“I’m not a politician”
Some professions look really easy, even to outsiders. Others look really hard. In fact, most are difficult for outsiders. Consider the following imaginary remarks:
1. It’s not my fault the patient died; I’m not a brain surgeon.
2. It’s not my fault that my client got the electric chair; I’m not an attorney.
3. It’s not my fault that I missed the game winning shot; I’m not a basketball player.
My response would be, “If you are not a brain surgeon, then don’t do brain surgery”. Ditto for attorneys and NBA basketball players. And if you aren’t a skilled politician, then don’t do politics. And for God’s sake, don’t get your apprenticeship by running for President.
Some people will argue that Eisenhower was not a politician. Nonsense. He had not been elected to public office, but he had extensive political experience at the very highest levels of government. Trump has none, and it shows.
Trump is already making excuses, in case he loses. He says it won’t be his fault, as he’s not a politician.
There’s a reason that we usually nominate politicians to be presidential candidates, it’s tough when your very first job is in a field that you know nothing about, even more so when it is the most difficult job in the world.
Here’s the WaPo:
It is peculiar in the extreme — unprecedented, according to the former agent — for a candidate for president to prompt concern about inciting violence against his opponent. Even if not intentional, Trump is so cavalier and/or inarticulate as to invite sincere concern about his words’ effect on his loyalists. But then, in his word salad of half-sentences and disconnected thoughts, it is often hard to figure out what in the world he is trying to say. (On the difference between coal from the United States and China, he announced, “We have a very, very small planet compared to the universe, right? And that stuff is going up and they’re not cleaning it.” What?!?)
What we do know is that Trump has repeatedly egged on his crowds and boasted that he would have hit this or that protester in the face. His henchman Roger Stone warned of “days of rage” at the convention if the nomination didn’t go to Trump. This is the language of thugs and fascistic pretenders who seek to discredit and undermine democracy itself.
Hillary Clinton was certainly entitled to rub it in. At an event on Wednesday, she told the crowd in Iowa, “Words matter, my friends, and if you are running to be president or if you are president of the United States, words can have tremendous consequences.” She continued, “Yesterday, we witnessed the latest in a long line of casual comments from Donald Trump that crossed the line. His casual cruelty to a Gold Star family, his casual suggestion that more countries should have nuclear weapons, and now his casual inciting of violence.” She concluded, “Every single one of these incidents shows us that Donald Trump simply does not have the temperament to be president and commander in chief of the United States.” Can anyone really take issue with that?
Well, we passed “unfit for office” months ago, but Republicans might want to consider whether Trump’s Second Amendment threat is the last, best chance to dump him. Neither House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) nor Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) responded to a request for comment. They might consider coming out en masse against Trump. At a time when many ordinary Republicans are decamping from Trump’s camp, GOP “leaders” seem paralyzed by indecision. They risk a real calamity (political and, God forbid, otherwise) if they remain silent. But mostly they look lost, irresponsible and blinded by partisanship.
What’s surprising about Trump is not that he has a flaw, other candidates were known for garbled sentences. (Although I consider that to be kind of inexcusable in a Presidential candidate. After all, talking is one of the President’s most important responsibilities.) What surprises me about Trump is that he’s so bad at so many of the skills needed to be a politician, like not giving the Secret Service the impression that you are trying to encourage others to assassinate your rival:
Trump insults nearly every subset of Americans. He lacks rudimentary knowledge of our government and critical policies. But are Republicans really going to persist in running a candidate for president whose campaign the Secret Service had to speak to multiple times concerning language that can be taken as a call for violence? CNN reported:
A US Secret Service official confirms to CNN that the USSS has spoken to the Trump campaign regarding his Second Amendment comments. “There has been more than one conversation” on the topic, the official told CNN. The campaign told USSS Donald Trump did not intend to incite violence.
I guess the Secret Service is also “unhinged and deranged”.
Now I see that Trump is starting to drag down GOP Senate candidates, even as he grows ever more apathetic about his own race for President. Won’t it be nice when Hillary has a majority Democratic Senate to rubber stamp her appointments?
PS. How many times have you heard the following:
I’m not an economist, but it seems like . . .
I always brace myself for what’s coming next.
PPS. Why does Trump have to step in it every single day? Here’s the latest from Jim Geraghty.
PPPS. And here Trump provides additional details on how he plans to pay off the entire national debt in 8 years.
Tags:
12. August 2016 at 10:27
Strawman noted, but nice post.
12. August 2016 at 10:42
Eisenhower was professional military. He had no background in electoral politics. Harry Truman predicted he would find the Presidency frustrating for this reason.
Garry Wills attempted to make the argument that Ike was ‘a political genius’ because he was promoted through the ranks of a peacetime military which requires ‘jealousy and intrigue’. Actually, Eisenhower was promoted precisely once between 1919 and 1941. (Wills, unlike a comfortable majority of his peers, had no history of military service and did not know any branch of the military from tiddlywinks; he has a long history, however, of being a shameless BS-er).
Barack Obama, is, of course, pure politician. He devoted less than 4 years to practicing law. What do you get? You get creatures like Ben Rhodes in charge of foreign policy (and Valerie Jarrett in charge of everything).
12. August 2016 at 10:48
Jim Geraghty concludes (from the link above): “If Trump had a split personality, it would explain a lot.”
It’s not that complicated, Trump is just not very intelligent. Obviously so: he doesn’t speak well, he doesn’t form arguments well, he doesn’t read anything, he’s been a very mediocre (that’s being generous) real estate investor. He’s a hype man, a showman, an entertainer.
Don King (one of his friends) did pretty well for himself the same way, and no one accuses him of being a genius. And he started from less than nothing unlike Trump who wasn’t just born on 3rd base and thought he hit a triple, he was born crossing home plate.
12. August 2016 at 10:59
The “additional details” link is broken.
“And if you aren’t a skilled politician, then don’t do politics. And for God’s sake, don’t get your apprenticeship by running for President.”
-Name me one way that being a politician improves a President’s performance. I can see none.
“but he had extensive political experience at the very highest levels of government.”
-As Art Deco points out, no, he didn’t.
You do realize that CNN news report was fiction, right? Stop listening to the establishment media.
“Why does Trump have to step in it every single day?”
-He doesn’t. It’s the establishment media that’s simply an arm of Hillary Rotten Clinton.
Make America Great Again!
12. August 2016 at 11:03
@ssumner: I think you need to do a perfect reverse-troll by posting that E. Harding has convinced you that Trump is a good idea for president. His arguments are that good.
12. August 2016 at 11:07
BTW, Bill Weld is less libertarian than almost all Republican legislators, and that’s really saying something:
http://libertyviral.com/bill-weld-rifles-can-become-weapons-mass-destruction/#axzz4GkSGa6LU
Who knows, he might even be less libertarian than Donald Trump!
I’ve been saying all along that Johnson/Weld is a dime-store Trump/Pence, without the chance of winning.
12. August 2016 at 11:32
Art, You said:
“Eisenhower was professional military. He had no background in electoral politics.”
Nice try, but I never said “electoral politics”.
Harding, I fixed it. There’s a 5 minute interview that might be the most idiotic set of comments I’ve ever heard from a politician. The guy who promises massive tax cuts also wants to massively boost spending on all sorts of programs. It would make Bernie Sanders blush. More Social Security benefits, more military, shiny new airports and high speed rail. There’s no limit to how much Trump wants to spend, and we are going to borrow all the money. He says he wants an even bigger budget deficit.
