Back in 2016, I posted an item about a future agreement in which Trump and Putin would divide Europe into spheres of influence. It was intended to be satirical. Given today’s conditions, it might well be a prophecy.
Viktor Orban has enjoyed playing Putin against the EU for a long time. I wonder how he’s going to feel about becoming a vassal to his right-wing populist soul mate. How much financial support is he going to get from Russia?
Trump, of course, wants desperately to keep his tax cuts. The problem is that under the current rules, they have to be paid for, at least in part. Most House Republicans have identified Medicaid as the primary source for offsetting spending cuts. As Steve Bannon has correctly noted, however, plenty of MAGA voters rely on Medicaid for their health insurance. A painful decision consequently is in the offing.
Trump doesn’t do tradeoffs; hence, the Obamacare repeal fiasco in his first term. Instead of giving firm direction, he will send out mixed messages in an effort to avoid being blamed by his supporters for the outcome. As a result, the GOP leaders in Congress will have to figure this one out on their own.
There are enough moderates in the House to make this process exciting. It is by no means certain that any large taxing and spending bill will have the votes to pass. Pull up a chair and grab some popcorn; the chaos is about to begin.
The delegates to the Constitutional Convention promised to keep the proceedings secret. Amazingly enough, they kept their word. There were no leaks, and the final product came as a complete surprise to the public.
Can you imagine what would happen today? The delegates would spend half their time posting on social media. Trolling and grandstanding would be the order of the day. The public would be in a constant uproar. And nothing would get done.
I was a Hamilton fan long before it was cool; I even made a point of visiting his grave the first time I went to NYC. I viewed him as the father of American democratic capitalism. To some extent, I still do.
But my enthusiasm for Hamilton has cooled somewhat over the last few decades. Hardly anything he did after he left office does him any credit. His writing style doesn’t endear him to modern readers, and some of his intrigues, starting with his days in the Continental Army, are distasteful. But the biggest revelation to me was that his ideas on finance largely came from Robert Morris, and to go even further back, from the English Whig Party, circa 1695. Hamilton would have fit in quite nicely as part of the Whig Junto in that era.
What about Jefferson? The analogy is imperfect due to different conditions in England and America, but Jefferson’s views about low taxes on land, minimal central government, effective rule by the local gentry, an unambitious foreign policy, and a tiny military make him sound a lot like an early 18th century Tory.
I was watching a You Tube video about Sulla, the reactionary Roman dictator, yesterday. Sulla is best known for marching on Rome, murdering hundreds of political opponents, and imposing political “reforms” that took power from the plebs and returned it to the patricians, including himself.
The guy who made the video clearly wanted to show the contemporary relevance of Sulla and his reactionary politics, so he showed a tweet from a prominent political figure saying that perhaps America needed its own Sulla. The individual in question was Elon Musk.
In my “Fork in the Road” post a few days ago, I asked Elon whether he would double down on authoritarian politics when he and Trump become unpopular. I guess he has already tipped his hand.
Madison is frequently described as the “Father of the Constitution.” But is that true? Is his claim better than Hamilton’s?
Let’s check the record:
The bottom line here is that I would give a slight edge to Madison, but it’s closer than more people realize.
By all accounts, Pierre Poilievre is a bit of a Trump clone. He expresses himself pungently on social media; he rails against wokeness and Canadian elites; he is suspicious of immigrants; he loves fossil fuels; and he wants to cut taxes and regulations. Sound familiar?
Given the boundless unpopularity of the current Liberal government, Poilievre is likely to be the next Canadian PM. But he has a problem; while Elon Musk is talking him up on X, Trump is threatening to annex Canada. Trump wants vassals, not allies. As a result, Canada’s relationship with America is now the biggest issue in the campaign, and the Conservatives are no longer a sure bet.
As I’ve noted many times before, agreement on ideological issues such as immigration and wokeness is not a guarantee that reactionary nationalist governments will cooperate on other issues. Poilievre will have to go the extra mile to prove to the Canadian public that he will stand up to Trump and make Canada, not America, great again. Musk may be eating his words before he knows it.
It’s a question that has perplexed historians for centuries: why did Madison, whose zeal for federalism in some respects initially exceeded Hamilton’s, change sides? I posted on this issue back in 2016, but with the advantage of nine years of additional reading, I’m going to try it again.
I think there are two reasons. First, Madison’s intense federal phase coincided with Jefferson’s tenure in Paris. Hamilton later accused Madison of being, I believe, “the handmaiden to a greater mistress;” there may have been some truth to this. But the more important reason was that Madison’s focus was less on strengthening the central authority and more on the protection of individual rights, the greatest threat to which in 1787 came from the states. When the new federal government started implementing an agenda that went well beyond checking state excesses, it was logical for Madison to flip against it.
The two titans have been reunited to talk about the state of American politics.
J: Hey Alex! What do you think about what Musk is doing to the government?
H: It’s even worse than I feared.
J: Why? I thought you would approve of Musk. He’s the richest man in the world. Didn’t you want American government to be run by really rich guys?
