Tuesday, August 16, 2016

In Which Peggy Noonan Drives Me Nuts

There's something about Peggy Noonan's 'here's the pulse of the times' style which can really rub me the wrong way at times. She writes:

Here is a truth of life. When you act as if you’re insane, people are liable to think you’re insane. That’s what happened this week. People started to become convinced he was nuts, a total flake.
...
This is what became obvious, probably fatally so: Mr. Trump is not going to get serious about running for president. He does not have a second act, there are no hidden depths, there will be no “pivot.”

This shouldn't be some new revelation. It was blindingly obvious a year ago that Trump was an entertaining nutter with a big mouth and a lot of money. Nothing more. Never going to grow into presidential material. Never going to step up his game. But Noonan first had to do some pious chin pulling during the last point when Trump could have been defeated in the primaries: Maybe he understood something about this moment. Maybe it was the elites' fault. Maybe this was the pulse of the times. Maybe conservatism betrayed it's supporters. O tempora, O mores!

And NOW she announces that the guy is a nutty vulgarian as if it's some kind of news? Why, oh why, could we not have gathered around a halfway decent candidate in a year when a bland, generic republican would have stood a very good chance of defeating the tremendously abrasive Hillary Clinton before she messes our country up more?

8 comments:

  1. No, we couldn't. If it were a normal Republican I just wouldn't vote. There's not enough a difference. The Repblicans sell me out just as well as the left does.

    I still don't know whether or not I am going to vote. When they trotted out McCain as a candidate I decided this had to stop. Show me a candidate who won't promise unconstitutional things, and then I can vote.

    But here's Trump. And an established reality- people say he said something stupid, I go and check, and it isn't so stupid. Certainly isn't worse than anything all the Republicans and Democrats have said. Sometimes it sounds reasonable. He isn't for all these wars. He isn't for all this nation building. If you keep Muslims out, they can bomb your buildings or shoot up your gay bars. Mysterious how this vulgar guy manages to come up with things that actually might work. Put a few women in jail, and women will stop trying to get abortions.

    But, he's vulgar. Yeah, the people who fix your stuff are vulgar too. Maybe this is a type, except we are lucky that he's not just a plumber, or a mechanic, or a contractor. But he's a type who might actually fix stuff. Now, I know, D.C. won't want to give him a chance. On the plus side there are a lot of F.B.I. investigations, C-span recordings of congressional hearings, and obvious piles of evidence that a lot of D.C. is criminal. So maybe his primary job is going to be cleaning them out for the next four years.

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  2. August,

    With a large country and two big coalition parties, there are clearly going to be people who don't like whatever candidate a party picks. I know other people who refused to vote for McCain or Romney because they thought they were too bland. However, in aggregate, Trump appears to be less appealing to the bulk of people who vote for GOP candidates than the last two nominees, as shown by the fact that he's polling lower in general and getting a lower percentage of support from Republicans.

    On Trumps statements: There are at least two clear areas where he's problematic as presidential material.

    One is a basic crassness. Examples of this include his speculating that Megyn Kelly was hard on him at the debates because she was on her period, or saying that he didn't think much of McCain because he was captured during the Vietnam war. The problem with these kind of statements isn't so much that they're not true as that they're rude. I think people are rightly tired of the excessively focus-grouped rhetoric and extremely PC attitudes among media and political elites. Some people rightly desire a political figure who is more of a straight talking. The problem is that in this day and age, too many people confuse being crass or rude with being a straight talker. I'd love to see a real straight talker on the national stage, but I've no interest in having an amateur insult comic. One of the functions that our presidency serves is as a sort of national example, and Trump is not someone I want to stand for our country because I think that he stands for much of what's worst about it, not what's best.

    The other problematic area is stuff that's genuinely stupid or nutty. This ranges from the odd (accusing Ted Cruz's father of somehow being involved in the JFK assassination) to the nasty (trying to smear the Kahn's as somehow terrorist affiliated) to just plain stupid policy (proposing that we run up lots of debt now because interest rates are low -- something that would work well for a company but badly for a country -- or speculating that maybe we shouldn't follow through on our NATO treaty obligations.)