And still pay off the debt in 8 years.
You said:
“Who knows, he might even be less libertarian than Donald Trump!”
Always good for a few laughs.
12. August 2016 at 11:34
BTW, Bill Weld is less libertarian than almost all Republican legislators, and that’s really saying something:
Weld’s a careerist who landed a position as U.S. Attorney during the Reagan Administration. You’re usually sponsored for those plums by your home state legislators. The two Republicans in the Massachusetts delegation at the time were Silvio Conte and Margaret Heckler, one a Rockefeller Republican and the other a Rockefeller Republican with important exceptions. His whole shtick as a candidate in 1990 was (stripped of the trumpery) to translate country club attitudes into public policy.
12. August 2016 at 11:41
Nice try, but I never said “electoral politics”.
The only other kind would be political staff positions, campaign consultancy, or lobbying positions, and the first two do implicate participating in elections. John McCain and Trent Lott started their career with these sorts of positions. BO has an affection for such people. Eisenhower was not such a person. He was in the military from 1915 to 1952 (though on leave for several years as President of Columbia University).
12. August 2016 at 11:42
The guy who promises massive tax cuts also wants to massively boost spending on all sorts of programs.
What is your definition of ‘massive’?
12. August 2016 at 12:08
Art, How about a tax cut estimated to cost $10 trillion over 10 years? How about proposing to further increase the already fast growing Social Security program, which is already rushing toward bankruptcy? How about insisting he’d spend more than twice as much on infrastructure as Hillary, who is already proposing a big increase? How about his promises to rebuild the military? Medicaid will have to rise if he replaces Obamacare with an alternative program, without cutting people off. He’s promised a replacement. He’s going to do great things “for the vets”. He’s promises not to slow the explosive growth of Medicare. I could go on and on, there’s no end to his promises. Whenever a question arises, he says “we’ll fix it. we’ll take care of it.”
Oh, and he’s going to pay off the entire national debt within 8 years.
By defaulting on it.
These sound like jokes, but they are from the horse’s mouth. The GOP used to complain about (and occasionally exaggerate) how bad the Dems were on “spending and borrowing” and now they put up someone who’s worse on deficits than any Democrat in history, and he’s proud of it. And the GOP falls into line and applauds. No wonder some of the Sanders voters are moving to Trump.
12. August 2016 at 12:11
“Always good for a few laughs.”
-Name three ways Weld is more libertarian than Donald Trump. Should be easy for you to do.
Remember, the Democratic Party was once the party of James Buchanan. Just because it says “Libertarian” on the tin does not mean anything.
12. August 2016 at 12:16
“and now they put up someone who’s worse on deficits than any Democrat in history, and he’s proud of it. And the GOP falls into line and applauds. No wonder some of the Sanders voters are moving to Trump.”
-Actually, when Trump ran, 61% of Republicans said he would be the best candidate for fixing the Federal deficit:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/189731/economic-issues-trump-strong-suit-among-republicans.aspx
and 57% of voters prefer Trump to Clinton on the Federal deficit, thus making it Trump’s most widely-appreciated selling point:
http://www.gallup.com/poll/192104/trump-leads-clinton-top-ranking-economic-issues.aspx
Voters; you gotta treat ’em like sheep.
12. August 2016 at 12:35
Interesting how Donald Trump follows up one truth (Obama was the founder of ISIS) with two lies in his tweets (it was sarcasm and ISIS expanded rapidly under Secretary Clinton).
12. August 2016 at 12:37
@Harding: only interesting to people with an IQ of 96 (or lower)
12. August 2016 at 14:57
Sort of a nice argument Scott, and cleverly written. But, if you vote you have to have enough understanding of politics to choose a candidate. If you are not happy with economic policy, you don’t have to be an economist. Politicians are not economists but they have to keep an eye on the economy.
It doesn’t take an economist, for example, to know that sovereign bonds are in massive demand, and that structured finance started in the 1980’s, which corresponds to the relentless decline in bond yields in the USA.
12. August 2016 at 15:49
You don’t need a professional education to become a politician, including US President. You simply get elected. That’s hardly Trump’s mistake. If anything then this is a systematic failure. Trump seems to understand the rules of the game (and its loopholes) quite well. Other people seem to have more problems to grasp those very simple rules.
Those loopholes are intended by the way. This is a core element of the liberal agenda: Any idiot should be able to become a politician and even US president. Everything else would be discrimination. Let’s call it I.I.I.(=Idiot Inclusion Initiative). In the future there will be quotas as well. For every year with a sane US President there needs to be a year with an idiotic one.
12. August 2016 at 16:07
I’ve finally figured it out. Trump isn’t trying to become president at all. He’s just trying to entertain us a la Andy Kaufman. And it’s working. This is the most entertaining election in my life. Watching all the media get in a huff and all his wee surrogates running around trying to weld on some after the fact logic is actually quite amusing if you think about how little he means what he says…
http://www.erikvance.com/donald-trump-is-the-worlds-greatest-performance-artist/
Who is the joke on, though? His supporters? Detractors? All of us?
12. August 2016 at 16:57
I personally love the fact that the Trumpistas will be blamed when Republicans lose the Senate. The civil war within the Republican Party will be ratcheted up yet another notch. These white nationalists will be the very reason Clinton will get any nominee she wants on the court.
12. August 2016 at 17:02
Perhaps Bruce Bartlett is right to point to the choice of Dan Quayle as a VP as the beginning of the intellectual slide of Republican standards for acceptable candidates for office. Then, came W. Bush, an obvious, inarticulate moron, and then Palin. The standards having been so lowered for even Republican presidential candidates was one factor allowing Trump to take over the party.
I never hated W. Bush, because I don’t think he was evil, racist, etc. He was just dumb. Palin and Trump are very negative people, on the other hand, and throw Quayle in there too, since he’s openly supporting Trump.
12. August 2016 at 17:10
Scott,
I think you are quite wrong to discount speculations about candidate intentions when deciding which candidates to support for office. You’ve often said that the expected effects of policies and not intentions are what matter, though I’m paraphrasing. This seems in agreement with Milton Friedman’s perspective.
I recall, specifically, you supporting Scott Brown over Elizabeth Warren in their Senate race in your state. You indicated you didn’t care to speculate about intentions, but instead favored Brown’s policies. Well, I wonder if you would revisit that question now, given that Brown was an early Trump backer. It seemed obvious to me and many others willing to speculate on intentions and character that Warren was by far the better choice in this sense, even if some of her economic policy ideas are, shall we say naive?
And now you seem to speak positively about Paul Ryan, a man who, as far as I can tell, doesn’t exactly cling to principles. He was an unabashed liar during the Presidential campaign in 2012, and his “reform” ideas are as laughably incomplete as they seem disingenuous.
You strike me as a good guy, so I wonder what you could be thinking by having anything positive to say about Ryan at all, apart from the fact that he’s undoubtedly better than Trump, though he’s rhetorically backing him.
12. August 2016 at 17:45
Harding, He doesn’t support a massive increase in infrastructure spending. He doesn’t support banning Muslims. He doesn’t support expelling 11 million illegals. He doesn’t support tougher libel laws. He doesn’t support increasing Social Security.
That’s 5, in case you find a flaw with two of them.
Joe, I’ve always treated Trump as a performance artist. It’s his followers that look like fools.
