Have a look at the SCOTUS opinions this term from Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson.
Trying to invent law to favor your interest groups instead of interpreting it is the true threat. I shutter at the thought of a Thomas or Alito retiring during a Biden second term.
For this reason alone, our family will hold our noses and vote for the strange orange man.
I see overturning Chevron as a win for constitutionalism generally and same goes for the court striking down SEC tribunals, which were a major 7th Amendment violation.
My larger concern is with the complete lack of rigor and substance to the dissenting opinions. They come across like juvenile whiners. What happens when we get a few more of these on the court?
I haven't read any of these dissenting opinions, but if you're correct, I would wager that's another argument against affirmative action. Would Sotomayor or Jackson-Brown be on the bench right now if not for their race/gender combinations?
Then we get the Court that has existed for 99.9% of US history. The SCOTUS has always been a political body and a joke, never understood why people seem to respect it as an institution.
Thanks, Arnold, for noting that Biden is, Right Now, unfit to be President, and unable to carry out his duties. The legal, Constitutional solution to this situation is clear. 25th Amendment - led by VP Harris and with support of the cabinet.
My tweet just before this:
"VP Harris has a duty to invoke the 25th Amendment.
How long before she’s guilty of dereliction of duty?
The media have long been guilty of a dishonest cover-up.
Speaker Johnson is mentioning it - All Americans should be talking about it.
Biden, today, should be relieved of Presidential responsibility -- by the VP, who also got 81 million ballot paper votes for Biden-Harris.
OTOH: Arnold, you are truly suffering from TDS. I can't stand listening to Trump or Biden or Hillary or even Obama -- give me transcripts. Unless you're willing to do the work of getting an actual paragraph of quote, "a man who said things that made no sense." is merely, and purely, an insult attack.
Like so many other quote-twisters, and out-of-context quote fragments that Trump-haters seem addicted to. Find a quote of what he actually said, then say why it makes no sense.
Or, be intellectually lazy and rightly accused of TDS.
I'm sure Trump says illogical things & contradictory things, so quoting him doing so shouldn't be hard. But it will likely make your insult look trivial, frivolous. Those who like his big policies won't care much about minor logical inconsistencies.
Biden was never fit to be President, except in 2020 I still preferred him to all the Dem contenders and Trump.
I get that Trump haters often conclude what Trump "really" means despite contrary words from Trump while they also often take him at his word when he clearly was speaking for political gain or as a joke and won't (and often didn't) do what he said he would. That said, I don't see how you determine Kling has TDS.
Fewer than one-quarter of eligible voters voted in the presidential primary elections. A number of polls indicated that a majority of respondents did not want another Biden versus Trump matchup. I conclude that most considered the matter insufficiently important to take 15 minutes out of their lives on primary election day to make their wishes a reality.
Regarding President Trump's debate comments, he was not aiming to secure the support of intellectuals (like Arnold), but of a majority of voters, especially in certain demographics, i.e., the transracial working class. It is amusing that so many pundits presume to know exactly how Trump should present himself, even though never having run for any office, he gets himself elected President on his first foray. Great point on the present disability of Biden and how Democrats couldn't care less.
That's a good point except I don't think you've correctly identified what concerns Kling about Trump's words. I'm pretty sure he was referring to how often Trump spoke complete gibberish.
All world leaders have known about Biden for some time. We’ve been living with the risk for several years. Here is a president who had not spoken to his defence secretary for a week while US troops were under attack in the Mideast and the US launched strikes against the Houthi rebels. Turns out the Defence secretary was also missing in action during that period. What a way to run a country.
Biden is a laughing stock amongst aides of European pols, dating from his behavior during the first G20 summit in 2021. There is a reason Biden skips all of the summit dinners in recent years. The WSJ ran a story yesterday saying European leaders have for some time been bringing their concerns to WH staff. Putin, Xi, Kim and the mullahs have always known the score. KJP’s “cheap fakes” spin never fooled anyone except rich white Dem partisans. This is not a new issue. All that is new is that some segment of his staff and the party wanted Biden out of the race- as you say, all about the election. Insanity.
As for Kamala, I don’t think she is any less intelligent than your average Senator or Rep (and is certainly smarter than Joe Biden). She is not a very good politician or communicator, to be sure. Coming up in California as a Dem with her (erm) “backing”, she didnt need to be. She hasn’t learned anything in office, unfortunately.
Trump is obviously not going to be impeached on day one. Repubs will want to keep his supporters, not alienate them. If he wins he will be a non-entity after the 2026 midterms. No need to rush him off the stage.
Last time I don't remember Trump "accomplishing" anything involving Congress other than the tax cut. He lost the senate in 2018 and that didn't seem to make him a non-entity.
Still appointed judges, still issued EOs, still provoked and increased discord, still did lots of controversial things, ...
Impeach Trump on day 1 if he wins? If that happened everybody in DC better hope that West Virginia Cold War bunker is still serviceable because I can't think of a better way to start a broad-based kinetic Regime change.
The point about what this would do to Trump supporters is a good one. I am afraid that both the people that want to keep Biden in office and the people who want to see Trump in office are in a very different place from me about what would be best for the country.
In case you haven't noticed, there's way more than just "Trump supporters" objecting to the treatment he's getting at the hands of the Democrat-aligned legal establishment, as well as fairly broad though maybe not deep support for him within the ranks of Republican officeholders. You seem very concerned that Biden doesn't remain President right now. Do you support impeaching him on Day 1 if the Democrats don't replace him and he wins the election, which is a quite likely course of events?
I obviously dislike Biden but process matters, and is fundamental to any system of government claiming to be democracy. If Biden is physically unfit to hold office there is a defined process members of his administration and the rest of the government can follow to remove him. If the members of his administration are unwilling to follow that process, that's on them and they should (though likely won't IMO) suffer at the ballot box accordingly. Invoking impeachment because you think the wrong guy won the election, whether that election was held in 1860, 2000, 2016, 2020, or 2024, is not the answer.
The Republican Party held a open and above board series of primaries in 2024, contested by several credible candidates, with no restrictions or unusual modifications to the process. Many of those primaries were open to all voters with no or minimal restrictions and featured attempts by the opposition party to influence the outcome. If the mass of voters wanted to make sure that Donald Trump was rejected as a President, they had ample opportunity to do so. I don't put much faith in the perennial grousing about Presidential nominees. With the exception of maybe 1984, every election I've witnessed has featured loud and persistent complaining from *Republicans* about their own nominee. The Democrats aren't immune, either, if you remember the 1992 complaints about the "Seven Dwarfs." The fact that Donald Trump got four million more votes in 2020 than in 2016, as well as more than Barack Obama's record win from 2008 (reminder also that Obama got 3 million *fewer* votes in 2012) would seem to indicate that the majority of the country found his performance as President credible, or at least no worse than any other occupant of the office.
If DeSantis wanted to be president he could have come up with a national platform (he never even mentioned school choice), not ban abortion after six weeks, or hire people other then ex Ted Cruz staffers who were just there for the payroll and didn't give a shit.
But he didn't want to be president, he just kind of got talked into a half assed run by his wife.
The Republican options all got worse from there.
As for the Dems, Biden is there ideal president, that's why he's the nominee.
The American people are here because elites — politicians, journalists, and prior Justices — decided compliance matters more than judgment. The ability to comply with a schedule mattered more to them than the ability to make good decisions.
