Category: Uncategorized

Trump’s favorite diplomatic tactic is to suck up to strongmen. No previous American president in my lifetime has done it to the same degree that he does. Why?

Because he looks at Xi and Putin and Sisi and Kim and Erdogan and the rest of the gang and sees himself. He knows that he demands that everyone around him fawn over him. That’s the way he decides to dole out favors. Why should the others be different? The world is nothing more than a stage for a handful of great men; if you can build a good personal relationship with them, everything falls into place.

Unfortunately for him, the world doesn’t actually work that way, and the strongmen in question are neither as stupid nor as susceptible to flattery as he is. That’s why his efforts at diplomacy don’t work.

When I need something to pick me up, I frequently watch a program called “Echo in the Canyon” on Netflix. The canyon in question is Laurel Canyon; the program, as you might have guessed, is a documentary about the music scene in the area in the sixties. It is full of shimmering sixties songs, and reflects the contemporary belief that, in America, all things were possible, and life would only get better.

It is that sense of optimism about the future, based on the virtues of limited government and individual freedom, that is the essence of the American dream. It is about the potential of new ideas as much as it is about having a bigger house and more cars in the garage. Ronald Reagan and David Crosby, both of whom lived in California at the time, wouldn’t have agreed on much, but they would have agreed on that.

Unlike any American politician in my lifetime, Trump doesn’t believe in the American dream. He sees a world filled with danger and fear, and promises to protect us from it with walls, tariffs, military power, and, of course, his unequaled genius. He appeals to people who see the world in the same way.

How do the Democrats combat this? By bringing back the dream, and putting our current problems in context. We’ve been in much tougher positions than this before. History tells us that we will prevail if we have decent leadership. That is all that we lack today.

Even the Republicans could see that it was necessary to compensate workers for the loss of their jobs during the shutdown. As a result, Congress approved enhanced unemployment insurance for a limited time on a bipartisan basis.

With the impending end of the lockout period, we are entering into a new phase, in which the legislative focus will change from a form of compensation to a more traditional stimulus. Republicans are already determined to claw back benefits from workers in order to assist their pro-business donors. And so, the expanded unemployment benefits, which will serve as a back door form of a minimum wage increase after the end of the lockout, will undoubtedly expire. Liability protection for employers from claims based on the virus will be on the table. Aid for state and local governments may be withheld in an effort to force those governments to impose layoffs and pay cuts on public employees. And so on.

The Democrats will resist all of this and launch completely justified attacks on the GOP as being anti-worker. Republicans rely largely on the votes of white workers; how will they respond? By attacking China and reviving the culture wars, of course, because distraction is what they do. Sometimes, it even succeeds.

Lindsey Graham, William Barr, and Mike Pompeo, all of whom are smart enough to know better, chose to become Trump sycophants in exchange for what they hope is influence over the decisionmaking process. They believe that more can get done inside the system, regardless of how flawed it is, than outside. As Sarah Palin might say, how’s that workin’ for them?

For Graham, the quid pro quo is a neoconservative foreign policy. His bargain has been a miserable failure. Trump is not, and never will be, a neoconservative. All Graham has received for all of his ostentatious sucking up is some degree of protection from the extreme right in South Carolina.

For Barr, the consideration is movement towards a system that empowers him to burn secular heretics at the stake. He has made some progress, but not much. Once a Trumpian judiciary is firmly in place, his prospects will improve. In the meantime, he has to keep doing thankless clean-up work for his master.

For Pompeo, the short-term payoff is a default to a foreign policy based on traditional American and GOP interests and values; the longer term goal is higher office. On the first, the record is a decided mixed bag, due to Trump’s frequent and unpredictable interventions; as to the second, the future is not yet written.

Like many before him, Ezra Klein observes that, based on its spending priorities, the federal government is an insurance company protected by a large military. More unusually, Klein concludes from this that the president’s job is to be a risk manager; it logically follows that Trump is a miserable failure. Is he right?

If your vote is determined by your economic self-interest, absolutely. However, if you’re an identity or vision voter, and the risk that you fear the most is rule by people other than what you consider to be “real Americans,” no. If you belong to the latter group, you elected Trump to disrupt the system, so if chaos ensured, he’s just doing his job.

According to today’s NYT, Iran is seeing a new spike in virus cases as a result of reopening prematurely for the overriding purpose of saving its economy. We may very well be headed in the same direction, and for the same reasons.

