"... as the brand buckled under the pressure from the coronavirus pandemic following years of declining sales.... [The pandemic has] pushed major names like J.C. Penney, Neiman Marcus and J.Crew into Chapter 11 proceedings.... All of the chains, including Brooks Brothers, plan to keep operating, though likely in a pared-back fashion. Brooks Brothers, with its tony men's wear, has been hit especially hard by the pandemic in an era of remote work and job interviews through Zoom, and the postponement of celebrations like weddings, bar mitzvahs, graduations and more. The company... is the oldest apparel brand in continuous operation in the United States.... It has dressed all but four U.S. presidents and its overcoats have been worn for the inaugurations of Abraham Lincoln, Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump, among others. It has outfitted Clark Gable, Andy Warhol and Stephen Colbert...."
I guess we don't need suits very much anymore. How much have we ever needed dress-up clothes or anything more than durable, well-fitting, weather-appropriate apparel? In the pandemic, so much has changed. I see the phrase "in a pared-back fashion" in the article — referring to the way the clothing retailers will operate in the future. But "pared-back fashion" can be used to describe what we the people are wearing in the time of the virus and, perhaps, long into the post-coronavirus culture of the future. Much has changed, and it will take some time to see which of the changes are temporary and what is the way of the future. Gaze forward: Do you see men in suits?
At least the Presidents will continue to wear suits, don't you think? Even the female Presidents, if we ever get to that phase of the future. Which 4 Presidents do you think did not wear Brooks Brothers clothes? I'm going to say Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison, because they all left office before 1818, so they couldn't possibly have worn Brooks Brothers clothes.
President #5 was James Monroe. Was the modern men's suit coming into being yet in his day? Here's something he wore:
Strange how men wore ruffles quite routinely back then. I'm remembering a tweet I saw yesterday:
A pinned tweet. That's the tweet I called "Kind of disturbing actually" last night. Why "disturbing" when it suggests good news, doesn't it? I found it kind of disturbing because of the oddness of getting news this way — it's coy and it's social media. It feels like the way a friend might begin to tell us that she's fallen in love.
To my ear, the "has" gives it a special feeling. "Something very big has just happened," not "Something very big just happened." The "has" elevates it, makes it feel rather grand.
United States Special Operations commandos carried out a risky raid in northwestern Syria on Saturday against a senior terrorist leader there, two senior administration officials said late Saturday.
A senior American official said commandos and analysts were still seeking to confirm the identity of the terrorist, who the officials said was killed in the operation when he exploded his suicide vest.
But a person close to President Trump and a senior American official said that the target of the raid was believed to be the leader of the Islamic State, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. A senior administration official said that the president had approved the mission....
That's the form and tone I'm used to reading when the news is serious.
This makes me think of something My name goes here wrote in the comments on last night's post:
In the "old" days an important announcement would be learned and then shared with favored journalists who would then tell all of the other journolists and they would get to be all smug and righteous when they, the favored few, would break the news about this developing story. They would lie to the audience that they are learning about this just now and they are sharing what they learn, then have 3 lined up "analysts" that already know the softball questions to expect to knit the narrative.
As long as Trump is president, it appears that those days are gone. Who did he tell first? Us. Tomorrow when the press carries whatever Trump's announcement is, they will be learning about it for the first time.
I like this. It pulls the Presidency into the 21st century.
I added the link to "journolists" to indicate that it's not a typo.
Will the next President talk to us like this? Trump's antagonists expect him to be gone and to stop occupying the position of President when he is not a real President. Only when he's gone will we see what the presidency has become. Will there be a reversion to the old form, or will the new President step into the new form of President created by Trump? I don't think we can go back, but I also think there can never be another Trump.
... but I was amused by this effort at running all the U.S. Presidents (or at least the first 40) through Snapchat's feminizing filter. It can't handle the facial hair, but other than that, I'm impressed by how attractive the Presidents become. Nixon approaches a Mary-Tyler-Moore-like charm.