Scott, You are wasting your time. If you want responses, write intelligent comments.
12. August 2016 at 18:58
Scott,
Oh, so that’s how it’s going to be? I’m sorry to distract you from responding to comments from Trumpistas and outright trolls.
I’ve thought for a while that your success has changed you. Unfortunately, the changes haven’t all been for the better, and the success has been very limited.
The fact that you responded to comments used to set you apart from other bloggers in the econ sphere. Now, it just means you’re ruder.
12. August 2016 at 20:07
“He doesn’t support a massive increase in infrastructure spending.”
-That’s one.
“He doesn’t support banning Muslims. He doesn’t support expelling 11 million illegals.”
-Those aren’t issues of libertarianism or lack thereof. Does the presence of Muslims and illegals in the U.S. help or hurt liberty? It looks as though it’s mostly on the side of “hurt”, given the dramatic statist policies in place for dealing with them.
“He doesn’t support tougher libel laws.”
-Is fraud by the lyin’ press really libertarian?
“He doesn’t support increasing Social Security.”
-Trump’s Social Security stance is so garbled, nobody knows what it is. Most days, he advocates keeping it the same.
“I’ve thought for a while that your success has changed you. Unfortunately, the changes haven’t all been for the better, and the success has been very limited.
The fact that you responded to comments used to set you apart from other bloggers in the econ sphere. Now, it just means you’re ruder.”
-Agreed, Freelander. I can’t really see Ryan as overall better than Trump.
“It seemed obvious to me and many others willing to speculate on intentions and character that Warren was by far the better choice in this sense, even if some of her economic policy ideas are, shall we say naive?”
-Now here, Freelander, I disagree. Warren sold out to Her. Scott Brown courageously taking a stance in favor of the ultimate Republican nominee in January is something I see no problem with. And, obviously, Brown is better on econ than Warren.
12. August 2016 at 20:38
Trump is a child. After he slanders someone he says “just kidding”. What a bully/child. Bad combination. Can’t be president, even if Obama funded ISIS. McCain wanted him to, we have him on fricken Youtube saying that very thing. But he said Obama didn’t go for it. So, who knows? If he wouldn’t fund ISIS, he probably didn’t found ISIS.
@Scott Freelander, you can write intelligent responses, but if Sumner doesn’t want you to comment you will be ignored. Don’t worry about it.
I am used to it. I used to contribute to Business Insider (60 articles) and took more than what I take from Scott. Scott is harsh, no question about it. But does it really matter to you? He won’t get involved in the hot topic macro debate on bond demand, even though Krugman says bond shortages is the hot button issue in the field.
So, if Scott doesn’t really want to be an economist, then I pretty much look for knowledge from reading his stuff and hope I understand some of it, and by looking at the comments. After all, that is what ya do at Yahoo or any other site that has a comment section left. They are drying up since they don’t want an article critiqued on the spot.
So, don’t worry, Freelander, just learn from the people you read, and go forward. It is no big deal. Alex Hamilton was countercyclical. Read him.
12. August 2016 at 20:45
“McCain wanted him to, we have him on fricken Youtube saying that very thing. But he said Obama didn’t go for it.”d
-Obama didn’t go for overthrowing the Syrian government (which McCain wanted Obama to do), because Obama knew that would lead to Iran and others simply cutting their losses and getting in the U.S.’s gears instead of the reverse.
“So, who knows? If he wouldn’t fund ISIS, he probably didn’t found ISIS.”
-Nah; he clearly did. Why else would its founding wait until Obama’s second term? And why would Obama wait until the fate of al-Maliki was sealed before starting airstrikes on it?
12. August 2016 at 20:59
In your heart, you know Trump is right!
12. August 2016 at 21:53
The CIA does what it wants. It works for Israel as much as for the USA, Harding. I don’t believe Obama founded ISIS because McCain said he didn’t want to fund it. It made plenty of money selling oil to Turkey.
12. August 2016 at 21:54
But does it matter, Harding? Let Trump supply proof instead of talk.
13. August 2016 at 04:17
Re: “I’m not an economist”
Henry George said it better than I could.
http://blog.supplysideliberal.com/post/148868101207/we-may-safely-leave-many-branches-of-knowledge-to
13. August 2016 at 06:04
George didn’t believe in intellectual property. He didn’t believe in land ownership. He was learned, but I don’t think his way would have been the right way. Having said that, I believe national parks should be protected from the greedy.
Now, the rich own land for, you guessed it, collateral.
13. August 2016 at 06:16
Bruce Bartlett is right to point to the choice of Dan Quayle as a VP as the beginning of the intellectual slide of Republican standards for acceptable candidates for office.
Bruce Bartlett is a lapsed history teacher who landed a series of Congressional staff jobs and then some patronage positions during the Reagan and elder Bush administrations. He was subsequently hired to work at the National Center for Policy Analysis. Policy shops commonly hire a few people to work as publicists. A place like the Hoover Institution has few if any such people. A place like the Institute for Policy Studies is larded with them. He wasn’t producing research, because that’s not in his skill set. His employers have contended he asked for time off to complete a book. When the book was complete, he was dismissed. He contends he was punished for dissent. They contend that the National Center does not hire people to produce polemical attacks on politicians, especially when said authors scam around with their supervisors. So, for 12 years, his brand has been fearless truth-teller in the Republican Party, rather than, say, ‘expendable hack’. It’s amusing you find this Capitol Hill patronage baby to be the acme of intellectual seriousness. The guy who just filled your prescriptions at Walgreen’s is (a) smarter and (b) more honest and congenial.
Then, came W. Bush, an obvious, inarticulate moron, and then Palin.
See Steve Sailer on George W. Bush’s scores on the Air Force Qualifying test.
You’re very adept at one thing: persuading people your self-assessment is wildly inflated.
13. August 2016 at 06:22
Harding, He doesn’t support a massive increase in infrastructure spending.
I think the civil works budget is < 10 bn. The federal government makes grants to the states.
He doesn’t support banning Muslims.
He suggested we have a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration. I know this leave the open-borders-crowd in a state of apoplexy, but it does not bother anyone who does not view Muslims as their clientele.
He doesn’t support expelling 11 million illegals.
What’s wrong with deporting illegal aliens? Sonny Bono was once asked his view of illegal immigration. He said, “It’s illegal”. If you do not enforce your laws, you have no policy.
He doesn’t support tougher libel laws.
Defamation law was gutted by a scandalous court decision back in 1967. Restoring the status quo ante is in the interests of justice.
13. August 2016 at 09:07
Trump would probably be sued for a host of libelous statements.
13. August 2016 at 10:02
Freelander, don’t take it personally. Sumner used to be a classy blogger, but now he just likes to get in the mud with trolls and people he considers morons. That is, morons he can easily bully.
Don’t let him bully you. He’s certainly no professional political analyst, and he’s not even an economist. He’s an economic historian who has the basics down well. That’s his claim to fame.
People like Jason Smith, who don’t even have econ degrees, embarrass him easily. I doubt Sumner can even solve basic differential equations anymore, much less follow the nonetheless simple framework Smith plays with. He’s never advanced the ball in econ theoretically, as his body of work indicates.
His blog used to be good reading for non-economists, but has devolved into roughly half of his posts retreading old, simple points made 20 times before, with the other half now attempts at trolling or addressing trolls so he can get in the mud with them in his comment sections.
