Said NYT reporter Maggie Haberman, answering the question how her days have changed now that Trump isn't President anymore.
Quoted in "Maggie Haberman on life after Trump and the one question she regrets not asking" (Forward).
The question she regrets not asking isn't really one question but a line of inquiry:
One question that I think is sort of an open one is he has said very little about what he expected the federal government to be like when he came in. Remember, you are talking about somebody who was never in government before, and we forget how strange that is — that we had a president who had never won an election before and never served at any level before. His understanding of what government was going to be, I believe, was very different than the way the federal government actually works.
She had 4 years. Why did she never get around to it? I have to suspect that she didn't want to get inside his head and see things from his point of view and with empathy. What if his understanding of "what government was going to be" had value? He was coming in from the outside, with all his observations and powers — what could he offer?
Why assume it was all bad and "the way the federal government actually works" right now is the way it should be? Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and that ideas about transforming it are dangerous.
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77 comments:
Haberman has always been a tool the Democrat Party could depend on. We know that from the DNC/Clinton emails.
"I feel like I can hear..." She's still crazier than a sack full of cats, and in spite of all that she's still a phony.
I'll tell Maggie what he thought- he expected the government was shit when he came in. He was right...
Actually he thought you could salvage it but we see its an augean stable.
Really? Current fakepresident can’t remember his own SecDef name or the big polygon-shaped building the SecDef runs. The BEST OF HANDS are on the till I tell ya!
that we had a president who had never won an election before and never served at any level before. His understanding of what government was going to be, I believe, was very different than the way the federal government actually works.
yes! Thank Gaia that we're back to having a "President",
That Never worked a day in his life outside of government.
Who 'knows' how government actually 'works'.
Who is SO Compromised that The Powers That Be, can MAKE him do, WHAT EVER they want
Who is SO Senile, that he probably Actually thinks He's in charge
I reject the premise that she is less crazed now. The question I'd ask her, if you knew you were crazed under Trump, why didn't you disclose that to your readers?
She's one of the best from that side because of the mysterious access she has, but it's scary when you realize how little they know.
Good one Leland.
Maggie Haberman is one of the leaders of the Fake News. A total fraud.
I am amazed that Althouse, who brought us a multiplicity of voices commenting on criticizing and smearing Trump daily! But has no interest in the well-advertised public cognitive failures of the man democrats installed in the whitehouse. He can’t answer simple questions, has offered no explanation of his policies and holds zero press availability. All big departures from normalcy: not a “return” to it as promised. Does this super radical break with tradition — and competence — not interest our hostess?
What I want to know is who in the WH was leaking to her. And how much did she just make up.
Trump taught us how it actually does work and it is really ugly.
Mattis Tillerson then mcmaster and brennan not in that order.
So she admits she was basically out of her head while journalisming.
"Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason "
Ooh boy. Hope boots were on.
The real question is what will occupy that empty space in her head now. Climate Change? Race Huckstering? Open Borders?
"Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous."
Are you arguing that Haberman is a conservative and doesn't know it?
"Why did she never"
Wouldn't serve anti-Trumpism and prog power.
"Why assume it was all bad"
Why not?
"Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous."
Of course, that kind of conservatism just sets itself up as easy prey for progressivism: progs move the goal posts, and cons say it must be for good reason, so leave them there.
So she just starts out admitting that she suffered from four plus years of Trump Derangement Syndrome.
Why does the MSM think we'll ever trust them again?
The way that the Federal Government actually works is that the FBI leadership has a veto over the elected President's choice for National Security Advisor.
If the FBI does not approve the elected President's choice, then the FBI frames the nominee as a Russian agent and gets him indicted on process crimes.
Someone please pass You Should Barely Know the Federal Government Exists to Maggie Haberman.
One question that I think is sort of an open one is he has said very little about what he expected the federal government to be like when he came in. Remember, you are talking about somebody who was never in government before, and we forget how strange that is — that we had a president who had never won an election before and never served at any level before. His understanding of what government was going to be, I believe, was very different than the way the federal government actually works.
It's sort of a silly question since the answer is pretty obvious to anyone who had been paying attention. Trump wanted a federal government that put the American citizen first, that prioritized their needs above all other concerns. If you look at all of the policies he championed, his strong stance on border secrurity and controlling illegal imigration, his efforts to get allies to participate more financially, his renegotiating trade deals, his efforts to reduce federal regulations for business, and many others it's clear that he believed that the federal government was not serving the interests of its citizenry.
