We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Samizdata quote of the day I am hardly a Trump supporter, but ask yourself: would a book saying everything his enemies want you to think about him is true sell? And would the media be guaranteed to market the hell out of it for free? Huh, what’s truth got to do with anything?
– Perry de Havilland
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
Well I’m sure it’ll make the author a few bob, which is the object of the exercise. And good luck to him.
But unless they’ve got some really powerful cognitive dissonance medication, the problem for the enthusiastic readers will be coming to grips with the notion that he was a fat, stupid, racist ignoramus, who ran a chaotic campaign AND who wanted to lose….but they still lost to him.
I confess I’m not going to bother reading all this stuff because even if it is all true :
(a) he’s still Not Hillary and
(b) the actual policies being pursued by his administration score about 4/10, which might not seem great until you compare it with the last few Presidents.
Perhaps more pithily: Say what you like about Trump, at least he doesn’t have principles?
Competitive Enterprise Institute, 12/29/17.
(The true number is actually lower than announced, as the printers have yet to re-collate and remove blank pages, plus many of Trump’s new rules are devoted to removing other rules.)
I’d award him a 4.5/10 at least.
Gosh, Mr. Trump wrote a book too.
Ever since “His first 100 days”, which, quite frankly began the day after November voting
in 2016, started the motion in “confidence” by the actual cast of characters, world wide,
that “our” professional economists, political scientists, grant pay stub addicted “experts”, talking head egotists, and other assorted rent-seekers in office, can only DREAM of not getting wrong AGAIN!
Let’s see, IN MY PERSONAL SPHERE OF INFLUENCE, my portfolio seems to have grown a bit, an army of invading aliens have lost their momentum, my picture windows are frosted over, (OK MY fault-steam from boiling beets), a broad spectrum of help wanted ads fill the classified section, financial support of local charitable groups-that actually DO something- is UP, support for (US)union labor/actual medical care “management” is down.
Your results MAY vary of course.
This “NEW BLOCKBUSTER BOOK”, has proved to be garbage. Tread carefully upon it as a slippery stepping stone across the river Styx.
My other favorite blogmaster also commented on the Wolff book:
I won’t attempt to answer the question, just want to stress that there must be an answer somewhere, and too few people are looking for it.
I agree with Lee Moore’s comment, except I think his grading of Trump is too low. I’d give him a 7/10. The only reason it’s not higher is that it took him a while to figure out how to deal with the troglodites in Congress. But so far everything he’s actually done (judicial appointments, executive orders, regulatory relief, bills signed, etc.) I support. I completely disagree with him on the issue of protectionism (the economics of which has been thoroughly discredited for 200 years), but so far it’s just talk, no action. For all I know it could be just posturing.
I don’t like his constant tweets, but since it gives his opponents such a massive case of the vapors I have to grudgingly admire his tactics. The next 3 years should prove interesting.
Laird: if you don’t like Trump’s tweets, just don’t read them! I don’t.
As for protectionism: hopefully it is just posturing, but it must also be noted that protectionism would do much less damage to a big country like the US than it did to Albania.
If i had to rate Trump’s 1st year, it would be even higher than 7/10, but this rating is provisional, and not only because we don’t know what he is going to do in the next few years: also because we do not yet know for sure the long-term impact of what he did in the 1st year.
What Laird and Snorri Godhi said, basically. However, I would not grade him so high, because while a lot of his actions have been good, he has totally failed to address spending, the real driver of the deficit and the debt. Sure, he’s made some minor inroads, but the elephants in the room have hone untouched.
While I understand that he may not have the political capital to address the big hitters (SS and Medicare), there’s no reason he could not show direction by eliminating ineffective and harmful spending. Things like farm subsidies, wind power and ‘alternative energy’ generally, corn-based ethanol, NASA, and a half-a-hundred other pork-barrel and vanity spending areas, would all benefit from a sharp haircut with mo negative impacts on the nation at all.
That being said, you gotta admire the way that he seems to have taken up residence inside the heads of his opposition. The more I see him operate, the more I think it is deliberate misdirection on his part. He’s got them all so wrapped up in a sort of fog of vague hatred – this book is just the latest example – that they don’t have time to take notice of the good things that are getting done. Why else would he so-extravagantly publicise such a questionable work? But all of the news media this morning are completely obsessed with it – it gas literally absorbed their entire bandwidth. And it’s a nothing-burger. Maybe, like a good magician, we should be watching what the other hand is doing.
He keeps this up, month after month, and wages keep rising, and 401ks keep growing, and unemployment keeps falling, and taxes get lower, and pretty soon, the voters will be going ‘Hmmm. I like this. Let’s have some more of this.’ And the media and the chattering clases will look up and go ‘ But .. . But . . But . . Illiterate! Didn’t want to win! Cheeseburgers! Doesn’t sleep with his wife! But . . . But . . ‘. And the voters will go ‘Yeah? And?’
llater,
llamas
And Trump’s thin-skinned stream of tweets about the book had no effect did it? It was Trump himself who “marketed the hell out of it for free”. It’s called the Streisand effect
Its real simple.
His tweets are a laser pointer,
The MSM are the cats.
I note that there is a steady trickle of insinuation about President Trump’s mental health, be it his age, or some other matter, and no lack of ‘experts’ ready to diagnose, the aspiration being a ‘coup’ by the Vice-President and Cabinet under Amendment 25, section 4.
… which he points straight into his own eyes
Mr. Ed, if there was a serious attempt to invoke the 25th against Trump, I can almost guarantee that you would see insurrection in the USA.
The self-proclaimed “elites” in the USA – and only they grant themselves this designation – have risen to their present power through a brilliant coercion of much of the American public to consider their opinions and values to be base and degraded and shameful. Trump’s primary lasting accomplishment in his election and administration has been to bestow back on that part of the public a sanction – a permission – to hold and put forth the views of nationalism and self-worth that have been suppressed for decades.
He has restored hope in at least half of our populace, and that hope isn’t going to be quelled again any time soon. Progressivism no longer holds complete moral sway. Being constantly labeled racist or sexist or nationalist or capitalist no longer shames, in fact no longer has impact at all. I doubt this was one of Trump’s explicit goals, but he has re-opened the culture wars which we thought had been lost.
Any attempt to label Trump’s impulses and actions as “mentally ill” or without capacity will be recognized for what it is – a claim that non-progressive thought itself stems from a mental defect. This would be the stuff of a raw coup.
I own seven rifles that can hit a four-inch circle at 700 yards. There are an estimated 200 million such rifles extant in America, and most of them are owned by people of conservative persuasion. You didn’t think we built them just to hunt coyotes, did you?
Flubber.
I love that description, and am going to steal it.
I don’t know whether Trump is a genius at this misdirection business or not. But when you have a team of self-declared geniuses being constantly beaten by a team of supposed buffoons, something is clearly wrong with the one of their visions of reality.
Tom Wolfe, in The Intelligent Co-ed’s Guide To America, said “The dark night of fascism is always descending on America, and always landing on Europe.”
In a similar vein, Trump is always pointing his laser into his own eyes, and liberals are always running around screaming that they’ve been blinded.
Hmmm … let me see:
1) Trump is a moron
2) Trump is mentally unstable
3) Trump couldn’t make a sensible decision
4) Trump is a multi millionaire
I’m not a moron, mentally unstable and I think I make sensible decisions but I’m not a millionaire. Where did I go right?
Can’t speak for the “liberals” (by which you almost certainly mean “leftists”), but this 19th Century Whig is very much entertained by the spectacle of the Trump White House in perpetual meltdown. And thankful that The God Emperor is as incompetent as he is, thus limiting the damage he can inflict.
Flailing away at “the mainstream media” as if it had a body to kick makes as much sense as blaming the market, or the weather, for one’s shortcomings.