To defend your specific point a bit, here’s the Paul Ryan page on Politifact:
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/paul-ryan/
Ryan is a wanton liar and Trump collaborator. That would be ’nuff said for most decent people, but Sumner will find positive things to say about him, because he was a Milton Friedman fan. Sad!
13. August 2016 at 15:11
“He contends he was punished for dissent. They contend that the National Center does not hire people to produce polemical attacks on politicians.”
Hahahaha!
13. August 2016 at 19:54
Scott, You said:
“He was an unabashed liar during the Presidential campaign in 2012, and his “reform” ideas are as laughably incomplete as they seem disingenuous.
You strike me as a good guy, so I wonder what you could be thinking by having anything positive to say about Ryan”
Obviously I’m a really bad guy, as I said good things about Ryan.
I’m not quite sure why you thought I was a “good guy” all these years (i.e. someone who thinks Hillary is honest and Ryan is a liar)
I assure I’m quite evil. I sometimes have good things to say about Republicans.
Harding, You said:
“Trump’s Social Security stance is so garbled, nobody knows what it is.”
And you are his strongest defender over here. Actually, all his views are so garbled as to be meaningless. He can’t even speak in coherent sentences, so who knows what he favors.
Art, Not sure what that comment has to do with my reply to Harding. Do you agree with Harding’s claim that Trump and Weld are equally libertarian?
Steve, You said:
“People like Jason Smith, who don’t even have econ degrees, embarrass him easily.”
Yes, I was especially embarrassed by his proof that monetary policy is ineffective at the zero bound. I had always thought it was.
14. August 2016 at 06:16
Scott,
You’ve gone off the rails. You are no longer reasonable and are too close to the situation to see it.
I never said Clinton was honest, and nor did anyone else, as I recall. But, there are degrees of dishonesty, which you’ve pointed out yourself when discussing Trump.
Ryan lies more often than Clinton, tells bigger, more important lies, and is obviously supporting Trump, even if reluctantly. Given the comments you’ve made about Trump, and that you think Clinton is preferable to him, the fact that you would have positive things to say about a Ryan presidential run strikes me as inconsistent. Sure, it would be better than a Trump run, but that’s not saying much.
You can think me unintelligent for thinking Scott Brown had low character, given the kind of campaign he ran against Elizabeth Warren, but the fact that he jumped on the Trump train early means I was correct and you were not, even if I’m not smart enough to claim to have been anything other than lucky.
It’s not that Warren was an ideal candidate, but it’s that intentions matter, and it’s not impossible to make decent guesses about character in at least some cases.
14. August 2016 at 11:33
“Do you agree with Harding’s claim that Trump and Weld are equally libertarian?”
-I didn’t claim that; I suggested it as a possibility. You haven’t entirely refuted it, giving only one real way Weld is more libertarian.
“Actually, all his views are so garbled as to be meaningless. He can’t even speak in coherent sentences, so who knows what he favors.”
-BUILD THE WALL as well as income tax cut, protective tariffs, and defeating ISIS. I can support three out of the four.
“He can’t even speak in coherent sentences”
-He can; he just sees no point in doing so most of the time. The stream-of-consciousness speaking style is more often found in interviews than in rallies, and more often found in rallies than in prepared remarks. And there’s no connection between speaking in sentences and having clear-cut views.
14. August 2016 at 12:46
I wonder why the US political system have such a bad S/N ratio (I’m not politician, but blah blah blah thing *noise*)
14. August 2016 at 16:11
Art, Not sure what that comment has to do with my reply to Harding. Do you agree with Harding’s claim that Trump and Weld are equally libertarian?
I’ve seen no indication that one would do more than confuse matters by referring to either as ‘libertarian’, whether or not you use modifiers of degree. Weld’s a patrician type, somewhat degenerate in ways that were fairly atypical in 1960 (Thatcher Longstreth and William Scranton were the real deal). Trump is sui generis.
14. August 2016 at 16:16
“He can’t even speak in coherent sentences”
I’d refer you to the late John Roche, who was an academic most of his life but had a stint as a White House aide. He said shortly after he was hired by the Johnson Administration, he gave a press conference. When he was given the transcript later, he could hardly believe it was a rendering of him speaking. The newspapers had a game at the time Roche was relating this which consisted of reprinting remarks by Ronald Reagan transcribed during brief exchanges with newsmen. The transcripts made Reagan sound like an idiot. Roche’s point was that anyone reads like an idiot when their extemporaneous remarks are rendered precisely in cold print, even the Dean of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
14. August 2016 at 17:25
Sumner, you replied:
“Steve, You said:
“People like Jason Smith, who don’t even have econ degrees, embarrass him easily.”
Yes, I was especially embarrassed by his proof that monetary policy is ineffective at the zero bound. I had always thought it was.”
You’re missing the point. You initially claimed to be too ignorant to evaluate the model. I’m glad you finally took some time to have a look at it. But, admitting your ignorance was not where you were embarrassed.
I’m referring to the post in which he had a picture of a dog and called you out for making an unscientific argument. My guess is that you didn’t think anyone would notice the sloppiness of the argument.
The point though is that you’ve become a bully here to people you consider to be of inferior knowledge or intelligence and you now seem to assume the worst about their intentions. You’re far worse than Krugman now, who you used to decry for his milder incivility. At least Krugman was taking on fellow economists, writers, and politicians. You enjoy belittling laypeople, and have developed pretty thin skin in the process.
If you want to bully people, some can bully you too, so you better be careful, because some people take their bullying offline. I’ll leave it to you to google instances where people created serious problems for rude bloggers in the real world. It only takes one of hundreds or thousands of readers to cause a problem.
14. August 2016 at 17:55
Steve Cameron,
If you are going to refer to intiators of aggression and property rights violators “offline”, then you should always make it clear that you do not condone such behavior, or else such comments can appear really creepy, suggestive, and innuendo laden.
You got that?
14. August 2016 at 18:31
Major Freedom:
Well said. Steve Cameron’s comment was creepy.
Thanks.
14. August 2016 at 19:48
I heard trump spent 63m this past month but had no ads and has minimal ground operations. Rumor is that 50m of the 63m was used to pay back his “self-funding”. (Remember he self-funded his campaign by extending it a loan).
14. August 2016 at 20:08
Scott, You said:
“Ryan lies more often than Clinton, tells bigger, more important lies”
And I’m the one who’s gone off the rails?
Steve, It’s kind of odd that you come over here claiming that I’m a bully. I was always polite to Jason, even when I disagreed. And then for some reason he started writing posts that personally insulted me. I have no idea what his problem is, and don’t care.
Yes, I do not understand his posts, nor do other economists, even those with much great mathematical skills than I have. When you can’t explain an idea in words, there’s usually a problem.
As for commenters, I don’t bully people unless they’ve been rude to me. Most of the negative comments you see here are aimed at people who I have told to stop commenting, and they continue to do so anyway.
I’m actually one of the few bloggers that does not ban the people who insult me every single day. I give them an outlet. But they cannot expect that I won’t reply.
15. August 2016 at 01:02
I saw a video of Hillary recently in which she shows obvious neurological deficits, a seizure for example. This video suggests that she might have a neurological condition. This neurological condition can range from pretty harmless to very serious.
