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Sunday, February 19, 2017

Trump's crazy, disjointed press conference had me thinking: I doubt that Donald Trump has ever read David Ogilvy, but he's done a bang-up job of following Ogilvy's main piece of advice on living one's life:

Develop your eccentricities while you are young. That way, when you get old, people won't think you're going gaga.

Trump's biography is chock full of such peculiarities, and indeed that's given him a certain protection against anything he does now -- a way of making excuses, rationalizing his tirades and outrages.

Still, I think the most important lesson from last week is the extent to which Trump has chosen to vilify the media. Admittedly, that's a tactic that has served him well in the past, but there is a fundamental difference between attacking the system from outside and defending the system he's gained control of. The media has always been eager to kowtow to power, but that's partly because they expect some stroking in return. Trump's characterization of everything they say as "fake news" is an affront (and a challenge) to their self-image.

On the other hand, Trump's emergence as crazy-in-chief has thus far worked out nicely for the Republican party regulars, both in Congress and increasingly in the administration (and eventually in the courts). As any con artist knows, the key is to get the marks to pay attention elsewhere while they pull off their manipulations unseen, and Trump is a marvelous distraction. Isn't it interesting that Trump's own staunchest campaign supporters have failed to get job offers in the new regime: Rudy Giulliani, Chris Christie, Newt Gingrich? Even Kris Kobach, the only Republican in Kansas to endorse Trump before the caucuses here, was passed over despite a couple of high-profile photo ops with Trump. The only exception I can think of is former Senator, new Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump has managed to keep a couple pet advisers like Steve Bannon and Kellyanne Conway in non-policy positions, but that's about it. He's well on his way to becoming the loneliest and most expendable man in his administration. I can't say as I'm surprised.

Some scattered links this week in the Trumpiverse:

• Zoë Carpenter/George Zornick: Everything Trump Did in His 4th Week That Actually Matters: e.g., "it was a bad week for clean water."

  • Fired National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.
  • Signed a bill to allow coal-mining operations to put more pollution in streams.
  • Allowed oil companies to hide bribes to foreign governments.
  • Pulled back a defense of an Obama-era transgender protection effort.
  • Nominated a new secretary of labor. Alex Acosta, after Andrew Puzder withdrew.
  • Issued a new Obamacare rule that makes getting coverage more difficult.
  • Stepped up immigration raids.

• Trump's Mar-a-Lago insecure Situation Room where club members and staff can eavesdrop freely: Actually, I thought it somewhat charming that a president can operate in such a public setting, until I remembered that the other guests had to pay Trump $200K to join his club -- "pay for access" at a level the Clintons can only dream of.

• Albert Burneko: Donald Trump Stunned to Learn Presidency Is an Actual Job, his First

• Zach Cartwright: Here's the stunning number of White House staffers who quit or got fired this week: Michael Flynn, of course, but he merely heads the list.

• Stephen F Cohen: Kremlin-Baiting President Trump (Without Facts) Must Stop: This is a little weird in that Cohen, who's been one of the saner "Russia experts" of the last couple decades, refers to himself in the third person. He provides a six-point debunking of various charges leveled about Trump's (and Flynn's) relationship to Russia, and I reckon he's mostly right there -- even where he seems to excuse Trump. What he doesn't do is explain why such misinformation "must stop": it may seem easy to score points against Trump by playing on decades of Cold War myth -- basically the old McCarthyite red-baiting smear tactic, but even less specific about the evil Putin putatively represents -- but it should be embarrassing for Democrats to fall back on clichés that were then and still are meant to undermine world peace. (Isn't a peaceful world subject to international law and order and norms of justice something Democrats still believe in?) It also belies any notion that Democrats are the "reality-based" party -- they're so hepped up on the jargon of American exceptionalism they can't begin to see how America and the world have changed. Moreover, they've fallen behind the American people, who no longer appreciate such sabre-rattling against "evil empires": not that Trump himself has turned realist -- he still sees plenty of evil to vanquish, but his reluctance to demonize Russia is at least one step in the right direction.

