In the 70-plus installments collected here, I’ve been recording (some of) the ways Donald Trump differs from people who have previously come so close to the presidency.
Here are two readers who disagree with the premise of the series, from a long-term-historical perspective and a more recent one. I’ll quote them each and then explain where I agree, and don’t.
First, from an American overseas:
I am a U.S. citizen currently living in Seoul. While I do not support Trump, and although I will vote Democrat come this election, I do not believe Trump is as unprecedented as some of the other readers seem to believe. In this case, I am writing to you with specific reference to the President Obama’s remarks against Trump’s temperament, and Trump’s talk of a rigged game. Both have clear analogues to the 1824 electoral cycle.
Andrew Jackson, as I am sure you know, horrified the Democratic-Republican elite. He paved the way for Common Man candidates by slowly expanding suffrage and embracing the Jeffersonian ideal of a Yeoman America. Thomas Jefferson, a former president at the time, had this to say about the prospect of a Jacksonian presidency:
I feel much alarm at the prospect of seeing General Jackson President. He is one of the most unfit men I know for such a place. He has had very little respect for laws and constitutions, and is, in fact, an able military chief. His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was Senator, and he could never speak on account of the rashness of his feelings, and as often choke with rage.
Truly, Jefferson was not the active president, but I think that a quibbling detail. He was the author of the constitution and the founder of the ruling party. I support our president, but Obama’s prestige now could not contend with Jefferson’s then. But notice the same critique: Like Trump, Jackson was seen as unfit for his temperament, not his ideas. His passions were so intense as to disqualify him from office.
And of course, like Trump, Jackson saw power in conspiratorial terms. His Bank Veto still reads like an Industrial Workers of the World manifesto. And, as I’m sure you know, in 1824 Jackson saw his electoral loss as a conspiracy, a Corrupt Bargain where Clay and Adams stole the White House from him. Jackson, by fundamentally undermining the electoral process and the legitimacy of the new president, was tapping into the zeitgeist and leading it towards victory four years later. Trump is doing the same.
Jackson is not my favorite president, and I suspect a President Trump would wreck synonymous havoc on minorities and the American economy. But America survived Jackson, who was an obvious danger to our democracy. We will survive Trump, although he may change us—or kill us all in nuclear fire.
On this comparison, I’m happy to stipulate that so much is so dramatically different between the America of the 1820s and the America of 2016 as to bring any “unprecedented” judgment into question. (For instance: back then there was no electricity or real-time communication; there still was slavery; only certain white men could vote; etc.) So I’ll more frequently say “unprecedented in modern times.”
But while recognizing that historians talk about the revolution of Jackson’s arrival, and that temperamentally Jackson may be closer to Trump than any other real-world president, the differences between them as plausible national leaders are still immense.
By the time he was elected president in 1828, Jackson had: been elected to the House once; been elected to the Senate twice; served as military governor of Florida; and won more popular and electoral votes for the presidency than any other candidate in 1824, only to lose to John Quincy Adams when the House of Representatives decided the outcome. All this is apart from his experience as battlefield commander.
If Donald Trump had had any elective-office experience whatsoever (for instance: Green Party candidate Jill Stein was elected a Town Meeting Seat in Lexington, Mass.), or had ever held any public or military office of any kind, it would be easier to suggest some likeness.
After the jump, the more contemporary dissent from a reader:
Judy Myers explains why she is growing uncomfortable with the Time Capsule approach:
I share your fear of what is happening in our society that would allow Trump to become the elected candidate of a major party. I hope the Time Capsule accomplishes your intended goal.
As you may have expected, there is a “but.” It is your tone of amazement that these things are happening, and what I see as your over-reach in describing some of them as horrifying in their uniqueness.
Take your Capsule number 69. Why did Mr. Rucker conduct his interview with a television facing the interviewee? Why did you not list the Trump interview with Bob Woodward, which I think was the best Trump has done? (It seemed to me that Woodward was trying to have a discussion with Trump, not sandbag him.)
I accept that your intent is to document the Trump campaign, but it would be just as easy to do to Hillary Clinton what you are doing to Trump. Mrs. Clinton has important weaknesses, and it would be just as easy to characterize her in the way that you characterize Mr. Trump. To take just one example, she is having just as impossible a time explaining her email problem as he is having in addressing what we see as his defects.
I live surrounded by Trump supporters. Many are giving up on Democratic leadership as being ineffective in supporting regular people trying to live a regular life. Some of these people see President Obama’s election as a cataclysmic event that destroyed their belief that other Americans shared their view. (Many others have written about this, so I won’t.)
I suggest that it is not just Trump; that you are claiming objectivity but your bias is showing. I suggest that Bush 43 was seriously unprepared for the presidency. I suggest that his attention span and depth of knowledge and understanding of presidential issues was not that different from Trump. I suggest that Clinton is just as resistant to outside information as Trump, and in fact most people who reach such heights of power are similarly resistant. I suggest that Trump has raised important issues to the point that we are talking about them—letting business and power take so much is hurting workers. Comparing him to Clinton, his opposition to the TPP as it was constructed when it became a campaign issue, I want to oppose parts of it too. Yes, he is a self-involved blowhard. No, I don’t want his hand of the nation’s tiller.
Whatever else is happening, we as a country have an opportunity for conversation now that some of our rifts are being openly discussed. Let's not blow it. To that end, I would like to see your writeup of what you heard in Texas and Kansas. I am down closer to the coast and to Mexico and the area you visited is very different from where I am. I am looking forward to your report on what you saw.
I appreciate Ms. Myers’s careful attention, and her taking the time to write in. Here is where and how I see the world differently from her:
It might be worth emphasizing again the journalistic idea behind starting this Time Capsule series. Donald Trump’s rise is clearly an unusual moment in our public history. No one like him has gotten this close to the presidency in modern times—by which I mean, no one with his total lack of elective or public-office experience, no one as willing to dismiss norms of what nominees “can” and “cannot” say. My purpose, as set out from the start, is to lay down a real time record of what it was like as the country decided whether to make him its leader—and in particular, the ways in which he did depart from norms.