"Before this, people liked or disliked one another, of course, but it wasn’t until after the Civil War, when middle-class men began to see virtue and character as essential to personal advancement, that success in business required projecting likability.... Americans were also taught that being likable was a quality that could be cultivated as a means to get ahead. In 1936, Dale Carnegie’s 'How to Win Friends and Influence People' warned that those who tried too hard to be liked would fail: Theodore Roosevelt’s naturally friendly greetings to everyone he passed, regardless of status, Carnegie noted, had made it impossible not to like him, but Henrietta G., now the 'best liked' counselor at her office, had been isolated until she learned to stop bragging. (Though looking back, we have to wonder: Would Henry G. have needed to hide his accomplishments?).... But as Dale Carnegie might have told [Hillary Clinton], if there is anything worse than being unlikable, it is wanting too badly to be liked.... That Mrs. Clinton lost the nomination in 2008, to a political virtuoso but still a virtual novice, seemed for some illustrative of the troubled relationship between gender and likability in politics. But then she lost in 2016. That voters could see Donald Trump’s rambling and bullying as authenticity seemed proof for many that the likability game was permanently rigged in favor of men.... Likability is associated with an emotional connection between candidate and voter that makes a politician worthy of trust. And yet because that connection is forged almost exclusively through the conduit of mass media, it can never be really about the candidate but only voters’ fantasies about how a politician they can never know ought to be. That women are disadvantaged by a dynamic that emphasizes fantasies over real achievements should perhaps come as no surprise: Popular fantasies about women, sadly, still don’t tend to feature intelligence, expertise and toughness at the negotiating table.... What would it mean if we could reinvent what it is that makes a candidate 'likable'? What if women no longer tried to fit a standard that was never meant for them and instead, we focused on redefining what likability might look like: not someone you want to get a beer with, but, say, someone you can trust to do the work?"
Potter fails to make a serious attempt to understand what people who like Donald Trump like about him. She tosses out the Trump hater's aversive summary, "rambling and bullying." Potter purports to be interested in "reinvent[ing]" what likability is, but she never takes the trouble to consider the ways in which Donald Trump has reinvented likability. She does breeze through the historical example of Theodore Roosevelt, though she only looks at him second hand, letting us know how Dale Carnegie saw him — "naturally friendly."
Potter rankles at the contrast between the male Roosevelt and the female ("Henrietta G.") who tries too hard, and she jumps to the feminist question whether the problem people had with Henrietta was her femaleness. Carnegie may have been right. People responded to the naturalness of Roosevelt's interactions and felt put off by the artificiality of H.G.'s trying too hard.
If we reframe likability as a sense that you can trust the other person, the distinction between Roosevelt and Henrietta G. already fits that frame! Roosevelt seemed natural, as if he really was friendly and showing his real self, and Henrietta felt like a phony who was trying to extract something from us.
Now, Trump haters, think about Trump and why the people who like him like him, and think hard. Don't shield yourself from the truth by reflexively interposing Trump-hating ideas like "rambling and bullying." Trump stands up in front of crowds for an hour and more at a time and speaks directly, without a script. You get to see how his mind works. He's a real person. It's weird but it's natural— natural in some way that's available to a 70ish billionaire TV-and-real-estate man from New York City.
By the way, if you're going to study "likability," you ought to also study hateability. It seems to me, the guys who've been winning the Presidency also have hateability. Speaking of trying too hard, maybe female politicians try too hard to expunge or hide any hateability, and that's what makes them seem to lack qualities — Potter's trio is "intelligence, expertise and toughness" — that we sense are crucial in the Leader of the Free World. We're not electing a Friend. We're electing a Protector.
IN THE COMMENTS: Automatic_Wing said:
"You're likeable enough, Hillary" was funny because everyone knew she wasn't.
Let's see it again:
What I notice, watching it again today, is that Hillary was ready with a funny response. The question seems planned, and her response seems to have been practiced, and it is funny. She says "That hurts my feelings" in a mock-feminine way, then adds, sarcastically, "but I'll try to go on." I think the idea was to insinuate that her critics were sexist to talk about likability and to be likable by displaying that she didn't really care about those criticisms. Obama stepped on her little routine. (Paradoxically, that routine of hers was very feminine.) And he was actually kind of mean, saying she was "likable enough," which is to say, not all that likable, certainly not as likable as I am, but I've got so much likablity that I can spend some of it on being kind of an asshole to you, Hillary. Ironically, that ad lib meanness was likable! And it underscored how practiced and phony her effort to please us really was. She was trying too hard, like Dale Carnegie's Henrietta G.
In which American presidential election were the major party candidates the least well-educated?