There is a rapidly emerging line of cope articulated by Ezra Klein: “[Biden] did seem up to the job of the President, but that he did not seem up to the job of campaigning for President.” The purpose of this article is to stomp that belief into the dust.
In one sense, Ezra has a point. In the vision of the bureaucratic left, the President’s only job is to ‘trust the process’. “The Democratic Party has become this party of normalcy and of systems and of institutions.” That system doesn’t need Biden’s judgment to rule. It’s more comfortable with no judgment at all.
Here’s what Ezra gets wrong: the system that rules by bureaucratic procedure cannot be separated from the system that produced senile figureheads. They are the same system, made up of the same people, doing the same thing, with the same outcome. Center-left news outlet Axios describes the Biden circle as a “council of elders and governing oligarchy.” The rule by oligarchy responsible for cutting off Democratic primary challengers is equally responsible for the decaying governance of the Biden administration.
Rule by compliance — the opposite of rule by merit — will continue producing similar outcomes until it is replaced.
On a large scale, there are only two types of hierarchies: merit and campliance. A meritocratic hierarchy values the competent and is quick to notice, point out, and deal with the incompetent. It selects for getting the job done. A compliance hierarchy is all about inoffense. The process of meritocracy involves uprooting entrenched interests. It involves hurting people’s feelings. And oligarchy — more specifically, NGOs, contractors, activists, and bureaucrats — have figured out how to use the latter to prevent reform.
As I satirized, the emotional instinct of the left is discomfort with discerning between good and bad. “The default reaction to a failing individual, social circle, or demographic group is to ask ‘how have healthy, successful people wronged them?’.” It’s obvious how this results in a candidate who can’t debate. But it also results in failed policy. It results in delaying critical semiconductor factories. It results in failing websites and failing to deliver benefits payments. As the same Ezra Klein notes, it results in a total failure to build housing and transportation.
This isn’t a right-wing critique of left-wing policy goals. It is the straightforward observation that the hierarchy of the Biden administration, along with those before it, have obstructed its own goals.
This is all true, but also primaries are sucky and undemocratic in the sense that they make election results turn out less moderate than public opinion would dictate.
As I understand the historical context of impeachment, it was originally intended to be the defined process for removing an officeholder who is no longer fit. The first impeachment in our history, in 1803, was of a judge who would today be viewed as cognitively impaired due to either age, psychiatric disorder, or severe substance use disorder.
There's a widespread belief that impeachment has something to do with crimes or criminal offenses, but since, as a process, impeachment is entirely conducted by the legislative branch and cannot be overruled by the executive, which investigates and charges individuals with crimes, or the judicial branch, that belief is incorrect..
I think the best possible solution would be for the establishment of both parties to reach an understanding that the President will pardon Trump in exchange for Congress impeaching him---no jail time, conviction, or trials and also no further political office.
You know I've actually grown more fond of Trump. They throw everything at him and he's still in the game. Any other Republican obviously would have folded by now, either being out of politics or having become a RINO.
"Youngkin"
Youngkin is my governor. He hasn't actually done anything. I'm glad we don't have a democrat making things worse, but nothing is really changing. I still don't have school choice. He didn't do well in the state elections (GOP lost seats in Virginia).
His handling of abortion, like that of every other Republican, has been poor. This is one area where Trump is just better than the rest of the Republicans, managing to overturn Roe v Wade and still be seen as moderate on abortion.
If Trump wants to pick a VP and step aside day one of his own volition, fine. But impeaching him is a really dumb idea. Trump needs to win as a repudiation of the left.
What were your expectations for Youngkin in a purple state? What would Terry McAuliffe have tried to get passed if he was elected instead? I guess if I were in your shoes, I would be counting my blessings. Then again, I don’t follow VA politics so I’m open to hearing where I may be off.
I already stated in my comment that I'm glad he won instead of McAuliffe.
But I'm also not proposing to impeach the president on his first day in office (without a charge even, just because Arnold doesn't like his aesthetics!)
Impeaching Trump first day would basically end Democracy and maybe even spark something like a civil war. We supposedly need to do this because replacement with Youngkin (or someone like him) is such am improvement that a dramatic step like that is worth it.
My observation is simply that I don't see what's so great about the Youngkins of the world that makes them so much better than Trump. Worth starting a civil war over?
If the libertarians want to throw themselves under the bus and then implausibly blame the conservatives for having done the throwing, I’m more than ok with that. It’s just par for the course.
You can lead a libertarian to freedom, but you can’t make him drink of the blessings or even acknowledge them.
Those of us who don't have a TV, and know the guy chiefly from his book, may need a little primer on the unsuitability of JD Vance.
Is he unsuited to join a MAGA ticket because he's MAGA? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.
Is he an unsuitable meritocrat because he comes from the world of white trash*, as do the Jan. 6 rioters? Or because his golf game is weak?
Is it because he has said the Jan. 6 people should be pardoned or something, instead of being held forever?
I mean, upon hearing the other day of the staged-for-social-media fake "coup" in - Bolivia, was it - presumably I was not the only one on the right who reflexively thought: oh, like Jan. 6.**
It must be understood that in a world where "protesting" and marching and looting and burning are all considered highest civic activities, not many on the right are going to care a fig about Jan. 6 and the truly fake histrionic reaction to it.
The correct take is and remains, what a bunch of trashy people.
Who are thus in good stead with the rest of the country.
This is a phenomenon I don't expect many people to grasp, but when the American South was decapitated of its elite - yes, its deeply flawed elite - the culture that was thus encouraged to rise up in the South and the Southern diaspora - was not "bringing its best" so to speak. And somehow with Yankees in total charge of America and of the South, that culture burst its former banks and became the predominant strand of American culture, in an atmosphere of relativism and permissiveness.
It is fundamentally anti-elitist. Not simply in the sense of "anti-that-elite" who deservedly went into the dustbin of history in the opinion of all but a handful of Southern conservatives; but anti the notion that there should be an elite at all.
It is the endpoint of egalitarianism, of leveling.
My Southern husband predicted this long ago when that comedian became popular for his trailer trash schtick. I can't remember that guy's name. The thing was - buffoonish whites and "rednecks" whatever that really means - became the last ethnic group America would be allowed to laugh at. Everything else was sacred and off-limits. With predictable results: not "redneck" virtues, which are certainly real in context, but trashy-ness went mainstream.
*I use this term not from animus but because, in the South, everyone both white and black knows or used to know what was meant by it. America itself implicitly endorsed the concept by canonizing "To Kill a Mockingbird" which is not really a book about Tom Robinson; it would be hypocritical to pretend it was. It is a book purely about the contrast between Atticus Finch and the Ewells, and that is why Yankees liked it, at least to begin with. It suited them to cast themselves in the role of Atticus Finch.
**Please for my sanity tell me I was not the only one who thought that.
Jeff Foxworthy had a lot of jokes beginning, "You might be a redneck if ..." They were generally gentle, about being poor or not fashionable, but shading over into being ignorant or stupid. "You might be a redneck if 1.More than one living relative is named after a Southern Civil War general. 8.Your coffee table used to be a telephone cable spool. 14.You think that potted meat on a saltine is an hors d'ouvre. 32.The taillight covers of your car are made of tape. https://www.worldspaceflight.com/addendum/potpourri/redneck.htm I include number 8 because I was once housemates with a number of Harvard graduate students. Our coffee table was a telephone cable spool.