As I’ve explicitly said, I’m not imagining that I’m going to change a single voter’s mind. I personally think that Trump’s candidacy has been bad for our civic fiber—“the judge is a Mexican!”—and that a Trump presidency would be worse. But it’s a free country; people can choose as they want. I’m trying to document we know while making that choice.
On a detailed point, I haven’t asked Philip Rucker, but I’ll bet you anything it was not his choice to have Trump looking back and forth at the TV while Rucker was trying to interview him. (One reason I say so: common sense. Another reason: in the transcript, Rucker keeps trying to draw Trump away from what Trump has glimpsed on TV.) And the reason why than transcript seemed significant is that, like the great majority of other long interviews by Trump, it was notable for its lack of sentence-by-sentence sustained argument or thought. It was also significant, as I mentioned, because it displayed Trump’s hair-trigger reaction to a plane crash he had seen, with an immediate, confident explanation that was probably wrong. This would be a very dangerous trait in an actual president.
We move now to the realm of the subjective: I have spent a depressingly large share of my life paying close attention to the way public figures talk—when they are being interviewed, when they are extemporizing on the stump, when they’re battling opponents in debates, when they’re delivering formal speeches. There’s an enormous range among them: Bill Clinton would sound mesmerizing in a rally speech, but if you read the transcript, it would just look ordinary. Teddy Kennedy was a magnificent formal orator but could seem tongue-tied or even aphasic in some interviews. Ronald Reagan was amazingly consistent in his tone, discourse, and argumentative structure whether giving a speech or being interviewed. Bob Dole was notably different in his private wise-cracking mode and his stiffer formal presentations.
They’re all individuals, and they’re all different. But in my experience, Trump is different from any of the rest of them. He knows less—about the government, about the world, about anything other than himself.
Rick Perry got in trouble for a botched debate answer, but he could talk very well about his plans for Texas. Similarly for Dan Quayle, but I once interviewed him about American defense policy in the Pacific, and he was very erudite.
I have never met Trump in person. But the transcripts of his interviews seem to belong in one category, and other public figures I’ve known (with their huge variation) in the other. I’m suggesting that he is different from other public figures, because in my judgment he is.
By extension, I also disagree with the idea that you could apply just the same treatment to George W. Bush or Hillary Clinton. I didn’t vote for Bush, and I think his administration was one of the most destructive in our history. The Iraq war; torture and Guantanamo; the conditions leading to the great crash of 2008, these will always be part of his legacy. But I never doubted that he was a serious man, who took the office (that his father had also held) extremely seriously, and who was doing his best (in ways I disagreed with), and who recognized the gravity of the choices he would make. It was Bush who went to national mosque six days after the 9/11 attacks. It is impossible to imagine him responding to the Khan family the way Donald Trump did.
As for Hillary Clinton, she is not a very good campaigner, as the world knows. It was foolish of her to set up her own server to begin with, and no one can understand why she doesn’t just say: This was a huge mistake, I’m sorry, let me answer any question about it for the next six hours, and then we’re done.
But the idea that she is “just as resistant to outside information as Trump, and in fact most people who reach such heights of power are similarly resistant” is, in my judgment, just categorically wrong. The problem of getting honest judgments, bad news and all, once you become powerful is indeed a profound one. Every leader has grappled with it; it’s a theme of the origins of the Vietnam and Iraq wars, of political treatises from Machiavelli onward. But I am absolutely sure that Hillary Clinton would at least theoretically recognize it as a problem. I have seen no signal that Trump is aware of this peril at all.
That’s enough for now. Thanks for reading, and for writing in.
Previous items today concerned Donald Trump’s reaction to an airplane crash that was noted briefly on Fox News, while he was in the middle of a major newspaper interview. Trump said he’d “never liked that plane, structurally,” but the question is which plane he considered flawed. Had he just seen news about the crash-landing of a Boeing 777 in Dubai? Or about a Navy F-18 in Nevada? Or a twin-engine Piper Seneca in Arizona?
I asked Philip Rucker, who was conducting the great WaPo interview with Trump, whether he noticed or remembered what Trump had seen. His reply:
I wish I had a definitive answer for you, but unfortunately I do not.
Unlike Donald Trump, I was seated with my back to the TV, so I wasn't paying much attention to what was on the screen. The TV was tuned to Fox News. I recall it was a small plane crash and not the Emirates 777. It might have been the Sedona crash…. I do not believe it was a military plane, but I cannot say for certain.
The crash was only briefly on the newscast. Much of the time during our interview Fox was covering Trump.
So odds favor the Sedona crash of the Piper Seneca—in circumstances (night flight, mountainous terrain, older pilot flying on his own) that likely have nothing whatsoever to do with aircraft-structural concerns.
***
Meaning-of-Trump point: the way his mind works. Immediately after an Egyptair flight disappeared over the Mediterranean in June, Trump declared,
What just happened? A plane got blown out of the sky. And if anybody thinks it wasn’t blown out of the sky, you’re 100% wrong, folks, OK? You’re 100% wrong.
No one knows for sure now, and no one had any idea then, what had happened to that Egyptair plane. Yet Trump moved instantly to “you’re 100% wrong!” mode. Again this week, in his instant reaction to whatever crash he saw, Trump responded instantly (and probably incorrectly). And he was in a position to make this misjudgment because he was so interested in seeing news that was mainly about himself.
I know, there’s hardly any news value in pointing this out any more, but: the man doesn’t know very much, isn’t aware of what he doesn’t know, thinks poorly, yet is super-decisive. Ryan, McConnell, Rubio, Cotton, et al: Heck of a job!
In an item earlier today I quoted a Boeing engineer who was dumbfounded / amused by Donald Trump’s off-hand comment that he “never liked that plane, structurally” about the mighty Boeing 777.
Several people have written in to say that maybe we’re not giving Trump full credit. Perhaps news of some other airplane crash might have been on the screen when it caught his eye and occasioned this remark. (Sample letter after the jump.) The possibilities include:
A twin-engine Piper Seneca aircraft that crashed near Sedona, Arizona, on a nighttime flight around the same time. Unfortunately the 76-year-old pilot, the only person aboard, was killed.
The Emirates 777 that crash-landed in Dubai, fortunately with relatively few casualties. This is the one the Boeing staff assumed Trump was talking about.