Now the amazing thing for me is that team Hillary is saying that you can’t see anything in the video at all (it’s just normal behavior) and the journalists I read so far are saying the same thing. It’s really Orwellian. When you can lie so blatantly and get away with it easily, you can basically lie about anything. Maybe the earth is also flat, who knows?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMHOcmDVBP0
So now America has to choose between a man with an “accentuated personality” (to say the least) and a woman who tries to hide neurological symptoms.
15. August 2016 at 07:28
Scott,
Did you forget or just forgive the numerous lies and distortions in Paul Ryan’s 2012 RNC speech, for example?
http://www.factcheck.org/2012/08/ryans-vp-spin/
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/08/paul-ryan-and-the-post-truth-convention-speech/261775/
Would Hillary Clinton give a speech like that?
And what about the budget plans Ryan’s released in the past, full of tax cuts and “magic asterisks” on the spending side?
How about the Politifact summaries?
Ryan: http://www.politifact.com/personalities/paul-ryan/
Clinton: http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/
Neither record is steller, but which is worse?
Who is supporting Donald Trump? Who publicly praised Ayn Rand, only to lie about it later when it became controversial?
The man is very much a liar and fraud, along with obviously being a kook.
15. August 2016 at 07:33
Scott,
Steve is too harsh in using words like “bullying”, but you were certainly rude to me. When was I rude to you? When did you tell me to stop commenting? I won’t comment here anymore if I’m unwelcome.
15. August 2016 at 07:55
@Christian List,
When I see a claim like that from either side the first thing I do is look it up on snopes.com:
http://www.snopes.com/hillary-clinton-seizure-video/
15. August 2016 at 07:58
https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/wp/2016/08/15/from-russia-with-love-and-cash/?utm_term=.9fa6fcfed861
15. August 2016 at 08:02
Trump’s ex-campaign manager was quick to tweet about his successor’s “problem”:
https://twitter.com/CLewandowski_/status/764989713149267968?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
15. August 2016 at 10:09
Well, I won’t be commenting much this year, but as Trump’s chances fall into single digits in most of the models, a few things are becoming obvious.
1) Trump suckered his supporters. He’s not even taking the campaign seriously, and according to recent reports he may manage to shove enough donated money through his businesses under the rubric of “campaign expenses” (reportedly including renting his house and drawing a salary) to show a tidy profit on this dumpster fire. His world-salad policies, from which supporters plucked whatever sounded good to them, were as insincere as they were ridiculous.
2. Trump was always going to lose badly. The awful polling was always there for anyone with the requisite minimal wit. His billions in free MSM “look at the crazy Republican!” coverage may have generated enough GOP marks to win him the primary but now that same coverage is destroying him in the general.
3. The GOP cannot be the party of Drudge and Hannity and Coulter. They will follow the MSM in promoting the “crazy Republican” because it means attention and ratings and book sales. When large numbers of Republicans keep saying Trump is their strongest candidate in the same polls that have him at sky-high unfavorables, you have a serious information dissemination problem.
4. The GOP cannot allow this to happen ever again. The “establishment” may suck, but they don’t suck as badly as the anti-Trump wave coming in November. The party needs a superdelegate system, the fashionable fetishization of democracy in the primary system leaves them too vulnerable to shameless opportunists.
15. August 2016 at 10:20
*word-salad
15. August 2016 at 10:20
@Tom Brown
Great and how is snopes helping you with this? It’s not helping at all. When I (as a physician) see a video like this I have to say it looks like a partial seizure or another temporary neurological deficit of some form. I have watched this material many times now from different angles. My advice would be: Go to a clinic with excellent neurologists and make a huge check-up. Chances are good that they might find something. And show them this video at any case. This video alone might be enough to take levetiracetam. I bet she is taking AEDs already. I bet she needs to take them since her stroke. But then she is lying to the public.
So what can I say in favor of Hillary? Maybe it’s a weird bug, a combination of angles, loops, imperfect video quality and many hours of filming that gave us this *one* result. On the other hand I have to say this is not the first time when she has conspicuous reactions. I thought this several times before but this might be the most blatant incident.
The colleagues I talked to about this are saying the same thing by the way and also the colleagues I read on quora.com
https://www.quora.com/Does-Hillary-Clinton-have-a-mild-seizure-disorder-caused-by-her-concussion-in-2012
I think a lot of people are just biased. Donald Trump with an incident like this and it’s all over the news and a major topic in all media outlets for a few days. People need to be honest for ones and answer truly to themselves how they would react when Trump would behave in this way.
15. August 2016 at 10:37
@TallDave
I don’t think superdelegates are the right approach. I think it’s much simpler. Why can basically anybody run as GOP candidate for example? You need to have some kind of additional qualification. At least 10 years of continuous GOP membership for example and maybe also at least 5 years in (certain) public offices. Trump got neither.
15. August 2016 at 10:43
@Tall Dave,
Maybe Jason Taylor, writing at Erick Erickson’s “TheResurgent” is right: perhaps it’s time for the GOP to just pack it in:
http://theresurgent.com/accept-your-fate-republicans-its-the-right-thing-to-do/
Apparently that’s his business model for all aspects of his life. No surprise there.
Agreed.
Ah, but it is. Heritage Action too: in the business of enforcing a code of unrealistic conservative purity and the myth of “no compromise” (which was never a concern with the core voter, except as a stick with which to poke Obama in the eye with) by threatening to primary the insufficiently pure. The purity patrol and the Alt-Reich have now gone their separate ways. The Alt-Reich is more direct w/o all the ideological baggage.
But now that the purists have been cast aside in favor of the anti-PC Alt-Reich, will the core voters ever want to give up their new found freedom to be themselves? I think not.
Trump could have easily been prevented if the GOP had required all PRIMARY candidates to publicly release a minimum of the last 10 years worth of tax returns before being allowed to run as a primary candidate under their party’s banner. There’s no well in hell Trump would ever do that, and so he would have to find some other way to get attention. If he truly was hell bent on running, he’d have to do it under a fringe party (assuming the Democrats adopted a similar rule), such as The Traditionalist Worker Party which seems a perfect fit for his “National Populism” message.
But beyond that, both major parties should add a few more requirements to their rules (any one of which would have probably shut down Trump before even entering the primary): public disclosure of all college transcripts and records and public disclosure of all foreign investments and debts. These requirements would probably have excluded Sanders from the Democratic primary as well, and he could likewise have run under the fringe Socialist Party if he was dead set on running.
15. August 2016 at 10:55
@Christian List, I actually agree with you about super-delegates. Other means of pre-primary qualification would be better. I suggest a few above, but ultimately it would be great to allow the Parties (who want to) to pay a government security agency to do background checks on their prospective candidates, as if they were getting a security clearance. If legislation is required to facilitate that, it would be well worth doing, since the candidate will get a classified security briefing if they win the nomination, why not immunize ourselves from malicious foreign threats (like Putin) by letting the major parties essentially force their primary candidates to obtain a Top Secret clearance before even setting foot on a primary debate stage. The voters cannot be counted on to care any longer: the cynical self-serving political media has been so effective in dumbing them down to turn a quick profit.
15. August 2016 at 11:02
Scott — I think the problem with Jason’s math is that when translated into words you get assertions like what is called “demand” in economics is essentially a source of information that is being transmitted to the “supply”, a receiver, and the thing measuring the information transfer is what we call the “price” which are kind of silly on their face. Modelling economics as a function of information transfer is a bit like modelling the digestive process on the basis of food’s color when it enters and exits — it just doesn’t capture enough of the process to be a useful exercise.
