Cromwell

Imagine that you are a businessman and you are forced to choose between Trump and Cruz.  Which one would you prefer?

While they agree on several important points affecting your interests (immigration; tax cuts; deregulation), they have completely different mindsets and personalities.  One of them is a hyperkinetic economic nationalist whose business has accustomed him to dealing with government on a regular basis; the other is a small government reactionary whose views on the economy were last fashionable during the Coolidge Administration.

For me, this would be a difficult (and painful) choice.  It probably would depend on the extent to which your business relied on access to overseas markets and the assistance of the government.  On balance, I hate to say it, but I would give Trump a slight edge in spite of his protectionist leanings, because he at least doesn’t want to bring back the gold standard, and he wouldn’t aspire to recreate some sort of 19th Century laissez-faire nirvana.

If Trump wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, the establishment will have a panic attack.  Efforts to identify a single establishment-backed candidate will intensify, but fail until it is too late.  Trump’s momentum is too great to overcome.  He gets the nomination, and the rest of the party falls into line.

It’s the time of year to make predictions.  Over the next week, I will lay out a number of different scenarios for the primaries. This is the first one.

Suppose, for purposes of argument, the last three serious candidates left standing are Rubio, Cruz, and Trump.  One way to predict the outcome of the election is to look at the constituents of the departed candidates and assign them to one of the three survivors.  How does that look?

In my opinion, Trump has reached his ceiling, Cruz would get Carson’s voters, and Rubio would get the rest.  If you add those numbers to their existing polling, what you wind up with is all three candidates with between 30 and 40 percent of the vote.  It is hard to imagine any of them having a majority going into the convention under those circumstances.  My best guess is that Cruz would be the most acceptable compromise candidate and would win the nomination.

The Washington Post has run two articles about Rubio and his brother-in-law over the last few weeks.  The first of them described the drug dealing activities of the brother-in-law during the 1980’s in some detail (he sounds a bit like a character from “Scarface”); the latter discussed Rubio’s efforts to help him get a real estate license after he was released from jail.

I have two reactions to this information:

1. Articles like these don’t appear for no reason; for the opposing candidates, they are a great way to engage in negative campaigning in a very passive-aggressive way.  Since the events in question took place in Florida, it is probably fair to assume that at least some of the inspiration for the articles came from the Bush campaign.
2.  While I’m no fan of Rubio, he didn’t get to pick his brother-in-law.  The families of other candidates in this race have had legal issues, as well.  I don’t think there is anything in the articles that should make any difference to the voters.

In my opinion, the five most important qualities that should be possessed by our next President are as follows (in order of importance):

1. Courage:  I had a dream one night in which a character told me that courage is more important than intelligence  for a head of state, because you can rent brains, but not balls.  In the conscious world, I believe that was correct.

2. Judgment:  This is not the same thing as pure intellect;  it is the ability to make the correct decision in 51/49 situations, and to evaluate people.

3.  Empathy:  You can’t interact successfully with either your friends or your enemies if you can’t put yourself in their shoes.

4.  Communications skills:  No elaboration necessary.

5.  Patience:  In the real world, problems are rarely resolved overnight. Blustering, throwing temper tantrums, and changing course abruptly in mid-stream are not effective management skills.

Who among our current crop of candidates best exemplifies these character traits?  That will be up to the electorate, but if you read the descriptions carefully, you can probably guess, at a minimum, who should be disqualified.

It’s only OK to execute enemies of the regime by hanging them from cranes in public squares.

The Democrat maverick named Bern

For minority votes he did yearn.

But he talked about class

Like a man from the past

I’m guessing he’s too old to learn.

 

There was more than one reason why “White Christmas” was set in Vermont.

The ex KGB man Vlad Putin

For his Syrian clique he was rootin’.

He sent in his planes

You could question his brains

For sure, he’s no Sir Isaac Newton.

(This is the first installment of a new feature:  Foreign Policy Friday.  It will replace Fiorina Fridays, which have become pointless).

As I have indicated in previous posts, the personality of the individual candidate is a better guide to his approach to foreign policy than his party affiliation: hence, Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul can sound pretty similar on Syria.  That said, there are two areas in which the principal GOP candidates all broadly agree that set them apart from the current administration and the two significant Democratic candidates:

1.  The rhetoric will change:  quiet reserve will be replaced by trash-talking.  All of the major GOP candidates can be expected to spout bromides about how great and powerful America is on a regular basis.  While my natural reaction to this is to recoil, I have to admit there can be some advantages to it;  adding an element of arrogance and unpredictability can help you get your way at times. On the other hand, it will unquestionably create friction with our allies, and Americans in general will be viewed as reactionary, irresponsible cowboys throughout the world again.

2.  There will be substantial increases in the defense budget.  We spend as much on defense as the next five nations combined, and there is no practical nexus between the size of our military and our difficulty in dealing with Syria and Ukraine, but the GOP believes that defense cuts that they accepted in the sequester deal have rendered us a pitiful, helpless giant, so major increases there must be.  They won’t have any significant impact on our ability to address the current crises, but if the underlying plan is to become the world’s policeman, the additional funds probably are necessary.  That is a topic for another day.