So we’re left with these choices:
- Trump was questioning the structural fitness of one of Boeing’s best-selling and (on the evidence) structurally soundest models. After the 777’s introduction in the mid-1990s, its first fatal episode was the pilot-error Asiana crash into a runway at SFO three years ago; or
- Trump was saying he “never liked that plane, structurally” about the Navy’s workhorse F-18, which first flew back in the 1970s and which has had critics of its cost, complexity, and design, but not on grounds that people “never liked it, structurally”; or
- He was reacting to a light-airplane crash at nighttime, in mountainous terrain, with an older pilot who was flying by himself—that is, in circumstances where “structural” problems of the airplane virtually never turn out to be relevant.
Or, something else. Just adding this to round out the explanation. I have written to Philip Rucker, of the Post, to ask if he noticed what was on TV to see which crash Trump would have been talking about.
Note from a reader on the which-crash-was-it mystery:
The Trump interview was conducted on August 2, according to the editor's note, and the Dubai crash was early in the morning of August 3 EST.
I think the crash was probably the Flagstaff one August 2 involving a Piper Seneca -- which perhaps makes his engineering criticism more defensible than if it was a 777, but frankly makes his distraction even more extraordinary.
One person died in that crash, sadly, but it wasn't a huge news event like the Dubai incident.
And from another reader:
If he gets elected (shudder), I'm sure we'll see Divine Leader Kim Il Trump visiting Renton or Everett to "give guidance" to Boeing workers.
And from another staffer at Boeing:
Word is he’ll be visiting WA to raise money at the end of the month. Hopefully I’ll have a chance to ask him for advice on ways to use topology optimization to improve the design of 3D printed structures.
A Boeing 777-300, flown by Emirates. Want to know what's good and bad about this airplane? Of course there is only one expert to consult.Paul Spijkers via Wikimedia
Last night I mentioned the resemblance between Donald Trump’s frequently distractable discourse—I don’t like mosquitos! Back to Mike Pence!—and Danny DeVito’s famous “Cows!” scene in Throw Momma From the Train. As a public service, I offer a glimpse of Cows once more:
Many readers have written in to say that the closer comparison might be Dug the Dog, with his “Squirrel!” scene from the great movie Up. You be the judge:
***
During one of Trump’s Cows! / Squirrel! interludes in his interview with the Washington Post, he offered the following observations about plane-crash news that was flickering across the screen:
[Trump looks at a nearby television, which was tuned to Fox News.] Oh, did they have another one of these things go down? It’s terrible that crash. Never liked that plane, structurally. I never thought that plane could—
The dash-mark at the end is when the interviewer, Philip Rucker, tries to bring Trump back to the topic at hand.
A reader in the Northwest took particular note of Trump’s comments:
I’m a stress analyst at Boeing and I just wanted to let you know that we’ve been chuckling at Trump’s latest quote from his interview with Philip Rucker: “Never liked that plane, structurally...”
I assume he was referring to the Emirates 777-300 that crashed in Dubai. I’m with many of my co-workers in hoping that a reporter asks a follow-up question on what, precisely, Mr. Trump dislikes about the structural design of the 777. I’m sure his answer would delight and entertain! Or, more surprisingly, he might be well versed in shear flow theory. Who knows!?
The reader’s email had the subject line “Donald Trump—Structural Engineer.” Other possibilities would include: “Donald Trump—New Frontiers in Bullshit” or “Donald Trump—It’s Even Worse Than You Think.”
But on reflection, I like plain old “Donald Trump—Structural Engineer” for its understated charm. What Donald Trump doesn’t know about an airplane matches what he doesn’t know about everything else.
A sign two years ago for then-mayor of Toronto, Rob Ford, whose style many have likened to Donald Trump’s. Ford died of cancer early this year; a reader explains an important contrast with Trump. (Mark Blinch / Reuters)
Many people have noted the campaign-style similarities between Donald Trump and Rob Ford, the late mayor of Toronto. John Spragge, who lives in Toronto, says that the Capt. Khan episode points out an important difference:
I am the Canadian systems analyst who sometimes writes you from Toronto. Earlier in this campaign, I compared Donald Trump to the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford.
I still believe Mr. Ford drew much of his support from people who feel alienated and left out, and I believe getting elected mayor had dire personal consequences for Mr. Ford, just as I believe attaining the presidency might have serious consequences for Mr. Trump. However, over the past week I have come to see important distinctions between Mr. Ford and Mr. Trump; I think Mr. Ford’s greater skill at retail politics speaks to a fundamental decency. As I put it in a web log post [JF emphasis added]:
When I asked myself how Rob Ford would have responded to Khizr Khan’s speech, it occurred to me: Rob Ford would have called the Khans. He would have talked to them. Rob always called people who disagreed with him. He would have listened the he Khans. He would have expressed sympathy with their sacrifice. He would probably not have changed any of his positions, but he would have given the Khans the courtesy of a hearing.
All Rob Ford’s most vehement opponents, which some times included me, acknowledged his ability as a retail politician. He listened to people, and whether he agreed with us or not he gave the impression he cared what we thought. I think he genuinely did; I think he had a real desire to help and connect with people, and unlike Donald Trump, he did not respond to opposition with the fury of wounded vanity.
Rob Ford was diagnosed with cancer during the last election and has since died. Since the emergence of Mr. Trump, many Toronto residents have seen the parallels between the social forces that gave rise to his candidacy and Mr. Trump’s. I think we owe it to his memory to acknowledge that nothing in his record suggests he would have treated the Khans the way Trump did.
***
Thanks to the very large number of people who have written in with responses to yesterday’s item, about why Republican “leaders” are standing with Donald Trump and for how long they’ll do so. An assortment of those is coming up when I can get to it, along with the next sixteen zillion Time Capsule entries.
In the Time Capsule thread (now up to #66), I’ve been chronicling some of the ongoing words, deeds, and gestures that the Republican party has decided to swallow from its nominee. This parallel “Trump Nation” thread is mainly for reader reaction to the spectacle of 2016, and in particular what the “responsible” GOP is showing about itself.