Now, you can certainly quibble about if he went about trying to achieve the goal of a government that better served the needs of its citiznes in the most effective way. He was definitely a firebrand, someone who went against the grain, and he clearly drove many people nuts. Perhaps he didn't always proceed in the most effective way.
He also clearly didn't fully understand the state of the government going in or the true nature of those he trusted. He didn't fully grasp the vast complexity of the federal government. He didn't fully appreciate how deeply corrupt a lot of the organs of the state had become, especially the intelligence apparatus. In short, he didn't know how bad things were and how resistant to change they would be.
Another example
https://thenationalpulse.com/news/biden-nec-adviser-ccp-conference/
Trump developed real estate for years. He had lots of experience dealing with government. Especially the parasites who flock around wealth creators with their palms out. His experience was formative.
The way that the Federal Government works is that if the FBI leadership does not like a Presidential candidate, then the FBI concocts a plot in which the candidate's campaign staff is colluding with Russian Intelligence to use stolen e-mails to win the election.
This imaginary plot authorizes the FBI to search and seize all communications of practically all the candidate's close associates for several years.
In order to keep this imaginary plot going, the FBI changes official documents. For example, if a CIA document says that one of the candidate's staff members IS a CIA informant, then the FBI changes the document to say that the staff member IS NOT a CIA informant.
That is the way that the Federal Government works.
Mattis went back to brookings probably loobies for qatar or china, kelly to caliburn which runs these facilities
Remember enemy of the state, thats a how tp manual for them, also the departed.
Michael K wrote: “Trump taught us how it actually does work and it is really ugly.”
Absolutely! He and Haberman taught us how the leftmediaswine works as well and it is really ugly.
I’m not going to read Haberman’s drivel, but it appears that from her perspective her despicable, dishonest coverage of Trump resulted from his occupying her brain, i.e., Trump Derangement Syndrome. In other words, her mendaciousness was all Trump’s doing. It has become evident that this type of thinking characterizes both the intellectual and maturity levels infecting the NYT.
Thanks Maggie, I too am thrilled we are back to normal now. We need a president who hides under the oval office carpet and occasionally is beckoned to sign an EO that he clueless about.
Funny, how all the Progressive opinion writers have a TERRIBLE case of TDS, and yet have no clue why??? Maybe if they opened their eyes and ears, they would have realized what millions of Americans who are being trampled over to make room for and pay homage to illegal Aliens are afraid of. Being outcasts in your own country because of the color of your skin after all we've been through is going backwards, but then, that is what the new Progressives want....REGRESSIVISM. Segregation. HATE. Division. All Progressive.
Anyone who writes for the NYT is not to be believed about anything.
https://www.the-tls.co.uk/articles/power-shortages/
"Richard Neustadt’s Presidential Power was hailed as a classic when it appeared in 1960 and remains today one of the most important and influential books ever written on the American presidency. It has been required reading for White House staff in a number of administrations – Richard Nixon’s staffers read it avidly (though not accurately, Professor Neustadt complains). The opening of the original version has become one of the best-known and most frequently quoted passages about the presidency. It is 1952, President Harry Truman is about to hand over to General Dwight Eisenhower and he begins to think aloud: “He’ll sit here”, Truman said, indicating the Oval Office, “and he’ll say, ‘Do this! Do that!’ And nothing will happen. Poor Ike – it won’t be a bit like the Army. He’ll find it very frustrating.” This provides the theme for Neustadt’s book, which is not about presidential power at all, but about presidential weakness."
Althouse: “Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous.“
This is “the very definition of conservatism?” Who knew? Perhaps the oversimplification is misleading me, but I suspect this may be how we are perceived in academia.
I would not recommend Russell Kirk’s tome “The Conservative Mind” by now, but I think his “The American Cause” might still be helpful to understanding today’s conservatism since it is not any “working system” we seek to protect from ideologues, but the historical essence of America - its Constitution, it’s political, economic and moral principles.
Her words verge on having meaning.
Is it though
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dhs-chief-volunteers-southern-border-migrant-surge
Althouse: “Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous.“
This is “the very definition of conservatism?” Who knew? Perhaps the oversimplification is misleading me, but I suspect this may be how we are perceived in academia.
I would not recommend Russell Kirk’s tome “The Conservative Mind” by now, but I think his “The American Cause” might still be helpful to understanding today’s conservatism since it is not any “working system” we seek to protect from ideologues, but the historical essence of America - its Constitution, it’s political, economic and moral principles.
Bitch be crazed.
Maggie Haberman finally gets one of her Trump-related stories right.
American conservativism: Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, without diversity and other classes of bigotry. A real danger, a real threat, to their faith, religion, ideological bent, and special and peculiar interests.
