagan was so successful. He was a large, powerful, athletic man with a celebrity background, a boatload of self-confidence, and no doubts about his ideology. He met all of the tests in my post in spades. Republicans loved him, and still do.

Donald Trump–angry, amoral, and narcissistic–has a very different personality than Reagan’s, but he also meets most of the tests. With Trump, what came naturally to Reagan is an ideology of sorts; he believes that every human interaction has a winner and a loser, and the winner is the one who dominates the other. He uses his size, celebrity, dark sense of humor, and boundless self-regard to entertain his supporters and make them feel safe. In other words, his swagger is the method by which he gets rural Christians to provide unquestioning support for him even though he does not even remotely resemble them. That is the key to his success–the way he squares the circle of white Christian identity politics in the GOP.

The only test Trump fails is the athletic part. Riding a cart and playing golf is not the equivalent of riding a horse and working on a ranch. In that sense, Trump is a parody of Reagan and George W. Bush.

Ron DeSantis went to Yale and Harvard Law School, but he maintains that he didn’t inhale, and that he despises both places even though he has profited from his elite credentials and connections throughout his career. This cynical ambivalence is not a new gambit for a prominent GOP politician. George W. Bush fairly broadcast the same attitude about his days at Yale during his years in office. Donald Trump loves to bang on about evil elites even though he always wanted his nominees to have impressive Ivy League pedigrees. Richard Nixon came by his anti-elite attitudes honestly, but the most prominent member of his administration was a Harvard professor. And so on.

What does this apparent hypocrisy about elite academic institutions mean in practice? There are inevitably limits to the populism of any candidate who relies on an Ivy League degree to make his case. It is, therefore, no surprise that DeSantis talks about the evils of woke corporations, but wants them to make as much money as possible, with a minimum of government regulation and taxation, as long as they shut up. After all, many of them are run by the kind of people who were his classmates.

So what, exactly, is swagger? Here are the key elements:

1. IT’S A GUY THING: It’s very difficult for women to swagger. They just don’t project physical strength and potential violence.
2. SIZE MATTERS: A very strong physical presence is part of the package. Look at Trump during the debates, for example; he’s always trying to loom over his opponent in order to look dominant.
3. BEING ATHLETIC HELPS, TOO: You can’t really swagger if you come across as bookish or nerdy. A love of vigorous outdoor activity goes over well with the electorate; it makes you look both strong and relatable.
4. THE WILL PREVAILS OVER THE INTELLECT: Swagger is about God and guts, not brains.
5. AN AURA OF CELEBRITY AND SUCCESS IS IMPORTANT: Why should people want to follow you if you’re not a winner?
6. PROJECTING CONFIDENCE IS ESSENTIAL: Always look strong, and always be on the attack, regardless of the circumstances.

The bottom line here is that a candidate who swaggers gives the impression that he knows what he’s doing, and that sticking with him keeps you safe against your enemies, both foreign and domestic. Creating that sense of security is extremely important with GOP voters who largely believe that the world is an overwhelmingly hostile place, and that only the strong survive in such an environment. That’s why so many of them drive trucks and SUVs.

I’ve got those dirty, lowdown, pudding fingers blues.

You have to be aware of it; it’s all over the news.

My polls are dropping like a stone, and now I’ve got to choose.

Reject the right or moderates; either way, I lose.

____________

I did my best to appease Trump and keep faith with the right.

I gave them everything they asked; signed every bill in sight.

But still they’re all supporting Trump; they haven’t seen the light.

I have to find an answer soon or kiss my ass good night.

________________

I’ve got the blues.

The war on wokeness blues.

I tried to fire up the base

But they don’t seem enthused.

Trump keeps taking shots at me.

He thinks that makes him strong.

I have to find an answer soon.

That way, I’ll prove him wrong.