• Tom Boggioni: Michael Flynn's Replacement Turned Down the Job After Watching Trump's 'Unhinged' Press Conference: Admiral (and Lockheed-Martin executive) Robert Harward was next in line for the job. Fred Kaplan also wrote about this: Robert Harward Just Gave Cover to Every Competent Professional Who Wants to Turn Down Trump. On Flynn, see Nicholas Schmidle: Michael Flynn, General Chaos.

• John Feffer: Steven Bannon's Real Vision Isn't America First. It's America Alone. Isn't that always the problem with nationalists? Their appeal is limited to one favored country, and sooner or later -- and any measure of success means sooner -- they repel all other countries. The US built its world-straddling pre-eminence less by dealing harshly with enemies than by cultivating allies, sometimes playing on fear of other powers but more often by offering generous rewards (like free trade for export-minded Asian countries, and cheap defense for war-weary Europe). Take the carrots away, or worse still demand tribute from your former allies, and they'll eventually turn away, or even retaliate. America Alone is likely to turn into a much poorer place. Feffer also wrote Killer Presidents, on the current political popularity of tough guys like Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, or indeed Trump himself. It's no accident that Trump ordered a botched Seal Team 6 raid in his first weeks. He want to show the world he's eager to kill too -- indeed, it seems like a rite of passage for all American presidents. For another take on the self-limits of nationalism, see (hard to believe I'm recommending him) Max Boot: Trump's Big Mouth Has Already Weakened America: After detailing many examples, he admits:

  In fairness to Trump, it's true that Rome wasn't destroyed in a day, and it will take him more than three weeks to undo 70 years of American foreign policy and trade relations. [ . . . ]

  But for the time being the 54 percent of Americans who didn't vote for Trump -- and the roughly 95 percent of the world that was horrified by his campaign -- should be breathing a sigh of relief that his actions are not turning out to be quite as radical as his rhetoric. [ . . . ]

  [Why?] Because his words are so immoderate. He continues to engage in fraudulent rhetoric and unhinged personal attacks -- he especially loves to tweet in UPPERCASE LETTERS! -- that create an unsettled environment of crisis, uncertainty, and concern. His own babble and bluster does more than any critic to discredit him.

• Larry Fink: The Faces of the Women's March on Washington

• Thomas Frank: How Steve Bannon captured America's spirit of revolt

• Olivia Golden: The Trump Agenda Poses a Major Threat to America's Children

• Jacob Heilbrunn: The Most Dangerous Man in Trump World? Profile of Peter Navarro, nominally head of Trump's National Trade Council -- like so many Trump officials, he was given a job he doesn't believe in just so he can wreck it -- and a long-time crackpot anti-China hawk.

• Allegra Kirkland: The 8 Craziest Moments of Trump's Impromptu Press Conference; also Esme Cribb: Reporter: I've 'Never' Seen Anything Like Trump's Press Conference in 20 Years.

• David Ferguson: Trump's Constant Lies and 'Endless Self-Pity' Are Unlike Any Other American President: So says Steve Schmidt, who ran McCain's 2008 campaign.

• Kali Holloway: 21 Facts That Explain Exactly Who Stephen Miller Is: A "White House adviser," recently emerged as a Trump spokesman.

• Richard Lardner: Trump's Plan for Spike in Defense Spending Faces Big Hurdles: I'm especially struck by this:

  Senior U.S. commanders have flatly warned that the spending caps set by the Budget Control Act are squeezing the armed forces so hard that the number of ready-to-fight units is dwindling. That means beating powers such as Russia or China is tougher than it used to be as aging equipment stacks up, waiting to be repaired, and troops don't get enough training.

  Uh, someone actually thinks the US can "beat" Russia or China in a war? Or that that should be a goal of the US "Defense" Department?

• Nancy LeTourneau: Trump Is Proving to Be the Embodiment of Everything Republicans Have Stood For:

  To expect anything different from Trump than the worst Republicans have put forward over the last few decades is a fool's errand. They share a world view that just so happens to be antithetical to what most of us mean when we refer to democracy.

