Response to Political Disintegration

(See: Just Above Sunset: Political Disintegration)

I disagree with Josh Marshall and anybody else who thinks Mitt Romney's spiel yesterday was feckless, and only helped Donald Trump.

Like Marco Rubio's, Romney's attack was really good, and sometimes in history, when all hope seems lost, we don't find out how effective some Hail Mary move was until afterwards. I personally think Romney, plus Team Fox, plus Team Cruzio, all struggling together, did do some damage -- which I think is fine, as long as it all didn't work too well.

The worst scenario, of course, probably involves Trump winning both the primary and the general election, but almost as bad would be if any Republican beats either of our candidates. But yes, I still hope Trump gets the nomination, since I see him as having the best chance of losing the election, with John Kasich having the best chance of winning. Let's hope the Republicans never figure that out. Still, I'm not yet convinced that Trump isn't secretly involved in some Democratic dirty trick to undo the Republican Party. If so, more power to him, but meanwhile, we need to proceed on the assumption that he's not playing that game.

I'm thinking and hoping this is headed for a three-party standoff in November, assuming whichever Republican faction that becomes the third party can find a way to get itself onto the state ballots. Maybe Democrats in the various states, in a spirit of comity, could help pave the way. In any event, if the establishment is forced out of their party, I don't envision a pathway for them coming back later to reclaim it. (Do you?)

Yet, I do see this rooting for Donald as a highly dangerous game of Hearts, a card game in which a player's objective is to end up with either very few hearts, or no hearts at all -- unless, of course, the player opts to "shoot-the-moon":

"Shooting the moon" ... is a very common scoring variant. If one player takes all the penalty cards on one deal, that player's score remains unchanged, while 26 penalty points are added to the scores of each of the other players. ... 

Attempting to shoot the moon is often a risky strategy, as failure to capture every single penalty card will result in the remaining penalty points (as many as 25) being added to one's score.

Which is to say, if we take the chance and succeed in this venture, we win big. On the other hand, if we try for it and fail, the whole country loses the United States of America.

Response to Stopping the Orange-Haired Frankenstein

(See: Just Above Sunset: Stopping the Orange-Haired Frankenstein)

Every now and then, I feel I have to express what many of us liberal Democrats are feeling right now, which is an almost equal mixture of glee and chagrin -- glee over all this enfeebling combat amongst Republicans, but chagrin for our country, fully realizing for the first time that so many of us, just to spitefully shit-can America because it won't give them their way, would vote to make Mussolini its president.

A few observations to think about:

First of all, there's that question of the value of Mitt Romney injecting himself into this election:

Do you really think those Trump fans will listen to a bit of scolding from the most spectacular failure of the Republican establishment in recent memory?

Okay, but Trump fans need to ask themselves, was Romney's failure really all that spectacular? The popular vote margin was only about three-and-a-half million votes out of about 122-million cast -- 51% to 48% -- so Obama didn't really beat him in a huge landslide.

But also, just as Donald Trump will (probably) be this time, Mitt Romney was the strongest Republican and was the choice of most Republican voters last time around, so the Trumpeteers should try not to bring the guy down too much.

On CNN this morning, I heard another one of those ubiquitous attractive Trump-babes opining that Romney should just stay out of it and keep his preferences to himself, since this is a democracy and people can vote for whoever they want -- apparently not realizing that this advice would not only also apply to newly-confirmed Trump-acolyte Chris Christie, but also to herself.

As for other Republicans funding this whole anti-Trump project:

“If you did that I think there’d be deep-seated resentment at a group of wealthy donors telling people what to do,” [longtime Republican donor Fred] Malek said in a recent interview.

That may be true, but is it really true that Trump voters dislike the power of big wealthy donors in elections, as if Trump isn't one of those himself?

But a suggestion worth considering:

Maybe the Our Principles PAC should ask for donations from small donors as well? In that way, you might even get voters crossing the aisle to help out. After all, Trump is not just a Republican problem, he's an American problem.

And by the way, speaking of Trump "funding his own campaign"? According to Glenn Kessler in the Washington Post, that's just another of his fabrications:

Trump keeps saying that unlike his rivals, he’s paying for his own presidential campaign, but that’s largely false. 

At the start of his campaign, he loaned his political operation $1.8 million. As of Oct. 1, he had given his campaign an additional $104,829.27 — but he had also received $3.9 million from donors, which accounted for the vast majority of the $5.8 million his campaign had taken in by then. His campaign website features a prominent “donate” button on its homepage. Trump has spent $5.4 million, and interestingly, about one-quarter of his spending has gone to Trump-owned entities (mainly his private jet company). 

In January, Trump launched an ad campaign in Iowa and New Hampshire, saying he planned to spend $2 million. He also claimed that his campaign was $35 million to $40 million below budget. Ultimately, all of his spending — and where the money came from — will have to be disclosed in campaign finance reports. The odds are his personal share of the spending will be less than 50 percent.

So yes, it turns out he does loan his campaign lots of money, but that only accounts for less than half of its funding. Also, why would you say you self-fund, at the same time putting, not just one, but actually two "donate" buttons on your website?

(And also by the way, although he may not actually be funding his own campaign, because he spends so much of the donations on his own companies -- such as paying himself to fly around in his own jet -- he could actually, at least theoretically, make a profit on running for office! Talk about being a wheeler-dealer!)

But why would he even brag that he's self-funded? Not that it really matters, but I would think Bernie's fundraising position is best of all the candidates -- he doesn't have a PAC like Hillary, and he's not some billionaire on a self-indulgent vanity-trip like Trump, but like NPR, he's funded by the small donations that come from a public that believes in him.

And one more thing: Politico cites economists' worries about President Trump:

And slapping massive tariffs on goods from Mexico and China could dramatically increase prices for U.S. consumers and create destabilizing trade wars.

Not to mention that slapping massive tariffs on goods from Mexico, presumably to "pay for the wall", might cause even more massive unemployment in Mexico, driving many would-be workers down there back toward their northern border-- something, by the way, that they are not really doing under Obama.

Response to Getting Ugly Out There

(See: Just Above Sunset: Getting Ugly Out There)

First, there's this scuffle between a TIME photographer and the Secret Service agent at a Trump rally in Virginia:

Christopher Morris, a photographer for TIME magazine, was attempting to leave the press section to photograph the Black Lives Matter protesters when he was “thrown to the ground in a choke hold,” TIME said, by a Secret Service agent.

And secondly, there's that Trump rally in Valdosta last night:

About 30 black students who were standing silently at the top of the bleachers at Donald Trump’s rally here Monday night were escorted out by Secret Service agents who said the presidential candidate had requested their removal before he began speaking. ... 

“We didn’t plan to do anything,” said a tearful Tahjila Davis, a 19-year-old mass media major, who was among the Valdosta State University students who was removed. “They said, ‘This is Trump’s property; it’s a private event.’ But I paid my tuition to be here.”

What I really find disturbing is that nobody seems to be questioning the role of Secret Service agents in Trump's campaign.

I remember back in 1968, shortly after the assassination of Robert Kennedy, when it was first decided to assign them to presidential candidates, but it was simply to protect the candidate himself, not to act as ushers or security at his campaign appearances -- something Donald Trump can afford to pay for himself without resorting to the "public teat".

But before going on, I must admit I looked further into these two incidents, and found that USA Today has since updated its story with the information that the "escorts" in Valdosta were not Secret Service, but apparently private security hired by the "host committee", which was presumably "hosting" Trump's visit, along with help of the Valdosta police.

But according to TIME Magazine, the photographer incident, apparently, did involve USSS agents:

Unlike other presidential campaigns, which generally allow reporters and photographers to move around at events, Trump has a strict policy requiring reporters and cameramen to stay inside a gated area, which the candidate often singles out for ridicule during his speeches. 

The entrance to the penned area is generally monitored by the Secret Service detail, which also screens attendees at his events and personally protects the candidate.