Trump himself is beyond criticism or judgment. What we see is who he is. But I think that people looking back at our time will be much harsher in their judgment of the Republican “leaders” who are trying to have it both ways.
The Speaker of the House, the Majority Leader of the Senate, senators like Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio, governors like Chris Christie and the now-trapped Mike Pence, figures from the past like Rudy Giuliani — every one of these people knows what is wrong with Donald Trump, and every one of them will be telling us as of November 9 that they were never really with him, they always saw what was wrong, how did this ever happen? But for now, every one one of them is saying, Vote for Trump!
You can understand, sort of, their constraint. If they come out and say, Vote for Hillary Clinton, in the short run they might infuriate substantial portions of their own electoral base. And if the longer run, if she does win, then every “liberal” thing she does, starting with her Supreme Court appointments, can be thrown back at them. Oh, there’s your President Clinton with her Bolshevik on the Court. Happy now? Oh, there’s your President Clinton, with …
You can understand it. But to say it’s “understandable” is not to say that it’s right, or even smart. I think they’re making a mistake not just from some lofty historical perspective but in how they will look in the relatively near future. Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination eight years ago, and the vastly better known Hillary Clinton did not, because she had joined most senior members of her party (including Joe Biden and John Kerry) in being wrong in a hugely consequential choice, the Iraq war, and Obama had been right.
A reader says you can extend that analysis to the choice of backing Trump:
As I’ve watched the way that Trump has been able to overcome unforced error after unforced error that should, and used to, effectively mean the end of a viable campaign, I’m interested in the box that this puts the GOP elite. Most seem to be trying to thread the needle in the Paul Ryan mode—I support the nominee, but I speak out not too forcefully on the most egregious statements.
What we may be seeing is the real-time development of another Bush Iraq War moment. In this scenario, it will seem obvious to anyone after an easy win by Clinton that they should have publicly called out Trump and said they were bound by conscience not to support him.
This raises an interesting question. In this scenario, who takes the role of Obama, who got used his anti-war position to jump start his road to the White House? It was a huge risk for a little known Senator, but the payoff was huuuuuuuge!
Right now you can probably rule out the Bushes or Romney or just about every elected GOP bigwig. Does it just leave Kasich?
I have followed with great interest the chronicling of the Trump campaign for the historical record. My question to you is this: Is there any integrity left in the Republican party?
I have waited for months for one prominent Republican with real “skin in the game” to step up and say something and take a stand. Something along this line: “You know that I am a Republican, but I am an American first. And as an American, I cannot and will not support the nominee of our party. He is not qualified to be President of this country. If this costs me my position, so be it. Some things are more important!”
Is it too much to ask for just one person to have the balls to do this? And if it is too much, what does this say about our country?
***
A reader who has worked in Republican politics defends John McCain, who has condemned Trump’s statements but so far not Trump himself:
My own opinion is doing anything you can to defeat Trump and hold his enablers accountable is one’s a moral imperative as an American, an acid test of one’s character.
That said you know that life is a balancing act and McCain is trying to win a GOP primary is a state with a hard-right GOP electorate. Have to give him a little latitude. Also suspect that’s why he included this line, “...which I will have to answer at the Final Judgment...”— he knows it’s an acid test he's failing and will have to answer for, and it’s weighing on him.
This reader goes on to say that the Republicans who should be judged most harshly are those who are not up for re-election themselves this year (unlike McCain) but are still riding the Trump Train.
***
From a lawyer on the West Coast:
I thought your term “Vichy Republican” was quite apt. I say this because I was recently watching the Ophuls documentary about France under the Nazi Occupation The Sorrow and the Pity. It does a masterful job of drawing out people on why they decided to resist or collaborate.
One thing that strikes me how many conservatives in 1940 France felt that “well, better Hitler than Blum.” Leon Blum being France’s first Jewish prime minister, who served at the head of a left-wing government in the period 1936-1938. It just sounds a lot like the praise many conservatives of like Trump and Farange have for Putin and disdain for Obama …
***
A brief note on a potential silver lining:
Wouldn’t it be great if the Khans, Muslim-Americans, became the moral conscience of the nation during this election, with their dignity and eloquence and compassion?
***
And, finally for now, a much longer and more downbeat assessment:
It is becoming blatantly clear to me that the GOP is failing in one of its principal roles as a major political party: To filter out those elements which, at their root, would destroy those organic mechanisms which keep our democracy functioning.
Given how blatant and ever-increasingly obvious is the nature of Trump, why is it so hard for the country to realize what he represents? Why did not our national immune system immediately recognize him for who/what he is and spit him out? The answer is that Ryan and McConnell and the Vichy Republicans, are validating Trump’s legitimacy, and have reneged on their fundamental duty leading a major political party.
And the GOP’s decay in performing this duty has been advancing for the last 20 years. In today’s NY Times, Lindsay Graham was quoted as saying in reference to Trump’s comments about the Khans,
“This is going to a place where we’ve never gone before, to push back against the families of the fallen. There used to be some things that were sacred in American politics — that you don’t do — like criticizing the parents of a fallen soldier, even if they criticize you,” Graham said.
At last! A Republican willing to say “YOU JUST CAN'T SAY SUCH THINGS!!” And here's the thing: It might have started sooner, perhaps Nixon, perhaps Goldwater; but in my mind it started with Newt Gingrich and the ‘94 Republicans who took power and dismantled the structural protections in Congress which fostered comity and collegiality among adversaries. Since that time, establishment Republicans started saying and doing things that political norms dictated that YOU JUST DON’T DO!
Before that time, no matter how awful the opponent’s policies, the opponent was, nevertheless, a worthy adversary, chosen by worthy citizens who, despite your fervent disagreement with them, were your countrymen. And starting in ‘94, establishment Republicans started disrespecting the elected representatives of the opposing party. And at that point, they moved from governing to open warfare. And each new incremental move into previously forbidden territory brought new standards of indecency and disrespect; to the point where the honor and patriotism of a proven, decorated war hero (John Kerry), the citizenship and faith of an elected president (Obama), the honor and patriotism of a former POW (McCain), and the fundamental integrity and worth of Congressional institutions (filibuster etc.), were all barriers which it is now acceptable to disregard. Things you just didn’t do, they did.
