Nil admirari.

Nil admirari is today's Word of the Day in the Oxford English Dictionary. I ran across it because, writing the previous post, I looked up the word "sunder," after David Axelrod had accused Donald Trump of "sundering history." It's an odd word, but it's not the most apt word. Sundering has more to do with separating than demolition. And how do you do either to history?

But I was glad to get deflected into the OED, because I'm finding out about Nil admirari: "The attitude of indifference to the distractions of the outside world advocated by the Roman poet Horace. Also: a person adopting this attitude."

Etymology: "classical Latin nīl admīrārī, in nil admirari prope res est una..quae possit facere et servare beatum, ‘to wonder at nothing is just about the only way a man can become contented and remain so’ (Horace Epistles 1. 6. 1).

From the Wikipedia article about the term: "Nietzsche wrote that in this proposition the ancient philosopher 'sees the whole of philosophy,' opposing it to Schopenhauer's 'admirari id est philosophari' (to marvel is to philosophize)."

Here's the Horace:

"There appears to be an emerging consensus that the impeachment of Donald Trump won’t matter very much in November, 2020."

John Cassidy writes in "Impeaching Donald Trump Is Already a Win for Democrats" (The New Yorker), and I note the weasel words "appears" and "emerging" and the lack of specificity about the set of persons who are coagulating into this consensus.

Is he looking entirely at those who are hoping to steel the Democrats to get through this next phase?

“Impeachment will eclipse all for the next seven weeks. And then it will recede, and other events will supersede it as the election year moves on,” David Axelrod, the CNN commentator and former adviser to Barack Obama, commented in a Twitter thread on Thursday. 

That's already clearly untrue. Impeaching isn't eclipsing all. Just yesterday, the impeachment was eclipsed by good economic news, an act of violence, and Trump talking about toilets. If you can't even get the next day right, your assurances about the next year sound like made-up happy talk.

In a Times Op-Ed, Michael Tomasky, the editor of Democracy, wrote, “I will bet you dollars to doughnuts that when we pore over the exit polls next Nov. 4, impeachment itself will have been a minor factor in people’s voting, let alone the question of how many articles the House passed.”

Dollars to doughnuts? Is that anything like malarkey? I'm going to guess that Michael Tomasky is over 70, because I'm almost 70 and I've only ever heard "dollars to doughnuts" from people who seemed really old to me. I looked. He's 59. I'm going to assume he's adopting a cornball, folksy style because he's knows it's a con.

Axelrod and Tomasky are shrewd and experienced observers....

No, they're not shrewd and experienced observers. They're shrewd and experienced participants in political discourse, manipulators of opinion. They're not prognosticating because they're trying to get it right. They're trying to affect what happens and what people think.

Kamala cautiously takes on the criticism "She’s very cautious."

So David Axelrod had disparaged Kamala Harris on at least 2 occasions:

1. “She is an incredibly compelling personality; a very bright and accomplished person... But she’s very cautious — and that caution was pretty apparent in a lot of her answers.”

2. “She’s a brilliant person, there’s no doubt about that... But what we’ve learned so far is that she’s great at asking questions but timid at answering them. She’s going to have to correct that to navigate this process.”

And it's not as though KH noticed and decided to push him right back (which is the sort of thing Trump does (he always hits back)). Politico put her on the spot and asked. You can't be very cautious and sound timid when asked whether you're too cautious and timid, can you?

Asked by POLITICO about Axelrod’s concerns — part of a line of criticism that Harris aides and allies broadly believe is tinged with sexism and not applied in the same way to the men running for president — Harris paused for a few seconds before saying, “I don’t know what to tell you."

Wow. Politico had to try to cushion the effect of the embarrassing confirmation of Axelrod's take. Look at that ridiculous extra material inserted in between the dashes. That's not what KH said when asked, and it's such mushy stuff — "broadly believe," "tinged."

“Axelrod was on the road with Barack a decade ago,” she added. “I’ve invited him to come on the road with me ... (and he’d see) “contrary to what he thinks is happening.”

She won't defend herself in words. Can that work in politics? I can imagine the most wonderful person in the world responding to attacks by murmuring "If you really knew me, you wouldn't say that." But would you choose that person as your champion, to do battle for you against bold adversaries?

As for whether the critiques of her are grounded in sexism, Harris said some of those making the charges about her “should do a better job of performing themselves.”

Again, she confirms Axelrod's take. She won't be direct. She exhibits nice modesty. I think it is better for female candidates to refrain from characterizing criticism as sexist, but you still need an answer, and her failure to answer is more evidence that Axelrod is right.

Incredibly, Politico's article ends with a quote from Willie Brown: "I would have said, ‘What did he say? I didn’t read it... Axel-who?'"

That forces me to go looking for what, exactly, is the connection between Kamala Harris and Willie Brown? I only remember the crude joking that continually turns up in the comments. Here's a piece published yesterday in The Washington Examiner: "Kamala Harris’ first significant political role was an appointment by her powerful then-boyfriend Willie Brown, three decades her senior, to a California medical board that has been criticized as a landing spot for patronage jobs and kickbacks. Then 30, Harris was dating 60-year-old Willie Brown, at the time the Democratic speaker of the California State Assembly, when he placed her on the California Medical Assistance Commission [which met twice a month]. The position paid over $70,000 per year...."

Axelrod isn't quite saying it's a witch hunt, but it too easily plays into the "witch-hunt" meme.

Maybe I’m missing something, but the hazard of an omnibus document demand by House judiciary versus discreet, serial ones is that, however legitimate the areas of inquiry, the wide-ranging nature of it is too easily plays into the “witch-hunt” meme.

— David Axelrod (@davidaxelrod) March 4, 2019

It's hard to think what anything really is or isn't anymore. It feels much better/smarter/safer to speak about whether things fit into memes. Or really not even that. It's more a matter of whether something can be used by somebody else to further their memes.

Live-blogging the Trump Inauguration.

1. We've been watching for a couple hours, but I think it's time to get the blog going.

2. I'll say what I suppose everyone is saying — I haven't looked — Melania's outfit is delightfully perfect. The color, the gloves, the length of the sleeves, the high cut of the jacket revealing the slimly columnar torso, the wrapped up, folded over neckline. Love it!

3. There's a scene we here at Meadehouse have watched 3 times and discussed at length. I think the title is: Delivery of the Tiffany Pizza. Donald and Melania drive up to the Obama's house. Donald gets out of the car and amiably greets the Obamas as Melania emerges from the far side of the car and walks around to the steps, and she's carrying a horizontal, flat box — the size and shape of a pizza box — and we know by the color and the white bow that it's from Tiffany. Melania, smiling warmly, joins the group, and she hands the box to Michelle. Michelle reacts as if a box of crap has been foisted on her, and she looks around as if she's truly pissed to be stuck with the box. No one off camera comes forward, presumably because they're all instructed to stay out of the photo op. The 2 saluting military men can't stop saluting. They're not like apartment doormen or hotel bellhops. They can't wrangle the packages. Michelle could pretend to appreciate the gift and hold it in a discreet sideways position. It's not really pizza. It's not as though the cheese will slide off if she turns it vertical. Obama sees he must cater to his wife's emotional needs, and he, in his last moments as President of the United States, walks over, gets the package, and takes it inside the house, and then he comes back out to line up for the big, historical photo.

4. Kellyanne Conway arrives at the Capitol. I saw her earlier on one of the morning shows and thought her majorette outfit could use a hat, so I'm glad to see she's got a nice red hat to complete the costumery. [ADDED: I'm seeing a closeup of the buttons on her coat. They seem to be the heads of lionesses. I think of what Donald Trump said about her last night: "There is no den she will not go into."]

5. Hillary Clinton arrives at the Capitol. She's wearing a nice champagne-colored pantsuit and puts on a matching light overcoat. From off-screen, some reporter yells out, "Madame Secretary, how does it feel to be here today?" Another one says: "How are you feeling, Madame Secretary?" What's she supposed to say? I'll say it for her: How the fuck do you think it feels? We overhear the CNN commentators giggling and one of them — maybe Axelrod — mutters "probably come up with a different question."

6. Axelrod says he finds it "irritating" that some Democratic Party members of Congress are boycotting the inauguration. When Trump takes the oath he will be President for all of us and there's business we need to do as a country, and we need to do it together, he says.

7. The Supreme Court Justices — all 8 of them — are here, arriving together, all in robes. Justice Breyer is carrying a ziploc bag of supplies. Alongside him is Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with a brown-colored lace collar. Is that a deliberate variation from white?! Remember she's on record having called Trump "a faker" with "no consistency about him." The Chief Justice looks determined — do not botch the oath. Clarence Thomas — who's doing the oath for Pence — looks happy. Kennedy and Alito seem spry. Elena Kagan seems fine. Sonia Sotomayor, perhaps rather weary, lumbering.

8. Trump and Obama emerge from the White House. They both look grim. Grumpy. CNN has a split screen so we also see Bill and Hillary Clinton arriving at the Capitol. They look grim too. Oh, no, now Bill is smiling. He's on camera, living in the moment, looking good. Good old Bill.

9. "She looks stunning. She looks great. She's stunning in defeat. She looks great." Meade is watching Hillary walk through the halls out toward the inaugural stage.

10. Oh, that steep stairway! So great that no one falls.

11. Trump swivels toward the camera. Looks right at us. He's waiting inside while Pence comes out. Pence has to shake many hands — Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, all the Trump ladies, etc. etc.

12. Trump is announced. He walks out. Gives a thumbs up then an upraised fist. Kisses Melania. Kisses Michelle. Takes his place. Who's that lady standing behind him doing an iPhone video?

13. Shots of Trump include Barron, sitting right behind him. Barron looks as though he might be staring into an iPhone. He's corrected by his mother at one point. He yawns. He looks annoyed, even angry.

14. "And God blesses you when people mock you and persecute you and lie about you and say all sorts of evil things against you..." The Bible reading seems to refer to Trump.