• Amanda Marcotte: Michael Flynn, right-wing hero: Will conservatives embrace him the way they did Ollie North: I doubt it, mostly because I doubt Flynn has ever been coherent enough to develop the sort of consistency that attracts believers. Nor can Flynn claim to be a martyr to the cause -- North and G. Gordon Liddy (Marcotte's other example) both did jail time, and Marcotte notes "These two men are beloved by conservatives because of their criminal histories, not despite them." Flynn just seems to be political roadkill, and while there were plenty of good reasons for getting rid of him, the one that worked wasn't one of them. (Unfortunately, this only helps reinforce the Democrats' notion that the best way to counter Trump is to play up the "soft on Russia" card, as opposed to hammering him on any of dozens or hundreds of policies that really do harm to working Americans.)

• Heather Digby Parton: Donald Trump's disastrous reality show: Master trash-talker turned flailing president searches for a new villain

• Matt Taibbi: Trump's Repeal of Bipartisan Anti-Corruption Measure Proves He's a Fake; also The End of Facts in the Trump Era.

• Sophia Tesfaye: Republicans rush to confirm Trump's EPA nominee Scott Pruitt after federal judge orders release of fossil fuel emails: one of Trump's worse nominees, having spent most of his career trying to keep the EPA from doing its job. One Republican voted against, two Democrats for. "After Friday's vote, the Republican chair of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works -- John Barrasso, R-Wyoming -- attend a high-dollar fundraiser hosted by energy lobbyists at a Capitol Hill steakhouse."

Along the way, I wandered across a lot of liberal links critical of Trump but obsessed with Russia, including posts by John Cassidy, Paul Krugman, George Packer, and David Remnick. In particular, Packer complains about "the heads of key House and Senate committees who are doing as little as possible to expose corruption and possible treason in the White House." The word that sticks in my craw there is "treason." I can't overstate how sick and tired I am of that word -- not least because it implies that we're obligated to be loyal to some hidden, unknowable, and unquestionable power. Packer goes on to describe "an authoritarian and erratic leader" -- I mean, which is it? Doesn't the latter subvert the former? He also names John McCain and Lindsey Graham as among "the few critical Republican voices" -- the only thing they've been critical of is that Trump hasn't started any new wars yet (and the word for that isn't "critical" -- it's "impatient").

Also a few links less directly tied to the ephemeral in America's bout of political insanity:

• Dean Baker: The Job Cremators: "If folks are worried about automation killing jobs, why don't they care about the Federal Reserve Board killing jobs?" Basically, a quarter-point rate hike costs us "0.1 to 0.2 percentage points off the economy's growth rate over the course of 2017. That would likely mean 100,000 to 200,000 fewer jobs than would otherwise be created."

• Michael Kimmelman: Mexico City, Parched and Sinking, Faces a Water Crisis: It's a city of nearly nine million people built on a dried lake bed 7300 feet above sea level, every aspect of which put strain on the city's viability -- and global warming is no exception, just not in the same way that it threatens coastal cities. Also see Ioan Grillo: Climate change is making Mexico City unbreathable.

• Alex Pareene: I Don't Want to Hear Another Fucking Word About John McCain Unless He Dies or Actually Does Something Useful for Once: Ever the gentleman, Pareene: I would have flipped the last two clauses and changed the conjunction to "and." But Pareene does note that the only Trump nominee McCain objected to was the budget director who supported defense budget cuts: for some time now, the only thing McCain has really believed in is more war.

• Paul Rosenberg: Beyond fact-checking: After the catastrophic media failure of 2016, the press must master "crucial evidence": Mostly an interview with William Berkson, who's specialty is philosophy of science. The history of science offers many examples where "crucial evidence" led scientists to radically revise their views -- Thomas Kuhn called them "paradigm shifts." I'm skeptical that you can do the same thing for news, because we have no real common framework for evaluating policies. Still, you can certainly do better than the present system, where competing political interests have taken over the news and turned journalism into propaganda operations. A start might be to work out broadly agreeable criteria for judging whether various policies are working as intended.

• James Traub: Marine Le Pen Is Donald Trump Without the Crazy: a portrait of the leader of France's ultra-nationalist party, who is gaining ground for reasons similar to Trump's triumph. Traub also wrote The Death of the Most Generous Nation on Earth, about Sweden's problems integrating an exceptionally large number of refugees -- the issue that is fueling the rise of Le Pen and other nationalists throughout Europe.

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