Author: hamilton1788

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.

I read two interesting articles on Vox.com yesterday morning.  The first one, from the invaluable Sarah Kliff, was about an attempt in California to impose uniform unit prices on all private health insurance companies through legislation.  It is clearly a move towards single-payer, but without much of the baggage.  It bears watching in the future.

The second was an article by Dylan Matthews about how Ryanism allegedly paved the way for Trumpism.  I was taken by this article largely because he talked about a “Christian Democratic” alternative for the GOP, which obviously uses my terminology for one of the GOP factions.  Nevertheless, I think he missed some of the nuances of the real story, as follows:

1.  Yes, the GOP clearly could have moved to the center after the debacle of the 2008 election.  Its decision not to had momentous consequences.  However, the seeds of the move towards the CLs and Reactionaries were planted in the domestic and overseas failures of the Bush administration, and became visible during the 2008 campaign, when the crowds were crying for Palin, not McCain.  It’s hard to imagine, even in retrospect, the GOP doubling down on “compassionate conservatism” after the Bush years; the country would have been much better off, but the principal beneficiary would have been Obama, not Mitch McConnell.
2.  Ryanism didn’t pave the way for Trumpism.  For one thing, “Trumpism” isn’t simply a code word for Reactionary ideology;  it just means faith in Donald Trump, whatever crazy thing he might decide to do today.  For another, the GOP gained control of Congress and many state governments between 2008 and 2016. This was hardly a disastrous era for the party.  Finally, Ryan won some victories during the Obama years; the size of government was cut significantly, but he didn’t get any credit for it from his own side.

Reality is more complicated.  With no ideology of his own except self-love, Trump was perfectly happy to outsource most of his program to Ryan after he took office; in other words, “Trumpism” and “Ryanism” have largely been one in practice.  The many failures of the program are due to the divisions within the GOP, and the discrepancy between the promises made to the public and the actual measures proposed in the program, not any split between the two GOP titans.

Pompeo spent most of yesterday trying unsuccessfully to distance himself from the extreme right positions he has taken in the past.  Nobody really believed him, and nobody should.  He’ll be a terrible Secretary of State.

But what’s the alternative?  Working for a boss whose Twitter eruptions are the very negation of diplomacy is a complete nightmare.  James Baker’s not walking through the door.   We have to take what we can get.

At the end of the day, he’ll be confirmed, because we need a Secretary of State during these troubled times, and he at least sees the value of repairing his crippled department. Better a minimally competent Trumpist than a vacuum and a daily blizzard of contradictions.

And if we need someone to play the bad cop more convincingly, Bolton’s already on the job.

Ryan, like all Ayn Rand acolytes, is a CL at heart.  His passion in life has always been to shrink the size of government for the benefit of the wealthy and to the detriment of the poor.  He succeeded in making his views the orthodoxy of the GOP in spite of their unpopularity with actual voters.   I suppose you could call that an “accomplishment,” although it meant that the GOP had to lie about its platform every election, and actually governing against the economic interests of its constituents proved very difficult in practice.

Ryan became Speaker with a large reservoir of goodwill within the party.  Was he a success?   Well, he failed miserably in uniting the factions, although that task may be beyond the ability of any mere mortal.  He failed in his attempts to remake the welfare state.  He could have treated Trump as a third-party president, not a real Republican, but he chose to embrace and enable him, instead.  His one creative idea on taxes, the BAT, went down early.  His only real success was with the mindless tax cut that was passed last year.  It will be modified over time, because it isn’t really working at any level.

I won’t miss him.  Will you?