Cromwell

Maureen Dowd hates the Clintons.  She’s disappointed in Obama.  She’s ambivalent about Trump;  on the one hand, she acknowledges that he looks like a menace to polite society, let alone American politics,  but on the other hand, she clearly thinks he’s a clever, charming rogue who would make a much better President than anything in his campaign would lead you to believe.

Think of him as a 21st Century version of Prince Hal in “Henry IV.”

The problem is that Trump is about fifty years too old to be Prince Hal.   In addition, when you combine his mistaken belief that he can run the country in the same manner he does his companies with his ignorance of policy and his inability to accept either defeat or criticism, you have a blundering tyrant–a man on golf cart– in the making.

An orange-haired version of Falstaff, perhaps.  Henry V at Agincourt, no.

The theory is that people who are too embarrassed to admit to pollsters that they’re voting for Trump will put him over the top.  Nothing about this election is normal, so I can’t dismiss this possibility out of hand, but one thing is for sure:  if you can’t bring yourself to admit that you plan to vote for someone, you probably need to reconsider your choice.

The election’s a few days away.

There isn’t much more I can say.

Will our choice be a nut?

My prediction’s no, but

I’d vote early and often, and pray.

My wife was watching “The Wolf of Wall Street” while I was intermittently suffering through the final game of the World Series on Wednesday.  I was struck by two things about the movie.  First of all, from a stylistic perspective, it was remarkably similar to the better “Goodfellas.”  Second, and perhaps more importantly, it reminded me a great deal of Donald Trump.

Trump doesn’t drink, and I have no reason to believe that he relies on drugs other than caffeine, but he is a product of the same kind of amoral, materialistic, self-promoting culture as the protagonists in the movie.  Like them, he invents stories and rips people off without the slightest sense of remorse.  Could we actually put this man in the White House?  It boggles the imagination.

If you’ve ever watched a singing competition on TV, you will know that the host is inevitably fond of saying that “the stakes have never been higher.”  In 2000, by contrast, it appeared that the stakes had never been lower; the country was at peace, and the economy was booming as a result of the tech bubble.  We were in the middle of a golden age.  We just weren’t aware of it, because everyone was fixated on Monica.

The 2000 elected pitted a Southerner running as the ambivalent heir to peace and prosperity against a frat boy from an illustrious family who essentially promised to let the good times roll.  He also told us that his foreign policy would be “humble.”  Guess how that one turned out.

Three comments about the contemporary relevance of 2000:

1. A year ago, I would have told you that Bush 43 was unique in that he could convincingly run both as an insider (his pedigree was impeccable) and an outsider (he clearly and genuinely despised parts of the establishment).  Today, the GOP nominee–the standard bearer for rural culture–lives in a high rise in Manhattan.  Go figure.
2.  The electoral map finally came into focus in 2000.  If a Southerner could not win a single Southern state, even his own, in a time of peace and prosperity, what hope was there for future Democratic candidates?
3.  He rarely talks about this directly, but if you listen carefully, Trump’s candidacy is as much a repudiation of Bush 43 as it is Obama.  The Bush family has every reason to vote against him.

I’m not an expert in UK constitutional law, but it is my understanding that the decision to require parliamentary action prior to the invocation of Article 50 is legally sound, and is likely to be sustained.  That raises some serious questions about what the government, and the opposition, should do next.

The Prime Minister has resisted calling an election even though she would be likely to win it with a substantially enlarged majority because she wants to avoid civil war within her party.  There is undoubtedly a majority against Brexit in Parliament today.  Would the opposition and the pro-EU members of the Conservative Party cooperate to bring down the government and force an election under these circumstances?  My guess is that the answer is no, but we will likely find out in a few months.

It’s hard to remember this today, but there was a time when the GOP was a moderate pro-business party that supported balanced budgets and civil rights and distrusted foreign military adventures.  Richard Nixon started the change by becoming a culture warrior of sorts and talking about “law and order,” but Gerald Ford, his successor, was a mainstream figure, so the evolution was not irreversible at that stage.  Then came Reagan, and everything changed.

Reagan brought swagger to the GOP.  He aligned himself conspicuously with the religious right, even though he didn’t actually do much for them.  His tax cuts were the first attempt to “starve the beast;”  in practice, they created huge deficits, but they did, in connection with actions by the Fed, create a boom which resonates in the memories of the public even today.

The GOP that we knew in the two decades prior to 2016 was a caricature version of Reagan which viewed tax cuts for the wealthy as the correct response to all economic conditions.  Today, we have a nominee who embodies swagger, mouths the party line on tax and spending cuts, and rejects Reagan’s optimism and belief in free trade.  The shining city on the hill has become a pile of rubble.  Mr. Sunshine has been replaced by Batman.

And so we have five days to go.

The waiting is painful, I know.

You’re given a voice

So please make a wise choice

And tell the strong man where to go.

If you find yourself with some free time on your hands, try imagining how American history would be different if Richard Nixon had been elected President in 1960.  Here are some of the questions; my responses are in parentheses.

1.  The Civil Rights Movement:  Would Nixon have embraced the movement? (He would have been ambivalent, but mostly negative).  If he had, what would it have meant for today’s politics?  (The two parties would be completely different). If not, what would it have meant for the movement?  (There would have been more violence, and real progress would have occurred only after the election of President Humphrey in 1968).

2.  Vietnam:  Would Nixon have been able to resist escalating in Vietnam?  (He would have been more sceptical about it, but no).  Would the Democrats have made the war a partisan issue in 1968?  (Absolutely).  Would the outcome of the war have been different?  (No)

3.  The Great Society:  Would Nixon have supported the Great Society?  (Absolutely not).  What would have happened with the Great Society legislation?  (President Humphrey and the Democrats would have pushed it through after the big Democratic victory in 1968).