Enjoy your vacation. Hopefully I’ll finish your book this summer.
15. August 2016 at 11:25
2. Trump was always going to lose badly. The awful polling was always there for anyone with the requisite minimal wit. His billions in free MSM “look at the crazy Republican!” coverage may have generated enough GOP marks to win him the primary but now that same coverage is destroying him in the general.
You’ve repeatedly promoted this idea. It requires: (a) a historically unprecedented concatenation of circumstances (b) in defiance of survey research (see the RCP median) or (c) redefining ‘lose badly’ to include any loss.
15. August 2016 at 11:38
*golf clap for TallDave
Well done.
15. August 2016 at 11:42
@Art Deco:
a) Trump is pretty ‘historically unprecedented’ too
b) If it makes you feel better to Baghdad Bob the polls today, you are free to do so. The results will educate us all come Nov.
c) Now you’re just quibbling over adverbs. ‘Badly’ or no, he’s probably going to lose.
15. August 2016 at 11:48
@Tom Brown
I think we had this topic already. Something like a “security check” for candidates is not democratic. Bureaucrats and/or someone like J. Edgar Hoover should not be able to decide who is allowed to run for President. It needs to be a democratic measure. I also assume treason (amongst other things) is illegal in the US already, isn’t it. No need for “security checks”.
15. August 2016 at 12:06
@Christian List,
I’m not proposing it be a law, just that the parties should voluntarily do this kind of “extreme vetting” (to use Trump’s own words) of their primary candidates prior to letting them run under their party’s banner, and also to either quietly leave if the vetting doesn’t go so well, or if they want to continue, then the results should be released publicly. Again, just party rules. If the American Nazi party doesn’t like those rules, nobody is forcing them to adopt them.
As Garry Kasparov points out there, do you think Trump would pass his own “extreme vetting” requirements? We’re talking about the possibility of handing over state secrets, the military and nuclear codes to these candidates, I think “double extreme vetting” is in order.
15. August 2016 at 12:29
Art — There was plenty of statistical polling analysis out there, even beyond the obvious data points (historically large negative ratings, running worst among GOP candidates). That’s why Trump’s election odds were always rated poorly by oddsmakers willing to take bets on it.
Christian List — The first thing the Founders did after ratifying the Constitution was put a bunch of limits on democratic powers, called the Bill of Rights. Liberty is an end, democracy is a means.
The purpose of a party primary is to nominate the candidate that can best represent the party’s interests, so primary voting should be more than advisory but much less than the only word on the matter. Haven’t seen a better proposal than superdelegates.
And back to work for a few months. Enjoy the election, folks.
15. August 2016 at 13:19
@Christian List, you write:
Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ll take another look at Trump’s “clean bill of health” from his physician on the matter:
Yeah, that sounds totally believable, not at all like Mr. Trump wrote that himself.
In the case of either candidate at this point, I’d be more interested in their psych evaluations. I’d prefer a dying sane person over a healthy unstable person any day. After all we are electing a backup as well. So all else equal, if Mr. Trump were on death’s door, he’d actually be a more attractive candidate to me. Say he had only 6 months to live, then that would limit the damage he could do. Mike Pence seems like he’s all there mentally at least, so the shorter Trump’s life expectancy, the better for all of us.
15. August 2016 at 13:20
http://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trump-health-report-medical-2015-12
15. August 2016 at 13:28
@TallDave,
For you (from Jason Smith):
https://twitter.com/browntom1234/status/765269088419450881
15. August 2016 at 13:33
@TallDave
And you think superdelegates lead to a result where liberty is an end and democracy is one of the means. I don’t see how. It’s quite obvious to me that superdelegates contradict both liberty and democracy.
@Tom Brown
You are opposing Trump but you are a fan of his measures? This makes no sense. Again: Tests that determine if you have the *correct* views and the *right* way of thinking contradict democracy. It’s the exact point of democracies to determine which (legal) ideas are preferred by the people. It’s not the job of some stupid test to determine those things. Of course there are illegal actions. But again: That’s why democracies have something called The Law.
You are expecting way too much from those stupid tests. Trump would most likely pass a psychological test (made by physicians) and he would also pass a “treason” test because otherwise the authorities would already investigate. Again: No tests are needed.
15. August 2016 at 13:48
@Christian List,
But parties are private institutions. I say it’s entirely consistent with liberty to let them do what they want and make and enforce whatever rules they see fit. If you don’t like them, you can find another party more to your liking or start your own.
15. August 2016 at 13:51
And no, I’m not a blanket fan of his measures. Just like I think he mostly lies, but sometimes tells the truth. Regarding his “extreme vetting” I do find this to be ironic.
15. August 2016 at 13:52
I’d prefer a dying sane person over a healthy unstable person any day.
We are talking about a neurological condition here that most likely would effect her brain and her mind. Let’s say she got a simple form of epilepsy. With something like this you can’t even drive a car, so how would you run a country?
You can say one thing for sure so far: All three major candidates (Sanders, Hillary, Trump) are too old. You should be at your best performance capability when you are President. With 68, 70 and 74 you are way beyond this point. I can’t say many positive things about Obama but at least he wasn’t some old geezer that would be better off in a retirement home.
15. August 2016 at 13:57
@Tom Brown
If you don’t like them, you can find another party more to your liking or start your own.
Okay then. The GOP got no superdelegates and will never have them. Deal with it. Anyhow we now finally know why you like the DNC so much.
15. August 2016 at 14:07
@Christian List,
I agree the candidates are old enough to make it more likely they won’t be at the top of their game.
As for super delegates, I agreed with you in my comment above: I’m not a fan, however I’d be willing to consider it as a viable means of a party immunizing itself from hostile invaders. Like I wrote I also like your idea of requiring the candidates to have been party members for some years prior.
And I wouldn’t describe myself as a fan of the DNC. All else equal, if Trump had managed to get the Dem nomination I’d still oppose him. I think he’s unfit for any public office. He’s suited to selling his brand to people and that’s where I’d like him to stay: where he’ll have zero impact on me or my loved ones. About how I would feel about L. Ron Hubbard if he were still alive.
15. August 2016 at 14:23
to consider it as a viable means of a party immunizing itself from hostile invaders
Okay let’s assume (for the sake of the argument) that super delegates are fine (which they are not). Then it is still not sure at all that they work towards your desired end. You could already see this when Hillary fought Sanders. It was obvious that she needed to win the majority of the regular delegates. Otherwise her nomination would be severely damaged and even worse her nomination would be anything but secure because public pressure would be so much that most likely more than enough super delegates would have tumbled over and switch sides.
So in short: Super delegates discredit the reputation of their party and put voters off – and in the very rare cases when they might be useful it’s anything but sure that will make the right decision.
15. August 2016 at 14:28
My notebook deletes too much: switched; that they will make; …
Enough internet for today. I’ll take some vacation, too.
15. August 2016 at 14:41
@Christian List, re: super-delegates, that’s what I’d argue as well. So like it or not, we’re on the same page there. However I’d like to hear someone give an intelligent defense of them because maybe that doesn’t cover all the angles (unlike Mr. Trump, I admit I don’t know all the answers ahead of time already).