Back at the turn of the millennium, four black comedians had a very successful tour as The Original Kings of Comedy, which became a successful video. Foxworthy and three friends, Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Larry the Cable Guy, got in on the action with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
I've got no issue with the jokes - it was more of a sign. To an extent they were so popular I expect they universalize to others. (Some commenter whether here or elsewhere, recently put up a link to like, a Jersey comic, Italian, doing a very (wryly) funny bit about what happens when somebody rings the doorbell nowadays: it works for many of us, it works because of a basically shared American past.)
A better example perhaps is that of the continuing insertion of what is viewed as a Southern, sometimes Appalachian, but often just Southern - type in movies/TV/standup. Often a rube. Cliche to the point of tedium, but it has the effect of making them seem like the Last of the Mohicans - as in, the last unique ethnic type period. And it emboldened them, to be so loved by the culture. Trashy reality TV seems to flow entirely from this. Poor Honey Boo Boo. They also like to take a piece of raw land and make housing developments, mostly for ill. They were made for the internet era. And they were born to reproduce. Now they're getting into Congress! Don't let them get their hands on the nukes because judging from youtube, they f**king love to blow stuff up in their backyard.
What does the "decapitation of the elite" refer to? As late as 1996 (less than 30 years ago, a small time window in the life of a nation) the democratic candidate, a graduate of Georgetown, and Oxford, and Yale Law School carried Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia (!!) on the way to 379 electoral votes. Oh what I'd give for a WJC of today.
I'm sure others left of center feel that way too, but they've made sure that that's exactly what they'll never get again.
Post-America will be a place. It won't disappear. For some it will be an opportunity, for others it only represents loss - and it should be allowed to. I'm not suggesting that history stops lol.
I haven't time to type an Internet Commenter's History of the United States, so I will simply say that an exemplar - obviously, the very greatest exemplar - of the Southern elite which ultimately, due largely but not entirely to grave mistakes of its own doing, lost its place in the world, indeed largely ceased to exist - would be George Washington.
Probably? There may have been more than one. For various reasons I basically missed pop culture from about 1985 until about 2000.
ETA: my husband says RIP Martin Mull. He is worried that his death has been overshadowed by some other notable deaths this past week. TIL that he was really fond of Martin Mull. I had no idea, did not even remember Martin Mull. He thought he had a wonderful sense of humor and he starred in a movie he really liked although he can't recall the title.
I should add that I am not unwilling to boo JD Vance - I haven't listened to him any more than I've listened to AOC or Marjorie Greene - but if the idea is simply, he's a less-nutty, less-prone-to-criminality Donald Trump type - well, for those of us firmly fixed on a couple of issues chief among them immigration, that's pretty much the dream. A very, very temporary dream, to be sure.
One of the things that stands out is the belief that "something’s pretty fundamentally broken about American society". If you share that belief, I suppose you could overlook the gratuitous nastiness towards groups that don't share his world view. In fact it may enhance his appeal.
On the other hand if you believe, like I do, that the United States remains the pre-eminent economic and military power, and a magnet for talent from all over the world, a stable constitutional order, a system that protects liberties and guarantees equal protection of the laws to everyone, that there is overwhelmingly fundamentally right about this country and society, and the present day is better than every day in the past, then such a belief system as the Senator's is unpalatable.
Not that the US Constitution matters much under our corrupt judiciary which can interpret it to mean whatever happens to be convenient at any given moment, but impeachment is at least notionally subject to the constitutional clause "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Not sure "irritates Arnold Kling" qualifies but the Roberts court could probably be persuaded.
I am much reminded of Walter Bagehot in his The English Constitution:
“The principle of popular government is that the supreme power, the determining efficacy in matters political, resides in the people—not necessarily or commonly in the whole people, in the numerical majority, but in a chosen people, a picked and selected people. It is so in England; it is so in all free countries. Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm. [… …]
But under a presidential government you can do nothing of the kind. The American government calls itself a government of the supreme people; but at a quick crisis, the time when a sovereign power is most needed, you cannot find the supreme people. You have got a Congress elected for one fixed period, going out perhaps by fixed instalments, which cannot be accelerated or retarded—you have a President chosen for a fixed period, and immovable during that period: all the arrangements are for stated times. There is no elastic element, everything is rigid, specified, dated. Come what may, you can quicken nothing, and can retard nothing. You have bespoken your government in advance, and whether it suits you or not, whether it works well or works ill, whether it is what you want or not, by law you must keep it. In a country of complex foreign relations it would mostly happen that the first and most critical year of every war would be managed by a peace premier, and the first and most critical years of peace by a war premier. In each case the period of transition would be irrevocably governed by a man selected not for what he was to introduce, but what he was to change—for the policy he was to abandon, not for the policy he was to administer.”
The prospect of another Biden vs Trump contest ought demonstrate the absolute superiority of an English-style cabinet/prime minister model executive branch over a presidential system once and for all. An American people unwilling to call a constitutional convention to make at least this most obvious of all potential improvements deserves what awaits it, good and hard.
Because all those countries with an "English-style cabinet/prime minister model executive branch" have been so much more successful than the USA. It is such an obviously superior system.
Well there is a lot to be said for the sort of knee-jerk nationalism that characterizes so much of intellectual life in the nation’s establishment, but objective sources tend to tell a different story.
USA ranked #26, and if I am not mistaken it is not until you get to #21, South Korea, that you have a non-parliamentary system. Singapore, so beloved by libertarians, is ranked #1, has a parliamentary system with strong cabinet ministers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Singapore
USA #24, and again outperformed by parliamentary systems. Denmark, as it does on so many international indices, ranks first, which one tends to suspect has something to do with the system of proportional representation for the Folketing which allows the people to maintain a simple, effective system of justice based on a civil code, as opposed to the mixed multi-level farrago we suffer under in the United States.
US again at #24. Note it appears that Uruguay at #16 marks the top appearance of a presidential system at the top of the list but keep in mind that Uruguayans enjoy substantial liberties associated with substantive decentralized and are not in thrall to a strong, out-of-control central bureaucracy.
“Our new research report provides a global assessment of the quality of national elections around the world from 2012-21, based on nearly 500 elections across 170 countries. The US is the lowest ranked liberal democracy in the list. It comes just 15th in the 29 states in the Americas, behind Costa Rica, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago and others, and 75th overall.”
And I could go on and on. Suffice to say, that with its unequalled endowment of fresh water, arable land, and mineral resources, the USA doesn’t have an excuse for its second rate governance other than its third rate establishment and what passes for its intellectual class.
I don't think you'll find a Western parliamentary nation that isn't more successful than the US on the things that matter to most people. But sure Austria, Andorra, et al. have been as unsuccessful as the US has been on invading other countries or mass incarcerating it's citizens. TBH I don't even think they are striving to be as successful as the US, the horrors.
Did you ever notice how nobody else actually adopted the US system even though hundreds of nations have came about since the US established it. Hell even in countries we conquered and could dictate future government type, we never installed a US style government which should tell you how bad our system is.
The US needs to ditch its own system as well as the British adversarial legal system, also an extreme minority system nearly no one else has adopted.