15. Clarence Thomas administers the oath to Mike Pence.

16. An ultra-smooth rendition of "America" by the Mormon Tabernacle Choir.

17. President Donald Trump. It's real now. It happened. Good luck, America!

18. Oh! The speech. I'd forgotten. We have a whole speech to go. "We are transferring power from Washington D.C. and giving it to you."

19. The theme: YOU. Today is "The day The People became the rulers of this nation once again... Everyone is listening to you now."'

20. "When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice."

21. Trump ends his speech and raises his fist. Waves it around in the air.

Axelrod got everything he wanted.

From the podcast with Obama:

OBAMA: And you know, part of the reasons that I think I've stayed sane in what has been this remarkable journey, and you've known me a long time and I think you'd confirm that I'm pretty much the same guy as I was when we started this thing.... [Y]ou know, success came late to me, notoriety came late. And it -- it made me realize that to the extent that I had been successful, it wasn't about me.  It was about certain forces out there and -- and me hitching my wagon to a broader spirit and a broader set of trends and a broader set of traditions. And so, when -- when we came up with the phrase Yes, We Can, which again, to give you credit I was a little skeptical of, it felt a little simplistic when we first started. But...

AXELROD: You didn't like the logo either, but that's -- that's a different discussion...

(CROSSTALK)

OBAMA: The logo I thought was a loser, it looked like the Pepsi logo and I thought...

AXELROD: That's what you said, that's...

OBAMA: ... that seems a little...

(CROSSTALK)

AXELROD: That's what you said, it became more iconic than the Apple insignia. So -- I'm glad we straightened this out...

OBAMA: But look, I...

AXELROD: I've gotten everything I wanted...

Trump's speech would look a lot more coherent if the transcripts were properly punctuated.

I was watching Bill Maher's show last Friday, and was struck by this mockery of Trump:

BILL MAHER: I have seen this guy change his position from the beginning to the end of a sentence.

DAVID AXELROD: With no punctuation.

That got a big laugh, but what does it mean to say that spoken word lacks punctuation? Unless you're Victor Borge, you don't voice the punctuation. Occasionally, people say "period" to stress a sentence, but the great bulk of what we say has no punctuation. Only when words are written down does punctuation enter the picture.

Sidetrack: Punctuation had to be invented, and early written word was not punctuated. Greeks and Romans got some punctuation ideas and experiment, but the serious work in punctuation came with the spread of Christianity:

Whereas pagans had always passed along their traditions and culture by word of mouth, Christians preferred to write down their psalms and gospels to better spread the word of God. Books became an integral part of the Christian identity, acquiring decorative letters and paragraph marks (Γ, ¢, 7, ¶ and others), and many were lavishly illustrated with gold leaf and intricate paintings.

As it spread across Europe, Christianity embraced writing and rejuvenated punctuation. In the 6th Century, Christian writers began to punctuate their own works long before readers got their hands on them in order to protect their original meaning. Later, in the 7th Century, Isidore of Seville (first an archbishop and later beatified to become a saint, though sadly not for his services to punctuation) described an updated version of Aristophanes’ system in which he rearranged the dots in order of height to indicate short (.), medium (·) and long (·) pauses respectively....

Much more at the link, which goes to a BBC.com article.

Punctuation developed out of the idea of preserving the meaning that a speaker would naturally convey if he were speaking from his own thoughts. And, of course, that is what Trump has been doing as he has successfully reached the minds even of "poorly educated" people as he speaks extemporaneously, tumbling out phrases, often inserting ideas inside ideas.

But the transcripts! Some speakers might end up looking clear and coherent in a verbatim transcript cranked out with no intelligent effort at punctuation, but Trump has all these phrases within phrases. The transcripts make the speaking look like a mess — changing his position from the beginning to the end of a sentence as Maher put it and with no punctuation as Axelrod quipped fancifully but aptly. Or... I should say: Axelrod's quip is aptly applied to the transcript but not to the live speaking, which does have the voiced quality that good punctuation would capture — at least in the ears of a sympathetic listener. If you don't like Trump, when you hear him speak, you might think Ugh! Word salad!

Hey, but salad can be good, even salad that's not salade composée. Sophisticated people are supposed to understand recursion:

In linguistics, the core application of recursion is phrase embedding. Chomsky posits an operation, unbounded Merge, that recursively merges words to create larger phrases. For example, given, “Jane said Janice thought June was tired and emotional,” merge would construct something like: {Jane, {said, {Janice, {thought, {June, {was, {tired and emotional}}}}}}}. In Chomsky's view, the evolution of unbounded Merge is the genesis of language:

Within some small group from which we are descended, a rewiring of the brain took place in some individual, call him Prometheus, yielding the operation of unbounded Merge, applying to concepts with intricate (and little understood) properties … Prometheus's language provides him with an infinite array of structured expressions. (Chomsky, 2010)

Wouldn't it be a kick in the head if Trump's rhetoric is the leading edge of evolution?

We are going somewhere, and social media is affecting our brains. Trump is a master of social media, perhaps the greatest master of social media the world has ever seen. The man leaped over traditional media, stodgily written, to wow us — some of us! — with a combination of tweeting and old-time blabbermouth rallies. It's too late to cower in fear of schizophasia (AKA word salad).

Stop scoffing at the mess of a transcript and start visualizing the missing punctuation. Yesterday, I was blogging about how the internet and social media were restructuring our brains and how I'd said, before the election, that "Trump may seem weird by old standards" but that he deserves credit for figuring out how to speak in this new culture that has emerged.

In the comments, prompted by gadfly, wildswan took a transcription of Trump speech that Slate had presented as "Help Us Diagram This Sentence by Donald Trump!"

Look, having nuclear—my uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT; good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart, the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—you know, if you’re a conservative Republican, if I were a liberal, if, like, OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat, they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—it’s true!—but when you're a conservative Republican they try—oh, do they do a number—that’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—you know I have to give my like credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged—but you look at the nuclear deal, the thing that really bothers me—it would have been so easy, and it’s not as important as these lives are (nuclear is powerful; my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going to happen and he was right—who would have thought?), but when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—now it used to be three, now it’s four—but when it was three and even now, I would have said it's all in the messenger; fellas, and it is fellas because, you know, they don't, they haven’t figured that the women are smarter right now than the men, so, you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but the Persians are great negotiators, the Iranians are great negotiators, so, and they, they just killed, they just killed us.

Wildswan wrote it this way (intending some additional indenting that didn't show up on publication):

My uncle was a great professor and scientist and engineer, Dr. John Trump at MIT;
good genes, very good genes, OK, very smart,
the Wharton School of Finance, very good, very smart—

You know, if you’re a conservative Republican,
if I were a liberal, if, like,
OK, if I ran as a liberal Democrat,
they would say I'm one of the smartest people anywhere in the world—

it’s true!—
but

When you're a conservative Republican
they try— oh, do

They do a number—
That’s why I always start off: Went to Wharton, was a good student, went there, went there, did this, built a fortune—

You know I have to give my, like, credentials all the time, because we’re a little disadvantaged— but

You look at the nuclear deal. The thing that really bothers me [is that]
—it would have been so easy, and

[The nuclear deal is not] as important [to us] as these lives are.

Nuclear is powerful;
my uncle explained that to me many, many years ago, the power and
that was 35 years ago; he would explain the power of what's going
to happen and he was right—who would have thought?),

But when you look at what's going on with the four prisoners—
now it used to be three, now it’s four—
but when it was three
and even now,

I would have said
It's all in the messenger, fellas.
and it is fellas because,
you know, they don't, they haven’t figured
that the women are smarter right now than the men, so,
you know, it’s gonna take them about another 150 years—but

The Persians are great negotiators; the Iranians are great negotiators;
so, and they, they just killed,
They just killed us.

Wildswan said:

So this is how I would diagram what Trump said. When he was speaking he puts in verbal cues that he is making a digression, making a joke, going back to the point. I've heard him speak and he is perfectly clear. As here: For thirty years the incredible power of nuclear weapons has been clear to me since it was explained by an MIT professor. (People say the conservative Republican are stupid whereas if I had run as a Democrat they would be saying I'm the smartest person in the world as Valerie Jarret said about Obama. It would happen!! But being a Republican, I have to explain credentials over and over as I just did.) Anyhow I know this about the nuclear deal (I won't be heard because what gets heard depends on who is saying it) but I know this - we gave the Iranians nuclear power in exchange for four hostages - and that was a bad deal for America.

Now why does Trump throw in all the side comments? I think they make the speech more interesting when you hear it because it resembles inner thought. When I write I strike out side issues but speaking isn't writing and maybe the internet is making speaking more important than writing. Also on the internet you do jump to little informational bits and sidebars.

And let me add this passage from Janet Malcolm's great book "The Journalist and the Murderer":

When we talk with somebody, we are not aware of the strangeness of the language we are speaking. Our ear takes it in as English, and only if we see it transcribed verbatim do we realize that it is a kind of foreign tongue. What the tape recorder has revealed about human speech — that Molière’s M. Jourdain was mistaken: we do not, after all, speak in prose — is something like what the nineteenth-century photographer Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies revealed about animal locomotion. Muybridge’s fast camera caught and froze positions never before seen, and demonstrated that artists throughout art history had been “wrong” in their renderings of horses (among other animals) in motion. Contemporary artists, at first upset by Muybridge’s discoveries, soon regained their equanimity, and continued to render what the eye, rather than the camera, sees. Similarly, novelists of our tape-recorder era have continued to write dialogue in English rather than in tape-recorderese, and most journalists who work with a tape recorder use the transcript of an extended interview merely as an aid to memory—as a sort of second chance at note-taking—rather than as a text for quotation. The transcript is not a finished version, but a kind of rough draft of expression. As everyone who has studied transcripts of tape-recorded speech knows, we all seem to be extremely reluctant to come right out and say what we mean—thus the bizarre syntax, the hesitations, the circumlocutions, the repetitions, the contradictions, the lacunae in almost every non-sentence we speak. The tape recorder has opened up a sort of underwater world of linguistic phenomena whose Cousteaus are as yet unknown to the general public.

I've quoted that on this blog before. Back in 2012 — before Trump became a candidate — I said:

Now, I think some people do speak in unbroken, well-structured sentences that are free of grammatical errors that could be transcribed directly into excellent writing, but I don't think those stuck listening to them are very happy with it. We need the backtracking and disfluencies to feel comfortable.

Similarly, most good writers "hear" their words and think about them as if they were speech — it feels speech-like as you go along — but it's actually different from speech.

I'd tend to be suspicious of anyone who seemed to be trying too hard to speak like writing or to write like speaking. I'd wonder what's up? What's the motivation? A speaker who strains to sound like writing might have an inferiority complex or a pompous, arrogant nature. A writer who affects an overly speech-like style may be padding or talking down to us.

A speaker who strains to sound like writing might have an inferiority complex or a pompous, arrogant nature. So maybe I should deduce that Trump does not have an inferiority complex or a pompous, arrogant nature. Oh, but his haters sure think he does. I'm just saying the man is going to be President. Your snorting about his character and coherence have gotten, suddenly, very old.

How can you get up to speed? Sit down with a Trump transcript and engage in the meditation practice called Punctuation.

"Mr Obama's catchphrase is 'Yes, you can!' - so why is he telling us Brits 'No, you can't'?"

A headline for a column over at the UK Telegraph.

Mr Obama’s most famous electoral message was “Yes, we can”. His electoral message to the British people is “No, you can’t”.

If we want influence, security, free trade, democracy and the rule of law, we can get these things only by staying in the European Union, he informs us. We cannot contemplate living – as his own country so proudly does – as a wholly independent state....

I've got nothing to say about Brexit. I just want to say that Obama's "Yes, we can" never meant you can do whatever you set out to do, the old can-do spirit. "Yes, we can" was a campaign slogan, and I believe it meant, yes, we can elect Barack Obama. I haven't heard it much in the years since the 2008 election, and in the thousands of messages I've gotten from Obama in the that time, there's been a mix of what we can do and what we can't do — with plenty of can't... plenty of can't in the cant.

I still love the old "Yes, We Can" campaign video. Beautifully done. And it was revealed (by David Axelrod, over a year ago) that Obama thought the "Yes, we can" slogan was corny and needed to be talked into it:

During his campaign for the U.S. Senate, Obama thought that your famous “Yes we can” line was corny. How did you convince him?

Michelle just happened to come by for the first ad shoot, and that was the ad that closed with the line “Yes we can.” He read through the script once, and after the first take he said, “Gee, is that too corny?” I explained why I thought it was a great tagline, and he turned to Michelle and said, “What do you think?” She just slowly shook her head from side to side and said, “Not corny.” Thank God she was there that day.

It shouldn't be pinned on Obama as his general philosophy. So, don't feel singled out, Britain, if he tells you you can't. We can't do a lot of things too.

"Privately, and to some degree publicly, Republicans seem resigned to death in November by fire or by hanging."

"The prolonged nominating process is merely a means of determining the nature of the execution and limiting the risk to other candidates on the ballot. The normal pattern of GOP nominating contests for the past two decades is that the party endures heated primary fights between populist, evangelical and center-right candidates, only to settle on the leading establishment choice. No more...."

That's how David Axelrod puts it.

"But I hope he sends us someone smart," said Scalia to David Axelrod. "I hope he sends us Elena Kagan."

Writes Axelrod, at CNN.com today.

He's relating a conversation he had with Scalia when they happened to have been seated together at the White House Correspondents Association dinner, right after David Souter had announced his retirement.

I was surprised that a member of the court would so bluntly propose a nominee, and intrigued that it was Kagan.... Later, I learned that Scalia and Kagan were friends.... Each was a graduate of Harvard Law School and had taught at the University of Chicago Law School, though in different eras. They were of different generations, he the son of an Italian immigrant, she a Jew from New York City's left-leaning West Side. But they shared an intellectual rigor and a robust sense of humor. And if Scalia could not have a philosophical ally in the next court appointee, he had hoped, at least, for one with the heft to give him a good, honest fight.

Kagan did not get that nomination, though she got the next one, when Justice John Paul Stevens retired a year later. The Souter seat went to Sonia Sotomayor... and perhaps you remember that before she was nominated, when she was thought to be the top candidate, she was openly attacked in the press as not smart enough. Jeffrey Rosen made "The Case Against Sonia Sotomayor":

Her opinions, although competent, are viewed by former prosecutors as not especially clean or tight, and sometimes miss the forest for the trees. It's customary, for examples, for Second Circuit judges to circulate their draft opinions to invite a robust exchange of views. Sotomayor, several former clerks complained, rankled her colleagues by sending long memos that didn't distinguish between substantive and trivial points, with petty editing suggestions--fixing typos and the like--rather than focusing on the core analytical issues.