So far, the situation calls for popcorn rather than panic.
Normally I would agree that Trump should just ignore, but Streisand effect does not seem to work on Trump. No one who hates him will ever be truthful about him, so no one who likes him believes anything bad (true or false) said about him. We are in such a profound low trust environment, created by Trump’s enemies and then inflated by Trump himself, that he will use this book for toilet paper. I don’t even like Trump, but I am in awe of this stunning example of the law of unintended consequencrs. I was waiting for Trump to implode but I am no longer convinced he will. His enemies on the othehand seem to be blowing themselves up daily.
Not so much credibility as free advertising. My guess? Trump has a percentage.
I certainly hope so 😀
I think he’s sort of a “windmill” boxer, hitting his opponents with so much, so fast that they haven’t got the time (or the sense) to focus on any one thing long enough to do any damage. Some of these hits are real, some larger percentage are mis-direction. Meanwhile his agenda moves forward. They can’t seem to get a clue as to what’s important to them and what isn’t.
The very name of the Goldwater rule – now being discarded along with other pretences of restraint on the part of the left – reminds us that assuming those who disagree with them are mad is the left’s old normal quite as much as their new normal (as I’m sure Mr Ed of January 6, 2018 at 4:28 pm knows well 🙂 ), just as discovering that hard-left student councils can have little in common with their students is no surprise to those of us who recall the 70s.
Phil: Trump is an intellectually un-curious narcissist, who is fantastic at self-promotion(as many narcissists are) and can make good short-term decisions about things that affect him directly. He also had the luck to be born rich and invest that money in a boom market(NYC real estate) right at the bottom. So right now his empire consists of the few scraps of NYC real estate he didn’t lose to bankruptcy, plus a licensing empire where he hocks his name for money. It makes perfect sense to me that he’s done well. But he’s still a thin-skinned buffoon who only makes good decisions about political matters by chance.
Which still makes him preferable to Hillary in the same way that Kerensky was better than Lenin, but unlike Kerensky, he’s kept a Lenin out.
Dissent.
I, and many of my friends and co-voters, have a very realistic picture of exactly who and what Trump is.
We just don’t care anymore.
In the face of the depths that the Progressives have become willing to plumb to get their way, we’ve become immune to that old canard of “don’t stoop to their level.”
Heck, had I lived in Alabama, I would have voted for the whacko religious-fanatic theocracy-in-a-jar nutcase Moore who was fired from two judgeships because he refused to hold law above his scripture. And I’m a committed atheist. Just to spite the Democrats.
I really liked his tweet about about having a bigger button than Kim Wrong’un. It was much what I would have said.
Usually, I read a Trump tweet at second hand – when the infuriated and/or contemptuous beeb quotes it to me – or at third hand, in some blog article about how hilariously angry some lefty was made by it. Like some cheeses, the flavour of some Trump tweets seems to improve after exposure to the ambient environment. 🙂
Most of them I (like Snorri) do not read. When I wonder, in the gaps my demanding schedule allows, “What shall I read next – the latest samizdata article or the latest Trump tweet?”, it’s astonishing how often samizdata wins. (Noone tell Trump. 🙂 )
Sometimes, context is everything. 35 years ago, as our task force sailed towards the Falklands to evict the argies, Jilly Cooper was momentarily in the news for saying that she supported Mrs Thatcher and our brave boys 100% “though some of those Argentinian officers are so handsome one might almost not mind being taken prisoner by them”. At the time, I felt her patriotic feelings were in the right place but her intellect and dignity of expression were perhaps not so sure. 🙂 Years later, killing time in a secondhand bookshop in Llangollen, I came across a lefty book titled “100 authors on the Falklands” that was written as the task force sailed south. It gave quotes from one hundred ‘authors’, selected to be predominantly lefty, on the upcoming war. 99 of them expressed, in very pompous terms, their disproportionately anti-Thatcher, anti-war sentiments, but two-thirds of the way through I suddenly, utterly unprepared for it, encountered Jilly’s quote. It was as if she’d put a pin in a huge bubble of pretentious elitism. I laughed out loud for half a minute (startling some of the punters). I also realised that her quote may have been her deliberate reply to the pretentious editors who’d solicited all these quotes.
Alsadius, OBVIOUSLY thinking that Trumps’ series of political triumphs (over a year now) is merely a series of lucky accidents is a bit silly.
Trump is crazy like a fox. He is everything that those who are ‘offended by freedom’ hate. He has self esteem based on success and productiveness. He is absolutely completely unapologetic about his success. He’s unapologetic about marketing himself…and should be. The ‘humility and altruism’ so-called ethic is dogshit. It’s fake, hypocritical and a key reason why the world is the way it is today.
Don’t forget his hair. He has interesting hair.
Trumps strength is popular appeal. Taking things away from people (farm subsidies, etc) is certainly spinnable. Yes, “pork barrel” should be done away with, but knowing this is completely worthless unless one is set up to win political battles.
You misspelled Billionaire.
I too like Flubber’s “laser pointer” analogy, and plan to steal it.
And I agree with bobby b about the Alabama election. Had I lived there I would also have held my nose and voted for that theocratic buffoon. Not because I think he’d be a good Senator (he’d likely be a disaster), but Trump needs as big a majority, and as many allies, in the Senate as he can get. We still have a lot of judicial vacancies to fill.
He showed you his tax returns, did he?
Riiiiiiiiight…
https://www.amazon.com/best-sellers-books-Amazon/zgbs/books
Mr Ed:
And yet when the human filth from Arizona was diagnosed with his brain tumor, nobody demanded he resign on health grounds.
Sorry Biffa but your link proves that people who hate Trump want to read things that tell them they are right. Well no shit. And how many minds do you think have been changed? Very few I suspect. Beware Trump Derangement Syndrome because take it from me, as I am viscerally prone to it, for TDS can cause you simply not see the dynamics of how this is really playing out.
And he’s winning converts in the polls is he?
“And he’s winning converts in the polls is he?”
November 2018 should be interesting.
The book and tweets are a distraction from what is happening just below the surface:
“All of the ‘Muh Russia’ co-conspirators, and the aggregate DC enablers, along with their media mouthpieces are nervous. The Wolff book noise is hiding a genuine trepidation that all of the scheming for the past 18+ months is about to come crashing down.
The larger American electorate have NO IDEA the scale and scope of the bigger story behind the vast Russian conspiracy. The people involved are fully aware of the potential for their visible trail to become increasingly public.
The special FBI and DOJ unit that Rod Rosenstein put together, at the request of AG Jeff Sessions and DNI Dan Coats, is still hunting congressional and IC leak agents. Almost no-one in the media has discussed this ongoing reality, but their silence on the story doesn’t mean their behavior has not changed directly because of it.”
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/01/06/the-silence-of-the-shams/#more-144286
Regarding Trump’s tweets, I remember reading analysis in the 70’s that someone who presents as crazy would beat someone who presents as rational. Trump’s response to Kim is the correct one, “You’re crazy? Hey, I’m crazy too! You press your button and I’ll press mine and we’ll see who walks away!” It amazes me that things which were once well understood are now lost.
I’m sorry, is your argument that you’re as ignorant as I am? I ask merely for clarification.
Roue la Jour, The way I read Trump’s treatment of “Rocket Man” is that he refuses to show respect to a despicable tyrant. That is indeed the correct response. And as to his not-so-veiled threat of nuclear force, the correct response is ridicule. Sure, he can press his shiny red button (Ren and Stimpy reference)…if he wants to remove north Korean DNA from the face of the earth that is.
