I don't know if this or is isn't true, but I will tackle one aspect of the post.
I think we can all agree that George W Bush was a real president. He wasn't senile. He was in charge and making decisions.
Well, what decisions did he make? They weren't good ones.
Lies? Do you remember WMD in Iraq.
I think I would still prefer a real human decision maker in the presidency to a senile old man, but it's not some cure all. It's not even guaranteed to be better.
Arnold's request is so extreme that the person replacing them better be Julius Caesar tier leadership (he still got killed BTW).
I think the real problem is that lies are so common in our society. You aren't going to fix that with one man, let alone a man picked by congress without the ascent of the people or the constitution.
No, I'm going to go with lying. I remember exactly what Colin Powell presented to the UN (I read it at the end of his biography). Bush clearly didn't have evidence that Iraq had WMD, but he presented it as if he did.
You don't invade a country because "they might have weapons and they might use them one day." You need proof. Bush didn't have it but pretended to the world he did.
I would suggest that using poison gas against the Iranians and the rebels in his own country is pretty good proof that he both had them and would use them.
Most of Iraqs use of chemical weapons happened against Iran with our support. The final use was right at the end of the Gulf War to stop a rebellion. After that, nothing. The programs were dismantled and Iraq did nothing.
Obviously he didn't have evidence, other than Saddam stating he had WMD. Evidence means they should have found them.
Regardless, what you say is more or less correct except not having evidence doesn't mean he knew he was being misinformed by intelligence. Fleisher argued exactly that.
I agree regarding initial intel — one needs to consider the counterfactual potential risk of inaction — but there was a lot of continued bullshitting of the American people once it was evident that the WMDs very likely didn’t exist in a mature development phase if at all.
True for nuclear weapons, and maybe bioweapons, not true for poison gas which leads to a reasonable conclusion that if he got a hold of nuclear material he likely would have weaponized it.
My good friend I'm seeing this weekend has had massive pain for twenty years due to shrapnel is he in his back from is time in Iraq. He doesn't consider humiliating Saddam worth it.
More to your other commenters but supportive examples of the media covering presidential negatives up would be JFK's open adultery and drug use and FDR's wheelchair. But equally I don't think it was nefarious unlike in modern times, I think it was more just not considered proper to report on and that same deferrence was given to all politicians.
I've Liked a different comment and placed a comment but for some reason I'm blocked from Liking your comment even as I see the number of Likes increase so it seems others aren't blocked.
Impeachment is a political act and so requires political calculation. In the 1970s a majority of Republicans were ashamed to support Nixon and calculated that it was better to have him go.
There is no shame in politics today. There certainly is a focus on making the other guys feel ashamed, but almost nobody feels ashamed over their own guy or gal (or rather, that shame doesn’t really affect the political calculation). I think maybe we’ve had this degree of corrupt partisanship back in the 1800s, so not completely new.
I have never voted for Trump or Biden and likely never will. Trump is a poor decision maker, a poor delegator (just saying things accomplishes nothing in a bureaucracy aligned against you- it requires good people with focus and determination holding feet to the fire for months and years) is too impulsive and relies on exaggeration as a rhetorical device (like someone changing the subject to when did you last beat your wife)- if the opponents are spending time refuting his lies or calling him a liar they aren’t advancing real arguments. He also lies easily for no real purpose.
Trump, though, is not really a partisan (he knows how the game is played) and actually has exhibited restraint far beyond what any normal person would have if they had been spied on by the Obama admin, called a Russian spy by the intelligence agencies, impeached for looking into Biden’s corruption, sued by political opponents on spurious grounds for nearly $1 billion, and now facing jail time on Trumped up charges.
That level of persecution would drive most normal people nuts. Maybe it helps that Trump is a little nuts and has a sense of humor and lots of money.
All of the J6 and election stuff is beyond the pale, but be honest - everyone knows the Dems would have pulled similar stunts had Biden lost by 45,000 votes over three states (it was war gamed by Dem operatives pre-election) and they had thousands of swampies and antifa types ready to set the country on fire in 2020 (they were already doing a good job in many cities). Isn’t a coincidence that the “independent” swampies and antifa types allegedly protesting against local policing rules and racism suddenly (for the most part) stopped as soon as Trump lost?
Biden is just a nasty, low intelligence SOB who sold out to China and various Russian/ex-CIS oligarchs while serving as VP. His lies aren’t rhetorical devices (except the lines he is fed about Charlottesville, bleach, losers, etc)- he is thoroughly dishonest with no sense of humor. He has proven to be a threat to democracy- censoring Americans, prosecuting and harassing opponents (not just Trump), opening the border, instituting racist/discriminatory policies and programs, and attempting to spend $400 billion illegally (student loan handouts) and on a whim without congressional approval. Despite being told it is illegal he continues to try. Biden should have been impeached for all of the above long before being impeached on competency grounds.
Hey- this is where we are. Not the situation I would have chosen. Trump, at least, was chosen by voters over more traditional candidates like Nikki and DeSantis. Nobody serious threw their hat in the ring against Biden.
Around the world people are figuring out how unaccountable and autocratic our bureaucracies and our globalist leaders are and are rebelling by choosing populists on the right and left. Nobody should be under any illusions that Trump will accomplish anything in his second term- he will be an instant lame duck that the bureaucracy can outlast, Congress isn’t likely to pass much legislation and leftist judges will stay (for awhile) most of his exec orders. By the time the stuff is litigated the Repubs will have lost the 2026 midterms and Congress amidst a constant drumbeat of media negativity.
