“Absolutely Unpresidential”: The Extremism On Display At The GOP Debate Would Have Horrified Anyone Who’s Actually Been President
I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after the last Republican debate. I had a vision of President Ronald Reagan sitting in the front row at his library watching the debate. Alongside him were fellow Presidents Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy, Gerald Ford and even Richard Nixon.
Very quickly the blood drained from their faces. They began to fidget, to shift awkwardly in their chairs. They began to look around for the exits. These men who had led our nation, made difficult decisions and participated in politics their entire lives were appalled at what was going on before them.
Sure, they were shocked at the nastiness and vitriol among the candidates – this was way over the top. Sure, they were amazed that the front-runner was one Donald Trump, who belonged on “Entertainment Tonight,” not a presidential debate. Sure, they understood that how the candidates were behaving was counter to everything they knew about getting elected in America.
But my guess is what really frosted these men was that the substance of what most of these candidates were saying was so unreasonable, so off base, so totally devoid of reality, that it was downright scary.
Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, and others, saying they would tear up the Iran agreement on day one of his presidency, thereby ensuring that no foreign leader would trust the U.S. to keep its word in the future. Former CEO Carly Fiorina stating flatly she would not ever talk to Russian President Vladimir Putin. No negotiating, no contact, nada. That would surprise Reagan and the others who always talked to our enemies and kept the lines of communications open – from the Soviet Union to “Red” China.
And how about blanket threats, with Fiorina’s phone call to the “Supreme Leader” of Iran that we will throw out the agreement and “move money around the global financial system.” Trump showed no knowledge of foreign policy and simply said he would hire great advisers – where are they now, the ones he watches on cable TV? And then there was the suggestion that we deport 11 million people because “the good ones will come back.” And, of course, there was the fight about who was the worst CEO or who could attack Planned Parenthood with the most vengeance.
The sheer level of ignorance, lack of preparation and categorical, extreme statements on critical policy matters was astounding. My guess is that these former presidents, had they been present, would have truly wondered what had happened to their country and the quality of the candidates running for the highest office in the land.
By: Peter Fenn, U. S. News and World Report, September 18, 2015
“So Sad, Too Bad”: Sorry, Republicans; It’s Still Donald Trump’s World
Sorry, Republicans, but it’s still Donald Trump’s world. And sorry, Donald, but now you have to share it with Ben Carson.
The conventional wisdom seems to be that Carly Fiorina won herself a big patch of political territory in Wednesday night’s marathon 11-candidate debate on CNN. But the conventionally wise have been consistently wrong about this campaign, and I wonder if voters were equally impressed with her performance.
There’s no question that Trump, the clear front-runner for the GOP presidential nomination, had an off night. The blustery mogul is at his best when he can feed on the energy of a fired-up crowd, but the audience at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library was small and consisted mostly of party insiders. They showed him very little love.
His worst moment came when he claimed, without elaboration, that if he were president he would “get along with” Vladimir Putin and somehow convince the Russian leader to support U.S. foreign policy goals. Sure, and maybe Putin will give him a pony, too. You had to wonder if Trump has given more than five minutes’ thought to relations with Moscow.
But he stuck to his guns on the issue that propelled his rise: immigration. Trump’s claim that he can somehow deport 11 million undocumented men, women and children is absurd, ridiculous, unthinkable, cruel, dishonest — pick your adjective. But it has electrified much of the Republican Party base, and I’m betting that his supporters heard him loud and clear.
Meanwhile, Jeb Bush’s attempts to go after Trump reminded me of the time when British politician Denis Healey said that being attacked by his patrician rival, Geoffrey Howe, was “like being savaged by a dead sheep.”
Bush tried gamely to land a punch, at one point demanding that Trump apologize to his wife, Columba, for the ugly things he has said about Mexican immigrants. Trump refused, and that was that. Bush is taller than Trump but for some reason could not contrive to loom over him. Mano a mano , the billionaire still seemed large and in charge.