“Fusion GPS Bank Records Handed Over; May Shed Light On Payments From Russian Embezzler”
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-01-06/fusion-gps-bank-records-handed-over-may-shed-light-payments-russian-embezzler
Not so easy to present as crazy if you are the leader of a Western democracy who is constrained by the rule of law and all that stuff. Or have we stopped pretending to be in favour of the checks and balances now?
Yep. Sometimes you have to one-up the guy who’s trying to convince everyone he’s crazy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOP6uMTYaM8
You are a card, Biffa. These would be the checks and balances that stopped Hillary blowing the crap out of Libya for no good reason?
O Polly talks to Tristram
And Tristram talks to Jez
But Jez is short of wisdom
O what a shameful mess
They witter and they chatter
About the parish pump
They fear their world will shatter
They’ve Crown’d the Knave of Trumps
For the anti-Trumpers out there, here”s something to give you an idea of what Trump is up against, and winning against:
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/01/05/operation-condor-how-nsa-director-mike-rogers-saved-the-u-s-from-a-massive-constitutional-crisis/
Polls eh? You mean those things that assured us Hillary was a 98 percent shoe in? There is only one kind of poll that matters. I am trying to see what is happening, not what I want to happen, you should try it sometime Biffa, however painful it might be 😉
It’s simple, Roue. It is impossible to credibly present as a madman unless you have an absolute blank cheque. Which, ultimately, no Western leader has. We can disagree whether that is a feature or a bug of Western liberal democracy, but it is an inescapable fact.
As for the polls, Perry, imperfect as they may be (the clue lies in their use of the word “probability”), I’m not sure what other metric to use when trying to “see what is happening”. Sniffing the zeitgeist, perhaps?
Well given the tendency for polls to be wrong, how about working from the presumption that the pollster and/or commissioner want the poll to show something, rather than to reveal it?
The margin of error in polling is infinite, there is no guarantee that anyone will ask honest questions, will get a ‘proper’ sample or that the answers will be truthful. At most, it is all about a hope that self-cancelling errors will arise, balancing out the final result.
Well given the recent record of political polls, I would have to say they are a good metric only if one take the view that the diametric opposite to what they say is probably true 😆 Although polls seem to be less reliable than a compass that dependably points south, if I had been betting that way over Trump, Brexit, Netanyahu etc. etc. I would have added to the family fortune quite considerably 😉
Steve Bannon the person who though the top rate of income tax was too LOW – he wanted it HIGHER.
And he seems to think the Islamic Republic of Iran (the proxy for Russia and China in the Middle East – and NOT just in the Middle East) is not a problem.
I have no time for Populist bash-the-rich and bash-big-business “economics” (which is not economics at all), and people who think that the United States exists on a different planet and so this world (Planet Earth) can just be allowed to fall to the enemies of the United States, are just wrong.
At the risk of going off on a wild tangent, I wonder what Andrew Breitbart (MHRIP) would think of both Bannon and Trump today. Short of an adept with a planchette – anyone care to offer an opinion?
llater,
llamas
llamas,
I would like to think of Trump as a possible icebreaker for a Ted Cruz presidency, unless he puts Ted Cruz on the Supreme Court to ‘out-original’ Justice Gorsuch.
@Biffa Bacon
> And he’s winning converts in the polls is he?
I could be completely wrong, but polling in regards to Trump seems to have a much higher and biased error rate than most polling. And it is the media’s fault. Anti Trump people are so hysterical that to make any rational argument in favor of Trump’s policies is to provoke an emotion filled screed about pussy grabbing, and evil tyrannts, and how you must be a bad person to contemplate his policies and losing friends. So much so that what I notice is that a lot of people who support Trump just won’t talk about it, but just drop their paper in the ballot box. I enjoy discussing politics, but I really won’t these days, because I think Trump has done some great things, and to hold a view like that results in violent conversations that I don’t enjoy. So I think polls generally greatly underestimate the support for Trump because the TDS people have made it impossible to support Trump in polite company. Ballot boxes are secret though. Again though, this is just my observation, I could be wrong.
