Author: hamilton1788

1.  I need a job, and I might as well go to the very top.  Fortunately, I don’t know of any candidate meeting this description who ever made it anywhere close to the White House.  2016 example:  Carly Fiorina.

2.  I have a calling to be President.  Most people who feel this way do so practically from birth, and live their lives accordingly.  2016 example:  Ted Cruz.

3.  I don’t care about personal ambition; I’m just a vessel for an ideology that will help the country.  2016 example:  Bernie Sanders.

4.  It’s all about me and my ego.  I’ll be the most important person on the planet!  There’s just nothing like having the band play “Hail to the Chief” when you pop out of Air Force One.  2016 example:  Too obvious to mention.

Trump praised Ali on Twitter yesterday.  I guess that proves that even an African-American Muslim can be OK if he’s enough of a winner.

One thing is for certain:  when it comes to clever and imaginative trash talk, Trump is nowhere close to being in Ali’s league.

As Bernie continues with his quixotic campaign, the only important remaining questions revolve around his ultimate objectives.  Here is my best guess:

1.  Influence the platform.  In the final analysis, platforms don’t mean that much;  if you don’t believe me, watch and see how much deference Trump pays to the GOP platform this fall.  I think the Clinton and Sanders camps can probably agree on a formula that essentially says that the Clinton incremental approach is appropriate for the short term, but Bernie’s vision is the long term goal.

2.  Bernie for VP?  This makes more sense that you would think at first glance. Bernie has a large constituency and a vision that could help the Clinton campaign, and I don’t doubt that he would be a powerful voice against Trump. He is also qualified to be President, if necessary.  On the other hand, I think he has drawn too much blood during the campaign to merit serious consideration; everything he said about Clinton and Wall Street, for example, would be thrown back at both of them by Trump and his partisans.  His age would also be an issue, and Clinton doesn’t need his help to carry Vermont.  On balance, I don’t see it happening.

3.  Bernie Prime Time.  I suspect Clinton will agree to give him a prominent speaking role at the convention as long as he limits himself to providing his vision and attacking Trump.

4.  Where does he go after Philly?  It has to have occurred to him that the best chance for his “revolution” would be a Trump victory, followed by a failed presidency.  I don’t think he is cynical enough to give into that temptation.

Personally, I would like to see him try to mobilize his supporters into a force at the state and local levels, and I would also suggest that he take his message to red states and see if he can make any headway with Trump voters.  After all, the ultimate challenge he faces with his program is not with the rest of the Democratic party; it is with Republicans and Independents who despise the idea of “socialism.”

Another day, another icon dies.  That’s 2016 for you.

They called him “The Greatest,” and he actually was:  an amazing amalgam of speed, power, grace, and trash-talking.  Many have attempted to emulate him, particularly in the trash-talking department, but none has fully succeeded, and probably none ever will.

All three were geniuses who died prematurely, but I think their stories are fundamentally different.  Robin Williams strikes me as a man who fought bravely against his personal demons virtually all of his life until they finally overwhelmed him;  comedian or car salesman, his fate ultimately would have been the same.  Michael Jackson was doomed by issues in his upbringing and his inability to deal with the pressures of fame;  his life was in a downward spiral years before he died, and the outcome seemed inevitable even at the time. Prince, on the other hand, was living the way he wanted to, and there was nothing inevitable about his demise;  he just made a stupid, fatal mistake with his pain medication.  There is nothing more to it than that.

The Robin Williams suicide affected me the most, because it is so easy for me to see him as an essentially noble character in a tragedy.  The death of Prince is a loss to all of us, because there is no telling what music the world will never hear as a result. With Michael, the story of his life from roughly the middle of the 1980’s was just kind of sickening.

That’s my opinion.  I could be wrong.  If you disagree, don’t hesitate to say so.

 

The British and Irish have made significant progress towards resolving the Northern Ireland issue over the last 20 years.  I would say that the membership of both countries in the EU has been helpful in that regard, for the following reasons:

1. The fact that both countries are members of the same political entity makes the Ireland/Northern Ireland boundary look like an absurd anachronism;
2. The other EU members provide a potential resource for mediation; and
3. The influence of the Catholic Church over the Irish government has clearly diminished in recent years.  While there are numerous reasons for that, I have to believe that the day-to-day connection between the Republic and a variety of more secular countries within the EU has played some sort of role in the process. That change, in turn, makes the ultimate acceptance by Protestants in Northern Ireland of a united Republic more plausible.

Brexit would put all of this at risk.  It would harden the border between the Republic and Northern Ireland and make unification more difficult.  For that, and other reasons I will discuss in the future, Brexit should be rejected.

Historically, the GOP has been the party of free trade, due to the strong influence of its business constituency.  It is now poised to nominate an avowed protectionist as its standard bearer in 2016.  What is the likelihood that it will return to its roots after the election?

Jeb Bush was the only candidate that I can remember making any significant attempt to defend free trade during the debates.  By the end of the campaign, you would have to say that all of the candidates were on board in differing degrees with Trump’s opposition to trade agreements.  As a result, I can only see two scenarios in which the GOP would revert to its previous position in 2020:  a catastrophic Trump defeat in 2016; or an even more catastrophic Trump presidency.

If I were a cartoonist, I don’t think I could resist depicting Trump as a gorilla, given his penchant for chest-beating and obnoxiously aggressive behavior.  It is only fitting, then, that he had lots of opinions about the incident involving the gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo.