Carson has zoomed to second place in most polls, and I think his debate performance will give him another boost. His soft-spoken, low-key approach might annoy the political cognoscenti, but voters apparently like it, perhaps because he doesn’t seem as needy or desperate as the others.
I thought his best moment was when he was talking about border security and related his recent trip to Arizona, describing simple measures in one county that had reduced illegal crossings almost to zero. Sometimes practical solutions have more impact than high-blown rhetoric.
If Fiorina wanted to convince everyone of her toughness, she succeeded. She barged in whenever she wanted, no matter who was speaking, and she icily backhanded Trump over his piggish remarks about her face. I thought she overdid the Iron Lady routine when she declared she “wouldn’t talk to [Putin] at all,” but any woman running for high office faces unfair pressure to project strength. She made this factual error: A constitutional amendment must be ratified by three-fourths of the states, not two-thirds.
Did she do enough to vault into the top tier of candidates alongside Trump and Carson? Maybe, but she’s starting from the low single digits. And while she nailed Trump for his sexism, I thought the extended back-and-forth over their accomplishments in business was the one exchange in which he was a clear winner. If Fiorina gets tarred as a mediocre chief executive, what qualifications does she have to run on?
As for the rest:
John Kasich was upbeat and reasonable, qualities that would definitely help him in the general election — but maybe not in the primaries.
Chris Christie was sharp and funny. His campaign probably isn’t going anywhere, but after Wednesday it still has a pulse.
Marco Rubio was stridently, alarmingly hawkish. Where doesn’t he want to use military force? And did his youth make him seem vigorous or callow? You decide.
Mike Huckabee was so apocalyptic on Iran that he must have frightened any children who happened to be watching.
Rand Paul seems to have become a libertarian again, sticking up for individual rights. And unlike the others on the stage, he spoke out for peace rather than war.
Scott Walker looked, once again, out of his depth. The party establishment once thought this guy was its savior? I expect his slide to continue.
And finally, the unctuous Ted Cruz looked and sounded as if he were trying to sell me a reverse mortgage. No thanks, senator.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 17, 2015
“How The ‘Party Of Stupid’ Birthed Trump And Carson”: Leveraging Racism Plus Pandering To The Dumb And Incoherently Angry
At the start of the cycle, conservative soothsayers boasted of the “deep bench” on the right; governors of purple states, with proven records, were the headliners. Worries that a handful of first-term senators in the mix might suggest a lack of seriousness about the real work of governance were brushed off by pointing to Barack Obama as precedent.
Now the party’s rising stars are two men who have exactly as much experience in government as they do interest in making government work. Their fealty to the Republican Party is almost as recent as their decision to run for president. Carson was a registered independent until 2014, and Trump flaunts his pan-ideological predilections to this very day.
Conservatives like to paint liberals as slaves to sentiment. The “bleeding hearts” sobriquet also connotes eyes too misty with tears to see the hard truths: We legislate based on immigrant sob stories and vote for presidential candidates to salve our own guilty consciences. Trump’s politically incorrect shtick is just another way of calling out this supposed divide: “We’re tired of the nice people,” he says, and by saying it creates a truth if it didn’t exist before.
For his part, Carson has been eager to prove his soothing bedside manner is an interface, not a core value. His youthful Democratic sympathies were Kool-Aid-induced; Reagan “reprogram[med]” him: “He sounded like a logical person and my mind changed.”
Since the neocons first uncracked themselves from the Ivy League, the conservative movement has masqueraded as the “think, not feel” wing of American politics. But their courtship of nativists, segregationists, and other grievance-seekers has led to this Trump/Carson moment. Not the party of ideas, but the party of stupid, where even smart, successful people have to pander to the dumb and incoherently angry.
According to CNN, 75 percent of those supporting candidates with no previous electoral experience are attracted to “their views on the issues.” I suspect that respondents selected that answer because they couldn’t just grunt.
Trump’s distaste for policy specifics could fill dozens of white papers that he’d never read. The fact that Carson justified his damning of Obamacare as “worse than 9/11” because the 9/11 attack was “an isolated event” speaks to his ignorance about terrorism as much as it does about the effects of the Affordable Care Act.
