All good. It’s such a great quote :)
Prison reform, probably.
I mean, it’s not done yet and it has flaws, but it’s probably a step in the right direction. Gods help us, but the best argument one could make against Trump on this issue is: “Well, it was really Kim Kardashian’s idea.”
Bush was elected governor twice and elected President twice. He was a skilled politician, who knew that his audience did not want him to act as smart as he was.
He made a lot of terrible policy decisions, but unlike Trump not everything he touched died. See his AIDS relief program, above. Honestly, PEPFAR is likely as good or better than anything that Bill Clinton accomplished in office, and I like Clinton.
I can’t say that everything W did was bad, but as president the ratio of bad to good is very heavily tilted to bad in my book. So bad that I fully expected him to be the worst president I’d live to see.
And so far, he still is. Trump is by far the worst person to be president, but W has caused the most harm while president. Does that difference make sense?
Trump has the temperment to do much worse things than W did, if allowed to. I don’t think he will be allowed to.
Come on man, he’s not gonna do any of that crap.
This is Trump’s MO. He says he’s gonna do good stuff, and then doesn’t do it. He says he won’t do bad stuff, and then he does even worse stuff.
At this point, in terms of actual policy, I’m pretty sure that Trump’s record is 100% bad. Which really, is strange. Like, it’s hard to not do something that’s beneficial.
It is typical of anti-Yglesias commentary to say that he’s an idiot because… reasons. He does tend to be forthright about when and where he’s been wrong, which leaves him vulnerable to pithy tweets like those above, but his reasoning is always well laid-out, he’s a clear thinker, and he supports his points with data. I welcome clear, reasoned refutations of his points–I’m always interested in a good counter-perspective and Yglesias kind of specializes in contrarian takes so there should be lots of good ones, but instead we usually get “He’s an idiot.”
Yes. And this is due to years of nurturing, focusing and paying to have that sentiment in their voter base by the GOP. It’s not something that just showed up a couple of years before Trump. The GOP has to own that. And if they won’t even acknowledge it happened, then they can’t. There can be no morality adjustment in the ranks of those who call themselves conservatives if they will not acknowledge their past. It’s not about I Told You So, or hindsight or trying to rewrite history. You cannot correct something that went wrong if you allow yourself and others a chance to just point to yet another boogeyman which is also their approach. This just happens to be Trump today, and yeah two states have a problem, serious problem with the GOP, and it wasn’t Trump that did it.
I agree that Bush did a lot more harm than good. When comparing with Trump, remember that we aren’t even two years into Trump’s term. At this point in the Bush presidency, nobody even heard of yellowcake. So, vigilance…
Two people can be bog-standard Republicans and yet not be the same. E.g. Santorum is a bog-standard Republican, and Romney is a bog-standard Republican, yet they are different people.
Sure Trump is different than Bush. He’s more coarse and — unbelievably — even more ignorant. He’s vulgar in a way Bush never was. He’s vain in a way Bush probably wasn’t. But on policy, he’s the GOP, just as Bush was the GOP.
And to come full circle, the GOP enablers that brought us to this point don’t get to claim that Trump is an aberration when he is in fact the culmination of all their work. And they surely don’t get to claim he’s really a liberal, not a conservative, as a way of blaming and attacking liberals at the same time.
I agree completely. We have the house now to prevent actual laws from being passed though, which feels like breathing room after the last two years of being able to do nothing but shout.
I expect that these are trump’s final 2 years as well. All bets are off if he gets re-elected.
Trump is not a liberal, but neither is he the intended consequence of GOP activism. The party intended someone like Rubio or Cruz to be their leader. Trump was an unintended consequence of their political strategy, yes an aberration, although one that the GOP is still ultimately responsible for.
I guess I disagree. If you train your electorate to accept absurd lies in pursuit of racism and owning the other side, it is predictable that at some point the guy who tells the most absurd lies and promises the most racism and lib-owning will win. Sure none of us believed Trump would be that guy, but there’s a straight line from Bush 2 to Palin to Trump that is damned hard to deny.
No, he doesn’t.
He’s a good WRITER. His articles flow nicely, and are easy to follow… but they aren’t supported by data. He presents data that is related, but doesn’t actually constitute a logical support.
For his most recent piece, let me explain in detail, although to some degree I suspect this is futile.
He points out that the Neocons are the most intellectually consistent group of conservatives left. This is certainly true, as they actually have a basis in real intellectualism. There is some attempt at the core of it to make a real, coherent view of things. And really, I think that this is the thing that Yglesias actually means… not that they are truly consistent (as I suspect that he believes some of their views to be at odds with other views, as this is generally how you prove someone is wrong), but more that they at least CARE about being consistent. That is, they aren’t willing to just accept obviously contradictory perspectives, like Trump supporters are.
This is in stark contrast to the modern GOP, which is just an increasingly hypocritical and inconsistent mess of garbage. There is no actual logical framework within all the current crap fits. It’s self-contradictory, in the extreme, on everything.
Further, he interestingly also points out that the Neocons actually correctly pointed out, back in the 90’s, that this is what would happen to the GOP if they abandoned the intellectual underpinnings.
But the problem is that he then says, “It’s good that these guys are gone, because they are the most dangerous part of conservatism”. But this is entirely unsupported.
He points out bad things that happened as a result of their policy directives… but it does not logically follow that, because those bad things happened, that they are “objectively the most dangerous” conservative faction.