Conservatism is about defending institutions that have stood the end of time.
You know Trump's "naïveté " about how the government works matched that of many Americans. But not anymore. Across the country, People were caused to see reality. Trump revealed a lot about the Deep State by drawing fire and causing them to reveal their sniping positions.
You can't fix something that is limping along until you see the major risk factor(s) that could kill you all that have been right in your face all along.
Do you have a tag for the Press analyzing the thoughts and feelings of the press? "Journomphaloskepsis?"
Now we are back to normalcy
https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/03/anti-semitisms-many-strains-joseph-puder/
The lefties are such hateful, nasty little shits.
- Krumhorn
I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was. It’s a lot easier now. I feel like I can hear the thoughts in my own head again.
Is she blaming Trump because she stopped taking her medications?
WHAT?? Maggie didn't KNOW she was part of the msm??
Maggie Haberman sounds like another lazy journalist who really just wants four years of light duty just like she had under Obama.
Why can't she ask that question of him now?
So she’s admitting to being insane for at least 4 years.
But you’re taking what she writes now seriously?
Nah.
So, she was crazed and she couldn't hear the thoughts in her own head.
If I were to play journalist, I'd like to ask her, "Do you think this might have affected the quality and objectivity of your reporting?"
Not the only one:
https://www.foxbusiness.com/personal-finance/this-etf-could-help-grow-your-retirement-account
Now they do this
https://thefederalist.com/2021/03/09/publisher-pulls-back-on-andrew-cuomo-book-citing-deadly-nursing-home-scandal/
I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was. It’s a lot easier now. I feel like I can hear the thoughts in my own head again.
That worked out well for Son of Sam...
"Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous."
*************
Our Faux Philosophe-in-Residence J. Farmer sneers at this definition.
"...it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and that ideas about transforming it are dangerous."
Whose definition?
Conservatives seek to retain traditional elements of society-- strong families, respect for the Creator, the independent spirit that made America.
Maintaining a government that is crushing that spirit isn't even on the list.
She didn't ask Trump the question because he would have hit that slo pitch softball out of the yard. Now, she is posing it so she can speak the truthful answer he would have given if in her opinion he was "honest".
So she’s admitting Trump Derangement Syndrome is real and she suffered from it. Gee, I wonder how many others in the MSM suffered from it and how it affected their coverage of all that went on. Possibly it made them more susceptible to the absurd lie that Trump was compromised by Russia, and caused them to miss all the Demoncrats compromised by China. As my son who was in MI said the other day, Nancy’s Chinese spy chauffeur wasn’t her chauffeur, he was her handler.
In other words, I was literally hysterical the last four years because of Trump.
“Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason and ideas about transforming it are dangerous.“
Not anymore.
Today the definition of conservative is wanting to RESTORE the system that used to work, and no longer does because it has become corrupted by the Left. Your definition is just another version of the ever advancing Leftist ratchet. The Left creates radical change, and now suddenly the right is supposed to agree with it because it is the status quo. Meanwhile the Left is free to change things, because they are "progressive" and making things more fair and better for everybody.
this super radical break with tradition — and competence — not interest our hostess?
Nope, she finds it all pretty boring, which makes her happy.
To a lot of women, Trump was every man who ever talked down to them.
THAT was not, to use the progressive catch-all, "sustainable" for his re-election.
"To a lot of women, Trump was every man who ever talked down to them."
And Biden was the creep who always invaded their personal space and got way too touchy-feely.
The crazy Maggie and the rest of the left showed us their crazy. It hasn't left them, but now we all know it's there. Same thing Trump did. We all knew government was a mess, but didn't realize just how corrupt it was through and through and how the Federal Government has little regard for either it's citizens or the actual Constitution.
Once seen, this cannot be unseen.
"I have to suspect that she didn't want to get inside his head and see things from his point of view and with empathy."
Don't overthink this. She's a psycho bitch, and everyone she knows is as crazy as she is. She's had her hair on fire since she was eleven, and her brains are baked like a potato.
"To a lot of women, Trump was every man who ever talked down to them."
And yet, he was the opposite of that sentiment, and treated men and women equally.
This seems to be more about displacement motivated by public voices, unearned authority, expert testimony, and influencers steering a focus, irrespective, and often in contradiction, to reality.
Maggie Haberman still has Donald Trump living rent-free inside her head.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the consent of the governed
...
