Washington was austere, reserved, and famously upright. Hamilton was a brilliant, visionary immigrant. Jefferson was a stylish intellectual with impeccable taste. Madison was modest, bookish, and methodical.
Trump, obviously, is none of those things. So which of the Founders does he least resemble? It’s a close call, but the winner is . . . Washington, by a nose over Madison.
When the NYT asked Bernie if America should have any billionaires, I expected him to respond with a simple and gruff “No.”. In point of fact, his answer was more nuanced than that. It sounded a lot like Warren’s.
I don’t think we should read too much into that, but I feel compelled to give credit when it is due.
In what does Donald Trump passionately and unequivocally believe? I came up with five things: himself; power; wealth; celebrity; and golf. Everything else, including his family, his party, the country, and the Constitution, is negotiable.
Is it any wonder his opponents despise him so much?
I attended a small town July 4 celebration yesterday. It was brash, ramshackle, spontaneous, and loud. It featured a band playing classic rock songs, kids throwing candy to the crowd, and lots of vehicles operating as mobile billboards, but no tanks. It was quintessentially American.
I couldn’t help wondering what a Chinese person would have made of it. God bless America, indeed.
There are two answers to that question. There always have been.
One response revolves around politics. If you accept the principles of limited constitutional government, you agree to follow the law, you don’t oppress your neighbor, and you don’t expect too many handouts, you can be an American. That’s all it takes.
The second response is predominantly cultural. The most important component is the use of English, but you have to listen to the right music, go to an acceptable church, watch the right sports, and so on. And, of course, there is a racial component, too. Anyone who doesn’t meet these standards, even if they were born here, isn’t a real American.
The second group is currently running the country on all but economic issues. Our job is to bring back the first crowd.
Have a happy 4th!
Elizabeth Warren is not a socialist, and that matters, for reasons I have outlined previously. That said, to the average voter, she sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders; the right will exploit that ruthlessly if she is the nominee. How should she make the case that she is just a capitalist reformer?
By combining Piketty with American history. She can argue that American capitalism has always turned into oligarchy in the absence of extensive government regulation. The first wave of oligarchy, the Gilded Age, ended with the Progressive Era; the second with the Great Depression and the New Deal; and the third one started with Reagan and continues today. Capitalism survived the first two waves in good order, and it will survive her, too.
To me, it is a pretty persuasive case, and it puts her in a context that is less alien and threatening than Bernie’s socialism.
If you were to ask Donald Trump what makes America great, he would say power—not freedom, or the rule of law, or the liberal democratic process. That is why he is so determined to have tanks at the July 4 celebration. And that is a big reason why he has to go.
If identity meant everything in politics, Bernie Sanders would poll well among senior citizens. In point of fact, Sanders does very well with millennials, but poorly with elderly voters. Why?
Two reasons. First, socialism has a very negative connotation to the elderly, based on their experience during the Cold War, that isn’t shared by millennials. Second, the elderly (correctly) see themselves as being at the mercy of the government; they can’t afford to take any actions which could put their benefits at risk. In their eyes, Sanders is proposing precisely that.
Bernie would respond by saying that his Medicare for All plan is more generous than the current Medicare program, so seniors have nothing to fear. If you simply accept what is on paper on its face, he’s right. The problem is that most seniors simply don’t believe the government can take on so many massive new responsibilities without screwing up, and that the real world effect of the Sanders platform will be to increase their taxes and divert their benefits (which, in their eyes, they have already paid for) to millennials. Given the fairly horrific experience with the rollout of Obamacare, who can say with absolute certainty that they are wrong? In the real world, therefore, their position makes perfect sense. Bernie will never win them over.
A note to my readers: I will be on vacation until Tuesday, July 9. Posting between now and then will be irregular at best.
I’ve been sort of a disappointed cheerleader for Harris over the last several months–touting her presence, intellect, and prosecutorial background, but complaining about her inability to pick either the realo or the fundi side. Well, her talents were all on display last night, and everyone noticed.
Biden wasn’t exactly doddering, but he looked old, gave meandering answers, and struggled to find the right words from the very beginning. Harris clearly smelled blood, and pounced. It looked a little like one of those predator and prey scenes on a nature documentary.
My guess is that African-Americans will now see her as a plausible winner, and will reconsider their support of Biden. It is an opportunity for her, not a complete victory. If she wants to win, she needs to, once and for all, identify herself as a realo, not a Sanders or Warren wannabe, because that’s where the most votes are. And she needs to be prepared to respond to attacks on her record. She got a pass last night, but don’t expect that to continue.
One other note: Biden wasn’t the only old guy who looked tired and irrelevant last night. Bernie just shouted and kept repeating his one grumpy speech about class warfare, even as the landscape around him changed in real time. I think he is on his way out, too.
Upon leaving the Ben Franklin Museum in Philadelphia about a month ago, my wife observed that Ben was a “Renaissance man.” I somewhat pedantically responded that, technically speaking, he was more of an “Enlightenment man.” The question for today is, what is the difference?
In a nutshell, it is the difference between art and science. The Renaissance was primarily a leap forward in the visual arts, prompted by the fortuitous rediscovery of classical artworks and fueled by growing Italian economic prosperity. Leonardo and Galileo notwithstanding, it was not a great time for science, and the reason is suggested by Galileo’s fate; the Catholic Church had already decided how the universe worked, and wasn’t open to second opinions. The Enlightenment, on the other hand, was born of the bloody failures of the subsequent religious wars. If you couldn’t impose a godly order on everyone, or even decide for all time what that meant, you could put metaphysical issues aside and use your senses to better understand the tangible world. That is what Franklin did, to the benefit of all of us.
With her jaw clenched and her eyes glittering, Elizabeth Warren stood up in front of the American people and promised to fight. She would fight them on Wall Street. She would fight them at the border. She would fight Mitch McConnell in the Senate. She would fight big business and big tech and rogue capitalists and lobbyists and pharma and China and Vladimir Putin and everyone else who stood in the way of the benighted American people. Fight, fight, fight, fight, fight.
If it all sounds like a souped up version of Hillary Clinton, it should. Clinton’s advisers consistently told her that talking about “fighting” polled well. How did that turn out?
When you think about the presidential candidates who won two terms over the last 40 years–Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama–not one of them talked constantly about “fighting.” There is a message in that.
Fighting constantly is exhausting. Sure, it has to be part of Warren’s populist persona, but she needs to be more balanced. I just don’t see how she can beat anyone who exudes warmth and optimism when the contest is one-on-one unless she provides more variety in her tone. And don’t tell me that’s just sexism; men with the same simple combative message are just as tiresome.
Observations as follows:
There was no such thing as a single national market at the time the Constitution was written and ratified. The vast majority of products were consumed locally; the few manufactured goods that existed were typically imported from Europe.
How different it was from today! How many local products do you consume on a daily basis? Practically none.
The creation of the single national market was largely a product of technological change, of course, but while it seems obvious and inevitable today, it was not. Without John Marshall and his expansive view of the federal power to regulate commerce, it might never have happened; railroads, for example, could have run into dead ends at state lines. At the very least, the development of our country would have been significantly slowed.
For that reason, you can easily make the argument that Marshall has as much claim to be the godfather of American capitalism as Hamilton. That is the case which is implicitly made in an exhibit at the National Constitution Center, and it has merit.
The case for Joe Biden is simple and persuasive: America just wants incremental change and to be freed from Trump, not a revolution; and he can win by picking off male blue collar workers who were put off by Hillary Clinton, Never Trumpers, businessmen worried about tariffs, and moderate suburban women. The polls suggest that a large plurality of Democrats agree with this approach. But what about Warren? What is her theory, and how does she win, using 2016 as a baseline?
Warren’s theory (against the evidence, including the 2018 election) is that Trump’s victory was driven by a hunger for radical change that he has failed to meet. Here is where she stands with groups of potential difference makers:
As you can see, it is possible for Warren to win in 2020, particularly if the economy goes sour, but her path is much narrower than Biden’s, and is almost completely dependent on her ability to mobilize millennials.
It’s easy to identify European historical analogies for Trump, but American analogies are harder to find. You could make a case for George Wallace or a right-wing Huey Long, but the best choice, in my opinion, is Aaron Burr. How do the two stack up?
TRUMP VS. BURR
CONTESTED ELECTION Trump–2016; Burr–1800.
FAMOUS ANCESTOR Trump–Dad; Burr–Jonathan Edwards
MILITARY SERVICE Trump–Bone Spurs; Burr–War Hero
MOTIVATION Trump–Narcissism; Burr–Ambition
TALK ABOUT SHOOTING Trump–Fifth Avenue; Burr–New Jersey
AND THE WINNER IS . . . Trump. Burr is the more attractive figure in a lot of respects, but he didn’t win the presidency, he killed Hamilton, and he intrigued for some sort of an empire in the west. Trump hasn’t done anything that bad–yet.