Cromwell

There is an interesting article by Peter Beinart in the latest issue of The Atlantic regarding religion and Trump voters.  The article concludes that Trump’s core supporters are not pious evangelicals (they voted for Cruz), but rather, people who can best be described as nominal Christians.  He concludes from this that the decline of faith in America actually helped Trump get elected.

He makes a persuasive case, for two reasons.  First, his citations to survey data (I’ve seen similar information elsewhere) are pretty convincing.   Second, his thesis is consistent with a very significant and clearly observable trend over the last ten years or so: the decline of the Christian Democrat (CD) faction of the Republican Party.

It can be difficult to remember now, but George W. Bush campaigned, and to some extent governed, as a “compassionate conservative.”  The CD wing of the GOP had nearly as much influence at the time as the PBPs.  Today, due largely to the failures of the Bush Administration, the CDs are wandering in the political wilderness of Trumpworld:  a faction without a home in either party.

The decline of the CDs is bad news for the American political system.  CDs are sober and responsible.  They care about the entirety of society.  You may disagree about the means with them, but you can usually agree about the ends, and you can make deals with them.  They are the bedrock of reasonable, stable government.

Can their fortunes be revived?  That will be the subject of a post during Holy Week.

My parody of “Mr. Jones,” like the original, portrayed the protagonist as an insecure, testosterone-crazed rock star wannabe who, for reasons he doesn’t completely understand, desperately wants to be famous.  It occurred to me afterwards that we should probably view the real Trump in much the same way, his vastly advanced age notwithstanding.  He doesn’t care about the GOP, the country, or even his own followers;  he just wants to be the center of attention at all times.  Period.

 

After the AHCA debacle, you can expect Christie and other GOP bigwigs to call on Trump to save himself by replacing the Not Ready for Prime Time Players around him with real professionals.  It won’t happen, for the following reasons:

1.  It was the “professionals,” not the amateurs, who failed over AHCA;
2.  It is far from clear that the “professionals” have the ability to paper over the very real policy differences within the GOP.  After all, Boehner couldn’t do it;  and
3.  Trump isn’t the kind of person who is going to permit the “professionals” to turn him into a figurehead.

Get used to it:  given Trump’s views on management, there will be constant churn within his administration, but there will be no James Baker moment. What you see today is what you get.

 

                   Mr. Trump

Hanging out at Trump Tower

Staring at this yellow-haired girl.

Mr. Trump pulls out a family photo

Of a brown-haired Slovenian model.

He says she’s no longer a ten

But she’s awfully beautiful.

We all want something beautiful.

Man, I wish I was beautful.

 

So come join the two of us down at the White House.

Sha la la la la la la la la la la yeah.

Uh huh.

 

Cut up, Melania!

Show us some Slovenian dancing

And make me an offer, Mr. Trump.

Believe in me

‘Cause I don’t believe in anything

And I want to be someone who believes.

 

Mr. Trump and me

Storming through the campaign.

We stare at the beautiful women.

She’s perfect for you

There’s got to be somebody for me.

I want to be Steve Bannon.

Mr. Trump wants to be a strong man like Putin.

When everybody loves you

That’s about as Putin as you can be.

 

Mr. Trump and me

Staring at the video.

When we look at the television

We want to see us, staring right back at us.

We all want to be big stars

But we don’t know why

Just a few know how

When everybody loves us

That’s about as happy as you can be.

 

Mr. Trump and me

We’re gonna be big stars.

 

Parody of “Mr. Jones” by Counting Crows.

The 45th President Don.

His Obamacare bill is now gone.

While he’ll move on to tax

Credibility lacks.

For the Democrats, it’s a new dawn.

I’m a loser

And I lost someone who’s dear to me

I’m a loser

And I’m not what I appear to be.

Lennon/McCartney

Imagine that you are Donny Rotten today (I hear you retching in the background).  You sold yourself to the American public, in spite of plenty of evidence to the contrary, as a brilliant businessman and negotiator who could break through the gridlock in Washington and get things done.  You then associated yourself way too closely with a health care plan devised by Paul Ryan that would have hurt your supporters if it had been approved.  You couldn’t close the deal, and now you have been exposed as a bumbler and a failure:  a man on golf cart, not a man on horseback.  There’s nothing you hate more than that. Your Twitter fingers are itching to go turbo.