I have an idea of what the answer might be but don't know for sure. Trump famously said "I love the poorly educated"...
... but what does the label mean and who gets it? For the purposes of my question, I would consider the level of education reached, the quality of the educational institutions, and the difficulty and sophistication of the program pursued.
IN THE COMMENTS: Lloyd W. Robertson said:
I think you have to speak of different eras. Before 1900, it would have seemed ridiculous to expect an Ivy League education or something similar; there were lawyers, but as traditionalguy points out, that didn't necessarily involve what we would call formal education. John Quinicy Adams was almost unbelievably well educated in the "classics," with a lot of help from "amateurs" who were themselves well educated (including in law). Polk graduated with Honors from UNC Chapel Hill. Without more checking, I would just say that was very unusual at the time.
In the 20th century you have more "Ivy League" presidents, often with a gentleman's C average. Hoover was a brilliant engineer, an early Stanford grad, and surely one of the four or five highest IQ presidents (despite being remembered for his failure in the Depression). He made a reputation for finding ore where others had failed, working in many countries, making his way through obscure documents in many languages, hiring and organizing work crews, transportation, food distribution, etc. Johnson vs. Goldwater in 1964 may indeed set the standard for "little higher/formal education" for both major party candidates.
Johnson/Goldwater was indeed the idea I had when I wrote the post.
Anyway, to make the question work, let's begin at 1900. That was William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. (1896 was also William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan, so we could just as well say let's begin in 1896, but it would make no difference.) WJB graduated from college and law school (Union Law College, known today as Northwestern University School of Law), so 1900 is not the right answer to my question. As for McKinley, he went to Allegheny College for one year and then went back home "after becoming ill and depressed."
I thought of the question this morning because I happened to be reading about Barry Goldwater, and I was surprised to see how little education he had:
After he did poorly as a freshman in high school, Goldwater's parents sent him to Staunton Military Academy in Virginia... He graduated from the academy in 1928 and enrolled the University of Arizona. Goldwater dropped out of college after one year...
As for LBJ, he went to college, but (constrained by poverty) an undistinguished place, Southwest Texas State Teachers College.
And the new article dredges up something from last fall:
Last fall, Mr. McGahn believed that he was being set up to be blamed for any wrongdoing by the president in part because of an article published in The Times in September, which described a conversation that a reporter had overheard between Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb.
In the conversation — which occurred over lunch at a table on the sidewalk outside the Washington steakhouse B.L.T. — Mr. Cobb discussed the White House’s production of documents to Mr. Mueller’s office. Mr. Cobb talked about how Mr. McGahn was opposed to cooperation and had documents locked in his safe.
Does the Times ever consider that Dowd and Cobb intended to be overheard? They were speaking loudly, next to a NYT reporter.
I don't like being nudged to get excited about this — sudden realization, etc. etc. Is something specific and important happening here or is the NYT serving its own interests? Without looking more deeply into this, I'm inclined to assume McGahn did what he was asked to do and operated within his role as White House Counsel of protecting the institution of the presidency. That's different from Trump's own lawyers, who focus on this particular problem. And the longterm interest of the presidency is in preserving confidentiality and executive privilege. Trump with his lawyers wanted to cooperate with Mueller (or at least appear to be doing so unless and until Mueller goes too far). What is the sudden crisis?
And, yes, I know that Trump's lawyer Giuliani said "Truth isn’t truth." It's a fantastic quote for Trump haters to use to the hilt, but I'm not getting excited about it. In context:
“It’s somebody’s version of the truth, not the truth,” Mr. Giuliani said of any statements by the president in such an interview.
“Truth is truth,” the show’s host, Chuck Todd, answered.
“No, it isn’t truth,” Mr. Giuliani replied. “Truth isn’t truth.”
Giuliani was obviously repeating his point that it's "somebody's version of the truth" and not the truth. He's not saying truth isn't truth or there is no truth. He's saying what Chuck Todd called "truth" isn't truth.
Politico spins by saying he's walking it back. If you understood the line they way I did (see above), it's not a walk-back but a confirmation. What Giuliani said was, "My statement was not meant as a pontification on moral theology but one referring to the situation where two people make precisely contradictory statements, the classic 'he said,she said' puzzle. Sometimes further inquiry can reveal the truth other times it doesn’t." I understood it that way all along. No walk back. Just more spin from the anti-Trump press.