4.  Cuba:  Would Khrushchev have tested Nixon the way he did Kennedy by putting missiles in Cuba?  (Probably not).  If he did, would Nixon have responded with Kennedy’s quarantine, or with air strikes?  (Air strikes).  Would nuclear war have ensued?   (No.  Khrushchev would never have risked annihilation over Cuba–it wasn’t a vital interest of the Soviet Union).

5.  Watergate and the 1970’s:  Would there have been a Watergate scandal, or anything like it?  (No).  What would that have meant to American politics in the 1970’s?  (No one would have ever heard of Jimmy Carter, and if Reagan ever got elected, it would have been in 1976, after President Humphrey’s two terms. Reagan consequently would have been President during the Iran crisis, and would have suffered the same political consequences.  The GOP and the conservative movement, as a result, would be completely different).

If you somehow think of American history as being an unbroken line, therefore, consider how different things might have been if a few thousand dead people in Cook County hadn’t voted for Kennedy.

There seems to be an emerging expert consensus in favor of my belief that there will be a worldwide market crash if Trump is elected, but most commentators appear to think that, as with Brexit, a recovery will follow in short order.  I’m less optimistic, because the analogy to the Brexit vote is flawed;  the UK plays a far smaller role in the world economy than does the US, and Theresa May is not a chaos agent.

To illustrate this, consider what will happen if people all over the world start pulling their money out of the markets and looking for a safe haven.  Under normal circumstances, that means US government securities.  What happens once we have elected someone who has openly mused about imposing haircuts on the owners of US government debt?  Will these really be viewed as safe investments anymore? Quite possibly not.

Investors will look next to China for stability and safe investment opportunities, but the Chinese economy isn’t designed for that kind of FDI, and the Chinese, in any event, have their own problems.  So where do you go after that?  Gold, perhaps?

The bottom line is that you might want to keep plenty of room in your mattress for your assets if Trump is elected.  There may be no better option.

While many–perhaps a majority, perhaps not–of Trump’s supporters are motivated primarily by their desire to “take their country back” from the uppity women, illegal immigrants, godless city dwellers, and panhandling minorities that have oppressed them for the last eight years, the other focus of his campaign has been his ability to fix the economy by renegotiating deals with China, Mexico, the rest of NATO, etc.  He has given us very little information about how he plans to accomplish that other than to refer us to his history of screwing over people in his business.  The question for the day, therefore, is how does he plan to “win” these renegotiations, and turn the world into Trump University writ large?

He can’t rely on deceiving the other world leaders, because he has already broadcast his willingness to lie at the drop of a hat, and they aren’t in any event the kind of  feckless people who invested in his casinos or enrolled in Trump University. No, his plan has to be to put outcomes that were unthinkable to all previous Presidents on the table and hope that the other side blinks.  In the case of trade, this means imposing illegal tariffs and engaging in mutually destructive trade wars;  in other instances, it probably means threatening the use of nuclear weapons.

I won’t kid you;  this could work in some circumstances, because he makes a credible madman.  The implications of it, however, are frightening beyond belief, because someone is bound to stand up to him fairly early in the process, and then what?  He will either have to follow through with his threat or lose face, and we know how strongly he feels about being humiliated.

Or, in other words, BOOM!

Timing is everything in this world (if you don’t believe me, just ask Ted Cruz). When FDR took office in 1933, the country had been living with the Great Depression for three years;  as a result, Hoover, who had done nothing to cause the collapse, but who had come to believe that any measures that would plausibly solve it were worse than the disease, was held completely responsible by the public.  FDR was given full credit for the subsequent recovery, and profited politically from it.

In 2008, by contrast, while the recession technically had started earlier, the real crash didn’t occur until the late summer and early fall.  The unemployment rate only began to shoot up shortly before the election.  Consequently, people with short memories blame Obama for the worst of it, which simply isn’t accurate or fair.

The origins of the federal welfare state, of course, can be traced back to the 1932 election.  In the long run, it may even be more important that the nation started to view itself as a single economic entity at that time;  without the expansion of federal power, with its roots in the commerce clause, who knows what our country would look like today?  Certainly more like the EU, with all of its corresponding economic and governance problems.

The FBI man known as Comey.

It’s clear he’s not Hillary’s homie.

What’s he trying to do?

To confuse me and you?

As a scandal, it looks pretty phony.

Lincoln’s victory in 1860 was largely due to a split in the Democratic Party, which ran separate candidates in the North and South.  Secession and the Civil War followed shortly thereafter.

When you look at this objectively, there really wasn’t a good reason for secession; the likelihood of legislation prohibiting slavery in the territories getting through Congress was pretty slim even with Lincoln’s support.  I think it is fair to say that the war was the result of weariness in dealing with the slavery issue and terminal impatience;  it was not, at least at that point, inevitable.

The outcome of the war enshrined the principle that the USA is a perpetual compact made by all of its people, not a marriage of convenience among individual states.  That principle has contemporary relevance, too;  in the event of a Clinton victory, you can expect some new secession talk as well as sporadic violence in red areas of the country.

I think Cyndi would approve of this.

                Girls Just Wanna Kick Butt

I wake up in the middle of the night.

The thought of Trump as President would give the world a fright.

Some people truly think we should elect a nut.

But girls just wanna kick butt.

Oh, girls just wanna kick butt.

 

I work hard, preparing for debates.

I’m the one who really wants to keep the country great.

He’s calling women fat, or maybe they’re just sluts.

But girls just wanna kick butt.

Oh, girls just wanna kick butt.

 

Parody of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper.