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As President Obama walks through the ruins in Greece on his European farewell tour, President-elect Donald Trump is figuring out how to clean up the mess he’s been left with. It’s a fitting narrative, because what has been happening in Greece could certainly happen here.
Back in 2012 during the riots in Greece, Reince Priebus (Trump’s newly appointed Chief of Staff) commented at a dinner in Newport, RI that Greece had become a country of “irrational takers.” In his home state of Wisconsin, where a Civil War-like union fight took place that same year, Priebus helped his friend Governor Scott Walker beat them back saying, “I don’t think we can get pushed around anymore by Big Labor.” Fighting is nothing new to Priebus.
This election Priebus fended off the GOP establishment from derailing the Trump campaign. And now he’s tasked with figuring out how to get Trump’s plan into law while at the same time taking the edge off of new Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. The Priebus crowd voted for: Anybody but Hillary, Mike Pence, or Trump with reservations. The Bannon crowd voted TRUMP! and some got MAGA (Make America Great Again) tattoos. The combination of the two, Priebus and Bannon or “Priennon,” might thread the needle of a smaller Washington which is what both groups want.
But we can’t have it all today. And that’s where the Priebus pick is smart. Priebus knows how Washington works. He is also good friends with House Speaker Paul Ryan and he could be the glue that brings Congress and the Trump administration together. The long game here is that we can have a movement away from Washington and back to the states. Because the states are ready. They voted no to Obama.
And that’s the earthquake of this election. It was a revolt by the states against Obama. He was Trump’s Trojan Horse. In “Trump’s Secret Weapon: Obama” Kimberly Strassel of the WSJ ran through the numbers. When Obama took office, Democrats held 257 House seats, now they hold only 193 with one third of that in three states: New York, California, and Massachusetts. When Obama took office Democrats had 29 governorships and now they have only 15, with North Carolina still counting votes. For the first time since 1922, 33 out of 50 governorships (see Cato’s report card on Americas governors) are held by the GOP. Back in 2010 Democrats held 60 of 99 state legislative chambers, now it’s 30. Democrats hold control of the governorship and both legislative chambers in exactly 5 states. You get the point.
In a perfect world we would take power away from Washington and give it back to the states like our Founders intended. We would be more like Switzerland where the presidency is more of a ceremonial office. The swamp in Washington needs to be drained but we need a swamp guide. Obama spent eight years pleasing, as Priebus pointed out about Greece—a country of irrational takers. It’s time for Trump, with the help of Priebus, to take our country back.
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What just happened in America? Down here in Key West, over 40 causeways and 135 miles from Miami, faces are long and shock is the pivotal word of the day as the literary crowd attempts to regroup with the recognition that the hated Donald Trump will now be calling the shots in Washington.
I ask, why the misery? For the most part the answers come swiftly: Trump hates people, women’s rights, the poor, LGBTs, etc. Not a peep about Obama driving the country over the economic cliff or America’s lost AAA-bond rating or the catastrophe that is the Fed or nearly two decades of intervention in a Middle East Muslim world in which America has neither a place nor any national interest or America’s burgeoning budget, trade deficits, and debt or Obamacare (imploding under Americans).
It appears that a wide swathe of the American public cares not a rat’s keister about the basics of a sound economy, sound money, or a foreign policy based on realism and restraint.
Progressive liberalism has dragged America a long way down the path to ruin. The same course has been pursed in Europe, as Debbie and I have found out first hand over the last six years of on-the-ground fact finding. We moved our international research and fact-finding base to Paris and have continued to use our Paris launching spot to meet with international business leaders and sophisticated travelers from around the world. We have reported to you with consistency that the ruling parties all over Europe have lost their grasp, with hardline right groups moving in for the kill. It’s no more business as usual.
Muslim immigration is front and center dividing Europeans. And the anti-Muslim immigration forces are rapidly consolidating their position and gaining ground. England departed the EU largely on this issue. And we have witnessed a firming of hardline positions from Hungary through Slovenia, Austria, Germany and France. In Paris, it’s not unusual to see the military armed with automatic weapons near any corner café or bistro one wishes to visit. And the Eiffel Tower? In October, it was surrounded by barricades, fences, security entrances, bomb sniffing dogs and teams of unpleasant no-joking military guys with guns, it looks like a battle zone. Sound cozy? Well no, and business is in the tank, to be kind.
So why are so many Americans so exercised that the country just elected a most outspoken fellow voicing exactly the same message that has been resonating in Europe for years. To Debbie and me, the election of Mr. Trump was a foregone conclusion. Trump simply got a wet finger in the air and properly concluded that the wind had changed and that his fellow countrymen had had it. We saw the change coming on the ground in Europe. And the change was magnified after many weeks on the road in the eastern United States. We did not need to take America’s pulse on the West Coast or in the heartland because positions are largely engraved in stone. California, Washington and Oregon are examples. We felt the 2016 battle would be won or lost along a stretch of highways and byways from Pennsylvania through North Carolina and Florida.
The national print and electronic media and the bought and paid for polling outfits chose to B.S. Americans that Hillary Clinton, a disgraced liar and national security risk programmed by Middle East oil tyrants and assorted Clinton Foundation rabble, was the likely victor.
Our 20 days of road trips through small towns and the interstates of the Maine to Key West corridor produced a 20-to-0 margin of victory for Trump. Clinton won not one counting of lawn signs. I know, I know. Not very scientific, but zero? And not a single Clinton sign, banner or poster in some of the most progressive liberal strongholds in America! Sure didn’t make one think Clinton.
We concluded that the Electoral College vote could go to Trump if he took Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida. And such certainly looked likely by what we witnessed. All of which of course could have simply been our lying eyes, which, of course, would turn out to be not the case.
Today Debbie and I are turning our focus to the emerging Trump governance team with an eye on advising you whether the selections appear to match with the promises Trump made to Americans on the campaign trail. Besides Rudy and Newt, two hardliners that perfectly fit the mold is one John Bolton, a foul ball doctrinaire neocon of disappointing proportions. If you begin to read more on Bolton, make your feelings known to people who count, and fast. This guy is a big time interventionist who will keep America in the Middle East until the end of time. Vote NO on Bolton.
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When the NRA endorsed Donald Trump for president, there was some backlash among members who didn’t trust Trump’s record on gun rights and from those who preferred other candidates. Ultimately, of course, Trump would win the presidency, but not before adding Gov. Mike Pence to the ticket as his Vice President. Of the governor the NRA writes: “Pro-gun candidates don’t come any better than Mike Pence.”
That, to say the least, is a massive vote of confidence from the nation’s largest organization focused on protecting the Second Amendment. Pence made the Second Amendment a highlight of his Republican National Convention speech (which you can watch below) saying “or the sake of our Second Amendment and for the sake of all our other God-given liberties, we must ensure that the next president appointing justices to the Supreme Court is Donald Trump.”
Perhaps the first place the Trump/Pence team will focus on gun rights is a national right to carry reciprocity bill. Chris Eger at Guns.com writes of carry reciprocity:
The concept, to treat concealed carry permits like drivers’ licenses, allowing current permit holders to carry in any other state that issues permits, has been the subject of failed federal legislation in 2011, 2013, and 2014 while a current bill, sponsored by U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, has been collecting dust in the Senate Judiciary committee although it has 35 co-sponsors. Its companion House measure has 121 co-sponsors but has been aging in committee since last March.
However, with the White House under new management in 2017, the next Congress may see better luck getting a bill passed.
Meanwhile, the NRA is taking a deserved victory for helping propel Trump to victory. The Washington Free Beacon quotes NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre:
“In northern Florida and Pennsylvania, throughout Ohio, Wisconsin, and Michigan, in small towns and communities all across America, you were the special forces that swung this election and sent Donald Trump and Mike Pence to the White House,” he continued. “You did this. Don’t let anybody else tell you otherwise.”
LaPierre said it was Clinton’s gun positions, which her own campaign privately labeled the most “forceful” in history, that did her campaign in.
“Hillary Clinton made her hatred for the Second Amendment a central issue of this campaign, and as a result of that fatal mistake, she’s on permanent political vacation,” he said.
He went on to say that President-elect Trump would nominate a “constitutionally sound justice to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court” and called it a “generational victory for Second Amendment freedom.”
With a solid Second Amendment champion in Mike Pence at his side, and the tailwind of electoral support form the Second Amendment community, president-elect Donald Trump can fulfill his campaign trail promises of protecting Americans’ freedoms for generations to come.
Watch Vice Presidential nominee Mike Pence’s full speech at the 2016 Republican National Convention
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The Wednesday yoga class I attended after the election was a group think exercise of weeping and gnashing of teeth. The outcome of the presidential election was exactly as Peggy Noonan described—enraged mourning. The enlightened Zen-like qualities of yoga—at peace with most things, a sense of natural serenity—were swamped by venomous spilling of well-worn liberal phrases aimed at Trump: he hates us; he’s going to deport children; he’s sexist, racist, anti-Semitic, homophobic.