ADDED: I assume Axelrod's story is true. He did wait to tell it until the one who could contradict it died, but what advantage is there in this that would make it seem like a lie? To my ear, it hurt Sotomayor, but Axelrod might not have thought about that. So I see an advantage in saying that the honorable conservative wanted a worthy liberal with whom to engage and therefore, perhaps, that it might honor him to be replace by a really smart person of Obama's choice.

Did Hillary make "a mistake to muddy up Chelsea" — "using Chelsea that way"? — Jake Tapper asks.

On "State of the Union" this morning:

TAPPER: For years, you have been very protective of your daughter, Chelsea Clinton, especially when she was a child, of course, and now she's a grown woman. This week, she surprised a lot of people when she unleashed one of the most scathing attacks of the cycle, accusing Bernie Sanders of wanting to empower Republican governors who might then cut people's health care. PolitiFact called Chelsea's remarks mostly false. Former Obama adviser David Axelrod said it was not an honest attack. And liberal columnist Mark Shields said the attack turned your daughter into a -- quote -- "political hack." Do you think it was a mistake to muddy up Chelsea like that?

CLINTON: Look, she was asked a question. I love my daughter. And she answered a question. And all I can say, Jake, is that the only health plan we know of from Senator Sanders is what's described in the legislation that he has introduced nine times in the Congress, in the Senate.....

TAPPER: So, no regrets about using Chelsea that way?

CLINTON: Oh, I didn't use her. She answered a question. And, you know, she gave a factual answer, based on the legislation that is the only way we know what Senator Sanders is actually proposing, because he introduced it nine times in the Congress.

TAPPER: OK. PolitiFact said it was mostly false, but let's move on. 

David Axelrod explains why Trump "the anti-Obama" — and why people are drawn to an anti-Obama.

On "Face the Nation" yesterday:

[T]he substitute for a coherent answer is bellicosity, let's be... strong -- because I think people are tired of the complexity of the situation and they're responding to strength. And -- and that's how -- that translates into the kind of language that [Trump is using].... [I]n the general electorate, that kind of rhetoric can be crippling. But in the primary and given the sort of red hot nature of the Republican base, you know, you get the effect that you see with Trump, where people are responding. He is the anti-Obama. I always believed that the incumbent sets the terms of the debate. And people never choose the replica of what they have, particularly in the other party. They choose the remedy. And there's no one more anti -- so -- there's no more of an antithesis to Barack Obama than Donald Trump.

"Who's the Republican Hillary Clinton should want to face — Bush or Walker — if she had to pick between those two?"

Chuck Todd asked David Axelrod on yesterday's "Meet the Press" (which I have to transcribe myself from the video, at about 24:20). A good question, but Axelrod said:

"The thing about Walker is we haven't seen him yet. We don't know how he's going to deal with the pressures of running for President. I've been through this a few times and the bar gets raised every time and whether it clears those bars is a big question. I don't know yet. I think Bush would be a very tough candidate for him... for her."

LOL on the "him... her." But Axelrod is coasting. This was a perfunctory repeat of what he'd said in an that I blogged last Wednesday. There, he said:

"So he goes to Iowa and gives a good speech to a few hundred activists…and he’s the flavor of the month.... Presidential politics is like pole vaulting. Everyone can clear the early bar. But then the bar gets raised. And the reality is, how do you handle it when it gets really, really rough, when you’re under constant scrutiny, when everything you say becomes an issue?"

I scoffed at the pole vaulting analogy the first time. And, of course, I kicked him for seeming not to know that Walker has already showed us how he "handles it when it gets really, really rough."

On "Meet the Press," Joe Scarborough picked up the slack: "We saw Rand Paul stumbling early. Scott Walker has been through 3 tough fights in a really blue state in 4 years."

Todd got very excited at that point and said: "It's not about the stumble... it's how you recover, and the guy who knows how to recover best will probably end up with the nomination."

I don't feel we got any good discussion of the great question that used for this post heading. One thing I've been thinking about is that if Hillary Clinton faces Scott Walker, we'll need to dig into the story of her struggles with the teachers union in Arkansas back when Bill Clinton was governor in the 1980s. Scott Walker may be known for his standing up to the public employee unions back in 2011, but Hillary's first big political success came in the form of standing up to the teachers union. The issue will devolve into which way a governor should stand up to the entrenched interests of the public unions. Hillary's approach got her and Bill accused of racism. Remember that?

From Carl Bernstein's "A Woman in Charge":

[A]t Hillary’s urging... education was made the signature issue of his administration. Hillary would coordinate a great effort at reform....

The day before Hillary’s plan was announced publicly, Bill told the head of the Arkansas Education Association that teacher-testing would be part of the reform package. The official was, predictably, furious.... [Hillary] was sure that testing teachers’ competence and holding them to minimum standards would help the schools educate. Frequently Hillary and Bill would talk about one teacher who, reading from a textbook, reportedly referred to World War II as “World War Eleven.”...

Bill, in presenting his budget plan to a special session of the legislature, called mandatory teacher tests “a small price to pay for the biggest tax increase for education in the history of the state and to restore the teaching profession to the position of public esteem that I think it deserves.” The teachers called it an outrage, racist. They accused the Clintons of calling the entire teaching profession incompetent. Civil rights organizations condemned the testing provision.

