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As we know, Donald Trump has no government experience, few policy ideas, and the attention span of a gnat.  As a result, he will have to rely heavily on his team in order to run the country.

The team does not exactly inspire confidence.  Here is how it breaks down:

1.  Where’s the key to the washroom?  Team members with no experience running  an agency or a large private sector entity:  DeVos; Carson; Trump himself.

2.  Fox in the henhouse:  Team members who clearly don’t believe in the mission of the agency they will be leading include:  Carson; Pruitt;  what’s his name–I just can’t remember–Rick Perry!

3.  Shining brass:  And you thought Patton was dead!  Two out of three are sane, which is a high percentage for this crowd.  Team members:  Flynn; Mattis; Kelly.

4.  Alt-right on!  Out of the ideological mainstream guys:  Bannon; Flynn.

5.  Tribunes of the plutocrats:  Faux populists include Ross, DeVos, and Mnuchin.

6.  Who’s in charge here?  The team as a whole is rife with ideological conflicts. These include:  Mattis vs. Flynn on Russia and Islamic terrorists; Kelly vs. Trump on immigration control; Tillerson vs. Pruitt and Trump on climate change; Sessions and Mattis vs. Trump on torture; and Price vs. Trump on entitlement “reform.”

The most important potential conflict is between Mattis and Flynn.  Mattis is a hawk, but he’s not a nut, while Flynn, by all plausible accounts, is an autocratic crazoid.  If Flynn wins this battle, God help us all.

Brooks has a column in today’s NYT in which he discusses the issue of market failures in the health care system.  He notes the arguments against markets and admits they have some validity, but ultimately rejects them because they are largely based on an analysis that is more than fifty years old.  He then goes on to say that things are different now, because lots of information is available on line.

The internet will solve our health care problems!  Whoo-hoo!  I would respond as follows:

1. Dismissing a study because it is old is an odd position for someone who claims to be a conservative.  I guess we can throw out Plato, Aristotle, and the Bible, too.
2. The conclusions that he rejects in the cited study are based on common sense observations that are still accurate today, not on obsolete data.
3. If you’ve ever gone on line looking for medical advice for a particular symptom, what you will inevitably find is a host of possible causes and direction to get advice from a doctor, which solves nothing.
4. The market does work in some instances.  If you have a medical problem that isn’t serious or complicated, you can probably figure it out for yourself and buy over-the-counter medicine to deal with it.  There is plenty of information available under those circumstances, there are lots of competing providers, you aren’t in a position where you have to make a decision under very adverse circumstances, and you won’t die if you misdiagnose the problem.  For more serious and complex issues, however, you don’t really have any choice but to rely on a doctor or a hospital, and that is where all the market failures–monopolies, inequality of knowledge, the need to rely on someone trustworthy, etc.–come into play.  That’s where the money is in our system.  The internet isn’t going to make the problem go away.

Just as the French Revolution still influences French politics today, the ghost of Franco still haunts Spain.  While the Spanish right clearly accepts democratic norms, you can occasionally see evidence of centralizing, authoritarian DNA, particularly in issues involving separatism.

The current rightist minority government is in a difficult position.  Is it sufficiently flexible to deal with the upcoming Catalonian crisis, or will it revert to type, even without a majority?  I make no predictions on that point, but it will certainly be interesting to watch.

             Welcome to the Roller Coaster

Welcome to the roller coaster.

Strap in for the ride.

Up and down and round and round.

There’ll be no place to hide.

 

We’ll cozy up to Russia, now.

We’ll fight with the Chinese.

Where’s North Korea on the list?

No one can feel at ease.

 

We won’t have any allies, now.

Cold interest will prevail.

Nobody there to pick us up

If we should fall and fail.

 

America is going rogue.

It’s not been tried before.

It’s likely a disaster but

It sure won’t be a bore.

The CIA guy known as Mike.

He thinks Putin should take a hike.

He broke with his boss.

Our gain is Trump’s loss.

There wasn’t much there not to like.

The Italians and Germans have a complicated history, going back to the days of the Roman Empire.  During the last two centuries, their respective experiences have been more similar than different:  a belated unification in the latter part of the 19th Century; war; fascism; defeat in World War II; and EU membership. That notwithstanding, the condition of the two countries today is very different; the German economy is roaring forward, while Italy suffers from slow growth and chronic deficits.  The question for the day, then, is why?

The easy and simple answer to the question is that one country is populated by Germans, and the other by Italians.  That, however, is just a way of rephrasing the question:  why are these nations the way they are?

I think there are two related reasons, both connected to national complacency.  If you’re an Italian, you’re blessed with good weather, good food, a beautiful countryside, great art, and a glorious history; it’s consequently easy to enjoy the dolce vita and leave the grim pursuit of material goods to others.  The Germans either don’t have those advantages or have them at a much lower plane, and their country suffered far more damage during World War II, so they have more incentive to throw their energy into building wealth.

