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Most people don’t remember this, but Ronald Reagan had the reputation of being a dangerous right-winger outside of the political mainstream prior to his debate with Carter.  He went a long way towards normalizing his image by showing off his avuncular side during the debate, and he won the 1980 election by a large margin.

Donald Trump came into the first debate with a similar problem, but, unlike Reagan, he added to it with his unhinged performance.   He has Reagan’s swagger, but none of his effortless charm.  Can he recover by turning himself into the man Mike Pence incorrectly says he is in the remaining two debates?  I just don’t see it.

The next big task for the Chinese Communist Party is to do something without precedent:  to give the entire country a first world standard of living without giving up its arbitrary power over the legal system and the economy.  I think the South Korean system could be a plausible starting point;  just substitute the privately-owned chaebols for the Chinese state-owned enterprises, and you are a part of the way there.

As far as I know, Xi isn’t interested in my advice.  Otherwise, the Chinese and the South Koreans don’t have a lot of issues except for North Korea.  There will always be limits on the closeness of the relationship unless and until the Chinese can somehow bring North Korea under control.

I didn’t watch much of it, because really, who cares?  What I saw during those brief intervals was a battle between an essentially genial but overly amped attack poodle and a smarmy, condescending guy who completely disregarded the moderator’s questions and repeatedly lied about his running mate’s positions.

It would appear that America found the smarmy, condescending guy to be more compelling, which doesn’t surprise me, because lying can be an extremely effective debate tactic.  It certainly worked for Mitt Romney when he talked about his tax cut plan in 2012.

The bottom line is that, no, Donald Trump isn’t just a slightly more coarse and unpolished version of Mike Pence.  America can draw its own conclusions; we don’t need to take Pence’s word for it.

In 2012, the GOP nominated Mitt Romney, an establishment politician if there ever was one.  This year, they nominated Trump.  Did the party just go nuts in four short years, and, if so, why?

I think it is mostly happenstance.   The economy is in better shape now than it was in 2012, and there have been fewer manufactured crises over the debt limit and government shutdowns over the last four years.  The rise of IS and gay marriage probably played a role in firing up the reactionary base.  The biggest change, however, is in the GOP candidates themselves.

Romney was shrewd enough to appropriate the immigration issue for himself. He was unopposed in his lane;  his two ultimate rivals were relatively undistinguished and had little claim to be “outsiders.”  In 2016, however, the establishment lane was the one that was crowded, Trump had the advantages of outsider status, celebrity, and free media, and Trump grabbed the immigration issue at the beginning of the campaign.

All of this suggests that if the GOP doesn’t split, and Trump goes away quietly (neither event is a certainty), the GOP will return to its 2012 “normal” state if it loses the election;  in other words, everyone will go back to pretending that the GOP electorate believes in limited government rather than white nationalist politics, and blind obstruction of the Clinton agenda will be the order of the day.

The GOP nominee Don.

He’s feeling a bit put upon.

They’ve followed the money.

I don’t think it’s funny

That his chances of winning aren’t gone.

The relationship between China and Taiwan resembles the relationship between the US and Cuba:  both situations involve a large island off the coast of a much larger nation with a significantly different political and economic system.  In both cases, the island has been a major thorn in the side of the larger nation.  The difference, however, is that no one claims that Cuba is legally part of the US.

Ten or twenty years ago, it was relatively easy to imagine the Chinese and Taiwanese governments agreeing on a formula by which the Republic of China would cease to formally exist for purposes of dealing with the outside world, but would retain considerable autonomy for domestic purposes.  Since then, however, the independence of Hong Kong has been eroded, a significant portion of the Taiwanese population has embraced independence as an ultimate objective, and the Chinese government has become more repressive at home and more assertive in the South China Sea.  The odds against a peaceful solution to the issue have grown accordingly.

The costs and risks of taking or annihilating Taiwan currently outweigh its benefits, from the perspective of the Chinese leadership.  That situation is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future even if Chinese military power and assertiveness continue to grow at their current rate.  On the whole, therefore, the prospects for a satisfactory negotiated solution for the Taiwan issue, while not good, remain better than those for Hong Kong.

The GOP nominee Don

Had no income to pay taxes on.

He insists that he’s rich

But the truth is a bitch.

In the nineties, his fortune was gone.

The real meaning of the NYT story isn’t that Trump uses the system and puts the burden of supporting government on ordinary citizens;  everyone knew that, and he actually takes pride in it.  No, the significance of the story is that the supposedly omniscient businessman lost a billion dollars in a year.  That’s billion, with a b.

Of course, Trump would say that it wasn’t his fault, and that he just got involved with Atlantic City casinos at the wrong time, but the evidence shows that the other casinos didn’t do as poorly as his did, and in any event, why couldn’t he foresee that if he is as brilliant as he says?

The equivalent to losing a billion dollars as President would be starting and losing a nuclear war.  That’s a risk no reasonable person should be prepared to take.

Based on his experience doing business with a few Chinese bankers, Donald Trump feels comfortable stating unequivocally that China is in complete control of events in North Korea, and can change the regime’s behavior at a moment’s notice.  As with most things, he is clueless on this subject.  The relationship between China and North Korea is complex and fraught.

The Chinese government decided a long time ago, and with substantial reason, that while the North Korean regime was dangerous and irresponsible, every alternative to it was even worse.  The North Koreans know this, and consequently pay little attention when the Chinese try to tell them what to do.