It genuinely pained Hillary and Bill that they were accused of appealing to racist sensibilities, just as they would be attacked for “playing the race card” to achieve welfare reform a decade and a half later. But it was also true that if a specific group of individuals were to suffer disproportionately in the process of reform it would be black teachers (and later black welfare recipients).

The union pursued its case in court—Hillary’s task force and the state were the defendants—for eight years. Most of the teachers’ wrath was trained on Hillary. Diane Blair remembered “walking through a crowd with her at a school, and you could hear teachers hissing at her. She just shook her head and said, ‘I get this all over the state. It’s heartbreaking. It’s hard. But someday they’ll understand.’” In fact, Hillary didn’t seem to mind too much. At times she wore the teachers’ enmity as a badge of honor, and for almost a decade used the example of their villainy as a basic component of the Permanent Campaign in Arkansas.

David Axelrod wants us to believe that he thinks we're terrible for only looking for juicy bits in his supposedly finely wrought meditation on politics called "Believer."

And if you can believe that, he's got a first-term Senator for President he can sell you. Or, well, we did believe him back then, he believes, so why won't we believe that this book of his is something more than what "modern media" is making of it?

“More than anything, this is what’s terrible about modern media and how these books roll out,” Axelrod says. “I was determined to write a book that wasn’t going to be characterized by some titillating nugget that had about a three-day half-life, but rather an entire story of my life and the conclusions that life has led me to. I wanted to write a book that people might want to read years from now and not just today’s publication because they wanted to find out who had been knifing who.”

But why would we believe that you have written a thoughtful tome of this sort? What in the entire story of your life could move us to believe that you'd produce a work of timeless literature or even solid personal memoir that tells the truth about what happened and reveals the actual "conclusions that life has led [you] to"?

Even now as you try to bullshit us into believing "Believer" is worth believing, you say things like:

Jon Stewart is leaving "The Daily Show" and Brian Williams is leaving "NBC Nightly News."

Williams is suspended for 6 months. I guess they want to see if we'll forget why he left and start wondering why he's gone, so they can bring him back. That's all very lame and pathetic, and I don't watch the nightly news, so there's a limit to my outrage about NBC's wan interest in the truth.

Stewart is gone for good, presumably, and by his own choice. 

Mr. Stewart, whose contract with Comedy Central ends in September, disclosed his plans during a taping of the program on Tuesday.

Saying that “in my heart, I know it is time for someone else” to have the opportunity he had, Mr. Stewart told his audience that he was still working out the details of his departure, which “might be December, might be July.”

“I don’t have any specific plans,” Mr. Stewart said, addressing the camera at the end of his show, at times seeming close to tears. “Got a lot of ideas. I got a lot of things in my head. I’m going to have dinner on a school night with my family, who I have heard from multiple sources are lovely people.”

Reading that, I feel a tad skeptical. The man is in contract negotiations! Comedy Central just lost Stephen Colbert, and Stewart must believe they really need continuity on "The Daily Show." Stewart has stayed in his place there for 16 years, while his subordinate comedians — Steve Carell, Stephen Colbert, John Oliver — have moved on to bigger things. They owe him. His departure might be December, might be July? Might be years from now! Throw more money at Mr. Stewart, Comedy Central, you cheap bastards! Show some respect! Show some gratitude!

He said he wants to spend more time with his family. That's code for: I didn't want to have to leave. Isn't it?

That reminds me of something from this Daily Beast article about David Axelrod and his new book that's going to be the basis of my next post:

["Believer: My Forty Years in Politics"] recounts... his parents’ divorce and his father’s subsequent suicide; and his guilty conscience over his own role as an often-absent parent, working on out-of-town campaigns while his wife, Susan, kept the family together as they confronted the challenge of raising a daughter seriously disabled by epileptic seizures.

“It was painful to write some of that,” Axelrod says, noting that he as he put together the family chapters, he sent them to his eldest son, Michael, as a cautionary note: “Don’t do to your kids what I did to you.”

"I’m just not very good at bullshitting," Obama bullshitted to David Axelrod.

The specific subject that prompted Obama to disparage his own bullshitting skills was same sex marriage, which — to get elected in 2008 — Obama claimed to oppose based on religion.

Axelrod writes that he knew Obama was in favor of same-sex marriages during the first presidential campaign, even as Obama publicly said he only supported civil unions, not full marriages. Axelrod also admits to counseling Obama to conceal that position for political reasons. “Opposition to gay marriage was particularly strong in the black church, and as he ran for higher office, he grudgingly accepted the counsel of more pragmatic folks like me, and modified his position to support civil unions rather than marriage, which he would term a ‘sacred union,’ ” Axelrod writes [in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics"].