As to the Streisand effect, it doesn’t apply to this book at all. The SE is a phenomenon where an obscurity receives massive publicity from the opposition to it rather than from itself. This book was going to be massive news no matter what Trump did. His response at least puts on the record good reason to think it is a bunch of garbage, something that the TDS media will never do — examine its claims with criticality.
Paul, consider the possibility that no one thinks the world should be allowed to fall, but that sometimes after decades of immediate apologetic appeasement, bluffs need to be called. Perhaps the threat of having their bluffs called will cause some nations to be more willing to contribute to their own salvation than they currently seem to be.
Personally, I’d like to devote my resources to saving my own small world for a bit. The rest can call us back when they have some impressive bit of self-help to show off. They need me more than I need them, and I tire of being expected to apologize for that fact.
I agree with Fraser. The media and the left generally has so poisoned the atmosphere that no poll concerning Trump should be accorded any credibility whatsoever. (Other sorts of polling could remain reasonably trustworthy, though.)
What bobby b said. As far as I am concerned the rest of the world can fall to the enemies of the US unless and until they start doing something to protect themselves, and acknowledge what the US is doing (and has done) in their defense. I expect respect, reciprocity, assistance, and at least some measure of gratitude from our putative “allies”. The UN is worthless and NATO has long outlived its usefulness; I want out of both. Europe, Japan and South Korea can take responsibility for their own defense; the whole continent of Africa can sink into the sea for all I care; and while we do have an interest in stability in the middle east realistically there’s not much we can do there other than allow them to work things out for themselves (and provide a little support for Israel). Is that clear enough?
Terence (patrick hewett, January 7, 2018 at 11:38 am), in the last line of your poem (which I like – I see you’ve also used a version on Brexit) is ambiguous – it is unclear whether the ‘they’ who did the crowning are Polly, Tristram and Jez (as in the three lines before it) or else other people that those three and their friends find deplorable. If your intent is the latter, then I offer
…
Of course, one could also avoid the ambiguity by making the last line
This thread suggests that not all would have joined in the acclamation 14 months ago, and there are reservations still, but ‘we’ would do as poetic truth. 🙂 However maybe ‘plebs’ – a term that Jez, Tristam and Polly would use – makes a better poem.
Just my 0.02p FWIW.
Laird,
I have to confess that I can find no argument to persuade you, or anyone on Earth, that Belgium, or Germany, is worth the bones of a single Appalachian grenadier, and much the same can be said for the UK.
in the mid-1980s, I went, as a student, with the Sage of Kettering, to NATO HQ in Brussels, and at a Q and A I asked some bureaucrat what they’d do if (sanctimonious) Sweden were attacked by the Soviets. I got some surprised (Belgian 🙂 ) waffle back. As we left, I told the Sage that I suspected that the bureaucrat would’ve been shocked if I’d said that I thought that NATO should have joined in on the attack.
Niall:
I myself do not follow anyone on Twitter, and have almost completely stopped reading Trump-related BBC articles. That means that almost all of Trump’s tweets that i read, are at third hand.
As for his Bigger Button tweet: we all know that, should there be a nuclear attack on US soil, the President would immediately retaliate with a nuclear counter-attack. Trump was not saying anything we didn’t know. Real craziness would be tweeting about a nuclear attack on North Korea as a preventive measure.
I agree entirely. Anyone planning a nuclear attack on North Korea as a preventive measure would indeed be crazy to tweet about it beforehand, but I feel perfectly sure that Trump knows this – so no-one need doubt his sanity.
What do you mean you were expecting a smiley? Oh well, if it keeps you happy:
🙂
(Full disclosure: I have always envied Natalie her designation as “Enemy of the people of North Korea’, which she won when this post came to the attention of the regime during the rule of Kim Wrong’un’s predecessor.)
About Trump:
There are some things he is personally involved in that are dear to his heart. In most matters he is not involved.
