If the predecessor’s actions were highly unpopular, then undoing them is a no-brainer. But if they were highly popular, then the incoming president would have to choose between wasting political capital undoing them and using that political capital to make their own mark.
Trump was so obsessed with Obama that his Wall is moving out of reach. He could have built it much more easily if he had played his hand differently.
Were Obama’s actions highly unpopular? I can’t even fucking tell anymore.
I don’t think Trump will or could ever have got even a GOP congress to come up with the money for that wall.
BernieBros didn’t think about policy at all. I mean, they had stuff they WANTED, but Bernie was a joke compared to Clinton in terms of actual workable, pragmatic policy.
Just because sexism hurt Clinton doesn’t mean we should just elect a random popular woman. I mean, Clinton wasn’t qualified just because she was a woman.
The idea that black folks can only vote for a black person is nuts. But even so, there are other black politicians who have actually served in government.
But we can’t make this mistake of saying “folks like outsiders, so we should run an outsider!”
To some very real degree, much of our government’s problems today stem entirely from this idea that we need “outsiders”. That’s where a lot of the tea party folks came from. That’s where Trump came from.
The problem with these “outsiders” is that they don’t fucking know how to govern. They’re just imbeciles and ideologues, or both. They have demands, and no path towards actually achieving anything in the real world. When Obama was president, this was less apparent, because they could just scream and thrash around, and say “Well, it doesn’t matter what we do, because Obama will just veto everything!” But now with the GOP in control of literally everything, they STILL can’t do anything, because they literally do not know how to govern. It’s like they were in the back seat, screaming about the driver, and then they got the keys and it turns out they don’t know how to drive at all. They don’t even know how to start the car.
Oprah would presumably be better than that, but she still has no experience in government. And government is not the same as business. Nor should it be. This is a big part of Trump’s problem. On some level he wants to just do stuff like he does in business. (we’ll just ignore that he actually sucks balls when it comes to business… let’s pretend he knows something about it) But we don’t elect a CEO for the country. We intentionally limit the power of those in government. We do not elect a king.
A big part of the problem is that without earmarks, there is little reason for lawmakers to compromise with each other. They don’t have the little bribes that they used to use to pay each other off for support.
And this means that major pieces of legislation, like the ACA, or the more recent tax cut, are passed on PURELY partisan lines. Which means there is zero buy-in from the other party… which in turn means that they just run against all that stuff, and then try to repeal it once in power.
In the past, even when you had one side generally oppose stuff, you had a few folks on that side who crossed the aisle and supported things. They were getting some good stuff for their constitutents in the deal, so it was cool with them. But now we don’t have any of that.
Yeah, back in my college days I wasn’t in with the whole ‘pork is bad’ notion of legislation. I am fully willing to admit I was wrong about that.
On the one hand it makes sense, why are all these irrelevant riders being tacked on to legislation? These things cost money! If we want to spend that, it should be on its own merits.
But we’ve seen the net effect. It has not been positive.
Being a McCain fan, and anti-McConnell person (isn’t everybody?) I certainly went along with the anti-earmark campaign. Turns out earmarks are the oil that keeps the legislative machine from freezing up.
I don’t know what makes madder that McCain and I were so wrong or McConnell and the old time Congress Critters were right.
Right there with ya, minus the part about being a McCain fan. I hated earmarks with a passion. I was very, very wrong.
They can cut taxes, which is apparently all they really want to do anyway.
I think that what it comes down to is this:
Compromise is not based upon getting two people to agree that any given policy is good.
Compromise is based upon folks both getting policy bits that they individually believe are good, and which don’t directly contradict each other.
So you want policy change X? Maybe I don’t really give a shit about X, but you’re in the other party, and I’m gonna lose support from my base if I help you out, just because you’re the bad guy.
But I can overcome that if you give me policy change Y. You don’t give a shit about Y. It’s money for some factory in my district. For you, no one will give a shit. For me, I can say “Hey, that bill my opponent says is bad helped Bill hire 50 new employees last year!”
And that totally works. And it wasn’t just straight up bribes (like we saw most recently in the tax cut), it was generally stuff to benefit local businesses… who then bribed the lawmakers with contributions, but hey, whatevs.