Still, I’d rather have Trump than Biden in 2024 as a matter of national security, even if nothing is accomplished and it sets the Dems up well for 2028.
Agree with the "no shame" which might be stated as "win at any cost", or at least, as you put it, shame the other side. That plus the unaccountability factor, the blatant lying, etc., together are making democratic nations pretty shaky nowadays.
Agreed- no surprise people are casting BITFD votes.
I think the shame argument isn’t aimed at the 40 pct or so (each) who would vote for a taxidermist’s representation of Biden or Trump but maybe the 15-20 pct of people who can be convinced not to vote for candidate x because it would be too shameful. The Dems strategy in 2018, 2020, 2022 (and now) is to make Trump too embarrassing for rich white suburbanites in swing states to support. Ironically, Trump was doing a good enough job of this all by himself, but all of the banana republic lawfare has probably increased turnout for Trump amongst other voter demos. Whoops. And now it would be disgraceful for anyone to vote for Biden (who isn’t a partisan). Fine mess we’ve got ourselves into.
I think both parties are now looking ahead to 2028 and a more “business as usual” post-Trump future, but I imagine there could be some wars and financial/debt crises in that timeframe that make our future anything but business as usual.
Well, I took what happened in 2016 with riots in DC on his inauguration and all of the election denials and “illegitimate prez” stuff by Hillary and Biden on down and then added what the Dems had arranged for public disorder in 2020 leading up to the election and then extrapolated.
I didn’t see 2000 as being relevant at all when there were more recent examples.
The J6ers mistake was in thinking they’d be treated like Code Pink or Antifa, “fiery and murdery but “peaceful” George Floyd protestors or Kamala’s Molotov cocktail throwing friends. Whoops. Don’t feel sorry for them, of course. I believe in law and order.
How odd to say Obama set the Mideast ablaze. Surely the GWB Iraq inversion did more than whatever Obama may have done (vacillated on Syria?) And the GWB reversal of the surplus to deficit was clearly worse than Biden's deficits whihc are more failure to raise taxes compare to GWB/Trump actually reducing taxes.
I was struck too by the off handed "setting ablaze" by Obama, of all people. Everyone is fallible, everyone makes decisions with incomplete and incorrect data, but if you look at the last how many ever years and you think Obama is the problem, then you expect super human omniscient beings in public service. Well into my middle age, and can safely say this is about the best you are going to get.
Obama got us deeply involved in several regime change operations and proxy wars over their 8 years in power - we can't know the counterfactual, but it does seem like the US did a lot to destabilize an already unstable region between 2008 and 2016.
The dominant critique (as far as I am aware) is that he did _not_ intervene in Syria despite their use of chemical weapons. The argument that he intervened too much is novel.
Saudi Arabia (and Yemen) do a pretty good job of keeping that war going. Whether they find it worthwhile or not, you should take it up with them! Egyptians have agency as well. You attribute a great deal to American presidents and the administration. Like you and me, people around the world exercise some measure of control over their destiny. But looking at, say, the specifics of Egypt from 2008-16, what was the substantive change?
1. Funding for pro-democracy groups? That started in the Bush Administration (and is a good idea!)
2. Speech in Cairo? Do you attribute magical powers to his other speeches (close to 500 of them) or was this such a captivating persuasive speech that caused Mubarak's ouster 18 months later? Perhaps he should have used these magical persuasive speech powers to get Merrick Garland a vote!
3. Should the US have prevented Mubarak from being toppled? Interfered in their civil strife still more?
You may generally dislike a liberal president (totally fine!) but this is a stretch :)
?? Like what? Pressuring the post Mubarak government to how elections too soon without giving non-Muslim Brotherhood forces to organize? Yes but ... "set ablaze?"
AK is a strong enough Israel partisan that he prioritizes Israeli interests in the Middle East over other factors. So he would consider the Iran nuclear deal a bad thing, because it shifted some of the regional balance of power in Iran's favor, even though it was beneficial for pretty much every country except Israel.
Yes I think so too, but the Israelis seem to want to disregard the existential risk to them from Iranian nuclear weapons, while thinking there is a very serious existential risk to them from the extremely weak conventional forces of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies. This may even be reasonable, since Iranian nuclear weapons could be effectively deterred by Israeli ones, but I would rather not test that out.
Of course Netanyahu has talked a lot about being very worried about Iranian nukes, but the things he had to say were often kind of gibberish, which invites the conclusion that he was misrepresenting his concerns. His whole 2018 presentation on Iranian nukes was basically him saying "We have evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear program before the nuclear deal was signed. Therefore the nuclear deal is bad and it's not stopping Iran from developing nukes." The logic of what he was saying was literally incoherent. (I'm not saying Netanyahu is happy to see Iran develop nukes, but he has no interest in preventing Iran from going nuclear if the price of that involves an increase in Iranian conventional and soft power.)
Ultimately Israel seems unwilling to reach any kind of compromise with Iran, and would prefer to set unrealistic goals and use them to leverage the US against Iran. They would rather see a war between Iran and the US than have to accept any significant amount of Iranian power in the Gulf region. This is their choice, but it means that they are not a trustworthy ally that takes our interests into account the way we have historically prioritized their interests.
"The public is becoming accustomed to being lied to."