Credit to Politico for choosing a great photo of Giuliani (in support of its spin).
"... of tearing up many documents after he's through with them. To keep in compliance with federal law after failing to get Trump to listen to reason, a team of archivists armed with scotch tape reassembles them from the waste paper baskets. Making jobs for Americans!"
Said readering in last night's open thread. Is it true? Should I check? I don't want to see that it's not true!
Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.
But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law.
Legal ideas:
1. He should be impeached for this violation of law.
2. The law operates merely as a guideline because, technically, it violates Article II of the Constitution (and the President cannot be deprived of the power to process documents in his own style).
3. Good scenario for a law school exam.
Back to the article:
“We got Scotch tape, the clear kind,” [Solomon] Lartey recalled in an interview. “You found pieces and taped them back together and then you gave it back to the supervisor.” The restored papers would then be sent to the National Archives to be properly filed away.
Non-legal ideas:
1. Is Scotch tape the proper substance for use in archival work?
2. Aren't there computer programs that would assemble an image of the document from a scan of the disassembled paper scraps?
3. The system of tearing up papers after you've dealt with them is actually a good one, generally, even if it's a problem for Trump to be using this practice in his presidential gig.
4. If Trump is going to be criticized for this, let's remember all the documents in the form of email that Hillary Clinton recklesslyextremely carelessly destroyed.
5. What's the most interesting story you have about tearing up paper?
Key fact from the end of the article: The 2 men interviewed for this story were both talking to the press about their complaint that they were unfairly terminated from the jobs they are describing.
When [George] Stephanopoulos asked if the president has the power to pardon himself, Giuliani said he "probably does."
"He has no intention of pardoning himself," said Giuliani, a former New York City mayor who is Trump's lead attorney in negotiating an end to Mueller's ongoing investigation. But it is a "really interesting constitutional argument: 'Can the president pardon himself?'"
Giuliani added, "I think the political ramifications of that would be tough. Pardoning other people is one thing. Pardoning yourself is another. Other presidents have pardoned people in circumstances like this, both in their administration and sometimes the next president even of a different party will come along and pardon."
So there's really no shock at all. Giuliani breezed past the legal question without seriously answering it and use the opportunity to talk about the political forces that constrain the use of the power the President "probably" has.
I think that's quite appropriate. The President is focused on his political fate, not what might happen in a criminal case in court, and as long as he's still in office as possessed of the power to pardon, the use of the presumed power to pardon himself would undermine his political position. Better to leave his fate in a possible criminal prosecution for later and to trust that the next President will — like Ford for Nixon — save him from the ignominy of a criminally prosecuted former President. The new President won't want that riveting the country's attention, tearing us apart.
By the way, this question whether the President can pardon himself was big during the Bill Clinton administration. I remember it well because I used it for a Constitutional Law I exam, and I remember a colleague of mine scoffing at the question (without knowing I thought it was good enough for an exam). She just thought it was ridiculous because it wasn't going to happen. You can talk about the President pardoning himself, but it isn't going to happen. The political realities preclude that scenario.
You might be wondering what's the answer to the exam and assuming I have if not a firm answer at least a preferred answer. I really didn't care which way the answers went. I wanted a demonstration of understanding and skill in applying methodologies of interpretation. It would be wise to begin with the text of the particular clause — "The President... shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment" — and wise not to end there.
"It seemed that every episode was an exercise in saving the world, with virtually no attention paid to the reality that even the most powerful person on earth – the President of the United States – is faced daily with the frustrating limits of that awesome power. Their were other issues as well, including overly melodramatic 'B' stories involving the President’s children – an eight year old daughter and twin teenage siblings (brother and sister), as well as a whole bunch of satellite characters who were truly under characterized and under served. Nevertheless, as fantasized as the show ['Commander in Chief'] was, and as much as there were elements in it I didn’t much care for, there was something fundamentally appealing about the show. It had a good heart. It wanted to be a hit, in spite of itself. It had real stars in Geena Davis, and the remarkable Donald Sutherland, as her antagonist....