In a quick Google session I was unable to determine who first said it, but I’ve heard it attributed to Jung, that civilization is a thin veneer. We take for granted that the glue holding this democracy together is only as strong as the willingness of the participants to honor the glue. It’s remarkable how few people it would take to disregard the white lane markings of our highways and turn traffic into a snarl. We function because of our consensus that there are just some things that YOU DO NOT SAY, and there are just some things that YOU DO NOT DO. And since 1994, at least, the GOP, with very little assistance from the Democrats, has been saying and doing non-normative things; and this has empowered a large number of people to say and do non-normative things as a result.
The country depends on its political parties to scrub out the infectious elements; to make sure that, whatever candidates are put forward, at the root they will put the institutions and the norms that provide the glue for our democracy ahead of their ideological and power questing goals. I wonder how graciously GW Bush/Cheney would have responded to the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2000 had it gone the other way. And in the subsequent Congress, I wonder how graciously the Republicans would have allowed a President Gore to function had the result gone the other way. I wonder how normative the Republican response would have been had 9/11 happened on the watch of a Democratic president. Oh. Wait. BENGHAZI!!!!!
The GOP no longer puts the country, its institutions and its norms, ahead of party. And McConnell and Ryan and the Vichy Republicans are glaring truth of the long road down which they've come. Thank you, and Mr. and Mrs. Khan, for directly calling them out. We need the GOP. We need a functioning, filtering, democracy glue-enhancing GOP. We haven’t had one since it started decaying during the first Clinton administration.
And what will happen when, the next time they nominate a candidate, they manage to hide the things that makes Trump so obvious? THAT’s what scares me most ...
A reader who is a veteran lawyer on the West Coast writes about Donald Trump’s argument that he can’t/won’t release his tax returns while they’re under audit by the IRS. (A reason that the IRS itself dismisses.)
The reader suggests that in this case, at least, Trump may have thought many moves in advance:
1. I agree with what you are saying about Trump’s tax returns. Of course I also agree with the IRS (i.e., he is free to release them; the audit is irrelevant to that question).
2. But there is ONE way in which the audit is relevant to the release, and vice versa: If Trump releases returns while they are still auditable or being audited—which, of course, every other candidate has done in the past—then the nation’s tax professionals, seeing them and poring over them, are likely if not certain to make public suggestions about things the IRS should look into, or how the IRS should look into them, that might actually lead the IRS to take a look at, or do, something the IRS might not otherwise have done.
3. The nation’s tax professionals might even detect tax fraud that the IRS might miss. That’s a criminal matter—not a back taxes or penalty matter. Which of us would be surprised if they did, in Trump’s case? (Remember the IRS caught Nixon on tax matters while he was still president; it didn’t help his situation.)
4. Not to mention that if the tax professionals make their suggestions to the IRS privately, then there is the possibility of their earning an actual reward if as a result the IRS is alerted to something that leads to the IRS collecting more tax from Trump than the IRS would otherwise have done.
5. My own suspicion is that the ranks of the nation’s tax professionals probably contain individuals, hostile to Trump or to tax cheats, who ARE aware of tricks the IRS has not yet suspected or at least fully caught up with (there are always new tricks) among taxpayers with really complex returns.
6. At a minimum, the IRS would have a greatly expanded army of volunteer auditors in Trump’s case!
Of course, these are all problems that Trump should have thought of before he became a candidate. Perhaps he did, hence the unequivocal nature of his stonewalling. And if Russia really wanted to prove that they are not partial to Trump, and if his returns were filed by his team or are kept by the IRS in electronic form, then the Russians could release his returns for him. Somehow I doubt that will happen.
***
Update another reader writes:
I think you and all other reporters have missed one essential point regarding Mr. Trump's tax returns. That is, even if there was some justification for withholding returns under audit, that does not explain the refusal to provide returns for older years.
My understanding is that years before 2009 are not under audit, and it might be very helpful if someone would point this out or ask Mr. Trump to produce those returns. He won't, but at least it might help show than his stated reason is bogus. Possibly some journalist has done this but I have not seen it.
I think this is very interesting: a reader who knows Russia and Ukraine, on how he reads the unfolding “Putin angle” news.
I’m a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant, now a naturalized citizen of the United States. I also was a Bernie Sanders voter in the primary, who will be voting for Hillary Clinton in the general election.
This is probably the weirdest year of my life politically. On the right, the anti-immigrant and antisemitic fervor is really a choice cut of hate. The apparent mutual interest of Russia and the Trump campaign has meant that on both the right and left, there is legitimate critique. However, it has also meant there’s a home for a very familiar panic about Eastern Europe and, honestly, people using the critique as cover for rank bigotry who were interested in that bigotry long before Trump and Russia were even a story. Lastly, the DNC e-mails specifically regarding Sanders’ religious views and raising it as an issue with voters WITHIN the Democratic electorate, was a dispiriting reminder that despite what has been a pretty nice life, given enough opportunity bigotry can have a house anywhere, even among friends.
However, I’m writing today to provide context for Russia’s actions, from my own experience. When Russia invaded Ukraine, they did it while putting their arms up and saying it wasn’t them, even as it was clear to everyone that it was. There were the anecdotes, of course, about the Russian military insignia of the people coming into Crimea and Eastern Ukraine being torn from their uniforms. Regardless of the truth of those anecdotes—of basically Russians barely modifying their own uniforms, doing the least amount of work to seem not like the Russian army—they got at what is a reality: the transparent cynicism of Russia, the tendency to do the terrible thing and tell the whole world they’re not doing it until they’re years deep into a conflict they can’t escape.
I wanted to mention that because in the recent stories, there’s been this emerging picture of Russia as a legitimate threat to the United States, run by a chessmaster. Russia is not a legitimate threat, and Putin is not a chessmaster. Russia is a transparently desperate country. The sanctions and financial freezes have spread Russia thin. They’ve impacted the oligarchs that run the country. They’ve impacted its long-term capacity to use war as an economic plan and perpetually hold sovereign states as territories on a whim. They’ve reduced its capacity to control its client states.