There was no recognition that “60 million people are very happy and hopeful,” as Peggy Noonan writes in the WSJ.
They haven’t taken to the streets in elation, so we can’t see them. They haven’t broken car windows in their joy. Respect their happiness.
The question we ask after every national election is, “Can we come together?” The question this year is more, “Do we even want to come together?” Have the two nations within our nation reached a point of permanent estrangement? If the cultural left eases up and the economic right loosens up, maybe things can be soothed.
I think many people intuitively sense this: The Trump era either really will work or really won’t. It’s going to be something good or a disaster, but it won’t be a middling thing.
Ms. Noonan suggests we need to give Trump a chance. Watch closely, yes, and wish well. “Cheer what’s sound, criticize what isn’t.”
What should we expect from a Trump administration.
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 I am assembling a running catalog on names being considered, and my company will evaluate each finalist in terms of what Donald Trump said he was going to do for Americans.
I do not want to get into specific names here, but rather kick off this lengthy task by saying that my initial impressions are not good, especially on the foreign policy front. I have in fact seen a small handful of names that I would almost certainly grade “F.” The whole foreign policy vetting mission looks to shockingly have a quite nasty neocon tinge to it with nary a worthy name under consideration.
Americans voted against an interventionist foreign policy and more involvement in the affairs of others. This is especially so in terms of conflicts where America’s national interest is not at stake. Here I am looking most directly at the radical Muslim Middle East which I and the majority of Americans would abandon in a heart beat.
President elect Trump meets with potential Cabinet picks
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Here the National Review staff summarizes Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s response to the cast of Hamilton addressing him directly after he attended their show.
Mike Pence’s response to the controversy surrounding the cast of “Hamilton” addressing him was spot on:
“I nudged my kids and reminded them, that’s what freedom sounds like…I wasn’t offended by what was said,” said Pence in an interview on Fox News Sunday.
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If possible, the French polls got their conservative primary election even worse than did America’s. Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppé had been the clear leader.
WSJ summarizes results:
Less than a month ago, polls credited Mr. Fillon with less than 15% of the first-round vote. On Sunday, results from 9,347 of the 10,229 polling stations across the country showed he won 44.2% of the votes in a field of seven candidates, ahead of the 28.5% received by Bordeaux Mayor Alain Juppe , who recent polls showed had been the favorite to win the primary. Mr. Sarkozy, by contrast, won just 20.6% of votes.
“Hope has shown itself with strength everywhere in France, demolishing all the predictions,” Mr. Fillon said.
Mr. Fillon and Mr. Juppé will now advance to a runoff next Sunday.
France primaries: What are François Fillon’s and Alain Juppé’s programs for 2017 elections?
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American politics has never been a dreamscape of considered, civil disagreement and wonky progress toward consensus. American politics and the American press have always been rambunctious, tendentious, and at times violent arenas, with warring papers and ideologies fighting viciously. At the founding of the nation, the populace was so whipped up with anti-Catholic fervor that George Washington, who was trying to enlist the French to help in the colonists’ struggle against the British, publicly condemned the “vicious and childish custom of burning the Effigy of the Pope” to tamp down the mania.
So let’s not romanticize the past. Still, one worries about the state of civic engagement in America. To be specific, two tendencies stand out. One is widely lamented, but the other is just as pernicious. First is the tendency to insulate oneself in social media where one regularly hears his own views reflected, or at least his enmities validated, but rarely considers the complexity of the issues or the limits of our knowledge.
A recent article in the Washington Post highlighted how to get ahead in today’s media landscape. Chronicling the new “yellow journalism,” the Post article profiled two formerly
unemployed restaurant workers [who are now] at the helm of a website that gained 300,000 Facebook followers in October alone and say they are making so much money that they feel uncomfortable talking about it because they don’t want people to start asking for loans.
The two seem moderately self-aware, realizing that they’re producing rotgut content that does nothing to broaden knowledge or civic engagement:
There are times when Wade wonders what it would be like to write an article he truly believes in. “In a perfect world,” he says, it would have nuance and balance and long paragraphs and take longer than 10 minutes to compose. It would make people think. But he never writes it, he says, because no one would click on it, so what would be the point?
And lest anyone believe our modern day Woodward and Bernstein are just hard driving ideological conservatives,
“It would be a perfect time to open up a small liberal newspaper right now,” he says as he types a post with, “The Democratic party is finished! Just wait til you see what happened today… .”
“It would,” Wade says. “There is so much animus on the left right now.”
