Krauthammer has in the recent past been a fierce critic of Trump but now has a more positive view of him. His colleague at the WP David Ignatius and MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough are singing from the same hymn sheet and, as the article linked above says, the Establishment looks to be coming round to the President.
So are the traditional Washington figures now firmly in control or is this just Trump being his usual changeable self, now favoring one faction, now another, and often within the same week? Is he really becoming more Presidential?
If devious, untrustworthy, and thuggish are presidential attributes maybe so.
i think he can match Reagan, LBJ, Nixon, Bush II and Obama in these regards, so I guess they are.
I think it’s the bolded portion. He still swings to the music of whomever he last danced with. For some reason, the fact that he ordered the missile strike on the airbase has sparked hope among some that he’s becoming a more traditional Republican.
Having roomfulls of experts looking at you several times a day, every day like you are a complete idiot is always either going to make someone shape up or step down.
Personally, since I fear a Pence presidency more than a Trump, I’d be perfectly happy to see Trump shape up. He could even turn into a reasonable centrist President.
I’m not particularly hopeful on that point yet, but there is something to be said for a president who is basically your average Joe off the street coming into power. He isn’t as perfectly indoctrinated into the belief system of a particular political party, so he has the ability to simply listen to experts and do whatever makes the most sense.
All assuming that he doesn’t get everyone in the Korean peninsula killed, first.
Yes Trump has abandoned “America First”. That is as plain as day to anyone paying attention. We have normalized to the more traditional “American Government First”. Who knows if this move is permanent. Impossible to predict.
Given his flip-flopping on health care and tax reform recently, I have no faith whatsoever that he has changed. How often do 70 year old people actually change?
There’s also all the people running around saying, “Hey, at least he admits when things are complicated. He’s learning.” It’s more like he thinks he’s discovered a new fact that no one else knew and is sharing his wisdom with the rest of us. If he’d been doing his fucking job in the first place, he wouldn’t be caught off guard by some of these little mysteries, like healthcare and North Korea being “complicated.” Stop watching Fox News, turn off your iPhone during your briefings (or attend them), stop golfing all the time, and do your job. Loser.
“America First” is a horrible governing philosophy, besides having unfortunate historical connotations. The US is not the only country on the planet and showing a public face of selfish petulance is not good diplomacy.
Trump is like a weather vane telling us which way the wind is blowing. That’s what irks the traditionalists the most and what his supporters love because they are just followers. This is a no win situation, the traditionalists who created the problems want to be in control, the alternative usually turns out to be a loose cannon. If Trump wants success he’ll turn to the establishment since he doesn’t really have the support of the people. He’s in power because we are divided, not just in two, but split among numerous contending factions and he’s harnessed the dissatisfaction. We get what we deserve, democracy is a messy process.
Krauthammer is saying many of the same things I’ve been saying.
Bottom line: both the alt-right and the far left were convinced the Trump administration was going to be run by Steve Bannon and that it was going to implement a radical agenda.
It now appears that Bannon is demoted and that Trump has largely ceded power to his son in law Jared Kushner and his daughter Ivanka.
The alt-right will see none of the policies they hoped for, and the Left will see little that it feared. The Trump White House is being run by Jewish Democrats, not by Republican antisemites!
Trump the man is still an asshole. But the Trump administration is now following fairly mainstream policies.
The way that Microsoft always won their battles, back when Gates was leading it, was to leave the job of coming up with good ideas to others and then take those ideas and quickly release a Microsoft version before the upstart had taken the market.
The Republican party would probably do really well by simply taking the Democratic initiatives that Obama was following, rebrand them, and carry on. Your average person won’t know better - they’re rooting against party not policy - and any news articles that say the party is cribbing will be taken as lies.
Trump himself remains a wild card. Or, at least, he will be if he REALLY cares about governing.
The big question with Trump has always been, does he want to do the job of President, or does he just want the acclaim and perks that come with the job? Does he have the passion and energy to fight for his positions, or would he rather go throw out the first ball at Yankee Stadium and let Jared worry about boring budget meetings and tedious Congressional legislation conferences.
If Trump leans toward being a lazy figurehead (my hunch), this could end up being a much, much more moderate administration than expected.