What do you take away from this mess?  Here is my guess:

1. You simply can’t rely on Ryan to deliver the votes, so don’t lend your name to any of his initiatives unless they have a lot more support than AHCA did.
2. Forget about the cuts to Social Security and Medicare that he wants.  They will be an even bigger fiasco than AHCA.
3. Forget about tax reform, which requires balancing and trade-offs that are beyond the capacity of the GOP, and stick to tax cuts, which are universally popular within the party.
4.  Part of the problem is that you have minimal leverage with Congress because your popularity is down in the dumps.  There’s nothing like victory in a war against a cartoonish opponent to bring up your poll numbers.  Look out, North Korea!

If you’re a GOP House member, and you vote for ACHA, you are accepting the abhorrent principle of a health care entitlement program while depriving thousands of constituents, many of whom voted for you, of their insurance. Expect to see their faces in TV commercials for the next two years. If you vote against ACHA, on the other hand, you are damaging the credibility of your party leader, violating a very public campaign promise, and facing the possibility of a primary and some really nasty Trump tweets.

Yeah, it sure sucks to be you today.  Poor baby.

The euro had the effect of bringing down transaction costs, but mostly it was intended to be a symbol of the inevitable progress of the EU towards “ever closer union.”  As a result, when it became clear around 2010 that the euro was actually reducing growth and splitting the EU between north and south, the leadership logically should have gotten rid of it.  But nooooooo!  Having invested so much political capital in the creation of the euro, the leadership decided that saving it was an end in itself, even if doing so would defeat its original purposes.  And so the euro stumbles on today as a reminder of what could have been, but isn’t.

The story of AHCA is somewhat similar.  The bill doesn’t decrease the number of uninsured or reduce medical costs.  It leaves the entitlement in place, thereby offending the HFC, but reduces its value, except for wealthy people.  Poll after poll shows that it is a political disaster for the GOP.  It almost certainly can’t pass the Senate in anything like its current form.  And for all this, Trump and Ryan are determined to force a vote later today.

Why?  There is only one reason.  Trump sold himself to the American people as a dealmaker and a winner.  Having foolishly attached his name to the bill instead of staying above the fray and letting Ryan twist in the wind, he thinks he has to have a victory in order to maintain his credibility with the public, to say nothing of his mighty self-esteem.   Never mind what the bill actually does to Trump’s core supporters, or the rest of the American people;  the objective, pure and simple, is to be able to declare victory.

That’s pathetic.

 

I have a theory (I’m guessing it isn’t original to me) that our culture is an endless cycle of classical and baroque phases.  By “classical,” I mean simple and clean; by “baroque,” I mean complex and moody.  In visual terms, classical means the use of unadorned straight lines, and baroque means the use of curves and adornment; the one reflects the male physique, and the other the feminine.  The analogy to yin and yang in Chinese thought is obvious.

Applying this idea to American and British pop music over the last sixty years or so, and admitting that my knowledge of the music of some eras is limited, here is what you get:

1.  The predominant pop music of the fifties was a reflection of the times;  a generation that had survived the Great Depression and World War II, and was living under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust, was understandably both hopeful and world-weary.  You can hear this in many of the songs of Frank Sinatra.
2.  The rock and roll of the late fifties and early sixties was extremely simple and testosterone-driven and was thus, in its way, “classical.”  As the rock bands actually learned how to write and play, however, the music became increasingly baroque, and the performances evolved into something far more elaborate. Think of the differences between the Beatles singing “She Loves You” on the one hand and “Sgt. Pepper,” “Tommy,” and “Hotel California” on the other.
3.  The baroque and allegedly overblown rock music of the 1970’s caused the pendulum to switch back.  As a result, you had three new and different kinds of direct and simple and thus “classical” pop music:  disco; punk; and rap.
4.  Today, it is obvious that the predominant tendency (notwithstanding “classical” groups like the xx) is baroque.  Rap has become much more complex, and taps into a variety of emotions, not just anger.  Anyone watching a typical concert video or the Grammys will be struck by how elaborate the presentations are;  Exhibit “A” is Beyonce’s presentation at the Grammys last month.
5.  The scene is therefore set for another swing of the pendulum to neo-folk or neo-punk or some kind of new “classical” form of popular music.
6.  The worm has already turned in our politics.  Late Obama was elegant, world-weary, and baroque, but Trump is the political equivalent of a punk rocker: inarticulate; incapable of expressing any emotion except anger; profane; outrageous; and indifferent to conventional opinion and values.

And thus, the title of this post:  Trump is the Johnny Rotten of American politics.