The TIME photographer, Chris Morris, ordinarily works at the White House:

“I’ve worked for nine years at the White House and have never had an altercation with the Secret Service,” Morris says in a statement. “What happened today was very unfortunate and unexpected. The rules at Trump events are significantly stricter than other campaigns and make it very difficult to work as a photographer, as many others have pointed out before me. I regret my role in the confrontation, but the agent’s response was disproportionate and unnecessarily violent. I hope this incident helps call attention to the challenges of press access.”

In fact, TIME admits that Morris...

...stepped out of the press pen to photograph a Black Lives Matter protest that interrupted the speech. A video shows that Morris swore at a Secret Service agent who tried to move Morris back into the pen. A separate video of the event shows that the agent then grabbed Morris’ neck with both hands and threw him into a table and onto the ground.

I may be wrong, but I bet the unnamed agent will be ruled out of line after his bosses look into the incident, but my question is, is anybody else looking into USSS agents "moonlighting" as security for political candidate campaigns?

Response to After Nevada

(See Just Above Sunset: After Nevada)

Once again, to all those Republicans who accuse Donald Trump of being a closet liberal, I have to answer, Hey, I'm a liberal! If Trump is such a liberal, how come I'm not thinking of voting for him?

The number-one main reason I'm not voting for him is because I don't like bullies. And, in fact, that Trump is a bully proves he's not a liberal. Liberals not only aren't bullies, they don't even like bullies; conservatives do, because conservatives worship "strength" (or the appearance of it) and despise "weakness" (or the appearance of it), which is why Donald Trump, bottom line, is a conservative who is selling himself to conservative voters.

And what is it about these Trump conservatives?

These aren’t gullible people. They are mutants – test an atomic bomb and you get those – the premise of all those Japanese Godzilla movies. You get monsters, and Donald Trump was the bomb, dropped in Nevada, just like old times.

Okay, there is something to them being mutant monsters, but monsters made in the image of their bomb, Donald Trump. The point being, just as in those Japanese movies about nuclear-created monsters, Trump and his monstrous followers not only can't be killed off by dropping another atomic bomb on them, as in Charles Cooke's "Anti-Trump Manhattan Project", they are all actually made stronger by doing that. 

One major reason Trump supporters like him is that so many other people don't. In fact, Trump supporters have very little use for the people that other people do like -- namby-pamby panty-waists who all talk the language of political correctness, afraid to offend, afraid to stand for anything, afraid to fight, afraid to show strength. Listen again to Sean Illing in Salon:

A majority of Americans appear wholly uninterested in the actual business of government; they don’t understand it and don’t want to. They have vague feelings about undefined issues and they surrender their votes on emotional grounds to whoever approximates their rage. ...

Trump’s wager was simple: Pretend to be stupid and angry because that’s what stupid and angry people like. He’s held up a mirror to the country, shown us how blind and apish we are. He knew how undiscerning the populace would be, how little they cared about details and facts.

Whether or not Illing is right about Trump "pretending" to be stupid, or that a "majority of Americans ... don’t understand ... and don’t want to", that seems to have nailed the Trump gang, except maybe that "stupid" part. I know some Trump supporters and none of them are stupid, but they sense something wrong with the country and they don't know why, but seem to think it can be put right by just electing some tough guy who cuts through the smokescreen put up by government and all these jaded elected officials who run it.

People who like Trump think this country is in a mess. I could tell them in explicit detail, with facts and figures and charts and graphs and lots of testimonials from experts, that this country is not in a mess, but all they'd get from all of that is that I'm one of those people who doesn't understand what a mess this country is in.

Their logic is bullet-proof and bomb-proof because Donald Trump is the standard by which the legitimacy of all anti-Donald-Trump criticism will be judged. If God himself were to expose Donald Trump as a phony, these people would then look down their noses at God and declare Him a loser, since he's obviously one of the losers who got the country into this mess.

What should be done about Trump?

Probably everything, including that Manhattan Project, since the goal is not really to chip away at his supporters (which I would bet is largely hopeless at this point) but to try to talk folks who have not yet given up on America out of defecting to his side.

But to take the longer view, those Republicans and Democrats (and okay, Independents) who take the political health of the republic seriously have to be concerned about what this Trumpzilla phenomenon means to our future.

Maybe the fact that there are so many Americans who "don’t understand it and don’t want to" can no longer be ignored, and maybe these previously-disinterested non-participants now taking an active part in the electoral process could have the disastrous effect of torpedoing the ship of state. If these people now insist on joining us in governance, maybe we need to somehow do a better job of weeding out the willful ignoramuses. After all, do you really believe the Founders would intentionally create a self-governing "dunceocracy", populated by dunces who "don’t understand ... and don’t want to"?

Although, yes, I still hope Trump becomes the GOP nominee.

And yes, I hear all those "be-careful-what-you-wish-for" arguments about how he could somehow become our next president, but because I still believe in the basic intelligence and righteous integrity of the majority of Americans, I am willing to take the chance that either of the two Democrats could beat him.

Response to Dead Stop

(See: Just Above Sunset: Dead Stop)

Once again, Republicans are trying to shut down the government. They're always looking for ways of doing that, with it usually backfiring on them, although owing to possible "Republican Bullshit Fatigue" (RBF) among the public, maybe this time they'll get away with it.

The most on-point point made in the column today was in the last paragraph:

This had to get much worse ... because of the inherently unstable nature of our system, where vague “norms” held things together, not the structure of government itself. Norms change. It all falls apart. The Constitution is of no help at all.

Nobody talks much anymore about those extra-constitutional, bi-partisan "norms" that those with seniority -- the old guard that's been around long enough to know -- would pass on to the congressional newcomers, the norms that used to keep the government chugging along, such as, "We need to let the president nominate someone of his own school of thought, because later, when it's our turn, they'll afford our president the same courtesy." What went without saying was that, if we don't, then this rickety government that our school kids are taught is venerable and unassailable, loses all the glue that holds it together.

When all those norms are no longer passed on, the whole machine grinds to a halt. But isn't that what the Republicans have been threatening to do all along?

Scalia died. The whole thing comes to a dead stop. Now what?

"Now what?" Ask that late Spanish political scientist Juan Linz, who in his essay, The Perils of Presidentialism back in 1990, made the point that a nation's survival is not all about a constitution:

In the final analysis, all regimes, however wisely designed, must depend for their preservation upon the support of society at large -- its major forces, groups, and institutions. They rely, therefore, on a public consensus which recognizes as legitimate authority only that power which is acquired through lawful and democratic means. They depend also on the ability of their leaders to govern, to inspire trust, to respect the limits of their power, and to reach an adequate degree of consensus. 

Although these qualities are most needed in a presidential system, it is precisely there that they are most difficult to achieve. Heavy reliance on the personal qualities of a political leader -- on the virtue of a statesman, if you will -- is a risky course, for one never knows if such a man can be found to fill the presidential office.

With Mitch McConnell having persuaded every member of his Judiciary Committee to pledge in writing that the Constitution will be ignored if the president attempts to do what it instructs him to do, McConnell may be herding the nation's angry malcontents -- particularly those who have more faith in the dubiously vague promises of Donald Trump than in a two-hundred-twenty-seven year old working political system that they feel has given them nothing worth preserving -- into a governance crisis in which, as Alan notes, the Constitution will be of no help at all.

First, the Republicans refuse to confirm a Democratic presidential nominee, then the Democrats refuse to confirm a Republican's, and soon, we have no working Supreme Court, and because the Constitution says nothing about how to fix that, we are left with just two branches, neither of which will work with the other. 

So then what? Without a working government to prevent it, maybe we just fight each other?

Maybe it's time our side started seriously reconsidering learning how to shoot guns.