To me the system is always the least important thing. What is important are good people and good laws. England has had a few larger than life prime ministers, like Churchill, of course, a subject unto himself; but at least since 1900 few "good" ones and yet until not that long ago, it has gone on mostly very well. Not sure about Bagehot's time.
The executive exists to make decisions. This calls for a prudent person. That's why in the early years of the American nation, the people called on those who were believed to be very smart men.
When Andrew Jackson came along, this preference for a smart executive was abandoned in favor of populism; and it has been a not-infrequent running theme in American history ever since (see the double bind situation in which we find ourselves) - and yet despite this, we were governed pretty well more often than not. It wasn't the system. People, and a sanity to our laws.
Maybe I'm just not close enough, but I do not see Biden as in any way decapacitated from being President for another x months. One might have concerns about his 7th r 8th year in office.
There was noting wrong with Harris as VP. Biden made the mistake of not using her (I'm pretty sure she would have agreed to being used) as his bulldog to stake out an "anti-woke" social and neoliberal economic position that he could then have triangulated against the Warren-Sanders forces.
That he did not do this has nothing to do with his age.
<i>But the Democrats don’t care. To them, the election is everything that matters.</i>
I'm surprised that a careful thinker like Arnold would use a rhetorical device like this. "The Democrats" are not a single-minded entity. Even if they were, we couldn't read their minds in order to impute their motives. I certainly don't like it when liberals pretend to know what "the conservatives" are thinking in order to make some wild generalization about their motives. Another way of making the same point would be, "From what I've seen in news outlets and social media, leading Democratic party voices appear to be more concerned about Biden's chances in the election than his ability to perform his job as president right now."
I do not worry about some of Trump's more extreme ideas in this election because I doubt he will be able or willing to do things like withdraw from NATO. As Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review has argued, the trajectory of his second term will depend entirely on the degree to which his executive branch appointees undermine him. I understand that Trump and his future transition team will be vetting nominees more closely for their loyalty to Trump and his ideology, but he has frequently shown that he can turn on people loyal to him on a dime. This argument that his appointees are fanatically loyal was made during his first term, with commentators arguing vociferously that figures like Bill Barr were loyal to Trump over anything else when there was little actual reason to believe that, and lo and behold, they now hate each other. I do not see a second Trump term as playing out that differently from the first, except Congress not being a solid conservative constraint on him now that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and other establishment figures have little control over the party. The fact that a good chunk of Republicans in Congress owe their current offices to Trump's endorsement is itself one reason why they will never impeach him.
The really hilarious thing about the debate was that this wasn't Biden at his worst- anyone who regularly watches videos of him interacting in any unscripted forum has seen him much more confused and mentally incompetent than he was Thursday night. During the debate I think Biden's team didn't provide him with near enough material to fill up his time slots and, as result, after he had recited/read off his answer to the question asked, he was forced to ad lib and repeatedly lost his train of thought. The other thing that very noticeable but, again, not the worst I have seen of him, was that he never really rebutted anything at all or even tried to- it was almost like he had no idea what Trump was saying even standing right there- the blank stares off into space while Trump was speaking are a terrible visual and a big missed opportunity that Biden even 4 years ago wouldn't have let slip by.
If Biden hasn't withdrawn by the week after the 4th, then he will be the candidate the Democrats are stuck with. Getting stabbed in the back by the media all of a sudden after they have covered for them the last 4 years is going to make the Bidens angry and recalcitrant on the issue and Biden, even if he withdraws, is likely to endorse Harris as the replacement candidate. Also, any funds on hand raised by the Biden/Harris campaign cannot be used by any presidential candidate who isn't Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
The media's reaction, I think, was either planned in advance or they expected Trump to make Biden look good by comparison so they could continue to sell the Biden brand post-debate. When that didn't happen, they went with plan B since the conviction of Trump in New York didn't bring the hoped-for rise in Biden's electoral chances.
Were they reading pre-written answers off a teleprompter?! I didn't know that. Or perhaps you mean he had memorized a set speech.
I was with my elderly parents and they were quite keen initially, turning on the TV more than an hour in advance as the talking heads talked over shots of people milling about what would be, I guess, the empty room. I went for a walk after giving them their TV trays but noticed they bailed and went to bed after about half an hour. They sundown too.
To do my due diligence after reading the "takes" next morning (elderly parents get 3 papers!) I googled a clip, in which Trump brought up a murder committed last week by a couple of lowlifes from Venezuela, who were fully "legible" to the authorities; if you wanted to chalk the murder up to the account of Soros-funded nonprofits, I'd not disagree.
Biden's answer showed some interesting coaching, as I am guessing his people knew that Trump wouldn't overlook this event.
He started on the usual "many people commit crimes, why would you concern yourself with this one particularly, what does that say about you" type rejoinder that is pretty customary from the left. But then he did that thing where he starts making a list and it just went crazy; it actually seemed to me that he said plenty of people are raped by their sisters ...
I mention this because I doubt many of you were able to stick with the debate either. I'm sure we could each adduce an example of the lunacy on display, yes, from both Trump and Biden, that we were struck with - and cobble together the whole thing. The whole bizarre exercise was so wretched we probably need to collectively forget it.
Maybe we just need to declare that debating is stupid and for losers and not do it anymore. It's not like others in recent years have covered America in glory.
Steve Sailer had the best take midpoint through: "Who would win in a debate, Biden or Trump?"
There weren't teleprompters but either candidate could have cue cards on the lectern- Biden almost never appears at a lectern without cards. His answers at the beginning of any clip were clearly rehearsed/read but then his mind would wander off after 30 seconds to a minute. Trump on the other hand I think was completely unscripted though he did use a lot material I have read before in transcripts from rallies. Of course, I think the difference is that people at CNN gave Biden's staff the questions a week ago so that the answers would be scripted and in the right order- this happens all the time when Biden is doing press conferences at which he occasionally lets the cat out of the bag by mistake.
Did you miss the bigger current thing?
Have a look at the SCOTUS opinions this term from Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson.
Trying to invent law to favor your interest groups instead of interpreting it is the true threat. I shutter at the thought of a Thomas or Alito retiring during a Biden second term.
For this reason alone, our family will hold our noses and vote for the strange orange man.
All of scotus invents law to favor their interest groups. It is human nature to look for evidence to support one's prior opinions.
That said, I also prefer gop nominees to the ones from Dems.
Overturning Chevron was a huge win for conservatives and libertarians. I am not a huge Trump fan, but credit where credit's due.
I see overturning Chevron as a win for constitutionalism generally and same goes for the court striking down SEC tribunals, which were a major 7th Amendment violation.
My larger concern is with the complete lack of rigor and substance to the dissenting opinions. They come across like juvenile whiners. What happens when we get a few more of these on the court?
I haven't read any of these dissenting opinions, but if you're correct, I would wager that's another argument against affirmative action. Would Sotomayor or Jackson-Brown be on the bench right now if not for their race/gender combinations?
Don't forget sexuality as well, it's well understood Kagan is homosexual.
Then we get the Court that has existed for 99.9% of US history. The SCOTUS has always been a political body and a joke, never understood why people seem to respect it as an institution.
Thanks, Arnold, for noting that Biden is, Right Now, unfit to be President, and unable to carry out his duties. The legal, Constitutional solution to this situation is clear. 25th Amendment - led by VP Harris and with support of the cabinet.
My tweet just before this:
"VP Harris has a duty to invoke the 25th Amendment.