I'm not sure this is the right word. "Accustomed," I think, implies some level of acceptance. I think the refusal to accept obvious, blatant, conscious lies from the elites in power is a key driver of the populism that propelled Trump's (and, to an extent, Kennedy's) campaigns.
I refer not only to politicians' lies - they are always present, consisting mainly of promising the impossible in order to get votes, while maligning opponents for their lies. I refer to the obvious lying in the name of Diversity, the ideological lying in the Transgender ideology, the unearned claims of authority by unelected officials whose role is advisory, the devout claims of "addressing the climate crisis" while spending hundreds of billions to *not* address the claimed causes of the claimed crisis. This lying is perpetrated not only by politicians, but by most of the people who make their livings writing or talking about politicians, government, and policy. As Megan McArdle recently wrote, the people who traffic in these lies seem to show Orwellian Doublethink, simultaneously believing and loudly proclaiming positions that are mutually contradictory, without acknowledging the contradiction.
These same elites want to give all government power to institutions that are explicitly shielded from democratic accountability. They want to empower international institutions like the European Union, the United Nations, or the World Trade Organization to force policies on governments. They want to empower unelected government bureaucracies to determine and implement policies that elected representatives won't publicly support because public support would get them dis-elected.
Trump lies too, in even more blatant form, but at least he promises to clean out the liars who are undermining democracy. It's more than a little ironic that his opponents, who are trying to transfer more and more power to undemocratic institutions, claim to be acting in defense of Democracy.
Re: "the public is becoming accustomed to being lied to. Right there is the case for making the analogy with the late Soviet regime."
If memory serves me well, Leszek Kolakowski (the incisive author of "Main Currents of Marxism") characterized the Soviet regime as "the system of organized make-believe".
As far as I can tell, the US presents a key difference: The culture war is largely *earnest*. Plus a substantial dose of *dominance moves* by pseudo-intellectuals.
Because I share your mood, I am bewildered by the seemingly sanguine state of financial markets. Are financial markets a check on our pessimistic mood? Or are they, too, somehow governed by the lies? Or?
They are looking at the reality that we've had nearly a full term from each of the two men most likely to win the election in November and, contrary to all predictions, the sky hasn't fallen in.
Other than rampant inflation, particularly it abruptly jumping in 2021. More than most other things, businesses want predictability. I don't think a business cares what the level of inflation is just so long as it's reasonably constant.
Even insane deficits don't bother businesses. I think they'll take consistent large deficits rather than abrupt increases in taxes or decreases in spending.
I think most people also feel, and I share this view, that even if government is a significant factor in our lives there are many more factors influencing life than which guy is elected to one office in the level of government most removed from our day to day life, even if that office is pretty powerful. Especially when either one is going to be out of office in four years.
All true. It's sometimes difficult to tell how Tweedledee affects your day to day life versus Tweedledum. There may be specific instances, e.g. how Trump versus Biden treated Title IX, the Department of Education, or various regulatory bodies. But really, does the FCC flip-flopping on net neutrality really affect many people's lives?
Or Venezuela. I almost went into that nuance but thought my post was already too long.
Yes, there are limits. Consistent 100% annual inflation is very difficult to work with. I was thinking more along the lines of businesses not caring if inflation was 1%, 3%, or 5%. As long as it's predictable, they can adjust operations to match. Even 10% is probably workable if known in advance (that is, in enough time to cut inventory, move assets out of cash, and the like).
Once it gets to 3% +it seems to never be predictable. It needs to be low enough that no one notices it and has to plan for it. Once people notice it and try to plan for it, then those actions start to destabilize the inflation regime as everyone is now trying to game the new higher inflation rate.
You're not wrong but I'd argue that you always have to plan for it. If I have money invested somewhere, I always have to account for inflation to figure out my real ROI.
If inflation is in the 1-2% range, it's kind of lost in the noise so I don't have to think about nearly as much as if it's 3+ percent. I guarantee any company spreadsheet has a cell where you plug in an inflation value regardless of how high or low that value is.
The danger of trusting financial market numbers too much is that those participating are drawing from much the same information as the rest of us. Many sources of info doesn’t help your aggregate accuracy if the sources are all similarly inaccurate and biased.
If I say I ate oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs, it doesn’t matter if 10 people ask me or 1000, the answer is still wrong despite “1000 people investigated!” You need people actually able to get different data, and those people’s reports need to not be drowned out.
Posner had a book in 2006 entitled "Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency". However, the phrase is much older, and the idea is older still.
""The Constitution is not a suicide pact" is a phrase in American political and legal discourse. The phrase expresses the belief that constitutional restrictions on governmental power must be balanced against the need for survival of the state and its people. It is most often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a response to charges that he was violating the United States Constitution by suspending habeas corpus during the American Civil War. Although the phrase echoes statements made by Lincoln, and although versions of the sentiment have been advanced at various times in American history, the precise phrase "suicide pact" was first used in this context by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago, a 1949 free speech case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The phrase also appears in the same context in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Justice Arthur Goldberg."
I'm quite curious who people think is running the show. During and after the Trump administration, lots of people quit and wrote tell-all books. I think we have a reasonable idea who was deciding what and what the environment was like.
I don't recall seeing anyone talking about what it's like in the Biden White House. If Biden is consistently the Biden we saw at the debate then I too can't see how he's an effective executive. But there are hundreds of people working at the White House. Surely _someone_ with personal knowledge of the situation would have spilled the beans, wouldn't they? Wouldn't someone point out that Jill Biden, Obama, Harris, or Jeff Zients (Biden's chief of staff for the last 18 months and a name I don't recall ever hearing before today) were actually running things?