Response to While We Were Sleeping

(See: Just Above Sunset: While We Were Sleeping)

I really liked reading Seth Stevenson in Slate, about hanging around the Jeb Bush campaign last Monday, the day Jeb invited his brother, "W", to introduce him at his rally in Charleston:

I saw people leaving once Dubya was done, and after it became clear that Laura Bush, also sitting on stage, wouldn’t be speaking. They stepped on discarded “Jeb!” placards as they headed for the exits.

And so two days later, after "addressing a modest gathering inside a gazebo" at a country club -- inside a gazebo! -- someone approached him:

“I loved your brother. Can you be in that category?” inquired an older man, rather doubtfully. “Can you be a sumbitch?” 

“I will be tough. I will be resolute. I will be firm. I will be clear. I will be determined,” Jeb answered. ... It was the least sumbitchy thing you ever saw in your life.

Oh, that's great.

So it turns out, after all, that the real problem with Jeb Bush isn't that he would end up being his brother, it's that he wouldn't!

To further understand what I'm about to say, you may want to read David Axelrod's "The Obama Theory of Trump" in the New York Times in late January, about what he told Barack Obama back in 2006 about why Obama just might win if he ran for president:

Open-seat presidential elections are shaped by perceptions of the style and personality of the outgoing incumbent. Voters rarely seek the replica of what they have. They almost always seek the remedy, the candidate who has the personal qualities the public finds lacking in the departing executive. 

A young, energetic John F. Kennedy succeeded the grandfatherly, somnolent Dwight D. Eisenhower, promising “a new generation of leadership.” In a slight variation, a puritanical Jimmy Carter, offering “a government as good as its people,” defeated the unelected incumbent Gerald R. Ford, who bore the burden of the morally bankrupt Nixon era. 

Even George H.W. Bush, running to succeed the popular and larger-than-life Ronald Reagan, subtly made a virtue of his own lack of charisma and edge. 

The pattern followed in 2008, as Mr. Bush’s son completed his final term in office. 

“The most influential politician in 2008 won’t be on the ballot,” I wrote to Senator Obama in 2006. “His name is George W. Bush.”

So, in fact, Stevenson may have struck on that secret formula we've all been looking for, which is an understanding of what the Republican base voter is looking for.

He's not looking for an outsider or some way to shake up Washington, he's looking for the exact opposite of Barack Obama -- someone who's not too bright; someone without actual ideas, nor a wonky bone in his body; someone not at all gracious or nice or adept at diplomacy; and someone who doesn't give a shit what any person or group or organization or country thinks or says about him being totally incompetent at doing absolutely anything useful for the planet.

To sum it up -- for lack of a better term -- they're simply looking for a sumbitch! And the bigger the sumbitch, the better!

This antichrist will probably get the Republican nomination, and whoever the Democrats choose to run against him in the general election will look, in contrast, like the second coming of Jesus Christ.

Response to Replacement Theory

(See: Just Above Sunset: Replacement Theory)

One thing I haven't heard discussed anywhere in the recent shitstorm concerning the proposition that a "lame duck" president -- allegedly, one who comes within a year of leaving office -- should stop being president, is the evolving meaning of the term "lame duck". Here's how my computer's onboard dictionary defines it:

lame duck |ˈˌleɪm ˈdək|
noun  

an official (esp. the president), in the final period of office, after the election of a successor

That, at least, is what it used to mean back when Marco Rubio was in elementary school.

In fact, I myself am old enough to remember when pundits, back when they were called "commentators", started commenting ironically on the fact that, although the election was months and even years away, some president started acting as if he were a lame-duck earlier and earlier, partly because a lot of people stopped listening to him. And the next thing I knew, they were doing away with the "as-if".

But here's Wikipedia on the concept of lame-duckism in American politics:

In U.S. politics, the period between (presidential and congressional) elections in November and the inauguration of officials early in the following year is commonly called the lame duck period. In regard to the presidency, a president is a lame-duck after a successor has been elected, and during this time the outgoing president and president-elect usually embark on a transition of power. ... 

A president elected to a second term is sometimes seen as being a lame duck from early in the second term, because presidents are barred from contesting a term four years later, and is thus freer to take politically unpopular action. Nonetheless, as the de facto leader of his or her political party, the president's actions affect how the party performs in the midterm elections two years into the second term, and, to some extent, the success of that party's nominee in the next presidential election four years in the future. 

For this reason, it can be argued that a president in his second term is not a lame duck at all, because this increased freedom makes him more powerful than he was in his first term. 

The term "lame duck President" traditionally is reserved for a President who is serving out the remainder of his term after having been defeated for re-election. In this sense, the following Presidents in the twentieth century were lame ducks: William Howard Taft, who was defeated for re-election in 1912; Herbert Hoover, who was defeated for re-election in 1932; Gerald R. Ford, who was defeated in 1976; Jimmy Carter, who was defeated for re-election in 1980; and George H. W. Bush, who was defeated for re-election in 1992.

So technically speaking, since Obama won't be defeated, given that he's not even running, not only is he not really a lame duck right now, he won't really even become a lame duck president on the day after election day, about nine months from now.

And while I'm here, I should say something about the contributions of Miguel Estrada and Benjamin Wittes to the discussion:

Here’s a simple piece of advice for anyone confused by the partisan politics of replacing Justice Antonin Scalia: Assume that anyone who claims to be acting out of a pristine sense of civic principle is being dishonest. 

We have both argued for a world in which judicial nominees receive prompt hearings and up-and-down votes based solely on their objective qualifications — education, experience and temperament. But that has not been our world for at least two decades. The savvy citizen should recognize as much and heavily discount anyone who speaks in the language of principle about the rules or norms that do or should govern the treatment of either a judicial nominee or the president who sends that nominee to the Senate. 

As recent history demonstrates, the only rule that governs the confirmation process is the law of the jungle: There are no rules. There is no point in pretending otherwise, as much as many of us wish it were not so. ... 

Republicans and Democrats put the blame on the other for the complete abandonment of rules and norms in the judicial confirmation process. Both are being insincere — whitewashing their conduct over a long period of time while complaining bitterly about the very same conduct on the part of the other side. Both have chosen, in increments of one-upmanship, to replace a common law of judicial nominations that was based on certain norms with one based on power politics alone. 

Today, there is no principle and no norm in the judicial nominations process that either side would not violate itself and simultaneously demand the other side observe as a matter of decency and inter-branch comity.

Yeah. But also, no.

The "yeah" part is that, yes, shit does happen. Senator Obama once backed a filibuster, although he later said he regretted doing so. Even I have found myself arguing that, if Republicans pull this stuff on us, we should threaten to later do the same to them -- that is, vow to filibuster every nomination of a Republican president until a Democratic one comes along. After all, where in the Constitution does it say we can't create chaos?

But the "no" part is that the founders couldn't write such a comprehensive document that covered every single detail, from how long a senate dominated by one party can stall confirming a nominee of the other, to exactly how many times a day the senators should take bathroom breaks. In truth, the founders didn't even anticipate there being any political parties in America, much less two of them constantly co-conspiring on ways to torpedo getting anything done.

The founders left it up to us to work out the details on how to make happen the things that need to happen. Yes, there's nothing in our Constitution that dictates that certain procedures happen a certain way, or even that they happen at all, but throughout our history, when we, the people, noticed a flaw in the Constitution, we sent out a patch. When the presidential election of 1800 demonstrated that future elections could all too easily end up in unresolvable ties, we immediately fixed it by amending the constitution. When we finally realized that our definition of "people" shouldn't exclude non-whites and non-males, we fixed it.

And so, yes, both sides get away with using power politics when they can, but there's a difference between the way things do work and the way they should work; otherwise, we'd never even know that we need to fix the system when it's broke.

But whenever we find ourselves falling into the trap of claiming that, if one party does something wrong, the other side obviously must do it, too, we need to stop ourselves. After all, as has recently been pointed out, while most Republicans seemed to get on Chief Justice Roberts' case for twice refusing to kill Obamacare, you didn't see Democrats likewise go nuts and blame Justices Brewer and Ginsburg for voting with the majority on not forcing the states to expand Medicaid.