How long before she’s guilty of dereliction of duty?
The media have long been guilty of a dishonest cover-up.
25th. Dereliction of Duty."
Now pinned: https://x.com/TomGrey56
Speaker Johnson is mentioning it - All Americans should be talking about it.
Biden, today, should be relieved of Presidential responsibility -- by the VP, who also got 81 million ballot paper votes for Biden-Harris.
OTOH: Arnold, you are truly suffering from TDS. I can't stand listening to Trump or Biden or Hillary or even Obama -- give me transcripts. Unless you're willing to do the work of getting an actual paragraph of quote, "a man who said things that made no sense." is merely, and purely, an insult attack.
Like so many other quote-twisters, and out-of-context quote fragments that Trump-haters seem addicted to. Find a quote of what he actually said, then say why it makes no sense.
Or, be intellectually lazy and rightly accused of TDS.
I'm sure Trump says illogical things & contradictory things, so quoting him doing so shouldn't be hard. But it will likely make your insult look trivial, frivolous. Those who like his big policies won't care much about minor logical inconsistencies.
Biden was never fit to be President, except in 2020 I still preferred him to all the Dem contenders and Trump.
I get that Trump haters often conclude what Trump "really" means despite contrary words from Trump while they also often take him at his word when he clearly was speaking for political gain or as a joke and won't (and often didn't) do what he said he would. That said, I don't see how you determine Kling has TDS.
Interested to know why Mike Pompeo is a name that comes to mind, he seems extremely untrustworthy (based on his intelligence community work).
Amen. TBH I'd like to see Trump pick Gabbard but that's not going to happen.
Fewer than one-quarter of eligible voters voted in the presidential primary elections. A number of polls indicated that a majority of respondents did not want another Biden versus Trump matchup. I conclude that most considered the matter insufficiently important to take 15 minutes out of their lives on primary election day to make their wishes a reality.
Regarding President Trump's debate comments, he was not aiming to secure the support of intellectuals (like Arnold), but of a majority of voters, especially in certain demographics, i.e., the transracial working class. It is amusing that so many pundits presume to know exactly how Trump should present himself, even though never having run for any office, he gets himself elected President on his first foray. Great point on the present disability of Biden and how Democrats couldn't care less.
That's a good point except I don't think you've correctly identified what concerns Kling about Trump's words. I'm pretty sure he was referring to how often Trump spoke complete gibberish.
All world leaders have known about Biden for some time. We’ve been living with the risk for several years. Here is a president who had not spoken to his defence secretary for a week while US troops were under attack in the Mideast and the US launched strikes against the Houthi rebels. Turns out the Defence secretary was also missing in action during that period. What a way to run a country.
Biden is a laughing stock amongst aides of European pols, dating from his behavior during the first G20 summit in 2021. There is a reason Biden skips all of the summit dinners in recent years. The WSJ ran a story yesterday saying European leaders have for some time been bringing their concerns to WH staff. Putin, Xi, Kim and the mullahs have always known the score. KJP’s “cheap fakes” spin never fooled anyone except rich white Dem partisans. This is not a new issue. All that is new is that some segment of his staff and the party wanted Biden out of the race- as you say, all about the election. Insanity.
As for Kamala, I don’t think she is any less intelligent than your average Senator or Rep (and is certainly smarter than Joe Biden). She is not a very good politician or communicator, to be sure. Coming up in California as a Dem with her (erm) “backing”, she didnt need to be. She hasn’t learned anything in office, unfortunately.
Trump is obviously not going to be impeached on day one. Repubs will want to keep his supporters, not alienate them. If he wins he will be a non-entity after the 2026 midterms. No need to rush him off the stage.
Parts of that IDK but I don't disagree with any. I'm curious why you think Trump would be a non-entity after midterms.
He can’t run for re-election and will be a lame duck and the pattern at midterms is for the other party to win majorities in Congress (see 2018).
Last time I don't remember Trump "accomplishing" anything involving Congress other than the tax cut. He lost the senate in 2018 and that didn't seem to make him a non-entity.
Still appointed judges, still issued EOs, still provoked and increased discord, still did lots of controversial things, ...
Man, I don't even know where to start on this.
Impeach Trump on day 1 if he wins? If that happened everybody in DC better hope that West Virginia Cold War bunker is still serviceable because I can't think of a better way to start a broad-based kinetic Regime change.
The point about what this would do to Trump supporters is a good one. I am afraid that both the people that want to keep Biden in office and the people who want to see Trump in office are in a very different place from me about what would be best for the country.
In case you haven't noticed, there's way more than just "Trump supporters" objecting to the treatment he's getting at the hands of the Democrat-aligned legal establishment, as well as fairly broad though maybe not deep support for him within the ranks of Republican officeholders. You seem very concerned that Biden doesn't remain President right now. Do you support impeaching him on Day 1 if the Democrats don't replace him and he wins the election, which is a quite likely course of events?
I would support impeaching him right this second.
I obviously dislike Biden but process matters, and is fundamental to any system of government claiming to be democracy. If Biden is physically unfit to hold office there is a defined process members of his administration and the rest of the government can follow to remove him. If the members of his administration are unwilling to follow that process, that's on them and they should (though likely won't IMO) suffer at the ballot box accordingly. Invoking impeachment because you think the wrong guy won the election, whether that election was held in 1860, 2000, 2016, 2020, or 2024, is not the answer.
The Republican Party held a open and above board series of primaries in 2024, contested by several credible candidates, with no restrictions or unusual modifications to the process. Many of those primaries were open to all voters with no or minimal restrictions and featured attempts by the opposition party to influence the outcome. If the mass of voters wanted to make sure that Donald Trump was rejected as a President, they had ample opportunity to do so. I don't put much faith in the perennial grousing about Presidential nominees. With the exception of maybe 1984, every election I've witnessed has featured loud and persistent complaining from *Republicans* about their own nominee. The Democrats aren't immune, either, if you remember the 1992 complaints about the "Seven Dwarfs." The fact that Donald Trump got four million more votes in 2020 than in 2016, as well as more than Barack Obama's record win from 2008 (reminder also that Obama got 3 million *fewer* votes in 2012) would seem to indicate that the majority of the country found his performance as President credible, or at least no worse than any other occupant of the office.
+1
If DeSantis wanted to be president he could have come up with a national platform (he never even mentioned school choice), not ban abortion after six weeks, or hire people other then ex Ted Cruz staffers who were just there for the payroll and didn't give a shit.
But he didn't want to be president, he just kind of got talked into a half assed run by his wife.
The Republican options all got worse from there.
As for the Dems, Biden is there ideal president, that's why he's the nominee.
https://www.fromthenew.world/p/there-is-no-one-in-charge
---
The American people are here because elites — politicians, journalists, and prior Justices — decided compliance matters more than judgment. The ability to comply with a schedule mattered more to them than the ability to make good decisions.
There is a rapidly emerging line of cope articulated by Ezra Klein: “[Biden] did seem up to the job of the President, but that he did not seem up to the job of campaigning for President.” The purpose of this article is to stomp that belief into the dust.
In one sense, Ezra has a point. In the vision of the bureaucratic left, the President’s only job is to ‘trust the process’. “The Democratic Party has become this party of normalcy and of systems and of institutions.” That system doesn’t need Biden’s judgment to rule. It’s more comfortable with no judgment at all.