Here’s the thing: Trump and Carson are winning a huge slice of the GOP base because of that prideful ignorance, which to voters signifies not just a rejection of the establishment or elites but a release from the hard work of having to think.
Let me be clear: To say Carson and Trump are anti-intellectual doesn’t mean they are dumb. Far from it.
Trump, especially, has shown a genius—a high-level forethought, not some native street smarts—in how he communicates his… oh, let’s call it his “vision.” Carson, too, has crafted his brand to appeal to those tired of ideas and arguing and philosophical debates. Given Carson’s smooth affect, his marketing handiwork is, ironically, a less subtle product than Trump’s; it shows the seams from where Carson has had to forcibly rip out the parts of his intellectual history that evince a deviation from the full-throated anti-establishmentarianism the Republican base now demands. (Forget his much-discussed turnaround on abortion: what about endorsing death panels, affirmative action, and eliminating for-profit insurance companies?)
Both Trump and Carson are brilliant in leveraging their extraordinary professional success as bait to voters whose principal complaint hinges on a nagging sense of failure. Audiences aren’t flocking to these brutalist polymaths for their ideas. Indeed, in a party already thirsty for innovative policy approaches, Trump and Carson stand out for the pride they take in their xeriscape platforms: empty places, where occasional quasi-insights drift by like tumbleweeds, unmoored from experience or data.
Trump’s screechingly casual approach to information is especially appalling. An anecdote in a recent Rolling Stone profile charts the route from Trump’s complete ignorance on the heroin epidemic in the Northeast (“You know New Hampshire has a huge problem with heroin? Why do ya s’pose that is?”), to his query of the reporter for information (“I tell him that it probably has to do with OxyContin and school kids raiding their parents’ medicine chests”), to his airy reference in a speech minutes later: “It starts probably with OxyContin, from what I’m hearing.” The conclusion implies, among other things, that this is a subject he may have discussed more than once.
From the embroidered, hearsay nature of Trump’s answers to concrete questions, I would say he treats facts like gossip—except I’m sure he takes gossip more seriously than facts. Trump knows he is expected to have some command of issues beyond “deals,” and so he clings to one or two more-or-less certain applause lines like a sticky-fingered child. Witness these excruciating exchanges with a slumming Hugh Hewitt, in which Trump dismisses questions about the intricacies of Middle East foreign policy with a koan-like recitation, “The Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated.” He says this even when the question is about Hezbollah, or al-Baghdadi—or, points for trying, the “Quds.”
Such rote memorized factlets have all the substance of cotton candy, and when he stretches them to apply to topics outside his limited scope of knowledge, they tatter and fall apart embarrassingly. Or, what would be embarrassing, if it were not for the fact that Trump has been able to rely on the underlying distrust his supporters have for experts.
Carson is not much better. If Trump’s shameless doubletalk (to evangelical voters, especially) suggests he thinks his supporters are suckers, Carson thinks his are rubes. His compulsory campaign tome is punctuated with what should be hackle-raising condescension, or at least revealingly faulty logic: “If you know all 26 letters of the alphabet, you are on your way to reading.” Perhaps he thought he was writing an audiobook script.
In a saner or at least more deliberative world, Carson’s debate-ending “zinger” about being the only person on stage to have separated Siamese twins would be treated as a howler of a gaffe, along the lines of Admiral Stockdale’s retrospectively winsome admission, “Who am I? Why am I here?” One thing (neurosurgery) has nothing to do with the other (the presidency), and to pretend the skills are transferable is an insult—mostly to neurosurgeons.
Carson has a predictable defense to his nonchalant naiveté: “There’s nobody who knows everything,” after all. He’ll delegate, just like how when he “runs into a kidney problem… will call in a renal specialist!” But he’s giving comfort to the patient by only taking the analogy halfway. The real parallel wouldn’t be a surgeon calling in for help on a single complication, it would be having a really smart diplomat trying to figure out how to run an ER.