"Donald Sutherland... had had strong opinions and feelings about every single word of every single script we wrote... And yet... [h]e was a delightful man, erudite and intelligent, and we often found ourselves engaged in deep conversations about world affairs, politics, and our personal lives. Geena was altogether another story. I would get long, detailed critiques of our scripts, and copious notes and questions about every scene she was in. Okay, I get it. She’s the star of the show. She’s being protective of her character. Fair enough. But I would almost always get these tomes about particular scenes on the morning of the day we were to shoot them. It was virtually impossible to carry on a dialogue since a) she was on the stage already doing the work, and b) there simply wasn’t time to intelligently debate and/or alter the scenes without stopping production.... Geena was severely undermining our efforts on her behalf, and it was clear that while she wouldn’t outright say it, she was definitely not on board with the direction in which I was steering the show. It was inevitable then, that the network started hectoring me about the scripts, in eerie lockstep with Geena’s objections...."
Was there any sexism in Bochco's comfort with Donald Sutherland and resistance to Geena Davis? Do you think a powerful man might accept critique from another man but experience the same kind of contribution from a woman as annoying and chaotic?
Do women — or did just Geena Davis — tend to have a more chaotic, irritating way of attempting to contribute to a joint project?
Do you think that playing the role of President of the United States affected the mind of Geena Davis, creating something of a delusion that she could, even at the last minute, imperiously expect that things would be done her way?
Do you think that being President of the United States creates a delusion that you can instantly and imperiously expect that things will be done your way?
Do you think the actual President of the United States feels something like an actor playing the part of President of the United States and that has created something of a delusion that he's doing a TV show and a TV show President of the United States would act like a major film-star diva given a TV show where she gets to play President of the United States and acts like a big drama queen annoyingly, chaotically, and imperiously expecting everyone to go along with whatever spontaneously rises to the surface of her big brain at any given moment? (By the way, both Geena Davis and Donald Trump are people who claim to have a very, very high IQ.)
Do you think that the Trump presidency suffers from the same problem Steven Bochco detected in the scripts for "Commander in Chief" — and makes every episode "an exercise in saving the world, with virtually no attention paid to the reality that even the most powerful person on earth – the President of the United States – is faced daily with the frustrating limits of that awesome power"?
Obama is up 10 since their last survey of "presidential politics experts" in 2014. He's now the 8th greatest President. Why would that be? Obama laid the groundwork for the Trump election and failed to fend off the Russians who were, apparently, bent on keeping Hillary Clinton out of office, but he's made the biggest leap in the whole survey.
Amusingly, George W. Bush has the third biggest jump, up 5 and out of the ignominious bottom 10 all the way up at #30 now.
The other big leaper was Ulysses S. Grant, up 7 to #21. Why? Ron Chernow wrote a biography of Grant. You just need the right PR.
One nice thing about this study is that it also provides separate rankings by "Democratic scholars," "Independents/other," and "Republican scholars." The Republicans don't put Trump dead last, but at #40. They put Obama at #16. Rottinghaus and Vaughn say "Trump doesn't get much of a lift from Republican-only vote: Even in their eyes, he’s a bottom-five president."
But who are the "Republican" presidential politics experts? Are they not the "Establishment"-type Republicans who deplore Trump and the people who responded to him?
"Well, the American people spoke. They rejected my analysis, and he is now my president. I worked with President Obama where I could, with President Bush even though I supported Senator McCain. The bottom line: he is president of the United States. I've gotten to know him better. He asks a lot of good questions. I think he's made good foreign policy choices. He's now arming the Ukraine. Long overdue. He's got the right policy to deny North Korea the ability to hit America with a nuclear-tipped missile. And he is now on the side of the Iranian people....."
The American people spoke. They rejected my analysis, and he is now my president.... The bottom line: he is president of the United States. Why don't more people feel like that?
IN THE COMMENTS: Kevin answers my question:
Because Republican. The Democrats would be doing this to any R president, no matter what their policies, no matter what they did with Twitter, no matter what. They have done it to every R president since Eisenhower. It just becomes more shrill and desperate with each round. The goal is to make the bounds of polite policy discussion between center left and far left, and cut out anything else as unacceptable to even think, much less speak of out loud. And it's working pretty well.
"But in recent weeks several of Trump’s accusers have said that while they’re happy sexual harassment is being discussed more openly, they’re still dismayed that their own stories seem to have had little impact. Some have continued speaking out, hoping that away from the chaos of the election, people might be more ready to listen to their accounts. A defamation suit filed by Summer Zervos, one of the accusers, has also opened up the possibility that they’ll get their day in court. But for now, Trump seems entirely unfazed by the allegations hanging over him. Press Secretary Sarah Sanders confirmed last month that it is the White House’s official position that every single one of the women is lying, and Trump has not shied away from condemning alleged sexual harassers (if they’re Democrats)."