But what I find weird is, based on the aforementioned tell-all books, the President is meeting with/phoning people all day, every day, including members of Congress, his cabinet, his staff, foreign representatives, the works. I assume Washingtonians would have noticed a distinct lack of face to face contact and that would include people (e.g. Mitch McConnell) who have little interest in protecting Biden.
And that still leaves the open question: if Biden isn't meeting with people, how's he running the executive branch. Or, _who_ is running the executive branch? Is the cabinet just running on suggestions from six months ago with no oversight?
I agree with you that neither man is fit to be president. I don’t think impeaching either on day one of the next term is the answer - the answer today is for pressure to build to use the 25th Amendment to remove Biden now, and the threat of that might be sufficient to get him to step aside, along with allowing him to pardon Hunter before he goes or something like that. If Biden is reelected somehow, the 25th remains the appropriate mechanism. For Trump, if he wins, I don’t think he meets the standard for the 25th today but could in the future. I don’t see any grounds for impeaching him on day one that have the slightest chance of success.
Agreed. Saying somebody should be impeached on day one is like saying you want a golden unicorn. I don’t think imaginary situations should be used as the basis of an argument, even if you really do like unicorns or impeachment.
I largely agree with you, but I like your policy of staying away from the current thing - which generally means avoiding the current political stupidity
Never trumpers have a huge incentive to lie to their new patrons. You can clearly see the lies in how they abandon conservative principles that have nothing to do with trump.
I think it's very humorous that a default mythology of the "framers" or the "founders" of the US would have thought this or that when in fact if they saw the state of affairs of today, in all likelihood they would have said the experiment failed and self governance or at least the appearance of self governance was no longer an acceptable ideal to aspire to. Also for the high minded, the founders used to settle their disputes in duels aka gun fights which is conveniently neglected in polite society today because the idea of aristocrats resorting to violence to resolve disagreements (which is always the ultimate resolution aka the State/monopoly on violence/war as the final argument of Kings(Ultima ratio regum)) removes the default passive aggressive state of socialization rather than outright aggression.
I think that if the founders saw our nation today they would give each other a high five and say prayers of gratitude to God (that was still a thing back then). They would be pleasantly surprised to see that a United States of America still exists after almost 250 years. There was no guarantee that the nation would last even 25 years.
One should evaluate a president on the performance of the presidency. One shouldn't just say, "Overall, things have been okay." An economic expansion or crisis during a presidency may or may not be the fault of that given administration. One should evaluate a presidency by the quality of the the decisions made and the leadership provided. Also, it's normally good to focus on the big decisions and the big impacts---because those are most attributable to the presidency.
So, for Obama, you (A. Kling) are saying "[Y]et people look back on his presidency and have few complaints." Well, we may not have had a full-blown economic crisis during his 8 years, but that doesn't mean that people think that, "Overall, things were okay." People look back on Obama and do have the serious complaint that he severely damaged race relations. Seemingly the biggest "big picture" opportunity Obama had was to improve race relations and, instead, he stoked false media narratives about white-on-black police shootings, or Trayvon Martin, before the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections.
For Trump, you seem to focus on mean tweets (which is not a big-picture issue). Trump's big picture issues were aggressively confronting the news media (confronting the 'lies,' to use the word of the day, which is a good thing), running huge deficits (as Kling mentions, and it's a bad thing), confronting illegal immigration (a good thing that he was not very successful at), and huge changes in foreign policy, like the Abraham Accords (which are a good thing). ....Yet A Kling thinks that this record is worthy of impeachment? With enormous respect to A Kling as a thinker, I suggest that this seems like TDS.
I’m not convinced that the amount of lying happening today is different in amount from that of previous administrations.
I don't know if this or is isn't true, but I will tackle one aspect of the post.
I think we can all agree that George W Bush was a real president. He wasn't senile. He was in charge and making decisions.
Well, what decisions did he make? They weren't good ones.
Lies? Do you remember WMD in Iraq.
I think I would still prefer a real human decision maker in the presidency to a senile old man, but it's not some cure all. It's not even guaranteed to be better.
Arnold's request is so extreme that the person replacing them better be Julius Caesar tier leadership (he still got killed BTW).
I think the real problem is that lies are so common in our society. You aren't going to fix that with one man, let alone a man picked by congress without the ascent of the people or the constitution.
Bush may have been wrong but he wasn't lying. Intelligence sources and Clinton thought it was true.
No, I'm going to go with lying. I remember exactly what Colin Powell presented to the UN (I read it at the end of his biography). Bush clearly didn't have evidence that Iraq had WMD, but he presented it as if he did.
You don't invade a country because "they might have weapons and they might use them one day." You need proof. Bush didn't have it but pretended to the world he did.
I would suggest that using poison gas against the Iranians and the rebels in his own country is pretty good proof that he both had them and would use them.
Yes, they used poison gas we helped them make to attack targets we helped and authorized them to target.
https://www.salon.com/2013/08/26/cia_helped_saddam_gas_iran_in_88/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Iraq_during_the_Iran–Iraq_War
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iraqi_chemical_weapons_program
Most of Iraqs use of chemical weapons happened against Iran with our support. The final use was right at the end of the Gulf War to stop a rebellion. After that, nothing. The programs were dismantled and Iraq did nothing.