My wife and I have been binge-watching episodes of “Escape to the Country,” a British TV program about people moving from urban areas to the countryside. The homes have plenty of character, the views are spectacular, and we’re learning lots of new British English in the process.

It occurred to me today that HGTV should make a similar program for the Trump era called “Escape from the Country.”  Naturally, it would be about Americans fleeing Trumpworld and buying real estate in Canada.

Any takers?

The GOP Speaker named Paul.

A disaster he’ll try to forestall.

Will he round up the votes?

Will the sheep beat the goats?

It appears that his back’s to the wall.

The NYT ran a brief article roughly two weeks ago about a new Chinese government initiative called “Made in China 2025.”  The gist of the program is that the government intends to eliminate virtually all high tech imports from China by 2025 by making hundreds of billions of dollars of cheap loans to Chinese companies to create and acquire new technology in the identified fields.

I know that Trump only likes to read bullet points and watch TV, but one hopes that one of his advisers managed to get him to read the article, because “Made in China 2025” sounds like a blatantly protectionist program.

Let’s face it:  “socialism with Chinese characteristics” means, in practice, a state capitalist, mercantilist economy, not a true market system.  Chinese companies doing business abroad are operating, in the final analysis, as the agents of their government, and not vice-versa.

It makes sense for a government which asserts the ultimate right to control every facet of life and which puts the highest priority on national strength and stability to view trade as a zero-sum game.  Our system, which is run for the benefit of individuals, not the government, is fundamentally different, so Trump’s mercantilist views on foreign policy are a horrible mistake.  That said, he isn’t wrong about the nature of the Chinese system, and we are burying our heads in the sand if we treat China as just another market economy.

In other words, we cannot and should not try to emulate the Chinese system, but our response to it needs to be based on its actual characteristics, not propaganda or wishful thinking.  Chinese claims to be standing up for an open global economy should be taken with a grain of salt.

 

The situation with North Korea is essentially similar to one of those ubiquitous crime dramas in which the bank robber holds people hostage, and the police have to figure out what to do.  Can they devise a way to arrest the bank robber without putting the hostages at risk?  Answers vary from movie to movie.

In this case, the hostages are millions of South Koreans and Japanese who are threatened by North Korean military retaliation in the event of an American air strike.  How much value will Trump place on the lives of foreigners in the era of “America First?”  If he really means it, not much, which should worry the hell out of the South Koreans and Japanese.

Beholden to few in the GOP leadership, determined to maintain his freedom of action, and desperate for popularity, Trump saw that he had an opportunity to rule as a man above party, and he seized it.  His inaugural speech was a well-received plea for unity and hymn to America’s greatness.  His first big policy initiative was a well-constructed infrastructure program acceptable to both parties.  He increased funds for immigration enforcement, but stopped talking about the wall.  His Obamacare replacement program was a genuine attempt to create a universal catastrophic health care system.  His tax cut plan, contrary to expectations, actually was skewed towards the middle class.  His popularity soared accordingly.

None of this happened, of course, but the point is that Trump didn’t have to be a bumbling hard right Republican president.  That he is one today is the product of a series of conscious decisions on his part, as well as his own moral and intellectual weaknesses.

About two weeks ago, I posted a column in which I discussed the points of friction between the PBP and Reactionary groupings within the Trump Administration, and how the great man would attempt to keep the peace.  The “budget” (given its level of detail, it is more like a manifesto), however, requires Trump to take sides.  At this point, who is winning?

Here are the principal issues, and where the factions stand:

1.  Social Security and Medicare cuts:  Loved by PBPs and loathed by Reactionaries.  Advantage:  Reactionaries.

2.  Immigration enforcement:  A threat to business interests, but demanded by Reactionaries.  Advantage:  Reactionaries.

3.  Defense increases:  Reactionaries like the idea of an increased defense budget even if they have no idea how the additional resources will be used.  Advantage:  Reactionaries.

4.  Cuts to the arts and sciences:  PBPs like watching “Downton Abbey.”  Advantage:  Reactionaries.

5.  Cuts to agricultural programs:  These are of minimal interest to PBPs, but have a substantial impact in rural areas.  Advantage:  PBPs.

6.  Cuts to regional development programs:  A small part of the budget, but important to Reactionaries.  Advantage:  PBPs.

On the really important items, then, the Reactionaries are winning.  The big ticket item for the PBPs, however, is the tax cut.  They can probably tolerate a Reactionary agenda in other fields as long as the tax cut has plenty of goodies for business.  How will that turn out? TBD.