From "What Happened to the 16 Women Who Accused Trump of Sexual Misconduct," by Margaret Hartmann in New York Magazine. Hartman lists the 16 women, their allegations, and what's happened since the allegations were made, but does not examine why — as so many others take massive hits and lose their jobs — Trump remains relatively unscathed. So let's talk about that. Let me get the conversation started with a few ideas. I'm not endorsing any of these theories, just putting them on a list of things you might want to consider:
1. The election worked as absolution. We factored in the allegations — giving them whatever weight we thought right — and they haven't really changed since the election, so the election is like a final judgment in a court case. As a political matter, we move on and get on with our life.
2. Since Trump is the President, we need him to carry out his duties. We especially want to put these accusations in the past, because we see the dangers of complicating his life. He's been chosen to shoulder the difficult tasks of the presidency, so leave him alone. Let him move forward.
3. Those who want to complicate his life probably didn't vote for him and would be happy to take him down now. Every time there's another Harvey Weinstein or Charlie Rose, they want to talk about Trump the sexual harasser again, but to those who've supported Trump or who want to respect the results of the election and not add to the difficulty of Trump's presidential tasks, they seem to be relitigating the election.
4. Many of the new targets of allegations are people who had seemed to be male allies of the women's movement, and it's the lying and the hypocrisy that bothers us the most. The accusations against Trump seem only to reinforce what we already saw on the surface of Trump: brash exuberance, wanting plenty of good things for himself, excitement over beautiful women, impoliteness. The new allegations don't take us back to the Trump allegations because Trump wasn't accepted as an ally of feminism. He seems to represent the old school, male chauvinism. That's a different category and not what we're paying attention to right now.
I'm not saying I definitely believe this was Trump's plan, only that it could have been and that the benefits serve his interests even if he merely bumbled into it.
Trump knows that the media will jump at opportunities to call him ignorant and/or racist. What he said about the Civil War seemed like another great opportunity. Historians — experts — were wheeled out to instruct us — imperiously, pedantically — that the Civil War had to be fought. There was no avoiding it. Nobody — not Andrew Jackson, not anybody — could have averted it.
Well, there you have it on the record now. Sometimes a war must be fought. It's not the failing of the President. Even the greatest Presidents are helpless against the coming onslaught of inevitable war.
Trump may never take us to war, but he wants his options. He wants to be able to say We have to do it, we have no choice and to assert that it's not his personal failure to avert war. It's plain nonsense to believe that a different man — a better man —would have avoided war. Look at all the historians who said exactly that — historians who thought they were schooling him and were, in fact, expanding his power. But they thought they were so smart, so educated, so up in a high place looking down on him. It only caused them to make their Trump-empowering statements more passionate and emphatic.
I don't know if he did that on purpose. But didn't that just happen?
I've been thinking about how we haven't had a long-haired President in quite a while, but it's not as though we never did. Fun is made of Donald Trump's hair, and the comedy swirls around its unique weirdness — the color, the strange arrangements of strands with frontal projection and swooping sides.
But calm down and think about long hair on men and how for the most part — despite decades of admiring men with long hair — we have expected the men wielding political power to keep their hair short. (Not too short, though. There are no buzz-cut Presidents.) What does it mean that after all these years, we — some of us — have accepted a leader with long hair?
We haven't had one since James Polk:
It doesn't count that some Presidents had long hair after they left office...
... or when they were little boys...
ADDED: Here's Buzzfeed's (pre-Trump) effort at ranking the Presidents by their hairstyles, e.g., #14 Zachary Taylor — "I like that he probably just rolled out of bed that morning and was like 'What’s up, I’m the President, bitches.'" You can see how the line "What’s up, I’m the President, bitches" seemed funnier before Trump got elected. Or maybe you think it's funnier now. For some reason, Andrew Jackson is only #3:
That's got the kind of swirling dynamism we see in Trump. And without hair spray. Impressive. That look on his face though. I get very uptight about it.
In 2001, Congress authorized the President "to use all necessary and appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts of international terrorism against the United States by such nations, organizations or persons."