Trump and the Supreme Leader in the same boat! How ironic is that?

Yesterday’s Politico contained an article which correctly noted that the job losses resulting from the current depression are causing the Social Security Trust Fund to be depleted ahead of schedule. At the present rate, the trust fund will be exhausted around 2030, and benefit cuts will ensue. What will come of this?

The GOP is divided between business people and small government devotees who support entitlement cuts, and reactionaries who will be appalled by them. Trump and the GOP leadership, for that reason, talk about the issue as little as possible. Their ultimate objectives will be to take the elderly hostage, to avoid tax increases, and to force the Democrats to share responsibility for benefit cuts.

The Biden campaign needs to emphasize its proposal to shore up the system by modifying the current payroll tax threshold. This is a life-and-death issue for the elderly, and it would force Trump to choose between his wealthy business constituents and his reactionary base. It is a win-win for the Democrats if they play it properly.

Bret Stephens sees a cleavage in American society between privileged remote office workers and the army of essential workers who risk their lives to serve them. Stephens clearly views this division in Trumpian terms: the remote workers are the self-serving, meritocratic coastal elites, while the essential workers are Trump’s angry base. Is he right?

Hardly. The Democrats are primarily responsible for all of the worker-friendly legislation that made it through Congress over the last few months, while the GOP’s objective is to reopen businesses as quickly as possible in order to cut spending and force workers to choose between their jobs and their health. Trump and the GOP intend to eliminate the extra layer of federal unemployment benefits and to jam employer immunity legislation through Congress– not the Democrats. This, of course, is intended to please the small business owners who actually comprise the GOP’s base. They are the people who are attending the anti-lockout demonstrations with their assault rifles, not nurses or drivers for Amazon Prime.

So, yes, the cleavage exists, but no, it will not operate to Trump’s advantage in November. Essential workers are not entrepreneurs who are frustrated by government regulations; they are just workers, period.

Virtually all of the local TV commercials for businesses include similar patter about safe practices during the pandemic. Which ones will be believed?

It will come down to the general reputation of the business prior to the pandemic and to the public’s opinions regarding the credibility of the government. No one on the blue side has any faith in a man who takes unproven drugs and urges us to eat bleach. Why should we believe him when he tells us it is safe to go to restaurants again, particularly since we know his advice will be completely based on his personal self-interest?

For once, Trump’s lack of credibility is going to bite him in the rear end. It’s about time!

“The Last Dance,” now concluded, can be viewed as Michael Jordan’s case for being the greatest of all time. How does he stack up against LeBron James?

The two were very different players in different eras, which makes the comparison difficult. We have numbers and the eye test to assist us, however. Having watched both of them play a few zillion times, here is my take on the matter:

1. LeBron is unquestionably bigger and stronger. He could probably have matched MJ in his prime in a foot race over a reasonable distance. Michael was quicker in small spaces; he could change directions and get off his feet more rapidly. To a large extent, that was the secret of his success.
2. LeBron is a better passer and rebounder. Michael was the better shooter and overall scorer.
3. Michael was a great defender from the minute he set foot in the NBA. LeBron, at his best, was just as good, and was more versatile, due to his size; he had to grow into it over a period of years, however. Viewing their careers as a whole, you would have to give MJ the edge.
4. Both were/are great clutch players. For every iconic MJ shot, I can respond with a corresponding LeBron moment. It’s a wash.
5. Michael won more titles, but with a better supporting cast. LeBron’s Cavaliers were mediocre defensive and rebounding teams. It was due solely to him that the Cavaliers played in so many NBA finals, against clearly superior opponents. Only his Heat teams were remotely comparable to the Bulls, and the tape shows that Wade and Bosh were past their prime by the time Miami lost to the Spurs in 2014. I would call this a wash, although some undoubtedly would disagree.
6. I won’t be able to compare them as leaders until LeBron has his own documentary.
7. LeBron is a cultural phenomenon, but not to the degree that Michael was. Probably no one ever will be. “The Last Dance” makes that very clear.

On balance, like most people, I would give a slight edge to MJ. It’s close, however.

Here’s a thought experiment for you: would the country be as concerned about the effects of globalization if the lost manufacturing jobs had gone to the UK, instead of to China?

Didn’t think so.