Here’s what Ezra gets wrong: the system that rules by bureaucratic procedure cannot be separated from the system that produced senile figureheads. They are the same system, made up of the same people, doing the same thing, with the same outcome. Center-left news outlet Axios describes the Biden circle as a “council of elders and governing oligarchy.” The rule by oligarchy responsible for cutting off Democratic primary challengers is equally responsible for the decaying governance of the Biden administration.
Rule by compliance — the opposite of rule by merit — will continue producing similar outcomes until it is replaced.
On a large scale, there are only two types of hierarchies: merit and campliance. A meritocratic hierarchy values the competent and is quick to notice, point out, and deal with the incompetent. It selects for getting the job done. A compliance hierarchy is all about inoffense. The process of meritocracy involves uprooting entrenched interests. It involves hurting people’s feelings. And oligarchy — more specifically, NGOs, contractors, activists, and bureaucrats — have figured out how to use the latter to prevent reform.
As I satirized, the emotional instinct of the left is discomfort with discerning between good and bad. “The default reaction to a failing individual, social circle, or demographic group is to ask ‘how have healthy, successful people wronged them?’.” It’s obvious how this results in a candidate who can’t debate. But it also results in failed policy. It results in delaying critical semiconductor factories. It results in failing websites and failing to deliver benefits payments. As the same Ezra Klein notes, it results in a total failure to build housing and transportation.
This isn’t a right-wing critique of left-wing policy goals. It is the straightforward observation that the hierarchy of the Biden administration, along with those before it, have obstructed its own goals.
This is all true, but also primaries are sucky and undemocratic in the sense that they make election results turn out less moderate than public opinion would dictate.
As I understand the historical context of impeachment, it was originally intended to be the defined process for removing an officeholder who is no longer fit. The first impeachment in our history, in 1803, was of a judge who would today be viewed as cognitively impaired due to either age, psychiatric disorder, or severe substance use disorder.
https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/timeline_event/judge-first-impeached-convicted/
There's a widespread belief that impeachment has something to do with crimes or criminal offenses, but since, as a process, impeachment is entirely conducted by the legislative branch and cannot be overruled by the executive, which investigates and charges individuals with crimes, or the judicial branch, that belief is incorrect..
I think the best possible solution would be for the establishment of both parties to reach an understanding that the President will pardon Trump in exchange for Congress impeaching him---no jail time, conviction, or trials and also no further political office.
Maybe I would too except I think Harris would be worse.
????
Really unhinged Arnold.
You know I've actually grown more fond of Trump. They throw everything at him and he's still in the game. Any other Republican obviously would have folded by now, either being out of politics or having become a RINO.
"Youngkin"
Youngkin is my governor. He hasn't actually done anything. I'm glad we don't have a democrat making things worse, but nothing is really changing. I still don't have school choice. He didn't do well in the state elections (GOP lost seats in Virginia).
His handling of abortion, like that of every other Republican, has been poor. This is one area where Trump is just better than the rest of the Republicans, managing to overturn Roe v Wade and still be seen as moderate on abortion.
If Trump wants to pick a VP and step aside day one of his own volition, fine. But impeaching him is a really dumb idea. Trump needs to win as a repudiation of the left.
What were your expectations for Youngkin in a purple state? What would Terry McAuliffe have tried to get passed if he was elected instead? I guess if I were in your shoes, I would be counting my blessings. Then again, I don’t follow VA politics so I’m open to hearing where I may be off.
I already stated in my comment that I'm glad he won instead of McAuliffe.
But I'm also not proposing to impeach the president on his first day in office (without a charge even, just because Arnold doesn't like his aesthetics!)
Impeaching Trump first day would basically end Democracy and maybe even spark something like a civil war. We supposedly need to do this because replacement with Youngkin (or someone like him) is such am improvement that a dramatic step like that is worth it.
My observation is simply that I don't see what's so great about the Youngkins of the world that makes them so much better than Trump. Worth starting a civil war over?
If the libertarians want to throw themselves under the bus and then implausibly blame the conservatives for having done the throwing, I’m more than ok with that. It’s just par for the course.
You can lead a libertarian to freedom, but you can’t make him drink of the blessings or even acknowledge them.
Those of us who don't have a TV, and know the guy chiefly from his book, may need a little primer on the unsuitability of JD Vance.
Is he unsuited to join a MAGA ticket because he's MAGA? I'm not sure how that's supposed to work.
Is he an unsuitable meritocrat because he comes from the world of white trash*, as do the Jan. 6 rioters? Or because his golf game is weak?
Is it because he has said the Jan. 6 people should be pardoned or something, instead of being held forever?
I mean, upon hearing the other day of the staged-for-social-media fake "coup" in - Bolivia, was it - presumably I was not the only one on the right who reflexively thought: oh, like Jan. 6.**
It must be understood that in a world where "protesting" and marching and looting and burning are all considered highest civic activities, not many on the right are going to care a fig about Jan. 6 and the truly fake histrionic reaction to it.
The correct take is and remains, what a bunch of trashy people.
Who are thus in good stead with the rest of the country.
This is a phenomenon I don't expect many people to grasp, but when the American South was decapitated of its elite - yes, its deeply flawed elite - the culture that was thus encouraged to rise up in the South and the Southern diaspora - was not "bringing its best" so to speak. And somehow with Yankees in total charge of America and of the South, that culture burst its former banks and became the predominant strand of American culture, in an atmosphere of relativism and permissiveness.
It is fundamentally anti-elitist. Not simply in the sense of "anti-that-elite" who deservedly went into the dustbin of history in the opinion of all but a handful of Southern conservatives; but anti the notion that there should be an elite at all.
It is the endpoint of egalitarianism, of leveling.
My Southern husband predicted this long ago when that comedian became popular for his trailer trash schtick. I can't remember that guy's name. The thing was - buffoonish whites and "rednecks" whatever that really means - became the last ethnic group America would be allowed to laugh at. Everything else was sacred and off-limits. With predictable results: not "redneck" virtues, which are certainly real in context, but trashy-ness went mainstream.
*I use this term not from animus but because, in the South, everyone both white and black knows or used to know what was meant by it. America itself implicitly endorsed the concept by canonizing "To Kill a Mockingbird" which is not really a book about Tom Robinson; it would be hypocritical to pretend it was. It is a book purely about the contrast between Atticus Finch and the Ewells, and that is why Yankees liked it, at least to begin with. It suited them to cast themselves in the role of Atticus Finch.
**Please for my sanity tell me I was not the only one who thought that.
Jeff Foxworthy had a lot of jokes beginning, "You might be a redneck if ..." They were generally gentle, about being poor or not fashionable, but shading over into being ignorant or stupid. "You might be a redneck if 1.More than one living relative is named after a Southern Civil War general. 8.Your coffee table used to be a telephone cable spool. 14.You think that potted meat on a saltine is an hors d'ouvre. 32.The taillight covers of your car are made of tape. https://www.worldspaceflight.com/addendum/potpourri/redneck.htm I include number 8 because I was once housemates with a number of Harvard graduate students. Our coffee table was a telephone cable spool.
Back at the turn of the millennium, four black comedians had a very successful tour as The Original Kings of Comedy, which became a successful video. Foxworthy and three friends, Bill Engvall, Ron White, and Larry the Cable Guy, got in on the action with the Blue Collar Comedy Tour.