My point is, when someone argues on principle, you shouldn't jump to the conclusion that they are "being dishonest"; otherwise, you would not see the occasional conservative (such as David Brooks, on NPR on Friday) agreeing with the rest of us who believe that when a vacancy comes up on the Supreme Court, the president -- no matter how far we are away from his being out of office -- should nominate a replacement, and the senate should advise and consent.

Response to Hillary's Hero

(See: Just Above Sunset: Hillary's Hero)

I haven't always had a problem with Henry Kissinger.

I remember the first time I became aware of him as a foreign policy expert, some time in mid-1968, reading an article by him in one of those thick foreign affairs journals that had no pictures. I knew he was some Harvard professor that I had never heard of, but he seemed to make such good sense. He seemed like the kind of intelligent guy who could get us out of Vietnam.

And then I learned he had somehow attached himself to presidential hopeful Nelson Rockefeller, which disappointed me as a Democrat -- not wanting all them smarts to go to waste, I wondered if it was too late for him to hook up instead with some Democrat, like Gene McCarthy or Robert Kennedy -- but the next thing I knew, Rockefeller was out of the race and Kissinger had glommed onto Nixon.

Flash forward to many years later, I remember being annoyed that Nixon was promising voters he had a "secret plan" to end that stupid war that I had begun to think would be endless, and sure enough, even after he was elected, his secret remained a secret. And finally, after having successfully delayed the war's end with quarrels over the shape of the peace-talks table in Paris, war wagers Henry Kissinger of the United States and Le Duc Tho of North Vietnam were prematurely awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. I say "prematurely" because they won for negotiating a settlement that never took effect.

So what I primarily remember Kissinger for was being this brilliant man who was widely-respected for getting good things done, but who in fact, had allowed maybe a million or so Vietnamese and 50-thousand or so Americans to end up dead, by helping drag out the Vietnam War unnecessarily, seemingly to make it look like we didn't fight it in vain. The truth is, we did, and if he was so smart, he should have made sure that we hadn't.

But here's an even more damning picture of Kissinger's vaunted career, from an article by NYU history professor Greg Granin in The Nation, on February 5th:

Let’s consider some of Kissinger’s achievements during his tenure as Richard Nixon’s top foreign policy–maker. 

He (1) prolonged the Vietnam War for five pointless years; (2) illegally bombed Cambodia and Laos; (3) goaded Nixon to wiretap staffers and journalists; (4) bore responsibility for three genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, and Bangladesh; (5) urged Nixon to go after Daniel Ellsberg for having released the Pentagon Papers, which set off a chain of events that brought down the Nixon White House; (6) pumped up Pakistan’s ISI, and encouraged it to use political Islam to destabilize Afghanistan; (7) began the US’s arms-for-petrodollars dependency with Saudi Arabia and pre-revolutionary Iran; (8) accelerated needless civil wars in southern Africa that, in the name of supporting white supremacy, left millions dead; (9) supported coups and death squads throughout Latin America; and (10) ingratiated himself with the first-generation neocons, such as Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz, who would take American militarism to its next calamitous level. ... 

A full tally hasn’t been done, but a back-of-the-envelope count would attribute 3, maybe 4 million deaths to Kissinger’s actions, but that number probably undercounts his victims in southern Africa. 

Pull but one string from the current tangle of today’s multiple foreign policy crises, and odds are it will lead back to something Kissinger did between 1968 and 1977. Over-reliance on Saudi oil? That’s Kissinger. Blowback from the instrumental use of radical Islam to destabilize Soviet allies? Again, Kissinger. An unstable arms race in the Middle East? Check, Kissinger. Sunni-Shia rivalry? Yup, Kissinger. The impasse in Israel-Palestine? Kissinger. Radicalization of Iran?  “An act of folly” was how veteran diplomat George Ball described Kissinger’s relationship to the Shah. Militarization of the Persian Gulf?  Kissinger, Kissinger, Kissinger.

So wait! Shouldn't we all be noting the irony of a self-described "progressive Democrat who can get things done" who happens to be running for the Democratic nomination for president, so closely associating herself with the most prominent Republican diplomat in American history -- while, incidentally, Kissinger's name has probably not been mentioned once by all those innumerable Republican candidates in just so many of their debates?

Yes, but, you might ask, how did she get to this place?

One possible answer, although not the definitive one, is that Hillary Clinton started out in life as a Republican. Her parents were Conservative Republicans, and she herself, at one point, did volunteer for Barry Goldwater. This is not to say she still is a Conservative, but I'm willing to bet much of her that's-just-the-way-it-is pragmatism -- much more pragmatic than your average progressive Democrat, I would think -- can be traced back to her political beginnings.

Just as one could imagine Kissinger's "realpolitik" -- a political worldview he shared with Otto von Bismarck, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong -- was to the "idealist" views of those of us who opposed the Vietnam War, so was Hillary Clinton's own views to those of Barack Obama in 2008:

“Now, I could stand up here and say, ‘Let’s just get everybody together. Let’s get unified,'” Clinton said to laughter of the crowd. 

“The skies will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing and everyone will know we should do the right thing and the world will be perfect,” she said dryly as the crowd erupted. 

“Maybe I’ve just lived a little long, but I have no illusions about how hard this is going to be,” Clinton continued. “You are not going to wave a magic wand to make special interests disappear.”

You've "just lived a little long", you say? You mean like Bernie Sanders?

Not that Hillary wasn't prescient about the Republican brick wall President Obama was headed for, but, first of all, she lost that election, and second of all, in winning it, Barack Obama revived hope among the hopeless in America, at least for just a little while.

And just for a few years under Obama, some good "idealistic" things happened -- near universal healthcare; a growing American economy that recovered without resorting to the crippling (Republican) austerity policies seen in the slump experienced in Europe; falling unemployment and a shrinking deficit; improved relations with Cuba; gays allowed to marry and serve in the military without being hounded out; talking with Iran, which led to a deal to shut down their nukes program; persuading Assad to surrender his chemical weapons, and getting Putin to help; and judicious participation in Syria, breaking us of the nasty habit of stumbling into every war that crops up -- all good things that wouldn't have taken place had a Republican without vision been in the White House during those years, and, one might presume, had Hillary beaten Obama to the Democratic nomination in 2008.

While I was pleased to see Obama include Hillary in his administration, I had hoped her time there might inform her of the power and significance of idealism and dreams, but I'm not seeing much, if any, of that today in her attacks on Bernie Sanders. Although maybe she learned nothing from Obama, it's also possible that her own predisposition toward realpolitik told her to just hang tough until come the day she gets a chance to do things her way, and at the same time, ironically, doing it under the pretense of adopting the Obama mantle.

So yeah, while there are days when I urge myself to forget about casting that protest vote for Bernie in a few weeks from now, I'm not quite ready to abandon my "idealism" yet and vote for Kissinger's pal, Hillary. While "reality" is cool, too much "realism" can put you on a slippery slope to outright evil, assuming you believe in that sort of thing. It's better to temper it with a healthy dash of unrealism:

Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp,
Or what's a heaven for? ~ Robert Browning.

That's a lesson I'm still hoping Hillary can learn.

Not likely? Okay, but a guy can dream, can't he?

Response to Breaking the Spell

(See: Just Above Sunset: Breaking the Spell)

Slate’s Elias Isquith, on Marco Rubio's age:

As they once said of that cherubic whippersnapper Al Gore, Rubio is an older person’s idea of a young person.

Yes, but that can work both ways.

Being someone who has gone through his whole life looking younger than he is (I'm 71, but a few weeks ago, someone guessed I was in my 50s), I tell people it's a good-news/bad-news story; the good news is that I don't look my age, but the bad news is that I am.