While the nature of the regimes is obviously very, very different, the China/North Korea relationship reminds me a bit of the relationship between the US and the Netanyahu government, which knows it has enough support in Congress and with the American public to ignore any attempt by Obama to leverage aid and diplomatic support for moderation in the West Bank and Gaza.

The US is often accused of trying to encircle China, but in the case of North Korea, we would welcome any developments that would increase Chinese influence. Unfortunately, any North Korean official who becomes too cozy with the Chinese is viewed as a threat to the regime and is likely to wind up being executed.  A moderate North Korean regime under Chinese control is, therefore, not likely in the foreseeable future.

Imagine that you are Prime Minister Abe of Japan.   Your country’s economy is stagnant, your population is aging rapidly, your debt is reaching the stratosphere, and you rely on the US for protection. China, your neighbor, is much larger, unfriendly, and growing far more rapidly. What do you do?

You have three choices:

1.  Bury your head in the sand and hope the problems go away by themselves;
2.  Attempt to persuade the population to accept large scale immigration and huge increases in the defense budget in order to deter potential aggression from China; or
3.  Make the best deal you can with China as soon as possible.  Given the history of China’s treatment of vassal states,  it is realistic to think you can preserve your political and economic systems and most of your independence as long as you toe the line on a few foreign policy issues that are important to the Chinese.

Abe is trying a highly watered down version of #2, but has had very limited success.  In the long run, my best guess is that #3 will be the choice.

Today is the 67th anniversary of the proclamation of the creation of the PRC: China’s national holiday.  I will be observing it this week with a series on China and its neighbors, starting with Hong Kong, which, as we know it, is doomed.

Why do I say that?

Hong Kong is an incredibly intense, vibrant, capitalist city.  Virtually every square inch of it is covered by a mall of some sort.  When I went to Shanghai, I described it as two parts Manhattan, one part Las Vegas, and one part Disneyland;  Hong Kong is that times ten.  I would guess that everything in the world is for sale there, and I mean that in the most literal sense.

When the Chinese leadership made the deal with the UK to regain control of Hong Kong, they agreed to leave it more or less as is, because it was the only goose in town, and they didn’t want to kill the golden egg.  Today, a much more powerful and prosperous China has Shanghai as an alternative financial center, so the economic value of Hong Kong to the leadership has diminished, and is decreasing further over time.

No one who watched the events in 1989 has any doubts that the government would rather turn Hong Kong into a cinder than permit it to evolve into a genuinely democratic state.  That includes the vast majority of the residents.  And so, while some of the younger residents in particular will engage in very public fights for more rights, the trend will run slowly, but inexorably, in the other direction.  In the long run, you can’t have a country with two different political systems, and the one that will prevail will be the one on the mainland.

For all of his many appalling qualities, Trump isn’t Hitler.  But what if he were? Would evangelical Christian leaders still convince themselves that he is a “baby Christian?”  Would self-interest and tribal ties still cause Ted Cruz to endorse him?  Would Marco Rubio say that he agreed with Hitler about some things, but that he disagreed with Hillary on everything?  Would Paul Ryan still grudgingly enable him? Would Giuliani and Christie still have his back?

Obviously, I’m just speculating here, but in my opinion, the answer to all of those questions is yes.  The aforementioned GOP leaders would rather put the nation, and actually the whole world, in mortal peril than live with a Democrat as President.

 

Putin’s modus operandi, when he invades a country in one way or another, is to govern through the use of local strong men, not by democratic means.  This obviously mirrors his own system, but it also means that he doesn’t have to engage in the kind of expensive (and frequently futile) nation-building that we do.  He simply gives the keys to some thug,  gives him a limited amount of aid, and tells him to sink or swim; if the former, he can always be replaced.  That limits Russia’s exposure and gives Putin a measure of plausible deniability.

Donald Trump, for similar reasons, clearly embraces this approach.  It is not too difficult to imagine President Trump cutting a deal with Putin in which the US and Russia agree to collaborate to keep dictators in power in the Middle East, and perhaps elsewhere, on the ground that the alternatives only result in terrorism. You can even imagine a scenario in which Russia and the US intervene militarily to keep Sisi in power in the face of a popular revolt in Egypt.

After the Napoleonic Wars, Russia, Prussia, and Austria formed what was called the “Holy Alliance” in an effort to keep liberalism and nationalism under control throughout Europe.  It would be fair to call the prospective Trump/Putin reactionary collaboration the “Unholy Alliance.”

 

The ex-KGB man Vlad Putin.

His methods aren’t too high-falutin’.

He invaded Ukraine

Caused great sorrow and pain

If his flag flies, don’t bother salutin’.

There were plenty of reasons to prefer Obama to Clinton in 2008;  one of them was the notion that the fundamental corruption of the Clintons was an insuperable obstacle to meaningful dialogue with Republicans.  Under this theory, Obama would be willing and able to reach out to the GOP, and civility would return to our politics.

I subscribed to that notion at the time.  I have never regretted my support for Obama, but events have proven the Clintons correct on the civility issue;  it is clear now that the Republicans consider all Democratic presidents to be equally illegitimate, because they don’t represent a majority of what they consider to be “real Americans”.  And yes, there is a web of right-wing media outlets, donors, think tanks, and politicians which could plausibly be described as a “vast right-wing conspiracy.”

During the 2012 conventions, there was lots of talk from Republicans about what an ogre Obama was, and how much easier it was to do business with Bill Clinton in the good old days.  I predicted then that everyone would forget those statements by 2016.  Does anyone remember that now?  Guess not.