Micro 4T?

[pbrower2a]

(08-14-2017, 04:06 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(08-13-2017, 02:26 PM)Mikebert Wrote:

(06-23-2017, 03:41 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: I have yet to see President Trump get anything right. That is not so far a question of the objectionable quality of his agenda; he has done little but vilify his predecessor and his opponents.

This is true.  But do you not see that Trump in the WH is damaging to the Republican brand in a way that was worse than Bush?  Now that the foreign policy blob has neutered the president I do not see him being able to start WW III.  So what is going to be about is reversing stuff Obama did. He will not be able to start a new conservative narrative as did Reagan.  This means Democrats should get another bite at the apple.

Here is a trend I see as disturbing.  Compare Reagan to Bush II to Trump.  Each of these captured the presidency from the opposition in the post-1980 Republican-dominated political world. Can you see the declining trend is quality? Consider just what sort of Republican will be get in 2032 if the two-and-two pattern continues?

The chief challenge for Democrats, when they do come back to power is, what can they do so that when they eventually are succeeded by a Republican he/she won't be *worse* than Trump?

Obama had a similar problem to Trump, without the  narcissism.  He tried to run his agenda in a vacuum, took on healthcare first, then lost Congress and any chance to do more.  After 2010, almost everything Obama accomplished was by executive order, and easily overturned.  If the next not-Trump has more legislative savvy, he/she could parlay an infrastructure program (almost guaranteed to be popular with voters) into other less popular programs that will be beneficial in the longer term.  If the net result is a booming economy, plenty of good jobs and rising pay, the rewards will transfer to his/her replacement. 

Obama faced a highly-scripted, highly-organized, often vile, extreme partisanship as no prior President has experienced in living memory. What other President ever faced such vicious  memes as

"The ZOO has an African Lion
the WHITE HOUSE has a Lyin' AFRICAN

Truth be told, the President wasn't a liar. But when the first thing that Mitch McConnell says is that his first priority is to ensure that Obama be a one-term President... many wanted him to fail no matter what.  

But that is the past. President Trump has shot himself in the foot so many times that he thinks he deserves a Purple Heart. (The Armed Services do not issue Purple Hearts for self-inflicted wounds).

Obama never had a chance to be the great President that he wanted to be. He was good, probably better than average... and considering the wealth of opportunities for "President Emeritus" that Presidents from Hoover to Clinton have used if they were able to take the role (so long as they didn't burn their bridges as did Johnson or lose their ability as did Reagan. Should the Presidency devolve to someone not in the current line of succession (let us say Mitt Romney), then the opprobrium that Republicans have loaded onto their scapegoat will be repudiated quickly. Obama has virtues practically the opposite of Trump's vices.

Conservatives need to recognize that Barack Obama was a good President even  if they disagreed with him. Should the Republicans end up in the political wilderness as defaults against incompetent, poorly-suited, or corrupt Democrats in most of America, then their next successful President may be much like Obama...or Eisenhower., who really did take back the presidency for eight years following five terms of bad elections. (Truman would have won in a landslide in 1948 had it not been for the Dixiecrat secession). Someone rational, with an unobjectionable family life, reasonably eloquent, adept at learning from minor errors before doing things on a big scale, free of narcissism, squeaky-clean in avoiding scandals, but with a more free-market, business-friendly agenda... well, that is what the Republicans could have used in 2016. They did not get that. They got Donald Trump, and by now you know what I think of him. The rest or the world simply bides its time awaiting his departure, often in places now more politically pleasant than the USA.

Quote:Then again, politics is now so bad that the next person may have to be Jimmy Carter 2.0 just to calm things down.  Count that as a failure.

Carter at least meant well. Maybe his attempt to graft the ways of his well-run governorship on America (with such ideas as zero-based budgeting) might have been good ideas but they were incompatible with political reality. Of course, Carter was and is a fundamentally-decent person, which Donald Trump isn't Donald Trump promised to make America operate like a business. Of course in American business the common man is simply another machine obliged to subordinate his hopes and dreams to the immediate desires of his superiors, which means that if someone gives you tickets to the Yankees-Red Sox game and your employer has dishes for you to wash, you wash the dishes. As a customer of Donald Trump you are nothing more than a monthly check or direct debit as large as he can get away with for an overpriced rental for which there is no viable alternative.

Trump's model is a failure in part because he is an ethical failure as a businessman (I have cause to believe that he has connections to organized crime), but also because government cannot operate like a for-profit business with a tycoon operating as a feudal lord. It is bad enough to work for an employer who sees one as nothing more than a machine of meat with no rightful dream except to live in subordination for bare existence. When government so operates with a despotic ruler, people might want revo0lutionary change at home if emigration to a more free-wheeling society is unavailable (recall Fiddler on the Roof)*. American business elites often operate like capitalists or rentiers in a Marxist stereotype, like the regrettable reality of a bureaucratic nomenklatura of Marxist reality, or outright crooks of criminal syndicates with entrepreneurs and politicians as mere puppets, however much those puppets can prosper.

*Imperial Russia was a terrible place in which to be a jew. It was generally also a terrible place in which to be a Russian!