And what then? Will there be a revolt in the GOP? Maybe… but we’ve already learned that many ostensibly conservative voters aren’t especially conservative. MAYBE Republicans will scream bloody murder if the Trump White House shifts left… but many of Trump’s biggest fans are devoted to HIM, not to any of his particular stances.
Principled Republicans like me may be outraged… but a lot of Trump fans will support him not matter which direction he leans.
Is it possible that inwardly Trump is at some level aware of his faults and limitations? I mean, he never outward shows any such self awareness - but does he really still think he’s all got it under control? Does he really think his secret plan to beat ISIS in 30 days is uh just a little slow getting started? Does he really think he can fix America?
No way to tell, of course. But unloading it on Jared Kushner and Ivanka - I mean, it could be worse, right? Kushner graduated cum laude from Harvard College with a Bachelor of Arts degree[20][21] in government. In 2007, Kushner graduated from New York University where he earned a J.D. and an M.B.A.;
He may not be likable, but Kushner is qualified on paper at least. He doesn’t have a decades long history of lying and scandals like Trump does.
Ref the bolded part I’m reminded that Presidents don’t get the term they want; they get the term history thrusts on them.
GWB campaigned as a domestic agenda president. And was governing as one until 9/11. Had that never happened he would probably have been a fairly uncontroversial mainstream Republican president with some domestic accomplishments to his name and be viewed as such today. As it actually unfolded, he and his administration weren’t really up for handling the problem thrust on them that day and they managed to make the problem a lot worse before they began to make it better 6 years later.
As applied to Trump, we may all luck out and history takes a semi-timeout for the next 3-1/2 years so he can golf regularly and neither he nor the shaky administration he heads will be strained to or past the breaking point.
But that’s not the way to bet. I for one am far more concerned about them lurching into a quagmire with an ill-considered response than I am the administration launching something crazy off their own bat that actually survives the first court challenge. As a specific example, them starting WWIII over an NK provocation is much more likely than them actually deporting all the Muslims or building the Wall despite some tweets and ill-considered EOs in that direction.
IOW, it *might *be moderate, but it *will *be accident-prone. Not all drunk drivers speed. But they’re all reckless.
So in the first hundred days we’ve lowered the bar for Trump to the point where it’s considered acceptable if he tried to enact an alt-right agenda as long as he failed in the attempt.
How low do you figure you’re going to have to set the bar by 2020 so Trump can still walk under it?
You think I’m pro-Trump? You don’t know me very well.
I’m one of the only authentic #NeverTrump Republicans. On a personal level, he’s an asshole. On a political level, he’s not a conservative and he’s barely a Republican. Conservatives who embraced him are going to find out quickly that they made a stupid choice.
I doubt he is aware of his faults and limitations, and I suspect he will externalise all failure. However, I think he is capable of learning. He will be learning what lies he can get away with, and what lies he can’t. He’ll be learning the areas to stay away from to avoid attracting (totally undeserved, of course!) criticism.
He is learning that his power is subject to various (totally unfair!) checks and balances, and that other (completely incompetent!) people can block him. Consequently he will figure out that during the early and middle parts of his term he shouldn’t make definite promises that he won’t be able to keep because he will (completely unfairly!) get called on that.
I doubt he ever believed he could beat ISIS in 30 days or that he could “fix America”. I doubt it ever crossed his mind to consider the veracity of such statements. He’s only concerned with whether these sorts of statements are what people like to hear, and whether he can get away with making them.
My view is that if he thought people would like it if he declared black to be white, and would never dislike him for black not being white, he would say it. If you pointed out to him that, actually, black isn’t white, he would stare at you blankly and not understand why you thought that was relevant.
Krauthammer is a cunt. His view of foreign policy is that the best person is the one who fellates Israel the mostest.
Otherwise, its what Princhester said. Reality is ensuing for President Trump. He is learning that there are real limits on his power, he is an elected President, not a god-King and I suspect even the god-Kings of ancient Egypt quickly discovered the practical limits of their power/were smart enough not to test it.
I don’t think he actually though that he has such power to be honest, he is not (the caricature nothwithstanding) stupid. He is following most of the same institutional policies as his predecessors did. Like 'W and later Obama, he probably hopes to kick the ball on any future problems down the road, though like 'W and unlike Obama he might be faced with an unavoidable problem while in office.
My bet is on Russia and China. The entire U.S foreign policy establishment is almost out of plays and fully out of ideas on those scores.