In the second category is the tax reform. It was done by Congress with no Trump input. It is, seems to me, a good thing (the tax reform) though I’m not sure, and it certainly isn’t a BIG thing. He us not involved in the judicial nominations either (a good thing).
The things he seems to be personally involved in are:
1. The wall and immigration limits – not sure it is a good thing, no big success so far.
2. Dumping the climate wars and Paris – great thing, thanks Trump.
3. Recognizing Jerusalem – personal Trump initiative – Great.
4. Deregulation – pretty solid achievements so far. Good.
5. Dumping the Pacific trade agreement, undermining NAFTA – bad policy, no great deal achieved.
The biggest failure – like all former presidents (including Reagan): no significant spending cuts.
As to the tweets: a funny diversion.
As far as madness is concerned – look no further than the mainstream US politics and media.
The obsession with “diversity” (race and gender) is totally and absolutely crazy.
The Russia investigation is crazy.
The reaction to Trump is absolutely insane.
In this madhouse that is America, Trump is a beacon of normalcy (he is only a narcissist blowhard).
Jacob – you’ve sort of tripped over your own feet here: “He us not involved in the judicial nominations either (a good thing).” Trump is president, he nominates people to the positions. They are his nominees.
Maybe you meant Trump delegates that to people on his staff? That’s what a good executive does, is it not? Delegate to people who will do things the way the executive wants.
I agree with Jacob’s essential point (that Trump has certain issues in which he is personally invested, and others which he is reasonably content to delegate), but I don’t completely agree with his specific examples.
For instance, on Supreme Court nominations Trump recognized fairly early in the campaign process (before he had locked up the nomination) this this was an important issue to much of his base, but one in which he had no personal experience or expertise. So he recruited members of the Federalist Society and the Heritage Foundation to research and compile a list for him. They did an excellent job (which, of course, is due in large measure to the fact that he did not include the American Bar Association in the process!). But Trump was most certainly involved; I’ve spoken personally with Jim Demint (then the President of the Heritage Foundation and previously one of my state senators) so I know how much time Trump spent on this issue. (Probably less so on judicial appointments to lower courts, but that’s somewhat less important). And it seems clear that he very much wanted tax reform, and especially a reduction in our outrageous corporate income tax, but recognized the need to give concessions in other areas in order to gain the necessary support. But he got the things which he considered most important.
And he was adamant that we would see significant regulatory relief, and appointed agency heads who were serious about getting that done. And they have. I don’t consider the least bit important the fact that he was less concerned with most of the specifics of regulatory relief than with the magnitude of it.
In fact, the things with which I most disagree with him are his vocal support of protectionism (mercantilism), a very bad policy, and his selection and retention of an utterly incompetent Attorney General (Jeff Sessions, who should never have been appointed [it was a reward for his early support] and should long ago have been fired [he has done absolutely nothing right].) But given the rest of his accomplishments I can live with that.
And the tweets are a funny diversion. I would put Trump closer to the “genius” side (which he asserts) than to the “crazy” side (which his opponents allege).
bobby b – it is an idea. And, YES, nations should pay more for their own defence – not just rely on the United States.
However, this is not what I was pointing at. I was pointing at people who oppose coming to the aid of other allies – even when these places make desperate sacrifices to defend themselves (as Britain did in 1940). Out of a delusion that the world can go to Hell – but the United States (which exists on some other planet) will carry on fine. For example such people would just yet the Islamic Republic of Iran (and its Shia proxies) take over the Middle East – totally ignoring that the Islamic Repulic of Iran is backed by Russia and the People’s Republic of China.
Normally such people say something to the effect of “the United States should only fight if Americans are killed – not non citizens” or even “only if there are attacks inside the United States itself” – their insincerity is shown by the First World War (yes the First).
For the Germans had killed Americans (large numbers of them) on the High Seas – and had launched terrorist attacks on American soil itself. Bombings, shootings, even an a mass Anthrax Plot (which failed). And had promised about a third of the United States to the Mexico – BEFORE the United States declared war on Germany.