The rise of China, and its increasingly aggressive and repressive behavior, are definitely legitimate concerns for America and its allies (to the extent we still have any). It is undeniable that China owes its greater strength largely to the effects of trade agreements signed over the last 20 years. Globalization and the Chinese challenge are not, however, the same phenomenon, and do not call for the same response. It would be a mistake to forego all of the benefits of globalization when the real issue is more narrow than that.

Any normal president in the middle of a pandemic would seek to unify the nation through ostentatiously strong leadership. That isn’t in Donald Trump’s playbook. He thinks that his unique combination of swagger, scapegoating, angry populism, and support for the red team in the culture war will be enough to carry him to another narrow victory. It is an approach based on division, not unity. Can it work?

Based on the results of the 2016 and 2018 elections and three years of polls, he has no realistic chance of winning the popular vote. He doesn’t care how many votes he wins, however, as long as they are the right ones. If he can pull off narrow victories in all of the blue firewall states, his built-in advantage in the Electoral College will carry him to a win regardless of the outcome of the popular vote.

To me, the key is going to be vote suppression. If Trump can reduce the Biden vote substantially through effective negative campaigning, virus-related restrictions, or the threat of violence, he has a decent chance regardless of the state of the economy. Otherwise, this ain’t 2016, and all of his anti-China commercials aren’t going to persuade people who are unemployed or feel threatened by the virus to give him a second chance.

Empires aren’t much use during peacetime. You have to bear the costs of administration, and what do you get in return? During wartime, however, an empire can be an invaluable source of men and materials. Great Britain probably wouldn’t have survived either of the two world wars without one.

So it is with globalization. You can certainly argue about whether the fruits of free trade have been distributed fairly within the developed countries, but that is a matter of internal politics; what cannot be disputed is that the world as a whole is much wealthier as a result of the current trade regime. Free trade is not realistically possible, however, in a pandemic or a war. What does that mean for the future?

If you’re Donald Trump, it proves that free trade is a mistake, and that we should be doing everything in our power to bring manufacturing back to the US. But do we really want to create an economy based on import substitution, like Russia’s? Do we want to live with poor quality, overpriced domestic products in lieu of imports 100 percent of the time because that system would work better 5 percent of the time?

No. Some adjustments should be made. Commodities that are absolutely essential to national security should be made here or stockpiled. Otherwise, trade should remain free, and there should be a strong, but rebuttable, presumption against protectionism in every circumstance.

My fellow real Americans:

We’ve had some tough times lately. That virus is bad. BAD! You might have lost your job and your health insurance, and even gotten sick, but I’ve had it worse than you. I’ve been stuck in the White House, and I haven’t been able to do any rallies. It’s been torture, I tell you. But I suffered in a good cause.

Now the tide is turning, and we’re going to start fighting back. We’re Americans, remember! When the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor, did we just stand there and take it? No! Americans are tough! We’re winners! We always fight back, and we never lose! Just like me!

These could be the best days of your life, so don’t just piss them away! Get even with the virus, and the Chinese! It’s time to take your life back!

So tonight, I’m telling you to go out to restaurants and bars again. Get on a plane. Go spend some money. Have a good time. Stare the virus and death in the eye, and tell them you’re an American, and you’re not afraid. And don’t wear one of those wimpy Chinese masks–no real American does that! I don’t! Sure, I make the people around me wear one, but I don’t!

Do it for yourselves. And for me. In the end, it’s all about me. You know that, and I do, too.

Trump blesses you all. As for the blue people, who cares? The more of them that die of the virus, the fewer votes for Biden!

Good night.

(Inspired by a famous scene in “Animal House”)

April 1, 1945

German Fuhrer Adolf Hitler assured his countrymen that the war was going well and that total victory was imminent at a press conference yesterday morning. When asked about reports that Allied troops had already moved into Germany, he dismissed them as “fake news.” When it was noted that this information had actually come from his own propaganda department, he said that any German defeats were caused by the Jews, not him. Upon being advised that the Jews had been exterminated, so they couldn’t be responsible for any German defeats, Hitler then blamed Mussolini for failing to carry his part of the load. When a reporter pointed out that Mussolini had been dead for some time, Hitler called the question “nasty” and stormed out of the room.

(To make this clear, I’m not saying Trump is Hitler; he’s way too lazy and narcissistic for that, and, to his credit, he much prefers trade wars to the shooting kind. That’s why the date on this is April Fools’ Day. It cannot be denied, however, that the two share some unsavory tactics and personality traits–telling outrageous lies and shifting blame to implausible scapegoats are among them.)