The elephant is too passive a symbol for today’s more assertive GOP.  The gorilla would make a perfect replacement.

About a week ago, I posted a column on Trump and the Ryan budget in which I noted that anyone voting for Trump on the basis of his promise not to cut entitlements was making a serious mistake, given his, shall we say, flexibility with the truth.  Right on cue, the AOL News ran an article on Monday in which unnamed sources indicated that Trump had indicated a willingness to cut Social Security in his meeting with Paul Ryan; he just doesn’t want to talk about it during the campaign, because he knows it will hurt his chances of winning.

The bottom line is that Trump’s attitude towards selling himself in politics is the same as it is in business–the entire voting public is, in a sense, a customer base for Trump University.  The difference is that his interests have turned from money to power.  And that’s really, really scary.

 

The GOP nominee Don.

He wants the establishment gone.

It’s all plain to me.

Is it so hard to see

That the emperor has no clothes on?

The Bush family and Mitt Romney, who have old-fashioned principles and no political prospects for the foreseeable future, clearly do not plan to attend or support the Trump coronation.  Most of the other active GOP players, most notably Marco Rubio, have fallen into line, as expected.  The following graphic will explain why it is in their self-interest:

                              Support                     Don’t Support

Trump Wins     Cabinet post?       Alone in the wilderness

Trump Loses     Slightly tainted    No future support from Reactionaries

If you have plans to run for office as a GOP candidate in the future, the risks of supporting Trump are clearly outweighed by its benefits.

Cruz hasn’t committed himself yet, but you can expect him to fall into line eventually.  It makes sense for him to put off his endorsement to the last minute because:

1.  It gives him more leverage with Trump;
2.  It will attract more attention; and
3.  It puts more distance between the endorsement and his personal attacks on Trump, thereby making him look slightly less like the spineless, self-serving hypocrite that he will actually be.

 

I never served in the armed forces.  I have not lived through a conflict that anyone reasonably believed could cost me my life or my freedom.  I don’t know anyone who died fighting for our country.  For these omissions in my life, I have no regrets.

I have serious doubts that anyone without these experiences can feel as intensely patriotic as anyone with them.  It is also completely obvious that even the best and most “realistic” of movies and literature portray warfare in a fragmented and sanitized way.  Nevertheless, they are my point of reference, because nothing better is available.

What I can do, notwithstanding the acknowledged limits of my understanding, is try to put myself in the position of a young farmer from Ohio with no previous experience of warfare who found himself fighting desperately to save his country at Gettysburg, or a man who willingly gave up a comfortable desk job to throw grenades into tunnels in the face of withering Japanese fire on Okinawa because it needed to be done.  My life today would be very different without them, so they are entitled to my undying thanks, and they have them.

Donald Trump lies, shamelessly, all of the time; a fact-checking organization reviewed his statements at one point and rated 75 percent of them, I believe it was, false.  While some of his lies are just typical ideological mumbo-jumbo, he has broken new ground by citing long-discredited conspiracy theories, and occasionally he just makes demonstrably and even gratuitously incorrect statements about insignificant facts (e.g., Trump steaks).

The existence of the lies is not in debate.  The questions for today are:

1. Why does he think this is acceptable behavior?
2. Why is he getting away with it?

The most plausible response to #1 is that Trump views politics as just another form of business, and he views his business as an ongoing and ceaseless stream of negotiations in which he is unwise to show his hand too early.   In other words, campaigning is nothing but salesmanship, and if the American public is foolish enough to buy into his opening positions, well, caveat emptor.

Does he behave this way with his family?  If he ever prays, does he try to make amazing deals with God?  The possibility cannot be completely dismissed.

As to #2, part of it is the MSM engaging in their familiar practice of false equivalence, but the larger part is that Trump’s supporters don’t care about the details; the only thing that matters to them is that Trump feels their pain and wants to make them great again by destroying their enemies.  In the big picture, the end justifies the means.

 

“The Graduate” will turn 50 next year.  In the unlikely event that you’ve never seen it, the protagonist of the movie is a young, idealistic, newly-minted Baby Boomer college graduate with no clear plans who is confronted with a future in an adult world that looks drab, corrupt, and overly materialistic.  He is comically seduced by Mrs. Robinson, a much older woman who stands for all of the corruption of her generation.  In the end, of course, our hero ultimately retains his ideals and prevails.

The movie is a classic of its kind, but it should be seen as a myth or a cartoon;  the distinction between the boring, racist, materialistic World War II generation and the truth-seeking Boomers was always absurd.  Today, of course, the tables have turned;  Boomers are largely viewed as being narcissistic and self-indulgent, while Mrs. Robinson would be lauded as a member of the “Greatest Generation.” Tom Brokaw probably believes she fought heroically for our freedom at Omaha Beach.  But that is a topic for another day.

The current relevance of this is simple;  it is clear that many Sanders supporters, and possibly even Bernie himself (he is a sixties guy, after all) see their campaign against Hillary Clinton in much the same light as the movie.  My advice to them is to get over their self-righteousness and move on.  In the real world, as opposed to the mythological one portrayed in the movie, there are no perfect candidates, and no completely pure political choices; every election requires an identification of the lesser evil.  Hillary is not the Democrats’ equivalent of Mrs. Robinson, and Donald Trump is, in fact, a clear and present danger to the country.

The GOP nominee Don.

As retro and sexist as Bond.

In Cleveland they’ll say

While he’s king for a day

As a winner, he can’t touch LeBron.