Now regarding crusty old fart politicians in the public eye who are LONG past their sell buy date, it seems Mr. Giuliani might qualify:
http://theresurgent.com/rudy-giuliani-may-have-alzheimers/
15. August 2016 at 19:06
Now regarding crusty old fart politicians in the public eye who are LONG past their sell buy date, it seems Mr. Giuliani might qualify:
He’s run for public office all of four times in the last 28 years and held elective positions for just 8 years in the last 50. There are very few political office-holders over the last 50 years that can claim his accomplishments. He’s less obtrusive than Jimmy Carter, much less the Clintons. He only irritates cretins.
15. August 2016 at 19:17
I’d prefer a dying sane person over a healthy unstable person any day.
Neither one is properly regarded as insane. Hilligula is only ‘stable’ in the mental bubble you’ve created for yourself; she’s a terror to work for and marginally functional absent Huma Abedin. She’s spent this campaign season appearing at scripted events laden with plants for a reason.
As for Hilligula generally, she has no accomplishments beyond earning a living that have not incorporated leveraging connections. Sanders, Jim Webb, Trump, Cruz, Jeb Bush, Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Michelle Bachman, Mike Huckabee, Wesley Clark &c. have all got something uncorrupt that you can’t take away from them. She’s spent her whole adult life chasing power and chasing swag. To what end?
15. August 2016 at 19:24
I can’t say many positive things about Obama but at least he wasn’t some old geezer that would be better off in a retirement home.
BO (and Jack Kennedy) are fine examples in support of the thesis that the minimum age to be inaugurated should be 60 or thereabouts. BO’s vapidity is second to none. With the exception of Franklin Roosevelt, our more accomplished and least destructive presidents have had one thing in common: they were old men. Truman was 60 when he took office, Eisenhower was 62, Ford was 61, Reagan was 69, Bush I was 64. A constitutional provision which would require a president be between his 60th and 72d birthday on the date of his inauguration and face mandatory retirement at age 76 (like New York judges) would be much in order.
15. August 2016 at 19:52
Everyone here raise your hand if you think that post at 19:24 was the least surprising thing Art Deco has ever posted.
16. August 2016 at 00:31
I wasn’t referring to personal irritation, I was referring to him forgetting completely about 9/11 in his asinine statement today! (i.e. the reason Erick Erickson accused him of having Alzheimer’s.)
@msgkings, no, not surprising in the least. Here’s what I imagine Mr. Deco must look like. As for Mr. Harding, I imagine something more like this.
16. August 2016 at 01:01
Truman was 60 when he took office, Eisenhower was 62, Ford was 61, Reagan was 69, Bush I was 64.
Hardly good examples for great Presidents except Reagan maybe. But his age wasn’t his strong suit either. He was a good President more despite of his age not because of it. I bet he would have been a better President at younger age. No Ford, no Carter would have been nice, too.
16. August 2016 at 05:52
Tom Brown –
There have been some good proposals to reform the nominating process, including this one:
http://www.nationalaffairs.com/publications/detail/a-republican-nomination-process
Having the primary candidates be nominated by a convention of elected officials (call them superdelegates if you want, but I dislike the name) would partially return the parties to their initial function of voluntary clubs of elected officials – rather than this ridiculous “American Idol” method of letting any clown run under the prestige of the party.
The RNC should set minimum experience standards (Governor, Congressman or Cabinet Secretary – except for wartime generals), minimum length of time as a registered Republican, plus investigate every candidate similar to the VP vetting process, and require every candidate get vouching from two-thirds of the Republicans currently serving in Congress plus the Governors before being allowed on the primary ballots and debates.
Also, debate positions should be rotated – no preferential treatment for poll position, which is initially based on name recognition.
16. August 2016 at 08:13
@Negation, thanks for the information. I agree *something* needs to be done!
16. August 2016 at 08:42
Hardly good examples for great Presidents except Reagan maybe.
You have to evaluate the more recent ones (last 40-50 years) with some reserve. You properly evaluate them within their heat, noting that the functions of the presidency are not uniform over time. You have to evaluate them against their competition. They all compare favorably to the younger set (though it may be some time before George W. Bush comes into focus).
Evaluating pre-1933 office holders one should recall that life expectancy was more circumscribed (Calvin Coolidge died at 61, TR at 60, Warren Harding at 58) and that the presidency required a more modest skill set.
Not many ‘great’ presidents. The outer boundary of candidates for “better-than-satisfactory” would encompass Washington, Monroe, Polk, Lincoln, Arthur, TR, Coolidge, FDR, Truman, and Eisenhower if that (with the evaluation of post 1970 occupants deferred).
16. August 2016 at 09:04
Having the primary candidates be nominated by a convention of elected officials (call them superdelegates if you want, but I dislike the name) would partially return the parties to their initial function of voluntary clubs of elected officials – rather than this ridiculous “American Idol” method of letting any clown run under the prestige of the party.
European political parties are private membership organizations and the current practice of the British Conservative and Labor Parties is to have primaries among members after an initial screen. Japanese political parties also have member primaries. Canada has conventions.
The American pattern since about 1910 has been to conceive of the party as a body of registrants. You could have a core of members supplemented with a periphery of registrants. Your concerns are ill-conceived, though. Since party primaries began to displace brokerage by grandees in 1952, the political parties have nominated a Governor or a Senator (sitting or quondam) about 4/5 of the time. The six exceptions (out of 34 cases) have been Gen. Eisenhower, Gerald Ford (once House minority leader, incumbent president), George Bush the Elder (the House followed by diplomatic posts, VP; later incumbent president), and Trump. The grossest example of a political party nominating someone without preparation would be the Democratic nominee of 2008, who seems to bother no one on this board bar yours truly.
You could, of course, have primaries and caucuses on one or two dates in June and then hold the conventions in August. It would foreshorten the irritation and allow for more deliberation (and perhaps peer review).
An alternative would be to have the conventions elect national officers, write the platform, and be a venue for showcasing candidates who have complied with a registration procedure. In this circumstance, you could institute ordinal balloting as a means of awarding electoral votes. Doing this properly would require a constitutional amendment, though some components could be accomplished through statutory law.
Another alternative would be to have the state legislatures elect the president through ordinal balloting. That would also require an amendment.
The Congress is so godawful, I can’t see your admiration for elected officials. The state politicians seem to get the job done better.
16. August 2016 at 09:13
The RNC should set minimum experience standards (Governor, Congressman or Cabinet Secretary – except for wartime generals), minimum length of time as a registered Republican, plus investigate every candidate similar to the VP vetting process, and require every candidate get vouching from two-thirds of the Republicans currently serving in Congress plus the Governors before being allowed on the primary ballots and debates.
1. Having roaches like Addison Mitchell McConnell and Hal Rogers vet potential presidential candidates is absurd.
2. Trump was a registered Republican from 1969 to 1985 and then has moved back and forth between Republican and non-partisan registration since then, so that would not exclude him. Again, Ronald Reagan had been a registered Republican for six years when his name was placed in nomination in 1968 and 14 years when he ran in 1976. James Jeffords was a lifelong Republican ‘ere 2001. How’d that work out for the Republican Senate caucus?
3. We don’t need a background check to know that Hilligula is as rotten as any candidate since Aaron Burr. Yet Tom Brown assures us she’s a normal-range candidate.
16. August 2016 at 10:10
@Art Deco: who’s more prepared and qualified to be president, Obama in 2008 or Trump in 2016? You won’t answer because you are a coward and a hypocrite. No need to though as the question is laughably easy to answer.