But to read “liberatian” accounts of the First World War it was not the Imperial German Government who were the aggressors – it was Woodrow Wilson (the man T. Roosevelt denounced and threatened to strangle with his own hands – for his endless weakness) who was “desperate to get America into the war”. They lie about the First World War just as they lie about Vietnam – and lie about so many other things. Like Islamists with the doctrine of “Taqiyya” they belive lying for-the-good-of-cause is perfectly acceptable (indeed praiseworthy) – of course I am thinking of the late Murray Newton Rothbard (the biggest liar ever to call himself a libertarian – and a first rate economist, just as Muhammed was a great political and military leader), but the bad practice did not die with him.
In a couple of weeks the film “The Post” will be out in Britain – more Marxist Hollywood lies about Vietnam. How much do people want to bet me that this sort of “libertarian” will love this film? They will love it because it is “anti government” and “exposes government lies” about the Vietam War. That it is Marxist agitprop (like so many Hollywood films – and univerity books) will not be mentioned by this sort of “libertarian”.
“But Paul why do you not carefully explain that the film is Marxist agitprop (Tom Hanks and the “Usual Suspects”) and carefully explain the truth about the Vietnam War?”
I do not because I am not 20 years of age – and I am sick and tired of explaining things to people who should already know. Indeed more than that – I am sick and tired of explaining things to people who, I strongly suspect, already do know – and are deliberatly saying things they know to be false.
If I am mistaken about them I will apologise in Heaven (assuming we get there), but I have no time for them on this Earth.
To those uninterested in history – watch what these people say about the Islamic Republic of Iran (and its backers and its proxies) their own words will be more unintentionally self-damning than anything I could say about them.
Patrick Buchanan (at least he does not call himself a libertarian) and Ron Paul are most likely producing some pro IRI propaganda even as I type these words. And Steve Bannon would be pushing President Trump that way – had not Mr Bannon not fallen to bits last year.
But what country, in the past forty years, has made any “desperate sacrifices to defend themselves”? I can think of two or three, and I’m almost certain that we would come to their aid should it be needed.
Outside of those countries, most of our allies – who, as you say, did indeed make those kinds of desperate sacrifices back in the 1940 era – no longer appear to have the kind of moral fiber to make any sacrifices at all.
My point is that the USA isn’t in danger of slacking off on its commitment to helping those of its allies who display the kind of steadfastness and resolve and self-sacrifice that would make our commitment into a moral imperative. Rather, the number of our allies who do display traits that make them deserving of our own commitment to die in their assistance seems to have dropped.
Would I send my sons to die in defense of a country that almost voted that my President lacked sufficient moral fiber to admit him into that country? Or a country that continually assists the most dangerous nuclear threat in the area? Tradition only carries so much weight.
I agree with bobby b. I originally wrote a long screed expanding on his comment, but I’ve deleted it. He said enough. (You’re welcome.)
Paul, in portraying Russia and China as mortal enemies of the US you play the lefties game (of blaming Trump for Russia ties). I think you are wrong.
Putin is a nationalist, unsavory dictator, but he is not in particular dangerous or inimical to the US. It was the US that picked a fight with him over Eastern Ukraine and Crimea. It was a US mistake.
The same about China. It is not the enemy of the US, though it pursues it’s nationalist aims.
The US foreign policy is more wrong than right, and if it became more isolationist (less involved around the world) it could be an improvement.
The notion that the US should act as the policeman of the world and keep everyone safe and happy is an unrealistic idealization.
What Trump failed to do (what needed badly to be done) – is reduce more the US contribution to the UN budget of 15b (25% financed by the US). (Trump cut some 238M)
Jacob is absolutely correct. Start with a substantial (not token) reduction in our contribution to the UN, moving ultimately to outright elimination of it, and then start on cutting back on our military spending in general.
Bannon? You mean Sloppy Steve?
😛