I've got no issue with the jokes - it was more of a sign. To an extent they were so popular I expect they universalize to others. (Some commenter whether here or elsewhere, recently put up a link to like, a Jersey comic, Italian, doing a very (wryly) funny bit about what happens when somebody rings the doorbell nowadays: it works for many of us, it works because of a basically shared American past.)
A better example perhaps is that of the continuing insertion of what is viewed as a Southern, sometimes Appalachian, but often just Southern - type in movies/TV/standup. Often a rube. Cliche to the point of tedium, but it has the effect of making them seem like the Last of the Mohicans - as in, the last unique ethnic type period. And it emboldened them, to be so loved by the culture. Trashy reality TV seems to flow entirely from this. Poor Honey Boo Boo. They also like to take a piece of raw land and make housing developments, mostly for ill. They were made for the internet era. And they were born to reproduce. Now they're getting into Congress! Don't let them get their hands on the nukes because judging from youtube, they f**king love to blow stuff up in their backyard.
What does the "decapitation of the elite" refer to? As late as 1996 (less than 30 years ago, a small time window in the life of a nation) the democratic candidate, a graduate of Georgetown, and Oxford, and Yale Law School carried Louisiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Tennessee, Kentucky, and West Virginia (!!) on the way to 379 electoral votes. Oh what I'd give for a WJC of today.
I'm sure others left of center feel that way too, but they've made sure that that's exactly what they'll never get again.
Post-America will be a place. It won't disappear. For some it will be an opportunity, for others it only represents loss - and it should be allowed to. I'm not suggesting that history stops lol.
I haven't time to type an Internet Commenter's History of the United States, so I will simply say that an exemplar - obviously, the very greatest exemplar - of the Southern elite which ultimately, due largely but not entirely to grave mistakes of its own doing, lost its place in the world, indeed largely ceased to exist - would be George Washington.
Do you mean Jeff Foxworthy?
Probably? There may have been more than one. For various reasons I basically missed pop culture from about 1985 until about 2000.
ETA: my husband says RIP Martin Mull. He is worried that his death has been overshadowed by some other notable deaths this past week. TIL that he was really fond of Martin Mull. I had no idea, did not even remember Martin Mull. He thought he had a wonderful sense of humor and he starred in a movie he really liked although he can't recall the title.
I should add that I am not unwilling to boo JD Vance - I haven't listened to him any more than I've listened to AOC or Marjorie Greene - but if the idea is simply, he's a less-nutty, less-prone-to-criminality Donald Trump type - well, for those of us firmly fixed on a couple of issues chief among them immigration, that's pretty much the dream. A very, very temporary dream, to be sure.
I hope some of the hours of my life wasted on reading about and following the Senator from Ohio may at least be of use to someone else.
Ian Ward conducted an interview with the Senator recently and here's his write up:
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/03/15/mr-maga-goes-to-washington-00147054
One of the things that stands out is the belief that "something’s pretty fundamentally broken about American society". If you share that belief, I suppose you could overlook the gratuitous nastiness towards groups that don't share his world view. In fact it may enhance his appeal.
On the other hand if you believe, like I do, that the United States remains the pre-eminent economic and military power, and a magnet for talent from all over the world, a stable constitutional order, a system that protects liberties and guarantees equal protection of the laws to everyone, that there is overwhelmingly fundamentally right about this country and society, and the present day is better than every day in the past, then such a belief system as the Senator's is unpalatable.
Thanks for the info. I thought it would be much worse than that ;-).
If Donald Trump thought that picking a qualified vice presidential nominee would cause him to be impeached ...
Not that the US Constitution matters much under our corrupt judiciary which can interpret it to mean whatever happens to be convenient at any given moment, but impeachment is at least notionally subject to the constitutional clause "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors." Not sure "irritates Arnold Kling" qualifies but the Roberts court could probably be persuaded.
I am much reminded of Walter Bagehot in his The English Constitution:
“The principle of popular government is that the supreme power, the determining efficacy in matters political, resides in the people—not necessarily or commonly in the whole people, in the numerical majority, but in a chosen people, a picked and selected people. It is so in England; it is so in all free countries. Under a cabinet constitution at a sudden emergency this people can choose a ruler for the occasion. It is quite possible and even likely that he would not be ruler before the occasion. The great qualities, the imperious will, the rapid energy, the eager nature fit for a great crisis are not required—are impediments—in common times. A Lord Liverpool is better in everyday politics than a Chatham—a Louis Philippe far better than a Napoleon. By the structure of the world we often want, at the sudden occurrence of a grave tempest, to change the helmsman—to replace the pilot of the calm by the pilot of the storm. [… …]
But under a presidential government you can do nothing of the kind. The American government calls itself a government of the supreme people; but at a quick crisis, the time when a sovereign power is most needed, you cannot find the supreme people. You have got a Congress elected for one fixed period, going out perhaps by fixed instalments, which cannot be accelerated or retarded—you have a President chosen for a fixed period, and immovable during that period: all the arrangements are for stated times. There is no elastic element, everything is rigid, specified, dated. Come what may, you can quicken nothing, and can retard nothing. You have bespoken your government in advance, and whether it suits you or not, whether it works well or works ill, whether it is what you want or not, by law you must keep it. In a country of complex foreign relations it would mostly happen that the first and most critical year of every war would be managed by a peace premier, and the first and most critical years of peace by a war premier. In each case the period of transition would be irrevocably governed by a man selected not for what he was to introduce, but what he was to change—for the policy he was to abandon, not for the policy he was to administer.”
The prospect of another Biden vs Trump contest ought demonstrate the absolute superiority of an English-style cabinet/prime minister model executive branch over a presidential system once and for all. An American people unwilling to call a constitutional convention to make at least this most obvious of all potential improvements deserves what awaits it, good and hard.
Because all those countries with an "English-style cabinet/prime minister model executive branch" have been so much more successful than the USA. It is such an obviously superior system.
Oh, wait ...
Well there is a lot to be said for the sort of knee-jerk nationalism that characterizes so much of intellectual life in the nation’s establishment, but objective sources tend to tell a different story.
- Government Effectiveness Index, https://www.theglobaleconomy.com/rankings/wb_government_effectiveness/ (
USA ranked #26, and if I am not mistaken it is not until you get to #21, South Korea, that you have a non-parliamentary system. Singapore, so beloved by libertarians, is ranked #1, has a parliamentary system with strong cabinet ministers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Singapore
- Legatum Good Government Index
https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-best-governments-in-the-world.html
USA comes in at #11 but again all the countries ranked above it, including the UK, I believe are parliamentary systems.
- WSJ Rule of Law Index
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/world-justice-project-rule-of-law-index
USA #24, and again outperformed by parliamentary systems. Denmark, as it does on so many international indices, ranks first, which one tends to suspect has something to do with the system of proportional representation for the Folketing which allows the people to maintain a simple, effective system of justice based on a civil code, as opposed to the mixed multi-level farrago we suffer under in the United States.
- Perceptions of Corruption Index
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index
US again at #24. Note it appears that Uruguay at #16 marks the top appearance of a presidential system at the top of the list but keep in mind that Uruguayans enjoy substantial liberties associated with substantive decentralized and are not in thrall to a strong, out-of-control central bureaucracy.