The Trump acolyte known as Rex.

For his boss, he must stick out his neck.

He wouldn’t diss Putin

For bombing and shootin’.

Have his chances of winning been wrecked?

The contrast between the cool, cerebral Obama and the Wizard of Id could scarcely be more stark.  That gives rise to the question, did the electorate choose Trump because they wanted to go in a completely opposite direction?  Or, to be more crude, did Obama cause Trump?

In my opinion, no.  Swagger has always been a huge part of the DNA of the GOP. Obama’s favorability ratings are much higher than Trump’s.  Mitt Romney, who resembles Obama far more than Trump, was the GOP candidate just four years ago.  Trump’s victory ultimately was a product of the lack of consensus among the leaders of the Republican Party and Clinton’s weaknesses as a candidate;  it was not a rejection of Obama’s personality or a seismic change in the opinions of the electorate.

As I noted about a month ago, there is a clear analogy tying the French election to ours.  Fillon, the socially conservative Thatcherite, sounds a lot like Ted Cruz, while the line connecting LePen and Trump is too obvious to merit much comment.

It has been almost universally assumed that the left will vote for Fillon in the second round.  Personally, I don’t see it.  A center-right candidate, yes, but not one with his agenda.

Trump will be casting a lengthy shadow over this election.  I’m not sure how that plays out.  If his first few months in office are perceived to be a success, I suspect that will make LePen look more viable.  If not, maybe not.   We’ll see.

In any event, if Fillon wins, France is almost certainly looking at a year full of strikes and violent demonstrations.  If LePen wins, the very existence of the EU is in danger.

Sounds great to me—not.

The newbie dictator Jong Un.

He’s killing his people for fun.

A war over tweets

Sounds at best bittersweet.

You can’t stop it once it has begun.

Kellyanne Conway was apparently quoted yesterday as saying something to the effect that we pay too much attention to what Trump says, and not enough to what’s in his heart.  I suppose that is a different way of saying that we take him literally, but not seriously.

The question that follows is obvious:  how the hell are we supposed to know what is in his heart, if it doesn’t come out of his mouth?  Is the whole country supposed to read his mind?

Personally, my approach will be to treat anything he says as a negotiating ploy, not to be taken seriously, until he signs on the dotted line.

 

My wife and I spent Christmas in Cologne.  My overall reaction to the city was to wish that I could have seen it before World War II.  It has the most impressive collection of Romanesque churches I’ve ever seen, and there are some neighborhoods, typically around the churches, that are very nice, but large parts of the city are characterized by featureless buildings speedily constructed with mediocre materials after the war.  If you’ve ever seen photos of the war damage, it’s easy to understand the immediate need to rebuild, but still . . .

The cathedral, to me, is just too large and overbearing.  It was finished during the late 19th Century, which figures;  it is a perfect example of imperial architectural bombast.

The day after Christmas, we decided to visit Liege, just across the border in Belgium.  The (grossly overpriced) train trip took about an hour.  There was no sign whatsoever of the national frontier.  The city was a complete change of pace; the language, of course, was French, but so was the culture.  While the Christmas markets closed on Christmas Eve in Germany, this one was open;  the architecture was more attractive; and the food looked better, too.

When we returned, I couldn’t help being impressed that one could have such a different experience just an hour’s distance away.  The trip would have been longer, and more cumbersome, without the EU.  There is a danger that the citizens of the EU will take this sort of freedom of movement for granted.  Let’s hope they don’t.

 

When I think of historical analogies to Angela Merkel, the first name I come up with is Robert Walpole:  two savvy political operators with the ability to find the country’s ideological sweet spot, but lacking the vision and force to prevail in a crisis.  Of course, Walpole’s job was easier, because he only had the UK to worry about;  Merkel has to run both Germany and the EU, and the jobs often lead her in different directions.

With the German election approaching, Merkel has a quandary:  she can’t support any more bailouts without alienating her electorate, but she can’t afford to let the EU split apart, either.  As a result, I suspect the EU will drift over the next several months;  there will be no attempts to impose Teutonic standards of financial rectitude on Italy or France for fear of creating a backlash, but there will be no stimulus packages, either.  The individual components of the EU will thus enjoy more freedom to act independently, which, in light of the circumstances, is probably a good thing.

The greatest actress of our generation clearly thinks she has earned the right to speak her mind in public.   In her case, I agree, but I would encourage lesser mortals to let their work do the talking, because  blunt political speeches at awards ceremonies are only going to make red America change the channel.

Oh, and won’t the Kennedy Center Honors program be fun for the next four years?

The woman named Marine LePen.

She’ll claim to make France great again.

She’d ditch the EU.

What else could she do?

Then the Germans would have one less friend.

 

A programming note:  this week’s primary topic will be Europe in 2017.  That will be followed by a week with twin themes:  Obama’s legacy and “Countdown to Catastrophe,” which will be about, well, you can figure it out.  Apres ca, le deluge.