With Marco, this works against him. He's 44, but I know plenty of people, especially those "of a certain age", who think he looks too young to be president. And lack of longevity may help explain his debate screwup: The older you get, the better chance that you will have learned tricks to strategize around your mental shortcomings.

Of course, having learned the lesson from Trump -- never apologize, and for godsakes never backtrack -- Rubio's response to his robotic repetition the next day was predictable:

“It’s what I believe and it’s what I’m going to continue to say, because it happens to be one of the main reasons why I am running.”

That's sort of the same lesson I learned being an amateur jazz-guitar jammer; if you hit a wrong note, the trick is to repeat the mistake one or two more times, in hopes the audience will think you did it on purpose. After all, this is jazz! People come to expect weird sounds now and then! It might even earn you praise as an innovative improviser.

But here's one big problem with Rubio trying that same trick:

The short version of what Rubio says -- that we need to stop thinking Obama doesn't know what he's doing because he does -- is something that most of us Democrats, including Obama, can sign on to, which makes it, in effect, Rubio's endorsement of Obama. That would be nice for Democrats if Obama were running for president, but he's not. You'd think Rubio would want to concentrate his admonitions on the people he's actually competing with for the office, especially if he's planning on making some repeated phrase the centerpiece of his campaign.

Donald Trump, on the other hand, is old enough (69) to have learned a few workarounds to his not knowing the first thing about doing the job he's aspiring to, many of which are being wrong about so many of his claims ("His grandmother in Kenya said he was born in Kenya and she was there and witnessed the birth, okay?", "If you look at the statistics, of ... the illegal immigrants — if you look at the statistics on rape, on crime, on everything, coming in illegally to the country, they're mind-boggling", et al) that nobody bothers fact-checking his statements anymore.

If anyone has been looking into Trump's latest whopper regarding the Iowa caucuses, I've missed it. Here he was in Arkansas on Wednesday of last week, two days after Iowa:

“Actually, I think I came in first,” he told a cheering crowd of more than 11,500 people who packed into Barton Coliseum to hear him. 

Mr. Trump, who placed second in Iowa, was continuing a theme he had been unspooling over the previous 24 hours — that in his view, Senator Ted Cruz, who won Monday’s caucuses, had in fact stolen the election. 

Mr. Cruz was declared the winner, with 27.6 percent of the vote; Mr. Trump came in second, with 24.3 percent.

I haven't heard estimates of exactly how many Carson voters were tricked into going over to Cruz, but I'm willing to bet Trump doesn't know either. But I do think it's significant that, in quitting Carson, very few if any of them thought to switch to Trump. He may not think that's worth noting, but I do.

But here's Trump complaining about the attention Rubio got after Iowa:

"In fact, you would have thought he had won. I came in second, he came in third, and his is a tremendous victory and mine’s not. 

“It’s interesting that Marco came in third place and it’s one of the great victories in the history of politics. They said, ‘No, no, his is, but yours isn’t.' And I said, ‘Oh, that’s wonderful.' I didn’t understand that.”

Do you seriously not understand?

Okay, it's all about expectations, Don. You were expected to win it, but you got beat. Rubio, who many had hoped would be a possible alternative to you and Cruz, and had been hanging down among the also-rans, somewhat surprisingly ended up in a virtual tie with you for second place!

Get it yet? You need to figure out this politics stuff soon if you have any hopes of competing in the general election, much less being a successful president. (Shutter.)

But also:

Trump then argued that the gap between his results and Rubio is much wider than widely acknowledged. 

“People said Rubio was right next to me,” he said. "Well, he was more than 2,000 votes away. That’s a lot of votes. 

“Don’t forget, in the history of Iowa, I got the most votes, other than one person, Ted. ...  I got a tremendous amount of votes, nobody came close.”

Yeah, you got the most votes -- "other than one person", Ted Cruz -- who got more. "Nobody came close" to your votes? How about Marco Rubio?

For a better perspective on actually how far ahead of Marco and behind Ted you ended up, here are the actual numbers:

• Cruz 
• votes:  51,666    percent: 28%     delegates: 8   
• Trump  
• votes: 45,427     percent: 24%     delegates: 7   
• Rubio 
• votes: 43,165     percent: 23%     delegates: 7

So by my figuring, you were 2,262 votes ahead of Rubio -- big whoop! -- but you were 6,239 behind Cruz! Almost three times as many! If 2,000 is "a lot of votes", then 6,000 is "a lot of votes", times three! You and Rubio tied on delegates; Cruz got more.

But here's the thing: With fingers crossed, I still think I want Trump to beat Rubio to the GOP nomination.

Yes, I realize the risk of this venomous lounge-lizard becoming our president, it's just that Rubio gives the appearance of being more normal than Trump, and maybe even Ted Cruz, which means he probably has a better chance to beat either Hillary or Bernie, whereas I'm betting that most of America is more aware of the threat from Trump.

Man, choosing a president in this country is getting to be like tap dancing on the edge of a cliff.

Response to After Iowa

(See: Just Above Sunset: After Iowa)

If it's not one thing, it's another. First, you got your Republicans, and then your Democrats.

First, the Republicans:

As we started watching the goings-on in Iowa last night, my wife and I found ourselves rooting for Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee, figuring he's probably more beatable than the rest.

Still, we were glad to see somebody stop the unstoppable Trump, yet sorry to see that the somebody was Ted Cruz.

Then again, we're confident that Cruz will eventually lose steam, too -- but sorry to see it will probably be to Marco Rubio.

Yipes! Damn, this gets confusing. I thought I'd be glad to see the voting finally start -- and believe me, I am! -- but It's starting to occur to me that it's not going to be fun anymore.

Then, the Democrats:

I think the best observation I heard from a pundit last night came from someone I can't even remember, although I'm pretty sure it came from Jake Tapper on CNN, who said he heard from someone earlier in the evening who expected to eventually be voting for Hillary, but in the meantime was voting for Bernie, "just to annoy her."

That little tidbit not only summed up the whole absurdity of the day, it totally jibed with my own feelings.

Even though I know intellectually that she, of all the candidates of both parties, is the best qualified to be president, she just doesn't impress me. Yes, she's the best of the bunch, but let's face it, look who she's up against!

It has nothing to do with whether I can "trust" her or whatever we're supposed to feel from her behavior in those GOP-driven "issues" concerning "Benghazi" and her emails, it's really more about her always seeming to be trying too hard not to be seen as trying too hard.

For one thing, she smiles too much! Nobody walks around every day smiling that much, always seeming to be pleasantly surprised about something. And when she's not smiling, she always seems to be shouting something! I hope, if she's elected president, she learns how to tone all that down, and just goes ahead and does the goddam job.

Not that Bernie is perfect, of course. I got this email from him, sent out moments after midnight last night:

Rick -- Tonight we accomplished what the corporate media and political establishment once believed was impossible...

Never mind what we all accomplished, since you know what that was, but at the end, he signed off...

On to New Hampshire. 

In solidarity, 

Bernie Sanders 

CONTRIBUTE $50 

Paid for by Bernie 2016  (not the billionaires)

Not to get nit-picky, by the way, but I half expected there to be an exclamation mark after "On to New Hampshire!", but the fact that there actually wasn't one pleased me, since it actually captures his spirit of understatement, unique among politicians, which is a large part of his charm.

And yes, the reason he's sending me emails is because, a while back, I actually sent some money to him -- partly just to "annoy" Hillary, who I think has been insufficiently attentive to the main issues that concern Bernie, which include what we have been calling "inequality" (although it's what I prefer to call "economy out of balance" -- which is bad for everybody, rich and poor) and campaign financing reform, and maybe even having another try at "Medicare For All" -- on that last one, figuring, the worst that can happen if it fails is we just keep Obamacare the way it is.