- Perceptions of Electoral Integrity Index
https://www.electoralintegrityproject.com/eip-blog/2022/6/13/plxw8zwd4m7thgurqvyqdj6qjhyhjw
“Our new research report provides a global assessment of the quality of national elections around the world from 2012-21, based on nearly 500 elections across 170 countries. The US is the lowest ranked liberal democracy in the list. It comes just 15th in the 29 states in the Americas, behind Costa Rica, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago and others, and 75th overall.”
And I could go on and on. Suffice to say, that with its unequalled endowment of fresh water, arable land, and mineral resources, the USA doesn’t have an excuse for its second rate governance other than its third rate establishment and what passes for its intellectual class.
I don't think you'll find a Western parliamentary nation that isn't more successful than the US on the things that matter to most people. But sure Austria, Andorra, et al. have been as unsuccessful as the US has been on invading other countries or mass incarcerating it's citizens. TBH I don't even think they are striving to be as successful as the US, the horrors.
Did you ever notice how nobody else actually adopted the US system even though hundreds of nations have came about since the US established it. Hell even in countries we conquered and could dictate future government type, we never installed a US style government which should tell you how bad our system is.
The US needs to ditch its own system as well as the British adversarial legal system, also an extreme minority system nearly no one else has adopted.
To me the system is always the least important thing. What is important are good people and good laws. England has had a few larger than life prime ministers, like Churchill, of course, a subject unto himself; but at least since 1900 few "good" ones and yet until not that long ago, it has gone on mostly very well. Not sure about Bagehot's time.
The executive exists to make decisions. This calls for a prudent person. That's why in the early years of the American nation, the people called on those who were believed to be very smart men.
When Andrew Jackson came along, this preference for a smart executive was abandoned in favor of populism; and it has been a not-infrequent running theme in American history ever since (see the double bind situation in which we find ourselves) - and yet despite this, we were governed pretty well more often than not. It wasn't the system. People, and a sanity to our laws.
Maybe I'm just not close enough, but I do not see Biden as in any way decapacitated from being President for another x months. One might have concerns about his 7th r 8th year in office.
There was noting wrong with Harris as VP. Biden made the mistake of not using her (I'm pretty sure she would have agreed to being used) as his bulldog to stake out an "anti-woke" social and neoliberal economic position that he could then have triangulated against the Warren-Sanders forces.
That he did not do this has nothing to do with his age.
<i>But the Democrats don’t care. To them, the election is everything that matters.</i>
I'm surprised that a careful thinker like Arnold would use a rhetorical device like this. "The Democrats" are not a single-minded entity. Even if they were, we couldn't read their minds in order to impute their motives. I certainly don't like it when liberals pretend to know what "the conservatives" are thinking in order to make some wild generalization about their motives. Another way of making the same point would be, "From what I've seen in news outlets and social media, leading Democratic party voices appear to be more concerned about Biden's chances in the election than his ability to perform his job as president right now."
Your way of saying it is better but I read Kling's words to mean exactly the same.
I do not worry about some of Trump's more extreme ideas in this election because I doubt he will be able or willing to do things like withdraw from NATO. As Michael Brendan Dougherty at National Review has argued, the trajectory of his second term will depend entirely on the degree to which his executive branch appointees undermine him. I understand that Trump and his future transition team will be vetting nominees more closely for their loyalty to Trump and his ideology, but he has frequently shown that he can turn on people loyal to him on a dime. This argument that his appointees are fanatically loyal was made during his first term, with commentators arguing vociferously that figures like Bill Barr were loyal to Trump over anything else when there was little actual reason to believe that, and lo and behold, they now hate each other. I do not see a second Trump term as playing out that differently from the first, except Congress not being a solid conservative constraint on him now that Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and other establishment figures have little control over the party. The fact that a good chunk of Republicans in Congress owe their current offices to Trump's endorsement is itself one reason why they will never impeach him.
The really hilarious thing about the debate was that this wasn't Biden at his worst- anyone who regularly watches videos of him interacting in any unscripted forum has seen him much more confused and mentally incompetent than he was Thursday night. During the debate I think Biden's team didn't provide him with near enough material to fill up his time slots and, as result, after he had recited/read off his answer to the question asked, he was forced to ad lib and repeatedly lost his train of thought. The other thing that very noticeable but, again, not the worst I have seen of him, was that he never really rebutted anything at all or even tried to- it was almost like he had no idea what Trump was saying even standing right there- the blank stares off into space while Trump was speaking are a terrible visual and a big missed opportunity that Biden even 4 years ago wouldn't have let slip by.
If Biden hasn't withdrawn by the week after the 4th, then he will be the candidate the Democrats are stuck with. Getting stabbed in the back by the media all of a sudden after they have covered for them the last 4 years is going to make the Bidens angry and recalcitrant on the issue and Biden, even if he withdraws, is likely to endorse Harris as the replacement candidate. Also, any funds on hand raised by the Biden/Harris campaign cannot be used by any presidential candidate who isn't Joe Biden or Kamala Harris.
The media's reaction, I think, was either planned in advance or they expected Trump to make Biden look good by comparison so they could continue to sell the Biden brand post-debate. When that didn't happen, they went with plan B since the conviction of Trump in New York didn't bring the hoped-for rise in Biden's electoral chances.
Were they reading pre-written answers off a teleprompter?! I didn't know that. Or perhaps you mean he had memorized a set speech.
I was with my elderly parents and they were quite keen initially, turning on the TV more than an hour in advance as the talking heads talked over shots of people milling about what would be, I guess, the empty room. I went for a walk after giving them their TV trays but noticed they bailed and went to bed after about half an hour. They sundown too.
To do my due diligence after reading the "takes" next morning (elderly parents get 3 papers!) I googled a clip, in which Trump brought up a murder committed last week by a couple of lowlifes from Venezuela, who were fully "legible" to the authorities; if you wanted to chalk the murder up to the account of Soros-funded nonprofits, I'd not disagree.
Biden's answer showed some interesting coaching, as I am guessing his people knew that Trump wouldn't overlook this event.
He started on the usual "many people commit crimes, why would you concern yourself with this one particularly, what does that say about you" type rejoinder that is pretty customary from the left. But then he did that thing where he starts making a list and it just went crazy; it actually seemed to me that he said plenty of people are raped by their sisters ...
I mention this because I doubt many of you were able to stick with the debate either. I'm sure we could each adduce an example of the lunacy on display, yes, from both Trump and Biden, that we were struck with - and cobble together the whole thing. The whole bizarre exercise was so wretched we probably need to collectively forget it.
Maybe we just need to declare that debating is stupid and for losers and not do it anymore. It's not like others in recent years have covered America in glory.
Steve Sailer had the best take midpoint through: "Who would win in a debate, Biden or Trump?"
There weren't teleprompters but either candidate could have cue cards on the lectern- Biden almost never appears at a lectern without cards. His answers at the beginning of any clip were clearly rehearsed/read but then his mind would wander off after 30 seconds to a minute. Trump on the other hand I think was completely unscripted though he did use a lot material I have read before in transcripts from rallies. Of course, I think the difference is that people at CNN gave Biden's staff the questions a week ago so that the answers would be scripted and in the right order- this happens all the time when Biden is doing press conferences at which he occasionally lets the cat out of the bag by mistake.
I suggest that a runaway Republican convention nominate Nikki Haley.