What Obama said was: "I believe that marriage is the union between a man and a woman... Now, for me as a Christian — for me — for me as a Christian, it is also a sacred union. God’s in the mix." I knew at the time he was lying, didn't you? I don't need an Axelrod book to say so. When Obama made that statement — at the Saddleback Presidential Forum, August 16, 2008 — I was live-blogging:

7:25: Define marriage. It's "the union of a man and a woman," and for him as a Christian, it's "sacred" and "God's in the mix." How about a constitutional amendment saying that? No. The tradition has been to leave this to state law. He admits that there is a concern about same-sex marriage, which he doesn't support, but he likes civil unions. He seems a little robotic intoning this position. I'm sure in his heart he supports full rights for gay people, but obviously, at this point, he can't say it.

And here's something I blogged right after the election in November 2008 (when some people were saying it wasn't fair that Obama's bullshit was used in robo-calls to prompt Californians to vote for Prop 8, which put the ban on gay marriage into the California constitution):

So Obama was instrumental in getting Prop 8 passed. What do you think of that? Some Obama supporters say it wasn't fair to use Obama like that. After all, Obama also said Prop 8 was "divisive and discriminatory." But that's absurd. Obama had to know that his words would be used by opponents of same-sex marriage. He himself is an opponent of same-sex marriage... except to the extent that he isn't, and I certainly think in his heart he's not, but that in his head he knew he had to say he was to get elected.

I don't blame him for this dishonesty. I think it's like the dishonesty of professing a belief in God if you don't have it. You're not going to get elected without that dishonesty, so we can just forget about all the good people who don't lie about such things. They're not going to make it to the presidency. Not in the near future anyway. But you can't have it both ways. You're responsible for the position you avow, and the Prop 8 proponents did nothing wrong using his voice like that. 

"Joe Biden is a decent guy, but man, that guy can just talk and talk... It's an incredible thing to see."

Obama once said to David Axelrod (according to David Axelrod).

Also... Obama was irked by Mitt Romney's 2012 concession phone call:

The president hung up and said Romney admitted he was surprised at his own loss, Axelrod wrote.

"'You really did a great job of getting the vote out in places like Cleveland and Milwaukee,' in other words, black people,'" Obama said, paraphrasing Romney. "That's what he thinks this was all about."

"He’s the most seductive character that we’ve seen in American politics in our lifetime. He just has this unbelievably resilient and seductive personality."

Said David Axelrod... about Bill Clinton, to Maureen Dowd, who's examining why Bill Clinton is so terribly popular these days.

Dowd also has this strange pairing of paragraphs:

A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News/Annenberg center poll showed that Clinton was, by a long shot, the most admired president of the last quarter-century. A new YouGov poll finds that among the last eight elected presidents, Clinton is regarded as the most intelligent and W. the least.

(Clinton and W. both should have been more aggressive in catching Osama. But certainly, if Clinton had been president post-9/11, there would have been no phony invasion of Iraq, and Katrina would have elicited more empathy.)

To that parenthetical, I say:

1. What phony military invasions would Clinton have chosen as appropriate after 9/11?  (I've listed Clinton's actual military ventures below the jump.)

2. Would he bite his lip? Would he wipe away a tear?

"How the President Got to ‘I Do’ on Same-Sex Marriage."

A big NYT Magazine article by Jan Becker. Excerpt:

Despite the president’s stated opposition, even his top advisers didn’t believe that he truly opposed allowing gay couples to marry. “He has never been comfortable with his position,” David Axelrod, then one of his closest aides, told me....

“The politics of authenticity — not just the politics, but his own sense of authenticity — required that he finally step forward,” Axelrod said. “And the president understood that.”

Much more at the link.

ADDED: The Politics of Authenticity? Is that anything like the Politics of Meaning?

Mrs. Clinton recently criticized the way American society rewards selfishness and stigmatizes idealism, publicly embracing my call for a politics of meaning that addresses the way this society thwarts our deepest ethical, spiritual and psychological needs.

"Recently" = 1993.

Obama's annual reunion with the group that still calls itself "The Choom Gang."

The NYT reports:

For a reputed loner, Mr. Obama has remained remarkably close to a trio he met as a teenager at Honolulu’s prestigious Punahou School — boys of Hawaii’s year-round summer with whom he played basketball, bodysurfed, drank beer and, like so many other young islanders in the 1970s, smoked pot, the “choom” of that long-ago nickname....

The annual gatherings perhaps speak to Mr. Obama’s greater need for their connection now that he has what is called the loneliest job in the world...

That first year, [Mike] Ramos said, “I remember coming home from a golf outing and literally starting to cry,” so emotional was the contrast he felt between their friendships and the “transactional” ones he said he had since formed as a businessman. “For me it’s the unconditional love, it’s the nontransactional nature of the relationship — that enduring quality — that is something that I really value,” he said.

Are your friendships so transactional you could cry?

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee said:

They didn't start meeting annually unti 2004, when Obama decided to run for Senate and he needed a fresh group of friends for his biography....

It says something pretty funny about politics when an article about the Presidents's friends has a quote about the importance of friends from the "long time" political strategist. And yes, Axelrod was Obama's strategist when Obama decided to start the annual get together with them.

Doesn't that just scream "these friends are part of a political strategy! This article is part of that strategy!" 

The transactionality of nontransactional friends.