I guess my problem with Bernie is that he keeps sounding like an old-time out-of-touch I.F. Stone-type lefty from the 1950s, with workers standing "in solidarity" in a "revolution" against "the billionaires". That "In solidarity" conjures up images of posters showing heroic workers, all with their fists in the air. Sorry, I just don't relate.

But also, while much of his schtick is his ability to talk frankly, off the cuff and with refreshing candor, we also very quickly notice him then lapsing into that one-note-johnny humdrum of political stump-speech talk, reminding us once again that...

...in our country today, the top one-tenth of 1 percent own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent and when the 20 richest people own more wealth than the bottom 150 million Americans ... the system is rigged when the average person is working longer hours for lower wages, while 58 percent of all new income goes to the top 1 percent.

And I'm thinking, "Wait. He says the top what percent own the bottom how much?" Not that I disagree or think it's unimportant, it's just that whenever my ears hear that, they tend to involuntarily glaze over. Still, at least he's not talking about carpet bombing illegal immigrants or whatever it is Carly Fiorina is always trying to say about the Sixth Fleet.

And for another thing, there's that swipe at "corporate media", which implies that mainstream-media journalists are phonies and hacks, toiling at serving their corporate masters, who are pushing the agenda of "the man".

Having spent much of my life working for "corporate media" -- at NBC and AP and CNN, among others -- I can tell you I saw it all up close, and I saw that the bosses would not get away with calling the shots on what news to cover or how to cover it in a way that would help the corporate owners, nor was there so-called "self-censorship" in the sense that editors and reporters "know what not to do" if they wanted to keep their jobs. In most cases, in fact, journalists being an overly-proud bunch, the bosses knew that if they had tried that, there would have been mass resignations.

But I guess I still plan on voting for Bernie in the March 1st Georgia primary -- although probably not if I suspect that a vote for Bernie will, in any way, damage the chances of Hillary, who really is, in the long run, I am loath to admit, the better man for the job.

Response to Missing Quite a Lot

(See: Just Above Sunset: Missing Quite a Lot)

If you, as I do, are tempted to ask how it is that all these newbie candidates keep bringing up that bit about our military forces having shrunk since 1916 -- the same thing that Romney kept bringing up back in 2012, and which Obama finally got a chance to answer, face-to-face ...

“You mention the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets,” Obama said during the final presidential debate. “We have these things called aircraft carriers and planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.”

... it's probably because all these current Republicans have, so far, been discussing all this stuff among themselves, where there's been nobody in the discussion with the incentive to set the record straight. That should change, of course, once some Democrat gets on the stage.

It's worth remembering, by the way, that falsely claiming the current administration is not keeping us safe is an old trick in presidential elections, and not always used just by Republicans:

The missile gap was the Cold War term used in the US for the perceived superiority of the number and power of the USSR's missiles in comparison with its own. This gap in the ballistic missile arsenals only existed in exaggerated estimates made by the Gaither Committee in 1957 and in United States Air Force (USAF) figures. ... Like the bomber gap of only a few years earlier, it was soon demonstrated that the gap was entirely fictional. 

John F. Kennedy is credited with inventing the term in 1958 as part of the ongoing election campaign, in which a primary plank of his rhetoric was that the Eisenhower administration was weak on defense. It was later learned that Kennedy was apprised of the actual situation during the campaign, which has led scholars to question what the (future) president knew and when he knew it. There has been some speculation that he was aware of the illusory nature of the missile gap from the start, and was using it solely as a political tool, an example of policy by press release.

But, of course, all this ill-informed Republican tough-talk on who we would be "bombing the shit out of", and how, if they were president -- a question that is being totally ignored on the Democratic side -- helps highlight the main difference in what the candidates on each side are looking to convey to voters. In general terms, the Republicans are trying to impress "toughness", while the Democrats are focussing on "smartness". It's "I-may-not-be-smart-but-I'm-tough" versus "I-may-not-be-tough-but-I'm-smart".

But it's actually more than that. While one's intelligence (assuming one has it) can be directly demonstrated in a campaign setting, toughness can only be hinted at.

Therefore, Republicans must constantly demonstrate their dominance over somebody -- especially their opponents, but not necessarily just opponents -- with symbolic gestures, such as humiliating their fellow candidates on Twitter, while Democrats ask voters to support them because, if elected, they will govern with the same intelligence they've been demonstrating throughout the campaign. It's all form versus function, in the sense that you can only promise you'll do something mean to our "enemies" if you win, or else you can come up with some good ideas on solving problems peacefully, and you can do that now.

But if they can't literally do more than promise someday to kick some foreign ass, they can still pretend to be beating up on Hillary back home, in the here and now.

As for her famous emails, I erupt every time I hear some candidate offhandedly mention that Hillary will probably be "indicted" any day now for something or other, without saying what or how or why.

First of all, to repeat what Fred Kaplan told us in Slate, since it's worth repeating:

Mishandling of classified information is a misdemeanor, which could turn out to be a problem for her; but even the sources of leaks about these incidents have acknowledged that she’s not the target of a criminal probe and that the lapse had no national-security impact.

A misdemeanor? All this scary FBI talk is about a possible misdemeanor?

It's also become known -- no small feat in itself, since nobody in the know is supposed to talk about this stuff, I guess even in private -- that what's being called "classified" was classified after the fact, and apparently might concern something so trivial as a casual mention of some newspaper article that mentions the drone program -- which nobody is supposed to know about, in spite of the fact that everybody, including you, does know about it.

And it should also be clear by now, including to all those disingenuous Republican candidates who pretend they don't know this, that all this talk about a criminal investigation of Hillary Clinton is simply hogwash.

Just for fun, someone needs to ask Chris Christie, or any of the other surviving Republican candidates who have been pushing this email fantasy, if they are aware of the United States having a drone program.

And if they say yes, they should be immediately arrested for disclosing classified information, just like Hillary Clinton did.

Response to Dying in Iowa

(See: Just Above Sunset: Dying in Iowa)

And now, for your amusement, another topical Iowa reference:

Q: "Is this Hell?" 

A: "No, it's Iowa."

Although the tragedy occurring in that state right now may actually be no laughing matter, it's hard not to relate when you notice that every reporter and pundit of every stripe in Des Moines that showed up on TV last night seemed to be smiling, sort of as I've always imagined many passengers on the sinking Titanic did once they concluded there was nothing more that could be done to stop it from happening.

I decided to watch the debate anyway last night, despite how boring it was bound to be, but found myself pleasantly surprised. Yes, it was boring, and predictably stupid, but not nearly as annoying as it would have been had Donald Trump been there -- not just because of the things he always says but more because of that constant mugging and gesturing when the other contestants are talking, which the camera just can't seem to ignore.

I was left with the feeling that, because Trump always seems to dumb down any room he's in, the tone was a smidge higher last night. Still, yes, the candidates' pre-rehearsed bits did seem to grate that much more without Trump there to break up their rhythm. I'm pretty sure that somewhere in the country, someone was playing a drinking game over that crescendoed phrase, "And when I become president..." (Hey, guys, you can't all become president -- and in fact, it is my sincere hope that none of you do.)

Did his not being there help him or hurt him?

I have to confess, it's impossible for me to say, since knowing that also requires knowing the nature of whatever nonsense it is that's rattling around in the skulls of those who are seriously considering voting for him. But I'm pretty sure those who had been supporting him before last night were probably impressed with his doing that, especially since if they had any inclination to suspect that his shenanigans are cheapening the whole idea of our maintaining America as a self-governing democracy, they probably wouldn't have been backing him all along.

Speaking of shenanigans, now and then, we did switch over to CNN, which was not carrying what could only be called "The Trump Event" gavel-to-gavel, so to speak, but covered it much as they cover political conventions -- that is, jumping in and out at will, sometimes staying on Donald at the podium, but often splitting the screen, with the "event" in one box and a guest being interviewed in another. But oddly enough, even with the network's attempt at breaking up the monotony of the show, it was even more boring than the real thing across town.