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  3. It should practically go without saying, but this is just a logical fallacy:

    "But, he's vulgar. Yeah, the people who fix your stuff are vulgar too. Maybe this is a type, except we are lucky that he's not just a plumber, or a mechanic, or a contractor. But he's a type who might actually fix stuff. "

    A similar argument might be: Sure, Chris Christie is overweight. But a lot of plumbers are overweight and they fix things. We need to elect an overweight politician so that things will get done.

    The problem is that the characteristic being latched onto has nothing to do with the action desired. Trump's vulgarity has nothing to do the hopes that people have for him -- unless what the American public is hoping for is four years of State of the Union addresses about Megyn Kelly's period.

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  4. I wonder if the pro-life position weren't created by some cultural Marxist as an identity for Christians. It seems to me if it were an actual position, then Trump's relatively anti-war stance would mean you should vote for him. With Clinton you get all the killing all the time. With a bland republican you'd get the same thing- no real change on abortion, and probably war with Russia.

    Instead you are regurgitating media talking points. It's like Black Lives Matter and their annoying tendency to promote policies that will probably get more black people killed.

    But I digress. From my perspective, Hillary is preferable to bland republican candidate. BRC pretends to be 'conservative' yet he doesn't actually conserve anything. BRC's party and the Democrat party continue to collaborate to keep the wealth of the nation going to D.C., and keep growing the military industrial complex. And keep destroying communities with H.U.D. and section 8. And keep letting the Fed do all the nonsensical things the Fed does.
    Hillary, however, being Hillary, breaks things.

    We are dealing, in some ways, with what Russia did, as the communist system broke down.









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  5. I wonder if the pro-life position weren't created by some cultural Marxist as an identity for Christians.

    On this point, I can reassure you: that conspiracy theory is false.

    It seems to me if it were an actual position, then Trump's relatively anti-war stance would mean you should vote for him. With Clinton you get all the killing all the time. With a bland republican you'd get the same thing- no real change on abortion, and probably war with Russia.

    Actually, Republicans have introduced a number of pro-life measures at the state level that have been successful in reducing abortion. If we could get a sane Republican elected this year, we'd also have a decent chance of shifting the Supreme Court to the right, which would make more room for pro-life activity. Too bad a sane Republican didn't get nominated.

    As for the war with Russia theory: this is pretty much hogwash. Russia pushed hard to get Obama elected and re-elected. Now they're waging a propaganda campaign in favor of Trump on the theory that he'll give them even more room that Obama has. But no war with Russia is going to happen unless Russia starts it by invading one of its NATO member neighbors -- something which if anything is probably more likely under an erratic Trump administration than an incompetent Clinton one.

    Instead you are regurgitating media talking points. It's like Black Lives Matter and their annoying tendency to promote policies that will probably get more black people killed.

    This seems kind of out of left field. I'm not even sure what you're trying to get at with this one.

    From my perspective, Hillary is preferable to bland republican candidate. BRC pretends to be 'conservative' yet he doesn't actually conserve anything. BRC's party and the Democrat party continue to collaborate to keep the wealth of the nation going to D.C., and keep growing the military industrial complex. And keep destroying communities with H.U.D. and section 8. And keep letting the Fed do all the nonsensical things the Fed does.
    Hillary, however, being Hillary, breaks things.


    Huh? So does this mean that your preference is that things break, because otherwise you've just claimed (falsely, I believe) that Hillary and non-Trump Republicans are the same.

    We are dealing, in some ways, with what Russia did, as the communist system broke down.

    That's right. I've noticed how our government recently collapsed, a number of our states left the union, the countries in our sphere of influence all left us, our economy fell apart, and we shifted economic systems.

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  6. Your responses suggest the hypothesis is true.
    The anti-abortion regulations may lower abortions in the short term, but they also move the smaller clinics out of the way, in preparation for the larger institutions to take over the industry. It isn't prohibition; it's regulation.