Obviously he didn't have evidence, other than Saddam stating he had WMD. Evidence means they should have found them.
Regardless, what you say is more or less correct except not having evidence doesn't mean he knew he was being misinformed by intelligence. Fleisher argued exactly that.
https://wapo.st/4cmirIk
I agree regarding initial intel — one needs to consider the counterfactual potential risk of inaction — but there was a lot of continued bullshitting of the American people once it was evident that the WMDs very likely didn’t exist in a mature development phase if at all.
True for nuclear weapons, and maybe bioweapons, not true for poison gas which leads to a reasonable conclusion that if he got a hold of nuclear material he likely would have weaponized it.
Agreed. I was perfectly happy to see Saddam humiliated and pulled out of a hole in the ground like the barbarian he was.
My good friend I'm seeing this weekend has had massive pain for twenty years due to shrapnel is he in his back from is time in Iraq. He doesn't consider humiliating Saddam worth it.
I don’t believe W was in charge of anything. He did what he was told
Congratulations; you have successfully mated a Paradox with a Tautology.
What do you name your child?
More to your other commenters but supportive examples of the media covering presidential negatives up would be JFK's open adultery and drug use and FDR's wheelchair. But equally I don't think it was nefarious unlike in modern times, I think it was more just not considered proper to report on and that same deferrence was given to all politicians.
I've Liked a different comment and placed a comment but for some reason I'm blocked from Liking your comment even as I see the number of Likes increase so it seems others aren't blocked.
If there’s a Divine Omniscience in the universe Mr. Friedman this DO may know the answer to this question ….
The rest of us cannot
Impeachment is a political act and so requires political calculation. In the 1970s a majority of Republicans were ashamed to support Nixon and calculated that it was better to have him go.
There is no shame in politics today. There certainly is a focus on making the other guys feel ashamed, but almost nobody feels ashamed over their own guy or gal (or rather, that shame doesn’t really affect the political calculation). I think maybe we’ve had this degree of corrupt partisanship back in the 1800s, so not completely new.
I have never voted for Trump or Biden and likely never will. Trump is a poor decision maker, a poor delegator (just saying things accomplishes nothing in a bureaucracy aligned against you- it requires good people with focus and determination holding feet to the fire for months and years) is too impulsive and relies on exaggeration as a rhetorical device (like someone changing the subject to when did you last beat your wife)- if the opponents are spending time refuting his lies or calling him a liar they aren’t advancing real arguments. He also lies easily for no real purpose.
Trump, though, is not really a partisan (he knows how the game is played) and actually has exhibited restraint far beyond what any normal person would have if they had been spied on by the Obama admin, called a Russian spy by the intelligence agencies, impeached for looking into Biden’s corruption, sued by political opponents on spurious grounds for nearly $1 billion, and now facing jail time on Trumped up charges.
That level of persecution would drive most normal people nuts. Maybe it helps that Trump is a little nuts and has a sense of humor and lots of money.
All of the J6 and election stuff is beyond the pale, but be honest - everyone knows the Dems would have pulled similar stunts had Biden lost by 45,000 votes over three states (it was war gamed by Dem operatives pre-election) and they had thousands of swampies and antifa types ready to set the country on fire in 2020 (they were already doing a good job in many cities). Isn’t a coincidence that the “independent” swampies and antifa types allegedly protesting against local policing rules and racism suddenly (for the most part) stopped as soon as Trump lost?
Biden is just a nasty, low intelligence SOB who sold out to China and various Russian/ex-CIS oligarchs while serving as VP. His lies aren’t rhetorical devices (except the lines he is fed about Charlottesville, bleach, losers, etc)- he is thoroughly dishonest with no sense of humor. He has proven to be a threat to democracy- censoring Americans, prosecuting and harassing opponents (not just Trump), opening the border, instituting racist/discriminatory policies and programs, and attempting to spend $400 billion illegally (student loan handouts) and on a whim without congressional approval. Despite being told it is illegal he continues to try. Biden should have been impeached for all of the above long before being impeached on competency grounds.
Hey- this is where we are. Not the situation I would have chosen. Trump, at least, was chosen by voters over more traditional candidates like Nikki and DeSantis. Nobody serious threw their hat in the ring against Biden.
Around the world people are figuring out how unaccountable and autocratic our bureaucracies and our globalist leaders are and are rebelling by choosing populists on the right and left. Nobody should be under any illusions that Trump will accomplish anything in his second term- he will be an instant lame duck that the bureaucracy can outlast, Congress isn’t likely to pass much legislation and leftist judges will stay (for awhile) most of his exec orders. By the time the stuff is litigated the Repubs will have lost the 2026 midterms and Congress amidst a constant drumbeat of media negativity.
Still, I’d rather have Trump than Biden in 2024 as a matter of national security, even if nothing is accomplished and it sets the Dems up well for 2028.
Agree with the "no shame" which might be stated as "win at any cost", or at least, as you put it, shame the other side. That plus the unaccountability factor, the blatant lying, etc., together are making democratic nations pretty shaky nowadays.
Agreed- no surprise people are casting BITFD votes.
I think the shame argument isn’t aimed at the 40 pct or so (each) who would vote for a taxidermist’s representation of Biden or Trump but maybe the 15-20 pct of people who can be convinced not to vote for candidate x because it would be too shameful. The Dems strategy in 2018, 2020, 2022 (and now) is to make Trump too embarrassing for rich white suburbanites in swing states to support. Ironically, Trump was doing a good enough job of this all by himself, but all of the banana republic lawfare has probably increased turnout for Trump amongst other voter demos. Whoops. And now it would be disgraceful for anyone to vote for Biden (who isn’t a partisan). Fine mess we’ve got ourselves into.