But we did stay long enough to notice the predictable nature of it all. For awhile, I thought it would be like a Jerry Lewis Telethon, but without all the jugglers and the crocodile tears at the end.

In fact, the idea of the Trump campaign promoting this as a charity event, not a political event, reminded me of the campus animal house taking time off to remind people that, in addition to hosting drunken toga parties, they also support two starving children overseas somewhere.

And the prediction that they would collect maybe $5-million, "maybe even more" (they ended up announcing they took in $6-million) was diminished by the suspicion that the whole thing was a hoax, with all those big donors -- including $1-million from Donald himself -- having ponied up before anyone took to the stage. But if you think $6-million is a whopping amount, remember that Trump himself has talked of getting his first start in business with what he referred to, without irony, as a "small loan" of $1-million from his father.

To top it off, there seemed to be an ongoing controversy as to who would be the recipient of the donations. Last I heard, none of the regular veteran groups would have anything to do with this. But I guess that's totally beside the point.

And the scariest thing about all of this shady business was that the thug behind it still seems to maintain enough support to be the frontrunner in Iowa, maybe headed for a win there and in New Hampshire, and maybe beyond.

But yes, in spite of the fact that it becomes increasingly obvious that our ship of state is in peril, it's hard not to look at all these Damon Runyonesque goings-on and laugh, having concluded that there is nothing more that can be done to stop this from happening.

Response to Trumping the Press

(See: Just Above Sunset: Trumping the Press)

I don't get it! As far as I can tell, nobody anywhere, in any media, has used what, to me, should be the obvious headline:

"Donald Ducks Debate"

(Believe it or not, they used to pay me to write captions like that back when I worked for AP Photos in New York. No, come to think of it, that one they would have thrown back at me.)

Is this about Megyn Kelly, or about Trump finding a way to capture headlines just before Iowa? The answer is yes, but I think there's even something more than that.

I remember years ago, when Chris Christy first started being talked of as a possible GOP candidate for president, I thought he would be a major contender when the time came, simply because he's a tough guy and a bully. Forget low taxes and small government and abortion, if you boiled the typical conservative down to his essence, you'd be left with someone who values shows of strength over anything else.

Christy's real downfall came in hugging Obama. Bridgegate? Okay, but only because he came off looking like he lost that fight, and the hard-core conservatives who are powering the campaign these days will write you off if you (a) hug Obama and (b) if you come off looking like a loser in a fight.

[Insert Donald Trump here.]

Is Trump a conservative or not? Here's Conor Friedersdorf in The Atlantic last summer:

In public statements, he has advocated government healthcare, a woman’s right to an abortion, an assault weapons ban, and paying off the national debt by forcing rich people to forfeit 14.25 percent of their total wealth. When the man married his third wife, he invited Bill and Hillary Clinton to the wedding, and he has given many thousands to their political campaigns and their foundation. He’s donated many thousands more that helped elect Democrats to the Senate and the House. And George W. Bush was “maybe the worst president in the history of this country,” the man said in 2008. “He was so incompetent, so bad, so evil.” 

On paper, this is not someone you’d expect to excel in the 2016 Republican Party primary. But Donald Trump is excelling.

Why? Because he represents the logical extension of all that is conservative in America. He's a bully. He likes to push people around. He's noticed that being tough is the sort of thing that impresses his largely low-education followers. The nastier he gets, the higher his numbers go.

Remember Hobbes' Leviathan?

In 1651, when Charles II was in exile in France, Thomas Hobbes published The Leviathan – life is mean, nasty, brutish and short, and that means we need a strong central government run by a king with near-absolute power...

Except for "and short", that's a good description of Trump -- mean, nasty, and brutish.

Trump wants to show off his strength and bargaining abilities, which, in the case of the upcoming debate, means, first of all, negotiating a better deal with Fox News, either by having them fire Megyn Kelly, or at least have her removed as a moderator. He knows he's got them over a barrel, since their ratings will soar if he shows up, and will drop if he doesn't.

So Fox News' boss, Roger Ailes, doesn't back down? Okay, he'll punish Ailes by, instead, staging some other event Thursday night, to raise money for "veterans and wounded warriors" -- which, I guess, is even cleverer than raising money for, say, widows and orphans, or maybe the Kitten and Puppy Rescue Fund. The rubes at his rallies will buy this, the pundits will call it brilliant, but count me among those who scoff at its baldfaced cynicism, just another sign that American politics has come to resemble Buffalo Bill's Cowboys and Indians Traveling Circus.

I found myself yesterday, while watching the news, saying to my wife something I hardly ever hear myself saying: "Boy, I hope Fox News doesn't back down or give in!" But then she reminded me that "there's no chance that Roger Ailes will back down!"

And of course, because we both worked for him back in the 1970s -- at TVN, a news syndicator owned by conservative brewer Joe Coors, who founded the company about when Nixon resigned because, I've always contended, he wanted to get the idea of a Ronald Reagan candidacy into the public consciousness -- we knew she was right.

One of my personal memories of Roger was showing up for work one afternoon, just after some broadcast union had declared a strike on TVN, to see a crowd of employees standing in a circle around him as he was pacing back and forth, shouting obscenities into a phone outside his office.

Someone told me he was on with President Ford's press secretary, Ron Nessen, who had been trying to persuade Roger to withdraw his scab camera crew from a Ford event, since none of the other networks would film it with us there. Paraphrasing here, I heard Roger loudly tell Nessen to grow some fucking balls and tell the other fucking networks that if they don't want to cover the fucking event, that's their fucking choice, but our crew is there to cover the fucking news, and we're not leaving.

Incidentally, Roger won.

The fact is, Roger Ailes is not only a conservative, he's of the tough-guy school of conservatism, as is Donald Trump. They both enjoy confrontation, and neither likes to be pushed around. I suppose it's not that much of a risk Trump is taking in this showdown, although I remain convinced that one of these days, his star will yet fall out of the sky, and just maybe enough Iowans will notice that The Donald Ducked Out of the Debate, and will think less of him for it.

And as much as I, as a liberal Democrat, have my problems with Roger Ailes and Fox News, I really want him, and them, to win this one.

I know this is too much to hope for, but wouldn't it be nice if there were such a thing as a reverse boycott of the debate -- that is, people who would otherwise not watch it, instead tune in, just to boost the ratings?

And for gods' sake, do not tune in to whatever the Donald has decided will be more worthwhile for voters to be watching tomorrow night.

Response to Should Have Seen This Coming

(See: Just Above Sunset: Should Have Seen This Coming)

It occurs to me, now that we're seeing a return to the old days -- the return of Sarah Palin, which in turn prompted the reappearance of not only Tina Fey, but Palin's exasperated 2008 handler, Nicolle Wallace -- maybe what this campaign really needs right now is the return of CBS's Katie Couric!

Not that Palin had not already been exposed as comically useless to her campaign by September of 2008, which is when she sat down to talk with Couric, but those TV interviews really zeroed in on whatever would have to pass for her aptitude for running the most powerful nation on earth:

COURIC: You've cited Alaska's proximity to Russia as part of your foreign-policy experience. What did you mean by that? 

PALIN: That Alaska has a very narrow maritime border between a foreign country, Russia, and on our other side, the land—boundary that we have with—Canada. It, it's funny that a comment like that was—kind of made to cari—I don't know. You know. Reporters— 

COURIC: Mocked? 

PALIN: Yeah, mocked, I guess that's the word, yeah. 

COURIC: Explain to me why that enhances your foreign policy credentials. 

PALIN: Well, it certainly does because our — our next door neighbors are foreign countries. They're in the state that I am the executive of. And there in Russia — 

COURIC: Have you ever been involved with any negotiations, for example, with the Russians? 

PALIN: We have trade missions back and forth. We — we do — it's very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where — where do they go? It's Alaska. It's just right over the border. It is — from Alaska that we send those out to make sure that an eye is being kept on this very powerful nation, Russia, because they are right there. They are right next to — to our state.