Now, we learn that President Obama is interpreting the 2001 authorization to support a war against he Shabab in Somalia! The NYT reports:
The executive branch’s stretching of the 2001 war authorization against the original Al Qaeda to cover other Islamist groups in countries far from Afghanistan — even ones, like the Shabab, that did not exist at the time — has prompted recurring objections from some legal and foreign policy experts....
“It’s crazy that a piece of legislation that was grounded specifically in the experience of 9/11 is now being repurposed for close air support for regional security forces in Somalia,” said Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations....
In Somalia, the United States had long taken the position that a handful of Shabab leaders, as individuals, had sufficient ties to Al Qaeda to make them wartime targets. But it has debated internally for years whether the Shabab as a whole, including their thousands of foot soldiers, can or should be declared part of the enemy....
But as American partners have been going after the Shabab in general more often without any particular focus on individuals linked to Al Qaeda, it has been harder to point to any congressional authorization for such airstrikes that would satisfy the War Powers Resolution.
As the election neared, the administration decided it would be irresponsible to hand off Somali counterterrorism operations to Mr. Obama’s successor with that growing tension unresolved. Now, as Mr. Zenko pointed out, “this administration leaves the Trump administration with tremendously expanded capabilities and authorities.”
If the GOP Congress didn't stand up to Obama and balance his exercise of war power, it's hard to see how it will interfere with President Trump. Any Democrats (and other nonTrumpists) who cry out about an overpowerful President acting without express support from Congress will have to answer for why they did not make this argument when Obama was building the power of the presidency.
IN THE COMMENTS: MadisonMan takes issue with my last sentence: "Answer to whom? The non-questioning press who will only harp on Trump?"
Interesting article in the NYT by Adam Liptak. "Donald Trump Could Threaten U.S. Rule of Law, Scholars Say." I read this and I go, no shit. It took you until June to figure this out? I guess only some lawyers are hot-tempered and Jeffersonian. "Be sure to wear a brown shirt so I know who to punch in our street brawls," is what I was saying, like nine months ago. I could have had a baby in the time it took Adam Liptak to figure out that Donald Trump could threaten the rule of law. Anyway, slow and methodical Adam Liptak is now helpfully pointing out to the citizens of the world that Donald Trump could threaten the rule of law.
Of course, I'd already seen and read the article. I read The New York Times. Does anyone blog NYT things more than I do? I chose not to blog it. First, every word of the headline annoyed me. That's not to say that I turn away from what annoys me. Quite the contrary.
In fact, an obvious riposte popped into my head immediately: All Presidents threaten the rule of law! That's supposed to cause you to understand the levels of my annoyance at the headline. I don'tlike the "could," since mere possibility is already built into the word "threaten." Any governmental power can be abused, so there is always a threat. Don't back off and portray the threat as mere potential. The threat is omnipresent.
If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.
The other level of annoyance is, as my riposte makes clear, that the headline singles out Donald Trump. What about Barack Obama? What about Hillary Clinton? But I settled down and read Liptak's article and Obama's name did come up:
Republican officials have criticized Mr. Obama for what they have called his unconstitutional expansion of executive power. But some legal scholars who share that view say the problem under a President Trump would be worse.
“I don’t think he cares about separation of powers at all,” said Richard Epstein, a fellow at the Hoover Institution who also teaches at New York University and the University of Chicago.
President George W. Bush “often went beyond what he should have done,” Professor Epstein said. “I think Obama’s been much worse on that issue pretty consistently, and his underlings have been even more so. But I think Trump doesn’t even think there’s an issue to worry about. He just simply says whatever I want to do I will do.”
Mr. Trump has boasted that he will use Mr. Obama’s actions as precedent for his own expansive assertions of executive power.
So, I didn't blog it yesterday, but — prodded by Saint Croix — I still like my original gut-reaction snark: All Presidents threaten the rule of law!
"... so he says 'Let's dispel with this fiction...' (intransitive, incorrect) instead of 'Let's dispel this fiction...' (transitive, correct) — or using a different verb, e.g. 'Let's dispense with this fiction...' (intransitive, correct)."
That's exactly what I was thinking. I could accept the repeating of a stock talking point. They all do that. Rubio did it rather ludicrously, conspicuously, with Chris Christie deftly, cheekily pointing it out. But I would get over that.