The well is running dry. And what they’re doing is the same thing they did in Ukraine. The world was getting away from them, they had something they could not control or overwhelm, so they went in to Crimea and Eastern Ukraine and tried to take it through brute force—all the while putting their hands up in the air and denying they had anything to do with it. Even now, in Putin’s speeches, it is clear he is coming not from a position of strength, but one of great weakness, asking essentially for a mercy that he does not currently deserve, seeing things like the banning on the basis of doping as signs of additional punishment.
So Russia may be behind the DNC hack. We may be seeing this fight because they’re desperate to elect the man they resemble the most, because it’s the only way out of it they see for themselves. It’s not prowess or intelligence though; it’s desperation and lashing out. Putin took the spirit of the Russian people and defaced it for years, replacing it with militarism and the use of the church as a prop for the state. This was sustained by capital, by investment. And it just isn’t there any more. Robbing the people of their spirit, the rulers of the country now have lost the capacity to fund the things that occupied the void. Their enterprises in Ukraine and Syria look more like past recipes in Chechnya, Georgia and elsewhere for forever war. It’s only a matter of time before the client states, the installed rulers, are once again challenged but do not find the support they once had. It is just history cycling.
But to be clear, Russia is not a danger to us so much as it is a danger to itself. A smarter government would have figured out a way other than the invasion of Ukraine, other than perpetually hostile acts such as this hack. A smarter government would not be in a position where it basically has to cut all its own domestic programs to fund wars that will go on forever. A more gifted politician wouldn’t be in a position of accumulating strikes against themselves while demanding mercy. I think this is already the view President Obama holds, as documented in his statements on Russia with Jeffrey Goldberg.
I think this election was and remains a choice between being governed by fear and being governed by perspective, between seeing monsters all over and understanding where we all really are respective to one another. Russia’s latest transparent ploy, even as its consequences are currently being felt deeply, will eventually be seen for the desperate and unsophisticated acts they are. Donald Trump’s series of transparent ploys, his perpetual financial and moral bankruptcy, will be seen the same way, the desperate, angry flicker of a flailing movement unable to navigate a changing world. And we will live this coming January in the same country as this past January—a fractured place working to rebuild itself, to be better than its past, and hopefully a little smarter.
I believe this to be true of the United States. I hope one day it will be true for the Ukraine; that it will escape not just the specter of this war, but its older history of corruption as a necessary fact of life. And I hope in time it will be true for Russia itself, either through the reform of its current leaders or through their eventual displacement by those who want something more for their people than desolation and war. It was possible for Iran. These realities do change with the work of people who do not give up their hope even when it seems no one in power has much time for it.
I will be casting my vote this November for perspective, up and down the ballot, rather than for a Republican Party and a nominee that can only see a wolf at every door who wants to convince you that his own barking is coming from the outside. I will be describing, at the onset of whatever panic, this same world to my friends that occupy it with me, where our understanding is the antidote to our fear, where the strength of our country is in our knowledge of it.
In response to recent items on what Donald Trump is doing, four readers offer views on why.
1) Id laid bare. In response to Time Capsule #54, “They Applauded for Me,” a reader says:
Today’s Trump™ Time Capsule reminded me of another example of unaware self-revelation.
Some 50 years ago I worked with a guy who volunteered at a meeting the statement, “I don’t get New Yorker cartoons.” He said it not without pride, as though it were somehow a badge of honor. There was no visible rolling of eyes and we went smoothly on with the meeting, but the remark explained much in my later encounters with him.
In Vital Lies, Simple Truths: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Daniel Goleman recounts in the preface a story of a woman talking about how much her family loves her, and how funny her mother is. If she was saying something that her mother didn’t like, her mother would just pick up what was at hand and throw it at her. “And once, we were eating dinner, so what she picked up was a knife and threw that at me,” told as a humorous anecdote.
Trump is id laid bare, so far as I can tell, and appeals directly to those controlled by the id.
***
2) Big versus little lies. This next reader email is very long but builds to a worthwhile point.
Thank you for the Time Capsule series. I think a lot of the commentary from all over on Trump is missing the main question, however. The fundamental question is seldom what people do; the fundamental question is why they do it.
Any “rational” analysis of Trump will fail. (“Rational” in both the “logical utility” and in the “sane” sense.) He is not presenting a logical way for attaining real benefits, nor is he presenting himself as sane.
What he is selling is fear and anger. It is those two emotions, and just the emotions, that his supporters want. They want to be deathly afraid of the world, and they want to use that fear to justify an all-consuming anger. They are not looking for justification for those emotions; they just want the emotions themselves.
If you see his supporters as masses of the frustrated and disenfranchised who are seeking a voice at the table of power, then it makes no sense. Anybody like that would not want to be lied to. They have been lied to too many times by the powerful. Trump is an obvious liar, and he is never going to do what he says is is going to do. Anyone who simply feels betrayed by the political process isn’t about to set themselves up to be betrayed again. Those types will simply stay home on election day like they always do.
There is no point going into who said it, but it was said that “people would rather believe a big lie than a small one.” Once you lie, and once you lie very very big, then you are in constant fear of being found out. The only possible face-saving response is to use the energy of that fear to violently insist that you are right.
Once you stand up in public and say you believe that the Earth is flat, then you simply can’t back down. The fear of ridicule is so great that the only way forward is to be angry at all attackers. That anger then becomes its own validity. It is an addiction, pure and simple. It is an addiction to strong empty feelings. No one believes that the Earth is flat because of any logical argument. They believe that the Earth is flat because the panic that is caused by believing that lie sustains their desired anger. And their anger is all they have and all they want. Believing the lie is a deliberate and calculated act to drum up an overriding state of blind emotion.
Trump’s big lies are the whole point of his appeal.
Hillary’s fault is that she makes small lies (about the e-mails and a lot else). Small lies can be proven to be false, and the small liar shown to be a fool. You can say that you believed her about the e-mails, and then be shown that that small lie was wrong, and then say that she is a scoundrel for fooling you like that.
But if you swallow a big lie, you can’t back down. Any backdown would be such a loss of face, that your identity won’t allow it. You get trapped in a world of fear of discovery and anger at your critics and you can’t get out.
Most importantly, however, most people don’t want to get out. Most importantly, most people get in that position on purpose. That is why they support Trump. They live off the anger that believing a big lie produces in them.