Really brings you back, doesn't it? Reminds us of those halcyon days when having a handle on foreign policy, and an ability to communicate it, was not just a plus for a candidate but a prerequisite for being elected.

That's all gone now. As Obama pal David Axelrod tells us, the pendulum seems to swing with every new president:

For those who found President Bush wanting, Senator Obama was the most obvious remedy. ... So who among the Republicans is more the antithesis of Mr. Obama than the trash-talking, authoritarian, give-no-quarter Mr. Trump?

But what Axelrod misses here is "smart" versus "not-so-much."

To me, Barack Obama's main appeal was always his being the smartest person in the room, and that included candidate Hillary Clinton, who not only had voted for Iraq but vowed not to talk with, much less negotiate with, Iran. Obama, like Hillary's Bill, could -- and often did -- eloquently expound on just about any issue facing the country, on the drop of a hat.

Yes, Hillary wouldn't be too shabby at that, and to a certain extent, John McCain was at least in the ballpark, but doing that sort of thing was never in Sarah Palin's wheelhouse.

Now picture Donald Trump, sitting down to an interview with either Katie Couric, or maybe even Charlie Gibson of ABC, who got to interview Palin earlier in that same month, before Katie did:

GIBSON: Do you agree with the Bush doctrine? 

PALIN: In what respect, Charlie? 

GIBSON: The Bush -- well, what do you -- what do you interpret it to be? 

PALIN: His world view. 

GIBSON: No, the Bush doctrine, enunciated September 2002, before the Iraq war. ... The Bush doctrine, as I understand it, is that we have the right of anticipatory self-defense, that we have the right to a preemptive strike against any other country that we think is going to attack us. Do you agree with that? 

PALIN: I agree that a president's job, when they swear in their oath to uphold our Constitution, their top priority is to defend the United States of America. 

I know that John McCain will do that and I, as his vice president, families we are blessed with that vote of the American people and are elected to serve and are sworn in on January 20, that will be our top priority is to defend the American people. 

GIBSON: Do we have a right to anticipatory self-defense? Do we have a right to make a preemptive strike again another country if we feel that country might strike us? 

PALIN: Charlie, if there is legitimate and enough intelligence that tells us that a strike is imminent against American people, we have every right to defend our country. In fact, the president has the obligation, the duty to defend. 

GIBSON: Do we have the right to be making cross-border attacks into Pakistan from Afghanistan, with or without the approval of the Pakistani government? 

PALIN: Now, as for our right to invade, we're going to work with these countries, building new relationships, working with existing allies, but forging new, also, in order to, Charlie, get to a point in this world where war is not going to be a first option. In fact, war has got to be, a military strike, a last option. 

GIBSON: But, Governor, I'm asking you: We have the right, in your mind, to go across the border with or without the approval of the Pakistani government? 

PALIN: In order to stop Islamic extremists, those terrorists who would seek to destroy America and our allies, we must do whatever it takes and we must not blink, Charlie, in making those tough decisions of where we go and even who we target. 

GIBSON: And let me finish with this. I got lost in a blizzard of words there. Is that a yes?

I imagine Trump would have handled Gibson better than Palin did, but not by showing a better familiarity with foreign policy issues, such as the Bush Doctrine, but by being better at bullshitting his way out of not knowing it.

I'm sure Trump knows about as much as Palin about foreign policy, but he'd just be more more adept at convincing voters that what he knows or doesn't know about anything isn't very important: "Charlie, take my word for it, when the time comes, I can hire people -- and I mean incredibly smart people! -- smart people who know about all that stuff."

(Yes, but doesn't he have to be smart enough to hire smart advisers? Does he even know enough to know when to go against their advice? And by the way, does he have any foreign policy experts on his campaign?)

After all, there's this: 

“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, okay?” Trump said, according to video from NBC News.

Except for the guy you shot, maybe, and maybe his loved ones? I mean, nowadays, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting some stupid Trump voter.

But I agree with him! I myself wrote roughly the same thing sometime last year, that Donald Trump being seen live on one of the morning TV shows, having sex with a toddler, would send his Iowa polls numbers even higher.

But just because having high poll numbers seems to be the most important thing to some random candidate doesn't mean he's the best man for the job.

“It’s, like, incredible. ... I have the most loyal people,” he said after citing his wide lead in the polls.

Of course you do! That's because you've picked stupid people as your target market, Donald, and stupid people are the most loyal people you can find because they don't listen to reason. After all, they're not backing you because you're smarter than Obama (or Jeb or Hillary or Bernie); in fact, they're backing you because you're not!

But this 2016 election really illustrates that we, as a nation, need to revisit the way we choose our leaders. In fact, I think that, assuming we come out of this year in one piece, we should consider a literacy test for presidential (and also vice-presidential) primary candidates.

It could be a test devised by a panel of experts from various fields -- including World and American History, Economics, Government, Science, and maybe even some Math of some kind. It should, I think, be broadcast live some night, just like a debate, with all the candidates taking the test simultaneously.

And no, the one with the highest grade does not automatically get the nomination -- those who pass the test still have to be voted on -- but there should be a rule that anyone who fails the test (that is, makes less than a "C") be disqualified from the race.

Bad idea?

Response to Unbearable Whiteness

(See: Just Above Sunset: Unbearable Whiteness)

About W. Kamau Bell's “White people, come get your boy":

“Donald Trump isn’t a Republican issue or a rich people issue or a human issue. Donald Trump is a white people issue. Whenever Ben Carson says batshit crazy nonsense, Black people rise up, and let him know that he needs to STFU. Whenever Raven-Symone pops off, we put her cap back on. We even handled Rachel Dolezal for you. Yes, we also make jokes and come up with clever memes and hashtags, but at the core of all that is that we are letting these people know that they are embarrassing us as Black people. 

It is time, white people, for you to finally step up and recognize that you also (even more so) have a responsibility to your race. It is up to you to silence Donald Trump. Don’t just insult him and make fun of him. You have to connect it to your race. Recognize that he is embarrassing you as a white person. Simple snark won’t win here. You have to feel it. You have to use words like “as a white person” and “he is an embarrassment to my race.” 

Stop acting like Trump isn’t the pinnacle and the result of America’s history and tradition of white supremacy. And again, P.S.: Simply put, white people, come get your boy.”

Not a chance, Kamau.

First of all, I am not one of those people who thinks black people should "take care of their own." If you feel like telling Ben Carson he's wrong for thinking a Muslim shouldn't be president or whatever, be my guest. But please don't do it because he's "embarrassing Black people." I feel qualified to tell Carson the same thing, and I don't care if he's disgracing his race or not. His race is just fine. It's not his race that's saying something stupid, it's him.

Yes, yes, I know! White people have always told black people they should speak up when other black people misbehave. First of all, white people shouldn't tell you that, and second of all, you shouldn't listen to them.

Furthermore, even if none of that were true, Donald Trump's major transgressions are so wide-ranging, they are hardly confined to racism, particularly not just anti-black racism. And while so many of us white people may always be saying not everything is about race, and so many black people reply that "everything is about race", you have to understand that this may be true if you are part of minority, particularly one that has suffered historical persecution, it's not to those of us in the majority. You're probably much more aware of Donald Trump being white than I am. In truth, the fact hardly ever occurs to me.

While it can easily be argued that Barack Obama and Jesse Jackson and Alan Keyes are "famous black people", Donald Trump is not a famous white person. Yes, technically, he's famous and white and even a person, but unless you're a person of "non-whiteness", it's hard to see "whiteness" as being one of Donald Trump's distinguishing features. So no, my own whiteness notwithstanding, I can't be held responsible for Donald Trump -- even if I could control him, which I can't.

So here's the deal:

I will not be holding you responsible for everyone of your whole race, so please don't hold me responsible for mine.

Rick