1/1/16

New Year

Have good cheer

Lose your fears

Love what’s dear

 

Milestone

Time has flown

Chances blown

Great unknown

 

With that mixture of hope and foreboding, I wish everyone who reads this blog a happy and prosperous 2016.

When you compare our year with the troubles experienced by the people in other nations around the world, it doesn’t look bad at all.  Consider this:

1. GDP growth was tepid, but steady.
2. The unemployment rate dropped to 5 percent.
3. Some progress was made in rolling back the IS pseudo-state.
4. Important international agreements were reached on climate change, trade, and Iran’s nuclear capability.
5. The federal government didn’t shut down or default on its debts.  Not even once.
6. The DJIA is almost exactly where it was on 1/1/15.
7. Gas prices were more or less cut in half, which was great news for everyone who doesn’t own or work for an oil company.

OK, so the weather was weird and we had some mass shootings–those have become the new normal.  All in all, we can consider ourselves pretty lucky.

The major event to look forward to in 2016 obviously is the election.  Will we continue our slow movement forward or try to return to a right-wing Brigadoon? We’ll know at this time next year.

Matthew Yglesias has an analysis of two articles in The Atlantic regarding the 2016 election  on Vox.com today.  I discussed one of the articles in a post yesterday. The bottom line is that I tend to side with Yglesias, but I think the subject requires some additional comment.

Here are the facts, as I perceive them:

1. It is true, as Yglesias says, that the GOP is the predominant party in state governments.  That will not change in 2016.
2. It is also true, due to gerrymandering and natural forms of segregation, that the Democrats have no realistic chance of regaining the House in 2016.
3. The Senate is up for grabs.  A resounding Clinton victory could make it possible for the Democrats to regain its majority.
4. Clinton’s chances of victory in 2016, under current conditions (which will certainly change in ways we can’t predict) are about 60 percent.
5. Numerous polls have shown that the GOP electorate holds opinions on issues like tax and entitlement cuts that are inconsistent with those of the establishment, and most of the Republican presidential candidates.

I think the big questions here are as follows:

1. What relative weight do you put on winning the presidency, as opposed to Congress and state governments?  In other words, which level/branch of government is likely to have a bigger impact on your life in the next four years?
2.  Would the apparent hostility of the GOP electorate to large tax cuts for the wealthy and entitlement “reform” stop a federal government headed by a President Rubio or Cruz from adopting them?

My reactions are as follows:

1. This is a difficult call; it depends to a large extent on what the big issues of the day are and how they affect you.  If foreign policy is the biggest issue, then you would rather have the presidency than state governments;  otherwise, you might attach more importance to state government.
2. I agree with Yglesias on this one.  There might be a backlash after the fact, but I don’t see the hostility of the electorate stopping a Republican Party in control of the government at all levels from adopting, at a minimum, huge regressive tax cuts.  Entitlement cuts would be tougher, but I think you would see them, too.  I absolutely concur with Yglesias that Beinart’s conclusion that a President Rubio would govern to the left of Bush 43 is wrong, because GOP orthodoxy has drifted a long way to the right regardless of the opinions of its voters on discrete issues.

I am happy to report that most of my predictions regarding the GOP race have been shown to be accurate.  In particular, I have always given Ted Cruz a much better chance than most of the pundits, and I identified Rubio as the leading Romney Coalition candidate several months ago.  I must admit, however, that I did not believe that Trump would survive as the frontrunner as long as he has.

A fairly large number of pundits and pollsters still flatly assert in the face of all of the evidence that Trump has no chance to win the nomination because his campaign does not have the support of the GOP establishment.  I don’t think the people who make those statements fully understand how the GOP has changed over the last several years.  I still believe that Trump will be beaten in the long run, but only if the establishment is willing to finance a shock and awe negative ad campaign about his numerous deviations from the party line.  So far, that hasn’t happened; Jeb Bush calling Trump a jerk isn’t going to cut it.

Koch, where is thy sting?

With one very notable exception, 2015 was a year of adjusting to the new normal in Nigeria-with-nukes.  The principal story lines were as follows:

1.  The price of oil continued to fall, and austerity bit:  However, the ruble stabilized, and Putin managed to find enough money in reserves to keep his political allies happy.  Never underestimate the stoicism of the Russian people.

2.  Military action in Ukraine diminished substantially:  Having accomplished his military objectives, Putin has decided to wait and see if Ukraine will implode and fall into Russian hands.  He is playing a long game here;  control of the eastern part of Ukraine is a means to an end, not an end in and of itself.

3.  Putin doubled down on his support for Assad by intervening directly in the war.  He has made very little progress, and lost both a civilian and a military plane for his pains.

4.  There was a splashy new opening to China, but results on the ground were meager, and are likely to remain so for years to come.

The big questions for 2016 are:

1.  Will there be an upsurge in terrorism as a result of the Syrian intervention?

2.  Is Putin willing and able to move towards a genuine political solution in Syria?  It does not appear at this point that the combination of Russian air power and Hezbollah ground forces are sufficient to win the war for Assad.  If Putin really wants to put an end to the war and retain Russian influence in Syria, he will have to show some real flexibility over regime change.

The Iraqi Army has more men and better equipment than IS.  The question has always been whether it had the will to fight.  Ramadi suggests that the answer is yes, under the right circumstances.

There is reason to hope that this could be the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq.  Syria, of course, is another story.