There’s a difference between being anti-intellectual and being dumb; there’s also a difference between having a governing philosophy and being smart. Scott Walker, for instance, has a more-or-less coherent approach to governing (do less and less of it). But he appears to be impersonating an honest-to-goodness dumbass, incapable of answering the simplest questions without sinking into the rhetorical version of Zeno’s paradox. He gets halfway to a definitive opinion, then halfway again, forever splitting the distance between himself and, it seems, the nomination.
Walker, like all the other Republican politicians with a résumé that matches the job opening, has been reduced to playing dumb. Is it an accident that the first major candidate to drop out was also the one with the longest gubernatorial résumé?
How did we get here?
You can’t spend 40 years tacitly making racists feel welcome in your party and expect the intellectual atmosphere not to suffer, or for that anti-intellectualism to stay bounded with race.
Not only does the GOP’s history of leveraging racism, if not explicitly endorsing it, explain Trump’s success (as numerous commentators have pointed out), it also explains Carson’s rise—and not just as embedded in the sideways condescension of considering Carson “not like the others.” Carson appeals to the same anti-intellectual, anti-government, anti-idea, anti-democratic set of biases the GOP establishment has been cultivating for decades.
Bigotry entered into the conservative movement’s DNA like a virus, altering the intellectual inheritance of the party of Bill Buckley and Irving Kristol. Where once it meant something to declare certain attitudes or policies too ugly or hateful to take seriously, much less include in debate, there is now a movement that can’t afford to call out bald ignorance and gross sexism for fear the most ardent banner-carriers might get offended. They say it’s the left that is governed by political correctness, but the deference paid to the sensitivity of Trump’s followers is as oppressive as any campus trigger warning.
“There is just something about him,” one fan of Carson’s said early on, as if he was “appointed by some higher power to do this.” Anti-democratic sentiments don’t come much more clearly expressed than that.
By: Ana Marie Cox, The Daily Beast, September 14, 2015
“Our Lead Exhibit”: Trump Proves Ignorance Doesn’t Matter Much
Our question for the day: Does ignorance matter?
Our lead exhibit — you will not be shocked to hear this — is Donald Trump.
Last week, the billionaire real estate mogul who is seeking the Republican presidential nomination stumbled over a question about terrorism from conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt. Specifically, he was forced to admit that he could not identify the leaders of Hezbollah and al Qaeda, among other terrorist organizations.
There is a pattern for how Trump reacts when cornered, and he was true to it last week. First, he made the usual vague, grandiose promises about how effective he will be once in office (“I will be so good at the military, your head will spin. … I’m a delegator. … I find absolutely great people and I’ll find them in our armed services”). Then he attempted to kill the messenger, bashing Hewitt on Twitter as a “very low-ratings talk-show host” and a “3rd-rate gotcha guy.”
As has also become part of the pattern, a gaffe that might have totaled another candidate’s campaign seems to have not even scratched the paint on this one. Or, as a Politico headline put it: “Trump bluffs past another crisis.” Indeed, Trump has come to resemble nothing so much as a real world “Sebastian Shaw” — a Marvel Comics supervillian who gets stronger every time you hit him.
After insulting Mexicans, insulting his rivals and insulting Fox “News” personality Megyn Kelly with a tasteless jibe that he claimed wasn’t about menstruation, though it transparently was, Trump continues to lead all contenders for the Republican presidential nomination. Nor is the ignorance of world affairs he betrayed on Hewitt’s show likely to change that.
It’s a fact that speaks volumes about the present state of the Grand Old Party. This is, after all, now the third presidential election cycle in a row in which one of its stars has shown him or herself to be spectacularly clueless on some relatively simple question of presidential readiness.
There is a straight line from Saran Palin in 2008 — unable to give coherent answers to questions about the economy, foreign policy and her own reading habits — to Herman Cain hemming and hawing and shifting in his chair in 2011 when asked about Libya, to Trump bristling and pouting because he was quizzed about major figures in Middle East terrorism.