I think both parties are now looking ahead to 2028 and a more “business as usual” post-Trump future, but I imagine there could be some wars and financial/debt crises in that timeframe that make our future anything but business as usual.
Why do you think Democrats would be up in arms if Biden lost to Trump by a small margin, when they were not up in arms after the 2000 election?
Well, I took what happened in 2016 with riots in DC on his inauguration and all of the election denials and “illegitimate prez” stuff by Hillary and Biden on down and then added what the Dems had arranged for public disorder in 2020 leading up to the election and then extrapolated.
I didn’t see 2000 as being relevant at all when there were more recent examples.
The J6ers mistake was in thinking they’d be treated like Code Pink or Antifa, “fiery and murdery but “peaceful” George Floyd protestors or Kamala’s Molotov cocktail throwing friends. Whoops. Don’t feel sorry for them, of course. I believe in law and order.
I believe strongly in not damaging historic or otherwise nice old buildings.
Thanks!
Just my opinion/speculation. Quite likely wrong
I do. How many feds helped whip up the crowd that day? Our government has a black hole at its center and its name is the IC.
More of a political organization than a black hole!
After a competent, if imperfect four years in office, the burden of proving Trump unfit is quite high.
Especially while being grossly undermined by the justice department and other nefarious actors.
How odd to say Obama set the Mideast ablaze. Surely the GWB Iraq inversion did more than whatever Obama may have done (vacillated on Syria?) And the GWB reversal of the surplus to deficit was clearly worse than Biden's deficits whihc are more failure to raise taxes compare to GWB/Trump actually reducing taxes.
Agree about lies!
I was struck too by the off handed "setting ablaze" by Obama, of all people. Everyone is fallible, everyone makes decisions with incomplete and incorrect data, but if you look at the last how many ever years and you think Obama is the problem, then you expect super human omniscient beings in public service. Well into my middle age, and can safely say this is about the best you are going to get.
Obama got us deeply involved in several regime change operations and proxy wars over their 8 years in power - we can't know the counterfactual, but it does seem like the US did a lot to destabilize an already unstable region between 2008 and 2016.
Yes and most Americans just looked the other way. Libya was destroyed. Secret war in Syria. The Afghanistan debacle extended…
The dominant critique (as far as I am aware) is that he did _not_ intervene in Syria despite their use of chemical weapons. The argument that he intervened too much is novel.
How's Libya working out these days? Was a decade of civil war worth it? Or Yemen? Or Egypt?
Saudi Arabia (and Yemen) do a pretty good job of keeping that war going. Whether they find it worthwhile or not, you should take it up with them! Egyptians have agency as well. You attribute a great deal to American presidents and the administration. Like you and me, people around the world exercise some measure of control over their destiny. But looking at, say, the specifics of Egypt from 2008-16, what was the substantive change?
1. Funding for pro-democracy groups? That started in the Bush Administration (and is a good idea!)
2. Speech in Cairo? Do you attribute magical powers to his other speeches (close to 500 of them) or was this such a captivating persuasive speech that caused Mubarak's ouster 18 months later? Perhaps he should have used these magical persuasive speech powers to get Merrick Garland a vote!
3. Should the US have prevented Mubarak from being toppled? Interfered in their civil strife still more?
You may generally dislike a liberal president (totally fine!) but this is a stretch :)
Long way to avoid the main point. The US did a lot to destabilize an already unstable region between 2008 and 2016.
?? Like what? Pressuring the post Mubarak government to how elections too soon without giving non-Muslim Brotherhood forces to organize? Yes but ... "set ablaze?"
AK is a strong enough Israel partisan that he prioritizes Israeli interests in the Middle East over other factors. So he would consider the Iran nuclear deal a bad thing, because it shifted some of the regional balance of power in Iran's favor, even though it was beneficial for pretty much every country except Israel.
I know Netanyahu (and his Republican allies) did not like the Iran deal, but I though it was beneficial to Israel as it was to others.
Yes I think so too, but the Israelis seem to want to disregard the existential risk to them from Iranian nuclear weapons, while thinking there is a very serious existential risk to them from the extremely weak conventional forces of Hezbollah and other Iranian proxies. This may even be reasonable, since Iranian nuclear weapons could be effectively deterred by Israeli ones, but I would rather not test that out.
Of course Netanyahu has talked a lot about being very worried about Iranian nukes, but the things he had to say were often kind of gibberish, which invites the conclusion that he was misrepresenting his concerns. His whole 2018 presentation on Iranian nukes was basically him saying "We have evidence that Iran had a secret nuclear program before the nuclear deal was signed. Therefore the nuclear deal is bad and it's not stopping Iran from developing nukes." The logic of what he was saying was literally incoherent. (I'm not saying Netanyahu is happy to see Iran develop nukes, but he has no interest in preventing Iran from going nuclear if the price of that involves an increase in Iranian conventional and soft power.)
Ultimately Israel seems unwilling to reach any kind of compromise with Iran, and would prefer to set unrealistic goals and use them to leverage the US against Iran. They would rather see a war between Iran and the US than have to accept any significant amount of Iranian power in the Gulf region. This is their choice, but it means that they are not a trustworthy ally that takes our interests into account the way we have historically prioritized their interests.