But it's the use of "dispel with" — more than once — that bothered me. It makes him seem too dumb to be President. It could just be a weird quirk, like the way I didn't notice how to spell "weird" correctly until I was 30. I'm holding the question open: Is Rubio a little dumb?
"But they are also patriots more than they are politicians. All three men have reached the point in their lives in which they are focused on giving back. I say we take them up on the offer. I want all three of them."
Writes Scott Adams, examining Sanders, Trump, and Bloomberg, and ultimately supporting a Trump presidency with both Sanders and Bloomberg on his team. And he warns you against "arguing in the weeds about healthcare expenses, socialist policies." That's "goal" thinking and missing the point of what he says we need: a "systems approach puts the smartest people from all sides in the same room and shines a light on it."
It wrecked Rick Lazio in the New York senatorial race in 2000. Oddly, looking at it now, he doesn't seem that bad. Maybe it was always only making people feel that it was bad. I looked at it again to try to answer the question I put in this post's title, and I didn't think what he did was the kind of inappropriate male encroachment on a woman that it was (successfully!) made out to be:
This key exchange came at the end of the debate, when Lazio interrupted Clinton mid-sentence, walked across the stage with a campaign finance pledge in hand, and urged her to sign it. Clinton awkwardly tried to shake Lazio's hand as he towered over her, his finger wagging in her face. In the hours and days after the debate, Clinton's team worked mightily to turn this interaction to her advantage. Clinton aide Ann Lewis told the press that Lazio had "spent much of the time being personally insulting." Howard Wolfson, another veteran Clinton hand, said Lazio was "menacing" to Clinton.
"They saw this opportunity and they drove it and that's the clip that was on TV over and over again," Lazio says now. The next day, media outlets began to embrace Wolfson's portrayal of Lazio as a sexist bully. "In Your Face," proclaimed a headline in the Daily News. Jon Stewart titled his segment on the debate "Rodham 'N Creep." Eventually, the Clinton campaign's depiction became the dominant assessment. Lazio was "Darth Vader with dimples," Gail Collins wrote in the New York Times later that week. Clinton went on to win by 12 points.
I assume Sanders and his people know full well that anything domineering or encroaching or disrespecting will be used against him and that Hillary and her people are hungry for something to deploy to get that old feminist umbrage stirred up again. But time has passed, and he's getting loose, getting confident, getting... aggressive.... The power lust has welled up. We saw it last night. The lovable old Larry-David-befuddled-grandpa image can only protect him so long. Once we can visualize Bernie Sanders as winning, it's not cute anymore, and Hillary has an opportunity she can use.
If she dares.
It's a big risk when you are running for President. It's one thing to have a Senator who's a bit of a feminine flower, to be protected from the mean men of America. It's another to have a President — the one person standing in for us all face-to-face with the world's Putins — who needs our comfort and protection.
I jumped in somewhere in the middle, when he was reminiscing about his early years with Hillary, drawing from what was meant to seem like a wellspring of emotion. Tears didn't come, but tears were at least implied. What a humble servant of the poor young Hillary was, he wanted us to know.
Then he shifted, for the ending, into some theory of the presidency, about how Presidents succeed when they are right for the time. He talks about Franklin Pierce, who, he tells us, couldn't possibly have succeeded in his time, and then Abraham Lincoln, who, he informs us, wouldn't have been a great President if he'd served in the 1950s. Lincoln was "gripped with crippling depression," and that would not have been successful in the 1950s, but it was just the frame of mind, he tells us, to suit the Civil War.
I don't know if Bill thought that theory up on his own or got it from some American history scholar, but of course, it led to the conclusion that Hillary is what goes with the particular time that we are in now. What exactly is it about Hillary and our time that fit together so well? I don't think he explained it.
Were we supposed to infer that the other candidates, whatever their positive attributes, are somehow not what is needed for our time? I don't know if Bill meant us to think about that, but it called to mind for me something Donald Trump said in his "Face the Nation" interview yesterday:
[O]ur country has no spirit.... But I would be very enthusiastic, like I am right now, toward the country. We need spirit. We need a cheerleader. President Obama is a bad
cheerleader. I thought he would be a good cheerleader. I thought he
would be a great cheerleader, actually. That's the one thing I thought,
is that he was going to be a great cheerleader. He was really a big
divider. We need cheerleading.
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