One is reminded of the old political axiom that people want a president they could imagine having a beer with. And that’s fine. But you’d think they would also want to imagine him or her being able to find North Korea on a map. And, in the last few years, there have been some political contenders and pretenders you suspect could not do it even if you spotted them a hemisphere.
Since when did running for president become a reality show? How does Trump or anyone else figure that a presidential candidate should not be asked hard questions? And what does it say about us that fundamental ignorance about things a president should know does not automatically disqualify one from credibly contending for that office?
Perhaps it says that some of us want the world to be simple, and that they want a president who will not ask them to think too deeply, nor proffer any policy prescription too complex to fit on a bumper sticker.
Perhaps it says that some of us embrace an extremist resistance to social change and are willing to support whoever promises most loudly to drag the country back to an imagined yesterday of purity and strength.
But the world is not simple and never was. And yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone.
Does ignorance matter? Well, Donald Trump is still the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination.
So obviously, it doesn’t matter nearly as much as it should.
By: Leonard Pitts, Jr., Columnist for The Miami Herald; The National Memo, September 9, 2015
“Defiance Of The Right-Wing Opposition”: Iran Debate; Clinton Steps Up To Oppose The Demagogues
When Sarah Palin joins Donald Trump, Ted Cruz, and a motley crew of crazies in Washington this week to rally against the Iran nuclear deal, the speeches are likely to reflect the incoherence of the opposition. None of these right-wing celebrities appears to comprehend its terms, how it was negotiated or – most important – why its failure would probably lead to yet another horrific war.
On that same day, as Cruz, Trump, and Palin blather on about their love of Israel, their hatred for Barack Obama, and their determination to “make America great again,” someone else will step up to support the agreement – someone whose diplomatic efforts laid the groundwork for successful negotiations with Tehran.
That would be Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former Secretary of State and leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination. Scheduling a major speech on the Iran deal for the same day as the Washington event, Clinton is plainly determined to display her mastery of its details as well as her defiance of the right-wing opposition.
But this speech — which could become one of the best moments in public life — will also prove just how far she has come since the last time she ran for president.
That’s because Iran was the subject of one of the most troubling moments in her 2008 campaign, when she promised to “totally obliterate” that country (and presumably its 70 million-plus population) if the mullahs ever attacked Israel with a nuclear weapon. Having uttered that genocidal threat in response to a provocative question, she reiterated the same bluster a few days later on ABC News’ This Week.
“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran [if they attack Israel with nuclear weapons]. And I want them to understand that. … I think we have to be very clear about what we would do,” she told host George Stephanopoulos.
At the time, in early May 2008, it wasn’t clear why the Iranians needed to “understand” any such ultimatum, since our own intelligence showed that they neither had nuclear weapons nor were likely to possess such weapons any time soon – and that the Israeli military was (and is) fully capable of nuclear retaliation. Clinton’s harsh rhetoric seemed to be aimed more directly at Obama, her primary opponent, whose aim of negotiating with traditional enemies like Tehran she had denounced as “naïve.”
Those who expected better from her pointed to her Mideast advisors, who advocated an opening to Iran, and to her own previous remarks about the imperative of talking with “bad people” as a sign of strength, not weakness. But at that moment, she seemed to echo John McCain and the “bomb Iran” chorus among the Republicans.
Much has changed since 2008, of course – including the leadership of the Iranian government. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the aggressive Holocaust denier who held the Iranian presidency back then, gave way in 2013 to Hassan Rouhani, a reformer who wants to end his country’s international isolation. Thanks in part to Clinton’s work as Secretary of State, a powerful and unprecedented international alliance enforced real sanctions that finally pushed Iran into serious negotiations. And since those negotiations began, Rouhani’s government has heeded the required limitations on its nuclear activities.
Perhaps Clinton hasn’t changed. After all, she has always believed that diplomacy, aid, and other aspects of American power are just as fundamental to our security as military force. But she has found a balance and a voice that are more vital than ever in a contest against irresponsible politicians, whose demagogy points us again toward war.
By: Joe Conason, Editor in Chief, Editors Blog, Featured Post, The National Memo, September 8, 2015
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