    If you look at big business, you'll see they often favor regulations, like minimum wages laws, because they function as barriers to entry. Abortion is likely to end up happening more often, within larger medical complexes where protests would look nonsensical, and probably more expensive but paid for by a socialized medical insurance system.

    This, and everything else, is known history. As was the looming destruction of the Republican party as it killed it's own grass roots. Politico just did this one: How We Killed the Tea Party.

    Look, I think you've said you've done well personally during this time. I certainly wish I had something similar to what you have. I came from a large family and always wanted one. Didn't know how extremely unlikely that was. Nobody bothered to tell me. And you don't start looking for reasons why things aren't working until they aren't working for you.

    This is why the candidate you wanted would never have won. We remember. We know the Republican party has betrayed us. We can see the games played, the seeming short term victories or statements that seem to work perfectly for the left, when they bring one the courts that they control to bear on it. They are collaborators.

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  7. Your responses suggest the hypothesis is true.
    The anti-abortion regulations may lower abortions in the short term, but they also move the smaller clinics out of the way, in preparation for the larger institutions to take over the industry. It isn't prohibition; it's regulation.

    If you look at big business, you'll see they often favor regulations, like minimum wages laws, because they function as barriers to entry.


    While it's true that large companies sometimes support new regulations in order to squeeze out competition (such as Walmart's support for increasing the minimum wage) there's absolutely no evidence that the large abortion provider (Planned Parenthood) is supporting GOP-sponsored restrictions on abortion. It's possible that abortions would shift to other institutions, but only if we imagine a completely Democrat run take over of congress and policy. For instance, Hillary Clinton supports using tax money to fund abortion and many Democrats support forcing all hospitals to offer abortions. These sorts of tactics might increase the number of abortions, but contrary to your point they are strongly opposed by most Republicans and if we can keep Republicans in office they will not happen.

    This, and everything else, is known history. As was the looming destruction of the Republican party as it killed it's own grass roots. Politico just did this one: How We Killed the Tea Party.

    I do strongly recommend that Polico article, but it's important to note that in many ways this is the story not of the party killing its own grass roots, but of some rouge members of the elite turning on the establishment and exploiting the ignorance of the grass roots to steal their money and turn them against the party. Trump is perhaps the logical end result of the parade of charlatans described in the article: someone who doesn't really believe much in conservative ideas and who stands little chance of being elected or of achieving what he promises even if he is, yet who sucks all the oxygen out of the party and the movement, destroying it in the process. This is why I hate Trump so utterly.

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  8. Look, I think you've said you've done well personally during this time. I certainly wish I had something similar to what you have. I came from a large family and always wanted one. Didn't know how extremely unlikely that was. Nobody bothered to tell me. And you don't start looking for reasons why things aren't working until they aren't working for you.

    I think there are dual risks here.

    For those who have done particularly well in our current system, it's easy to miss out on the ways it doesn't work for others. While I'm not sure I'm fully ready to change my mind on free trade, I think the rising populism in regards to this topic and the way that differences cut along economic lines shows that the "haves" are not seeing the collateral damage which their favored polices are causing. If conservatives are going to remain free traders, they may need to re-look at some other aspects of the small government package and figure out how to get growth going again for the sector of the economy not thriving in the global economy.

    However, there's also a tendency of those under pressure to search for explanations even where there may not be easy ones. Suffering can make people ripe for listening too eagerly to demagogues. It strikes me that in this election cycle, both the right and left have been going in for this with Sanders and Trump.

    Often the truth of the matter isn't easy. Sanders' promises of government paying for everything while funding it all with just a few tax hikes on Wall Street are obvious bunk, but so, in the end, are a lot of Trump's "Only I can fix it" claims to be able to kick start the economy. He's not even always clear on the difference between a trade deficit and a budget deficit. He does seem like a tempting answer to people who have been frustrated by the tendency of demagogues on the right promising big changes and then failing to deliver on them, but I think that what that misses is that many of those promises for quick fixes coming from the right over the last decade were never possible in the first place. Slow incrementalism is often all that's possible.

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