That said, Obama's handling of Libya was really bad.
He straight up destroyed a country, along with his NATO buddies
And sent a message to dictators of small countries that if you make a deal with the US, the US will forget about it 20 years later and kill you
"The public is becoming accustomed to being lied to."
I'm not sure this is the right word. "Accustomed," I think, implies some level of acceptance. I think the refusal to accept obvious, blatant, conscious lies from the elites in power is a key driver of the populism that propelled Trump's (and, to an extent, Kennedy's) campaigns.
I refer not only to politicians' lies - they are always present, consisting mainly of promising the impossible in order to get votes, while maligning opponents for their lies. I refer to the obvious lying in the name of Diversity, the ideological lying in the Transgender ideology, the unearned claims of authority by unelected officials whose role is advisory, the devout claims of "addressing the climate crisis" while spending hundreds of billions to *not* address the claimed causes of the claimed crisis. This lying is perpetrated not only by politicians, but by most of the people who make their livings writing or talking about politicians, government, and policy. As Megan McArdle recently wrote, the people who traffic in these lies seem to show Orwellian Doublethink, simultaneously believing and loudly proclaiming positions that are mutually contradictory, without acknowledging the contradiction.
These same elites want to give all government power to institutions that are explicitly shielded from democratic accountability. They want to empower international institutions like the European Union, the United Nations, or the World Trade Organization to force policies on governments. They want to empower unelected government bureaucracies to determine and implement policies that elected representatives won't publicly support because public support would get them dis-elected.
Trump lies too, in even more blatant form, but at least he promises to clean out the liars who are undermining democracy. It's more than a little ironic that his opponents, who are trying to transfer more and more power to undemocratic institutions, claim to be acting in defense of Democracy.
Re: "the public is becoming accustomed to being lied to. Right there is the case for making the analogy with the late Soviet regime."
If memory serves me well, Leszek Kolakowski (the incisive author of "Main Currents of Marxism") characterized the Soviet regime as "the system of organized make-believe".
As far as I can tell, the US presents a key difference: The culture war is largely *earnest*. Plus a substantial dose of *dominance moves* by pseudo-intellectuals.
Then, “The system of organized delusion…”
Because I share your mood, I am bewildered by the seemingly sanguine state of financial markets. Are financial markets a check on our pessimistic mood? Or are they, too, somehow governed by the lies? Or?
They are looking at the reality that we've had nearly a full term from each of the two men most likely to win the election in November and, contrary to all predictions, the sky hasn't fallen in.
Other than rampant inflation, particularly it abruptly jumping in 2021. More than most other things, businesses want predictability. I don't think a business cares what the level of inflation is just so long as it's reasonably constant.
Even insane deficits don't bother businesses. I think they'll take consistent large deficits rather than abrupt increases in taxes or decreases in spending.
I think most people also feel, and I share this view, that even if government is a significant factor in our lives there are many more factors influencing life than which guy is elected to one office in the level of government most removed from our day to day life, even if that office is pretty powerful. Especially when either one is going to be out of office in four years.
All true. It's sometimes difficult to tell how Tweedledee affects your day to day life versus Tweedledum. There may be specific instances, e.g. how Trump versus Biden treated Title IX, the Department of Education, or various regulatory bodies. But really, does the FCC flip-flopping on net neutrality really affect many people's lives?
How is business in Argentina the last 50 years?
Or Venezuela. I almost went into that nuance but thought my post was already too long.
Yes, there are limits. Consistent 100% annual inflation is very difficult to work with. I was thinking more along the lines of businesses not caring if inflation was 1%, 3%, or 5%. As long as it's predictable, they can adjust operations to match. Even 10% is probably workable if known in advance (that is, in enough time to cut inventory, move assets out of cash, and the like).
Once it gets to 3% +it seems to never be predictable. It needs to be low enough that no one notices it and has to plan for it. Once people notice it and try to plan for it, then those actions start to destabilize the inflation regime as everyone is now trying to game the new higher inflation rate.
You're not wrong but I'd argue that you always have to plan for it. If I have money invested somewhere, I always have to account for inflation to figure out my real ROI.
If inflation is in the 1-2% range, it's kind of lost in the noise so I don't have to think about nearly as much as if it's 3+ percent. I guarantee any company spreadsheet has a cell where you plug in an inflation value regardless of how high or low that value is.
The danger of trusting financial market numbers too much is that those participating are drawing from much the same information as the rest of us. Many sources of info doesn’t help your aggregate accuracy if the sources are all similarly inaccurate and biased.
If I say I ate oatmeal for breakfast instead of eggs, it doesn’t matter if 10 people ask me or 1000, the answer is still wrong despite “1000 people investigated!” You need people actually able to get different data, and those people’s reports need to not be drowned out.
Financial markets are doing well because our economy has grown and profits are high.
I posted this link the other day for a different reason but it seems relevant here too.
https://wapo.st/3L6Uyby
Nominal values will dominate market gyrations going forward unless the federal government gets the deficit back below 2-3% of the GDP.
Lies since ARM reset 2006
Posner had a book in 2006 entitled "Not a Suicide Pact: The Constitution in a Time of National Emergency". However, the phrase is much older, and the idea is older still.