Without all that, we’re left in a situation were I’m like, “I really want X.” And you’re like, “Well, I don’t. Fuck X. Hey guys, did you hear me tell him to fuck X? I’m awesome.”
Stepping back if we look at the resume of the ideal Presidential candidate.
A.
Executive experience in government (i.e. Governor or mayor of a megacity.)
Congressional experience, ideally at the leadership level
Management experience at the Federal level (e.g. military officer, FBI, diplomat, cabinet official)
A significant accomplishment in the private sector.
B; A boatload of charisma.
If we look at our last one term President Carter and Bush 41, neither were charismatic. Bush 41 in particular had damn near the perfect Presidential resume but lacked the charisma to get either Congress or the American people to go along.
The problem that I see is that Democratic party doesn’t really have anybody that has the perfect resume.
If there is 18 Charisma Democratic politician out there, they’ve been well hidden.
I would offer that he wasn’t even lacking charisma that much, he just didn’t have anything approaching the charisma of the folks he lost against (Reagan and then Clinton). But those guys were above average in that regard.
Our greatest presidents and their resumes, just by way of historical perspective:
Lincoln – 2 years in Congress, some time before that in state legislature. Trivial military experience. Career as a private attorney. Maybe the exception that proves the rule.
FDR – Governor of New York, Asst. Secretary of the Navy, State Legislator. From a prominent political family.
Washington – Military through and through, commanded the Continental Army and led it to a stunning victory against the hated English
Jefferson – Legislator, diplomat, Secretary of State, Veep, inventor, writer of the goddamn Declaration of Independence, last Renaissance man, and rapacious plantation owner
James K. Polk (maybe not a ‘great’ president per se, but certainly a massively influential one) – State legislator, Speaker of the House, Governor of Tennessee
Teddy Roosevelt – Police Commissioner, Asst. Secretary of Navy (man, Roosevelts really locked down that gig), Rough Rider, Governor of New York, Veep
Lincoln does seem to be the exception – most effective Presidents seem to have had hefty resumes. All of our military presidents have been somewhat noteworthy – only Washington achieved greatness, but Grant’s reputation is being reevaluated, Jackson was certainly a commanding figure, and Eisenhower is nowadays regarded as a solid executive who handled the choppy waters of the Cold War pretty well. Taylor doesn’t count because he died too soon in office.
I think you forgot Ronald “Jesus Christ and Peanut Butter” Reagan from your list.
I sure did. I think the last president you could legitimately call ‘great’ would have been LBJ, but there was that whole Vietnam thing.
However, if one is inclined to include Reagan, he did have California Governor on his resume, which is at least respectable. (The gig, not his performance in it, of which I know far less than a Californian ought to.)
I remember Reagan as Governor, but I wasn’t very political then. From what I have read he really went hard core conservative for his presidential run. He was the guy in California who had “legal carry” outlawed after the Black Panthers showed up on the capital steps with weapons. :)
Of course Reagan’s hard core conservative act is now considered being a RINO by many GOP wackos.
McCain had a nearly perfect resume and plenty of charisma. Romney had a great resume and a reasonable amount of charm. But both ran into a juggernaut with almost no experience, but enormous charisma.
When it comes down to it, elections appear to depend more on charisma than experience.
I think Oprah would win.
The funny thing is, Chester Arthur was – during his time – considered to have been a damned fine president. Problem for Chet is that he was too ill to seriously run for re-election, and died two years into the next President’s term. For whatever reason, historians have lumped him into the same unhappy group of other presidents who never won their own term: Tyler, Fillmore, A. Johnson and Ford. Those other four guys were either very bad Presidents, or just weren’t real good at the presidenting thing.
Arthur though, was solid.
His experience prior to being named Garfield VP? Collector of duties for the port of New York.
He was also head of the SAG, which gave him important experience in negotiation. He negotiated immense deals with studios that permanently changed the industry.
An event thrown by the Hollywood Foreign Press is clearly the venue for tough talk on North Korea.
I expect we’ll see single-payer come up at the SAG Awards.