“You could get more traffic than we do now,” Goldman says.
“It wouldn’t be very hard to argue the other side for me,” Wade says, as he types a post that says, “LIKE + SHARE IF YOU LOVE TRUMP! It’s time to heal the nation. All the lies that we have been fed about him were wrong. He is not a Nazi, he is not a Xenophobe, he is not Deplorable, he is not racist and he is about to make America great again!”
As these two young media mavens dole out Facebook fodder that’s the media equivalent of Monster energy drinks and Hot Fries, another tendency in civic debate should be lamented as well: the fetishization of so-called fact-checking. This became a topic of conversation during the debates, when there was controversy whether the moderators and/or networks would fact-check the candidates in real time.
The problem here is that almost none of what we debate in politics is fact. Does cutting taxes increase government revenue? Would bombing Bashar Assad’s forces produce a favorable outcome to the Syrian civil war? Is a revenue-neutral carbon tax possible?
None of these questions is amenable to fact checking. If a candidate said the boiling point of water was 100 degrees Fahrenheit, or that human beings are silicon-based, we could fact check those things. But when it comes to the social science questions that our politics centers on, the objects of debate are rarely facts. We are debating, usually implicitly, theories that carry with them ideas about what sorts of things are important, what sorts of things cause various outcomes in social and political life, and how to value various goods.
By treating political questions as disputes about fact, we render our opponents not just wrong but deranged. They are denying facts, so at best they must simply be stupid.
I’m not sappy about politics, but between the sludge on Facebook and the prissy fact-checkers, our political discourse has gone from bad to worse. There seems to be no way out other than to turn off, tune out, and unplug ourselves from the media we’ve been using to form our opinions.
Maybe things would get better if over our turkey and pinot, we just talked face to face with somebody we disagree with. Listened to him or her. Think about what’s being said. And see if we can’t get beyond the demonization and echo chambers that have helped us down into the pit where we find ourselves today.
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Jon Basil Utley, a friend of mine and publisher of The American Conservative, highlights the thoughts and ideas he gleaned from a speech by General James “Mad Dog” Mattis to the Jamestown Foundation. Mattis is likely to be America’s next defense secretary. Jon’s comments are in italics.
–America doesn’t lose wars, it loses interest.
–We have no overall strategy about how to defeat our enemy. (Just killing them is not working because, as I wrote years ago, the proper analogy comes from Greek mythology, Hercules’ adventure where, for every enemy soldier he killed, ten more sprung up in each one’s place)
–We don’t understand our enemy. (This refers to Sun Tzu’s classic dictum for war, “Know Thyself and Know Thy Enemy.” Americans have scarce interest in understanding the Muslim world’s history, wants, and fears.)
–Violent Jihad is gaining, not losing ground. (House and Senate intelligence panel chairs say terrorists are gaining. Half of Americans believe us less safe today than prior to 9/11.)
–We need a strategy which does not drive young Muslims to al-Qaeda.
–We must develop a persuasive counter narrative to that of our enemies. (With communism America held the moral high ground; today our Middle East wars have taken it away.)
–Al-Qaeda’s narrative is vulnerable, its strategy has its own poison pills. The IRA is an example of how a group’s own extremists can cause disaffection among the public. They eventually caused the Irish public to abandon them as they competed to prove who could be the most violent and brutal using indiscriminate terror. A franchise operation is not controlled, factions will do things wrong—think of al-Qaeda in Iraq murdering so many Sunni civilians for not conforming to Sharia law and subsequently being defeated. (Remember also that every free election where most Arabs could show their beliefs, only a small minority supported al-Qaeda’s religious fundamentalism. Most want safety, prosperity, and security. The calumny that most want to establish Sharia law in America is a propaganda of Washington’s war party.)
–Irregular warfare must become a core competency of our military; also our new weaponry must be focused on this new kind of war. (Most military training and procurement still concerns the strategy of World War II.)
–We must be more attentive to our allies’ sentiments and needs. We ignore them and then wonder why they won’t later do what we want.
–We must do a better job explaining and talking to the American people about our objectives.
–Palestinian peace process—two-state solution –Washington must address and promote this issue. (The conflict weakens and discredits America in the whole Muslim world. Mattis follows previous CENTCOM commanders, Admiral Fallon and General Petraeus, in stating the same judgment.)
–First think how we are going to end the fight before getting involved in wars. Democracies don’t know how to end wars. How much longer will there be public support for the war? American are not war weary, but rather are confused.
Leadership Lessons from Gen. James Mattis (Ret.)
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