""The Constitution is not a suicide pact" is a phrase in American political and legal discourse. The phrase expresses the belief that constitutional restrictions on governmental power must be balanced against the need for survival of the state and its people. It is most often attributed to Abraham Lincoln, as a response to charges that he was violating the United States Constitution by suspending habeas corpus during the American Civil War. Although the phrase echoes statements made by Lincoln, and although versions of the sentiment have been advanced at various times in American history, the precise phrase "suicide pact" was first used in this context by Justice Robert H. Jackson in his dissenting opinion in Terminiello v. Chicago, a 1949 free speech case decided by the U.S. Supreme Court. The phrase also appears in the same context in Kennedy v. Mendoza-Martinez, a 1963 U.S. Supreme Court decision written by Justice Arthur Goldberg."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Constitution_is_not_a_suicide_pact
It’s gone
I'm quite curious who people think is running the show. During and after the Trump administration, lots of people quit and wrote tell-all books. I think we have a reasonable idea who was deciding what and what the environment was like.
I don't recall seeing anyone talking about what it's like in the Biden White House. If Biden is consistently the Biden we saw at the debate then I too can't see how he's an effective executive. But there are hundreds of people working at the White House. Surely _someone_ with personal knowledge of the situation would have spilled the beans, wouldn't they? Wouldn't someone point out that Jill Biden, Obama, Harris, or Jeff Zients (Biden's chief of staff for the last 18 months and a name I don't recall ever hearing before today) were actually running things?
There are starting to be some leaks in the dam. That WSJ story a couple weeks ago was one.
Here's another
https://www.axios.com/2024/06/30/top-aides-shielded-biden-white-house-debate
But what I find weird is, based on the aforementioned tell-all books, the President is meeting with/phoning people all day, every day, including members of Congress, his cabinet, his staff, foreign representatives, the works. I assume Washingtonians would have noticed a distinct lack of face to face contact and that would include people (e.g. Mitch McConnell) who have little interest in protecting Biden.
And that still leaves the open question: if Biden isn't meeting with people, how's he running the executive branch. Or, _who_ is running the executive branch? Is the cabinet just running on suggestions from six months ago with no oversight?
I agree with you that neither man is fit to be president. I don’t think impeaching either on day one of the next term is the answer - the answer today is for pressure to build to use the 25th Amendment to remove Biden now, and the threat of that might be sufficient to get him to step aside, along with allowing him to pardon Hunter before he goes or something like that. If Biden is reelected somehow, the 25th remains the appropriate mechanism. For Trump, if he wins, I don’t think he meets the standard for the 25th today but could in the future. I don’t see any grounds for impeaching him on day one that have the slightest chance of success.
Agreed. Saying somebody should be impeached on day one is like saying you want a golden unicorn. I don’t think imaginary situations should be used as the basis of an argument, even if you really do like unicorns or impeachment.
Kevin Drum thinks he needs to resign now.
https://jabberwocking.com/joe-biden-needs-to-resign-the-presidency/
I largely agree with you, but I like your policy of staying away from the current thing - which generally means avoiding the current political stupidity
I disagree with a lot of the stuff you’ve written but I believe that you’re expressing exactly what you think, and with deep consideration.
For that reason, I’ll probably never unsubscribe. Thanks for being honest in a world full of liars and cowards.
Never trumpers have a huge incentive to lie to their new patrons. You can clearly see the lies in how they abandon conservative principles that have nothing to do with trump.
I think it's very humorous that a default mythology of the "framers" or the "founders" of the US would have thought this or that when in fact if they saw the state of affairs of today, in all likelihood they would have said the experiment failed and self governance or at least the appearance of self governance was no longer an acceptable ideal to aspire to. Also for the high minded, the founders used to settle their disputes in duels aka gun fights which is conveniently neglected in polite society today because the idea of aristocrats resorting to violence to resolve disagreements (which is always the ultimate resolution aka the State/monopoly on violence/war as the final argument of Kings(Ultima ratio regum)) removes the default passive aggressive state of socialization rather than outright aggression.
I think that if the founders saw our nation today they would give each other a high five and say prayers of gratitude to God (that was still a thing back then). They would be pleasantly surprised to see that a United States of America still exists after almost 250 years. There was no guarantee that the nation would last even 25 years.
One should evaluate a president on the performance of the presidency. One shouldn't just say, "Overall, things have been okay." An economic expansion or crisis during a presidency may or may not be the fault of that given administration. One should evaluate a presidency by the quality of the the decisions made and the leadership provided. Also, it's normally good to focus on the big decisions and the big impacts---because those are most attributable to the presidency.
So, for Obama, you (A. Kling) are saying "[Y]et people look back on his presidency and have few complaints." Well, we may not have had a full-blown economic crisis during his 8 years, but that doesn't mean that people think that, "Overall, things were okay." People look back on Obama and do have the serious complaint that he severely damaged race relations. Seemingly the biggest "big picture" opportunity Obama had was to improve race relations and, instead, he stoked false media narratives about white-on-black police shootings, or Trayvon Martin, before the 2010, 2012, and 2014 elections.
For Trump, you seem to focus on mean tweets (which is not a big-picture issue). Trump's big picture issues were aggressively confronting the news media (confronting the 'lies,' to use the word of the day, which is a good thing), running huge deficits (as Kling mentions, and it's a bad thing), confronting illegal immigration (a good thing that he was not very successful at), and huge changes in foreign policy, like the Abraham Accords (which are a good thing). ....Yet A Kling thinks that this record is worthy of impeachment? With enormous respect to A Kling as a thinker, I suggest that this seems like TDS.