16. August 2016 at 11:45
Interesting article I largely agree with: “conservatism” broken into three mutually loathing sub-groups (I’d say 4, but close enough):
http://thefederalist.com/2016/08/06/conservatism-is-dead-long-live-conservatism/
17. August 2016 at 16:55
TallDave, for you:
http://informationtransfereconomics.blogspot.com/2016/08/is-information-equilibrium-silly.html
17. August 2016 at 17:33
Christian List,
Finally after 7 years of the cons trying and failing to come up with a better alternative to O-care ….you have done it !!!
we will just send you videos of every patient, and let you diagnose them…
17. August 2016 at 20:26
Every word of this is exactly correct.
The author is sometimes a douche, but here he’s spot on:
http://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/17/is-trump-purposely-sabotaging-his-campaign-michael-moore-commentary.html
18. August 2016 at 07:18
@msgkings,
That’s hilarious! I’ve never been a Trump fan. I never watched his TV show. When he pulled that birther stunt in 2012 I wrote him off for good as a disgusting media whore … basically the lowest form of life imaginable. But if he were to fess up to any of this… hold a press conference and say “Fooled ya! I was just being sarcastic!” … I think I might worship the man. It’d be like Bernie Madoff coming out at the height of his power and saying “You’re all a bunch of chumps and I’ve been robbing you blind for years. You really need to bone up on your critical thinking skills people!” A hot turd pie in the face of every Alt-Reichist out there would turn me into a Trumpkin!
18. August 2016 at 08:14
@Bill Ellis
Laymen like you are diagnosing Trump constantly with one serious psychiatric condition after another (without knowing anything about this topic) and I’m not allowed to observe simple neurological symptoms? Oh the irony.
18. August 2016 at 08:44
My father was a fire chief in a pretty big city, he was frustrated that one guy above him was a political appointee who knew nothing about he job. My father wanted the job was not a politician and he did not expect to ever get the job.
It struck me recently that Barack Obama (maybe due to his lack of experience in execute Gov.), rather than hire from within, had done with the state department what Bush was criticized for doing with FEMA, that is appointing a political person with little experience. He appointed Hillary Clinton who had little experience to head the state department (also John Kerry). Hillary encouraged the bombing of Libya and sending of weapons to Syria, disaster ensued.
As you point out experience is often very important when hiring. We are hiring a president and I think both major candidates are lacking though Trump more. Hillary had one term in senate not even the executive branch and a disastrous term as secretary of state (experience is not so valuable when the person performed poorly).
Jonson and Weld have the best experience for POTUS, successful terms as Governors.
18. August 2016 at 08:45
@Christian: that’s one of the things that’s so good about the Moore link I posted above. He’s not playing armchair psychiatrist (one does not need a degree to know that Trump is a narcissist, his picture is in the dictionary next to that word, believe me. Sad!). He’s just getting in Trump’s head (also not hard to do, he’s not exactly a complex person, and very public) and explaining in a simple, obvious way how Trump had no intention of actually winning the presidency (when he first ran that is)
18. August 2016 at 08:48
@Floccina: couldn’t agree more, Hillary is terrible, Trump is worse, Johnson/Weld would be far better, and they have my vote. No chance to win of course, and if I was in a swing state I would vote Hillary (because Trump is a disaster).
18. August 2016 at 09:16
As did Donald Trump and his running mate, Mike Pence, and a host of other GOP politicians and “conservatives.”
I’m not as negative about HRC as you or msgkings, however, I respect any #NeverTrump position. If Johnson/Weld or McMullin had the best chance of beating Trump, then I’d be voting for one of them. If Cruz (whom I detest) was running 3rd party and had the best chance, I’d vote for him. I understand some of that has to do with being in a swing state. Where I’m at (CA) it’s going HRC no matter what, so I could vote for anyone w/o it mattering one bit. I don’t care what party Trump is running under (and he’s “intellectually flexible” enough that he probably doesn’t care either): Dem, GOP, 3rd party, I’d be voting against him.
I heard an interview with J. D. Vance (author of the book Hillbilly Elegy) on Fresh Air yesterday, and he essentially expressed the same view as msgkings: if it’s a matter of a swing state vote, it’s for HRC: anything to stop Trump. Otherwise he’ll vote McMullin or write in his dog.
18. August 2016 at 09:17
My father was a fire chief in a pretty big city, he was frustrated that one guy above him was a political appointee who knew nothing about he job. My father wanted the job was not a politician and he did not expect to ever get the job.
It depends on how much the position relies on technical competence v. coalition building skills v. adhering to certain principles. Also, some agencies have satisfactory institutional cultures and some have rancid ones. The fire department, the water authority, and the sanitation department would be one’s where technical competence was the main consideration. Police and welfare departments are more ‘political’ by nature. When you get to state capitals (much less the federal capital), policy preferences and an ability to work with the legislature and other attentive publics take on more importance.
I doubt you’d want a Foreign Service professional as Secretary of State. I’ll wager you the vast majority of them have a cosmopolitan outlook and think of other diplomats and such types as their mob, when they should be looking to the interests of their countrymen. It’s actually unlawful to have as Secretary of Defense anyone who has served in the military in the last 10 years. Regarding other departments (e.g. Agriculture), something akin to agency capture would be a consideration (of course, when you appoint a farm-state congressscumbag, you just make a gift of the agency so the Farm Bureau doesn’t have to capture it). And you’re always contending with Congress, our awful Congress.
18. August 2016 at 09:20
It struck me recently that Barack Obama (maybe due to his lack of experience in execute Gov.), rather than hire from within,
I suspect BO’s methods manifest what Northcote Parkinson called ‘injelitance’. He hires from extant pools of Democratic Party office seekers, he hires factotums like Ben Rhodes, he hires crooks and abusers like John Koskinen, and he has a bias in favor of people who don’t make him feel inadequate.
18. August 2016 at 13:01
Scott F,
Back in college, the guys in my house liked to argue for sport and had a simple rule about insults. The first one to go ad hominem loses. To enforce the call, the judges would gang up on the offender and put him in a wrestling hold until he conceded the error. In extreme cases, you could get thrown over the bannister rail.
I would think the judges at my house from 30 years ago would have faulted Sumner out for calling you stupid. That is ad hominem, as well as seemingly untrue. You seem clever to me.
Here is a minor irony, though. If you call somebody a “good guy,” that can also be ad hominem, because there is an implied but and because any judgment of character is ad hominem when appearing inside an argument. No biggie. I liked your comment, fwiw. Maybe just avoid calling people good guys. That can really piss people off!
I like to say obvious stuff. Probably only about average intelligence.
18. August 2016 at 20:34
Gerard,
Thanks. I didn’t mean anything when I referred to Sumner as a good guy. I just meant to say I think l think he has good values overall, but that supporting Paul Ryan seems a contradiction. I also think it is a mistake not to speculate about intentions and character.
I think GWB was a terrible President, but I don’t think he intended to be so destructive. Trump, on the other hand, really does have ill intentions. The fact that Ryan supports him is unforgivable.
19. August 2016 at 23:53
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhNJoqs1eCE
25. August 2016 at 08:17
Gerard, You said:
“I would think the judges at my house from 30 years ago would have faulted Sumner out for calling you stupid. That is ad hominem, as well as seemingly untrue. You seem clever to me.”
That’s correct, I should not have called Scott stupid, I apologize. Most of his comments are sensible, it’s just one or two that I thought were lame.
Scott, See my reply to Gerard.