I hate to always be bringing this up, but every year 250,000 Americans die from medical mistakes. That is over 600 a day, every day, all year long. That is more than a fully loaded 747 crashing every day due to preventable errors.
And the Wall Street Journalreports that immigrants have a lower crime and incarceration rate than natural-born Americans.
Where were the teary-eyed speakers at the RNC talking about their loved ones killed by medical mistakes or by native-born American criminals? There are only a couple hundred thousand more of those to be found than the ones they trotted out. But that is only if you believe in the weight of evidence.
There is no either sane or utilitarian reason to put the fear of immigrant criminals or Islamic terrorists anywhere within the top 100 things to worry about in life. But that is not the point. The point isn’t in believing in the truth what that does for you. The whole point is in believing the lie and what that does for you.
***
Trump is giving his followers what they want and what they insist on: a big lie that will feed their anger. They want to be lied to so that they can be angry at those who call them liars. That is all they want in life, and Trump is delivering the goods. Trump isn’t doing this because he has some carefully calculated path to power on backs of his supporters. He is doing it because he is an idiot and can’t do anything else. He is just a meaningless tool of the times. The more he lies the more his supporters feed off the anger those lies cause and it goes on and on.
The “Vichy Republicans” are just along for the ride, knowing full well that all they want is power and that they will get it and find a way to cover themselves no matter what happens. As you know, in politics, losing is often the best choice, because then you get all of the talk and none of the responsibility.
It is all up to democracy. If most of the people want to be lied to so that they can be angry, then goodbye the good old U.S.A. If Hillary isn’t up to bringing out the vote, then that’s the end.
But Trump isn’t stopped by showing him to be a liar. That just feeds the beast. You don’t convince someone that the Earth isn’t flat by telling them that they are stupid. They want you to say that, so that they can get angry at you for saying that, and that anger is all they really wanted from the beginning. If you are angry enough you don't have to deal with anything else in the world. It is the cheapest and most powerful drug in the world. And once you are addicted, it is hard to stop. Once you are addicted you simply don't know how to do anything else. And you want more and more of it.
You narrow his support by giving his supporters a way out. I think the best way to stop him, as has been pointed out by others, is to simply insult him. That way he will wind it so far out that even his supporters will see the humor in it. Get him to trash talk more about the U.S. and start bringing in UFOs and it will all turn into stand-up comedy even to his supporters. A good laugh puts you in charge, and gets you out.
Either that, or he starts insulting pockets of his own supporters, and then they start wondering who is next. Get some surrogates to insult him in public, and trust he handles it badly. Not call him a liar, but actually insult him. He’s afraid of the very thing he does to others. That’s why he does it. Reagan would have put on that famous smile and say “there you go again.” Trump will probably loose it.
That and when the Trump U case comes up, he’ll be shown to be a small liar.
***
3) Roots of his appeal. A reader with another tip:
Another magazine [apart from TheAtlantic!] I’ve recently discovered that has a lot of insightful articles is The American Conservative. Below is a link to a great article discussing the appeal of Trump to the white working class.
Yes, this interview with J.D. Vance, author of Hillbilly Elegy, is interesting and important. It intersects with the themes Deb and I have been covering, and we’ll return to it.
***
4) On Trump, Putin, and a bias toward chaos. Last for today:
I haven’t slept well since Trump’s RNC speech when it dawned me how close the alignment of Trump’s and Putin’s behavior and interests are. I plead that you dig deeper, much deeper. That you encourage your compatriots to uncover this connection.
In general, I am not a conspiracy believer, but Trump certainly is. I believe that most of us see the world through the prism of our own beliefs. Therefore, Trump believes that the world is run and “won” by using fixers, by rigging the game. This has clearly been how he has operated his businesses and been his experience within New York real estate. Trump says as much in his acceptance speech. Putin has the power and inclination to help Trump fix or tilt our election—with cyber warfare (DNC email leaks?), terrorist attacks, and promoting social unrest.
Putin has been in a cold war with us for several years now and has become adept at using asymmetric warfare against democratic nations. I expect there to be more fear-inspiring activity before and during the DNC, during the Rio Olympics and leading up to election day. Russia can facilitate terrorist groups, even fake terrorism through Chechen connections that can be passed off as ISIS. Russia could fake an Iranian or North Korean cyber attack on the US or an ally (Israel?). They can incite, even arm, the crazies in any democracy. The possibilities are many—arm some militant Black Panthers in the U.S., set off a few car bombs close to the election, send some anthrax around, release some Zika mosquitos, leak embarrassing and incendiary information.
There will be an act of terror somewhere in the world practically every day to light up cable news and remind us how scared we should be, to keep our flag at half mast.
How else does the RNC and Trump’s victory speech make any sense? He’s tripled down on chaos. He wins the election only if the electorate is scared and all we want is “law and order.” Trump is not worried that his convention was a mess, that his party is not united or that he has no staff or ground campaign; this is a cable-news assault.
Russia helps make the chaos and get Trump elected. In exchange Russia gets the Ukraine, the Baltics, greatly weaken democracies and a narcissistic U.S. President that is prone to their manipulation.
Crazy? Yes. Is Trump crazy? Yes. I believe he is crazy enough that there could actually be a direct link between Putin and Trump. Either way, whether a real conspiracy or a confluence of toxic nationalistic waste streams the only vaccine is suspecting the truth before the fact.
Western Kansas, where Deb and I have spent time over the past month, is the heart of Trump Nation in one sense: Trump and the GOP will almost certainly carry this area, and the whole state, this fall.
But if you compared the daily texture of economic, educational, civic, and cultural life in cities like this, with the America-in-the-ashcan end-times tone of political discourse in general, and of the past week in Cleveland in particular, you would wonder about the contrast.
The tension between these two basic assessments of 21st century America, and the ways in which each might selectively be true, was the theme of my March issue cover story, and of our on-scene reports from around the country over the past few years collected here. It’s also been part of our previous reports from Kansas here, here, here, and here, with more to come.
Deb Fallows has a new installment up this morning. It’s about Dodge City High School: home of two successive Kansas State teachers-of-the-year; source of civic pride; locus of ethnic diversity exceeding that of many big cities; and home, among other things, to a fishing team. You can read her report here, and I hope you will.