H: My position on that was more nuanced than you think. I believed that government needed to be responsive to the needs to business in order to build wealth for the entire community and power for the new nation. I also thought that America needed its own aristocracy of wealth and talent. Musk doesn’t represent business; he just speaks for himself and a few arrogant tech giants. He creates chaos and assumes he has the ability to fix it, which may or may not be true; in the meantime, business doesn’t know how to react, and the economy suffers. And as to his contribution to America, do you really think owning a social media company makes him a natural aristocrat?
J: I still call it Sewer, not X.
H: Anyway, you are more responsible for him than I am.
J: Whoa! Everyone knows I didn’t have any use for big business types. Musk would have been my worst nightmare. How can you say I’m responsible for him?
H: Look at what Musk stands for–moving fast and breaking things. He has no respect for what came before him and no concern for the people he hurts. He even makes a point of being offensive to America’s traditional friends. That makes him a 21st century Jacobin. And we both know who among us supported the Jacobins.
J: My position on that was more nuanced than you think. I supported the French Revolution in its early stages. I gave some help to Lafayette and his friends. But I didn’t support the Jacobins or Napoleon. They were thugs and terrorists. We had to deal with them, but they weren’t friends of mine by any means.
H: OK, so I guess we should call it a draw. What do you think happens next?
J: Musk keeps tearing things down until one of his decisions really negatively impacts the entire American public, at which time the polls become very negative and Trump dumps him.
H: How long do you think that will take?
J: A year at most.
H: We’ll be watching and hoping, I guess.
DOGE is now cutting everywhere. They cut desperately needed immigration judges and the VA. They even acknowledged making a mistake with some probationary nuclear safety employees, but they can’t find the poor souls to call them back. What is going on here?
Here are some possible rationales for the cuts, and my reactions:
In short, the correct answer is a combination of #4 and #5.
If Trump is now the developer-in-chief, it seems that Vance has become the troll-in-chief. After attempting to prove that the Pope knows less about the Catholic Church’s position on the treatment of immigrants than he does, he flew into Munich and demanded in the name of democracy that the EU countries–the Germans in particular– stop excluding right-wing extremists from power. All of the German parties to the left of the AfD were, as you would expect, highly offended by this outrageous intrusion into their domestic politics. What is Vance trying to do here? How does America benefit when he insults our allies?
In the short run, there is no obvious answer to that question. In the longer run, one of Trump’s objectives is to split the EU; I suspect his ill-defined plan for reciprocal tariffs will treat some favored European countries (Hungary and Italy, to name two) better than others. The poor Germans, with their massive trade surplus, will be among Trump’s designated punching bags. Will the EU stand as one against the tariffs, or will Trump divide and conquer? Either way, I think insulting the Germans foreshadows the turmoil to come.
Somewhat to my surprise, Collins and Murkowski are voting to confirm all of Trump’s cabinet nominees except Hegseth. Murkowski won’t pay a price for that–she represents a red state, after all–but Collins will. As with Kavanaugh, she will be held responsible by the good people of Maine for all of the havoc that Kennedy, Gabbard, and Patel will wreak over the next few years.
But McConnell has remained firm. Why? Because he understands that an unrestrained Trump is the end of the McConnell Project. If Congress and the judiciary can’t keep a Republican president within the guardrails, how can you rely on them when the left is in power? What good is the filibuster if the Senate has ceded all of its power to the executive? What difference does a conservative judiciary make if the president has the practical ability to ignore it?
Having met with furious resistance from the Europeans and the Ukrainians, Trump and his allies are walking back their comments about the future settlement with Putin. Of course the Ukrainians and NATO members will have a seat at the table during the negotiations. And everything is on the table, including escalation, if Putin won’t moderate his demands. We wouldn’t just throw away all of our leverage up front, would we? That wouldn’t make sense!
And yet, it is exactly what they did. Putin will not be impressed.
We were frequently reminded over the last decade that Twitter, now X, isn’t America. Elon Musk doesn’t appear to believe that, however; he is using the same tactics to reduce the federal workforce that he used at his company. Will it work?
It depends on what you mean by “work.” America is a nation of citizens, not a closely held corporation. It is governed by laws and the Constitution, not the whims of an unelected entrepreneur. If you fire masses of federal workers more or less randomly, your actions don’t make the underlying statutes and regulations disappear; you just make it impossible to enforce them. Chaos ensues, and business, which demands certainty even above low taxes, slows to a crawl.
Is that really a sensible way to make America great again? Since X lost a large percentage of its value after Musk bought it, the answer would appear to be no.
On the one hand, Putin’s not a bad guy. You can make deals with him, and we should bring him back to the G7. On the other hand, the Europeans need to increase their defense spending to 5% of GDP to strengthen NATO. Does the message of the last few days make sense?
Clearly not. If Putin isn’t the big bad wolf, why should I bother to reinforce my house?
If Trump really wants to turn NATO into the 21st century version of the Delian League, he needs to be talking up what a menace Putin is, not embracing him.