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
Libertarianism is self-organizing. Liberalism is divergent. Progressivism is monotonic. Conservativism is moderating. American conservavativism is Pro-Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness with a governing constitutional republic less the Twilight Amendment (e.g. selective-child, diversity, chauvinism, political congruence). Principles matter.
What if his understanding of "what government was going to be" had value? He was coming in from the outside, with all his observations and powers — what could he offer?
I think he came in with the naive assumption that the civil service are basically professionals, who will faithfully implement the policies decided on by the elected government. Frankly, although I had some cynicism about the competence or good faith of our careerist civil servants, I also thought that they were more or less professionals about it. Nothing has been more distressing to me about the Trump years than the revelation that in fact our civil service is not only incompetent, but incredibly unprofessional as well, and that the "professional" classes -- people like lawyers, academics, bureaucrats -- will actively celebrate that kind of unprofessional conduct and do what they can to reward it.
Speaking as a lawyer, I think we're going to live to regret this deterioration in norms of professional conduct.
"I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was."
Yes you are.
That a professional journalist was "crazed" during Trump's tenure says more about the journalist than about Trump.
Really, Trump was an asshat, and always has been. He was a bad president, but most of them are, and he was certainly not the worst president we have had, not even the worst in the last 20 years. His public manner was a pretty honest representation of who he was--a bully, braggart, and know-nothing interested mainly in his own self-aggrandizement--and this is where he offended the chattering classes and self-regarding virtue warriors. He at least made half-hearted feints at reducing, if not completely removing, our troops from the lands we have invaded, (while Biden, in his first weeks in office launched a needless and purposeless missile strike on Syria, thereby joining the President War Criminals club).
The thing is, reporters presumably are (or should be) more knowing--more cynical--than to find the character flaws, demagoguery, corruption, and criminal behavior of politicians and Presidents surprising or crazy-making. Rather, they should see this as the norm for this cohort, and their job is to discover and report on how each new holder of power will betray their constituents, their oaths of office, their campaign promises, and the law.
I refuse to allow myself to be recruited into this kind of mental torment to advance the political fortunes of some group or other the way this lady was. From now on I am a loyal subject of the ruling cabal, and will live as men have lived throughout most of history, hoping for a good king and enduring the bad ones.
Life is too short, “God give me the strength to change the things I can change and to accept the things I cannot change, and you know, the thing."
I think this journalist needs some space, she is recovering from her capture and psychological rape from the Democratic cult. She needs some space and healing.
Maggie figured out how to traverse the Government as it is. It is her bread & butter.
Trump threw a rock through the window.
Progressives usually just put boards on the window, get on their knees and beg to know what they can do to appease the rock thrower.
Instead they encouraged other rock throwers, arsonists and looters to destroy Main Street, USA
Oh...wait. I know. It was Maggie's window that the rock came through, not some nobody's window.
Robert Cook - "The thing is, reporters presumably are (or should be) more knowing--more cynical"
Much to my chagrin, I find myself agreeing with RC...again. (Still not getting a vaccine though.)
“Ironically, it's the very definition of conservatism to believe that the working system already in operation is the way it is for good reason.”
Or (perhaps more accurately) it’s not tearing down that gate until you understand why the gate was put there in the first place.
In any case, today’s “progressives” do seem to have become reactionaries just as surely as today’s “anti-racists” have become outrageously racist. It’s why, if you want to find freethinkers in an American high school or college a good place to start would be to look among those with a more conservative worldview. For it doesn’t, after all, require much thinking to just safely go along with whatever the progressive-piety-du-jour happens to be without actually thinking about whether it actually makes any sense.
I'm not sure the thoughts she has in her head are really worth listening to. Minds work when they have something to work on or work against, and it sounds like she didn't spend much time trying to understand Trump. Though she was working against him in a simplistic, unquestioning way, she doesn't seem to really have engaged with him.
Yes, her assumption seems to be that government works fine and that Trump was a fool who didn't understand how Washington works. But what if government really was an awful mess? Then the question becomes, "How did you think you, coming from outside of the government could actually fix it?" and the obvious answer is "Were the people inside government really ever going to change it? They are happy with how things are and don't listen to people's complaints about the system."
I don't suppose Trump was up on all the civics classes details when he took office. But that was but a small detail. It would not have been too hard to get caught up on that if he wanted to learn. The problem was knowing who he could trust and how much he could trust them. That's the inside of politics and bureaucracy. It's harder to learn than how laws are made or which agencies do what. Trump had real problems there, but on the whole he didn't do worse than presidents who did have government and political experience.
Maggie Haberman, a shit person.
"I’m nowhere near as crazed as I was."
The first admittance it was THEIR problem all along.
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