There are two fairly obvious points that makes this conclusion pretty obviously wrong. First, an intellectually consistent platform is inherently better than an inconsistent one (and one which simply does not care about inconsistency), because you can actually have a meaningful discussion with someone who respects intellectual consistency. You can point out inconsistencies, and in doing so, change their mind. If someone cares about logic and reality, then you can work with them and come to an understanding. This is, inherently, better than the alternative.
Second, and this one is the more obvious… is that some non trivial portion of the GOP, including the Trump administration itself, has essentially embraced authoritarianism and fascism. While we have not seen them actually seize power and implement that vision, YET, they are clearly being driven by those goals. And that faction is, objectively, more dangerous. Fascists started WWII. They murdered millions of people. Fascist authoritarians are infinitely worse than the Neocons.
Again, it goes back to this idea that, “Well, they haven’t actually destroyed the world YET, so they’re not as bad.” No man, fascists are more dangerous. If you go back to Germany in 1930, you wouldn’t say “Oh, well the Nazi’s haven’t done anything bad YET, so whatever!”
I mean, that is in fact what people said back then… but that’s the point. They were WRONG.
(and we don’t even have to get into the fact that some of the stuff Yglesias says is objectively false, from a purely historical perspective… like his characterization of Russia invading Georgia as " the small nation found itself paying the price for aggressive action toward Moscow." Because that ain’t how it went down.)
These two statements are inconsistent. You’re judging fascists by their results but saying we shouldn’t neocons by theirs.
No, I’m saying the opposite.
I’m saying that you need to judge the fascists by the fact that they almost destroyed the world.
That’s why they are more dangerous.
The Republicans are destroying the world with their constant attacks on climate change and the environment. They just don’t care because of the $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$.
This all gets down to the inherent difficulty and danger in evaluating things before the long term consequences are known.
Because both of these statements can (and I’d agree with those saying they are) true.
George W Bush’s presidency has had greater negative effects on our country to date
Donald Trump’s presidency has potential to eclipse those bad consequences by a very wide margin
Further I’d even add
George W Bush did enact policies that had a positive impact on the world
Is true. The AIDS in Africa makes that self evidently true.
It’s impossible to judge the effects, especially second order effects and non policy items, today. We now, over a decade on, have the room to evaluate many of those effects of the Bush II presidency. The consequences of the Iraq War are much more clear and stark today than even in 2008. The costs too.
So comparing the total cost and effects ofnthat choice to the current costs and effects of Donald Trump is a fools errand. Better would be to look at the current effects of the Iraq War at the time Sadaam was caught. What had the total cost, civilian and military, at that point? What were the effects? At that time it was possible to pretend things would work out fine, that we would be completely out of there in a year and Iraq would be stable and great.
Didn’t pan out, and it contributed to the conditions that allowed ISIS. But in 2003 we didn’t know that yet.
So it is with Donald. What is the long term consequence of his authoritarian leanings, his complete dishonesty and immoral actions, his flaunting of the laws on corruption and self dealing, his demagoguery and deceit?
We don’t know yet. And they could range from a fever that breaks, to the ending of the American experiment.
So comparing the total net effects of Bush II’s 8 years to Trump’s ongoing 2 is pointless. And I think that’s where the conflict lies. Timex is looking at the down the road potential, Scott and others are looking at the, as of today, actual. You’re arguing about different things.
In the end the comparison can only be done in hindsight. And there is an economics term I think is important here. Net Present Value. It is valid and fair to place some of the for Trumpism, Tea Partiers, etc on the GOP operatives of the Bush presidency. And claiming a line from GOP policy and rhetoric over the decades to the party of today is totally fair! But as you get further away in time, the portion of blame you can place decreases.
Is Nixon’s southern strategy integral to the party of today? Of course! It is impossible to understand the party of today without that. Can you place fault for the current tax policy on Raegan? Most definitely! Does each incremental step have a cumulative effect? Absolutely.
But how much blame can you back port? What is the responsibility of Nixon’s naked fearmongering over black America on the party of today? Well it’s not zero, that’s for sure, but while he gets special credit for laying the foundation for that, and the drug war ugliness, he gets only a fraction of the blame. How much does Raegan share blame for the trickle down chicanery leading to the current policy insanity? A fair bit for sure.
And it is those long term effects that are toughest to judge. Because while the above are all bad, the potential for Trumpisms authoritarian and deceptions can be so much worse.
Even if you wanted to try to equate ecological damage to literally murdering millions of people with guns and bombs, the fascists would still lose, because they ALSO want to fuck the environment.
But in this case, it’s actually doubly wrong, since you have Neocons like Max Boot who literally wrote a piece in the WaPo admitting that he was wrong about climate change. So at this point, at least some portion of that group actually is on your side to some degree about that too.
Really? How was he wrong?
He’s a smart guy, so I can’t imagine he actually believed that climate change was a hoax; which suggests that if he was a denier, he wasn’t wrong, he was lying.
On the other hand, I can find articles by Boot going back to 2007 where he seems to say climate change is a real problem. Was he ever actually a denier at all?
I love the response of “You can’t just admit error, you must admit that you are an evil person!”
So productive.
Here’s the piece, by the way.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/i-was-wrong-on-climate-change-why-cant-other-conservatives-admit-it-too/2018/11/26/11d2b778-f1a1-11e8-bc79-68604ed88993_story.html?utm_term=.419446546f92