Process note: the balancing act within our own household and inside my own mind, between the increasingly dire aspects of America’s national politics, and the fresh and encouraging developments in most other realms, is our own local reminder of the larger challenge of trying to make sense of the national condition.
Maybe I should just fall back on the principle that was so handy in China: Everything you could possibly say about the country is true — somewhere. Maybe I should call it schizophrenia or cognitive dissonance, rather than a balancing act. But most of all I should probably keep the balance in favor of on-the-road reporting, which usually has the virtue of being surprising in positive rather than negative ways.
In a series of posts, I’ve been arguing that the well-publicized chaos of the Republican National Convention provides cautionary evidence on how the Trump organization might handle the scaled-up challenge of running a national campaign.
A reader on the West Coast says there is another possibility (and extends the kayfabe analysis from a previous reader ):
I’ve been enjoying the past few days of convention meltdown because I love the idea that we may be watching a Donald death spiral. However, a new theory struck me this morning: This might all be a trap (if I’m wrong it’s because I’ve watched too many episodes of Game of Thrones). Here it is:
Theory: Some or all of the chaos at the Republican convention is intentional / staged.
Evidence: According to NPR, Cruz didn’t go off script. That is, Trump knew what he was gong to say and he let him go up there anyway. Therefore this is no surprise slap in the face as it’s being portrayed.
Why:
Attention: Trump has consistently shown an ability to profit from attention, and chaos drives more attention. Everyone will be paying attention to his speech tonight.
It makes it all about Trump: For instance, Cruz overshadowing Pence is being portrayed as a problem, but if you’re creating a cult of personality, it’s actually a feature not a bug. Now Trump can ride in as the savior.
Lowers expectations: You remember how W played this to great effect. In other words, a moderately good speech turns into the turnaround of the century.
Sets a trap: Trump can use all the attention on the horserace (which is a media obsession) to paint himself as the outsider candidate: “All the media cares about is the soap opera, meanwhile I’m gonna make America great again! Let’s get rid of these jokers who have been driving this country into the ground.” For a public that hates the political class, the right speech tonight could be a big breakout moment. Bonus is that Hillary will look totally wooden when she pulls off an organized convention. Old narrative: well organized conventions are key to a successful presidential bid. New narrative: conventions are the band camp for political losers
I hope I’m wrong, but worry I hear the Rains of Castamere playing in the background.
For analytical completeness, it’s worth comparing this possibility with “Trump’s Razor,” as explained most recently by Josh Marshall at TPM. (Premise of the razor: “Ascertain the stupidest possible scenario that can be reconciled with the available facts.”)
My life experience inclines me to razor-style, as opposed to trap-style, interpretations of most events. But no one knows anything for sure right now.
Readers respond to this stage in our national pageant.
Is it all just kayfabe? From a reader in the Northwest:
Maybe it’s time to stop looking to political pundits to analyze Trump, because politics is the wrong lens? Trump isn’t a politician; he’s a performer. Maybe we should be asking directors and producers to explain what we are witnessing: drama, and nothing more.
Why did he let Cruz speak in primetime without a guarantee of an endorsement? Political ineptitude, or dramatic genius? It was a pro wrestling moment. Betrayal, treachery, defiance! What better way to set up a scene of triumphant revenge! Are Cruz, Christie, Pence, and his own family unwitting or semi-witting extras in Trump’s improvisational “kayfabe”?
Is this all just a corollary to PT Barnum’s quote about bad publicity: “There’s no such thing as bad drama?”
***
It’s getting out of hand. This reader is less amused:
One of the many concerns with watching a man like Trump edge closer to becoming the most powerful man in the world is the growing feeling that there is nothing anyone can do to stop it. And that we’ve seen this before. And that this is something new and unbelievable. And frightening. Mostly frightening.
There are so, so many rational arguments against him and none of them matter despite many of them being of the utmost importance. Years of over-the-top mudslinging have made us all numb to criticism of his very real faults. It’s not that there are Teflon politicians. It’s just that there are people who don’t care about the charges made against them. They care about ratcheting up the attack even more so that they look good by comparison. So here we are, scraping from the bottom of the scum pond for rhetoric to hurl.
It’s a certainty that the people chanting “lock her up” believe simultaneously that she deserves to be locked up, and that they are engaging in the same type of hyperbolic arguments that they think are being made against Trump. Like Mr. Goldberg’s assertion that Trump = Putin, which I can’t even tell whether it is hyperbole or not. Or Donald Trump: Sociopath?
Yet I think that none of this is effective. In fact, all of it contributes to the success of the Republican call for change, which is made more effective because the change is being proposed in the form of a very, very much non-politician. Who wouldn’t want change in such a toxic election?
I just hope someone can come up with an idea on the Democrat side, something that everyone can rally behind. Things are getting desperate.
Not a deal but a relationship. A reader responses to Time Capsule #49, on Trump’s willingness to walk away from a deal: “You always have to be prepared to walk”:
Trump really relishes deal-making and negotiations, and rightly so. The rules he plays by—regardless of whether they’re anyone else’s rules—appear to serve him well. What’s scary is that he seems to treat everything like a negotiation. As you point out, we don’t just have a deal with, say, Japan; we have a relationship. Relationships aren’t always easy, and the strongest ones require hard work to maintain.
It’s hard not to compare this to his marriages. We can’t just get divorced from Japan or South Korea or Estonia every so often and go start over with younger, seemingly more exciting allies.
***
The Cruz gamble:
I am a Texan and I despise Ted Cruz.
But he is one of the few to stand up to Trump. I have never voted for a Democrat for President, but this year will be the first. I would have hoped that Cruz would have done the right thing and clearly stated that as flawed as Hillary is, Trump is unfit for office. He did the next best thing.
I think it’s brilliant politics. What are the chances that Trump self-destructs before the election, or God help us as President? Very high, I’d say. Cruz can say he was right when it happens. Also, he sets himself up to run against Trump in Republican primaries in 2020 as the “I told you so” candidate. He could also run as as 3rd party candidate and get significant support as the only conservative in the race.
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