This article is from David Frum, former speech-writer/advisor to George W. Bush and various other conservative movement and Republican Party operative stuff. He's also been a never Trumper from...
This article is from David Frum, former speech-writer/advisor to George W. Bush and various other conservative movement and Republican Party operative stuff. He's also been a never Trumper from the beginning.
The analysis in here is mostly correct but I would like to see him and his fellow never-Trump Republicans accept or acknowledge their role in creating this state of affairs. The most significant part is here:
Americans have lavished enormous powers on the presidency. They have also sought to bind those powers by law. Yet the Founders of the republic understood that law alone could never eliminate the risks inherent in the power of the presidency. They worried ceaselessly about the prospect of a truly bad man in the office—a Caesar or a Cromwell, as Alexander Hamilton fretted in “Federalist No. 21.” They built restraints: a complicated system for choosing the president, a Congress to constrain him, impeachment to remove him. Their solutions worked for two and a half centuries. In our time, the system failed.
Through the Trump years, institutions have failed again and again to check corruption, abuse of power, and even pro-Trump violence.
Yes the framers were obsessed with preventing a bad man from taking office. But their assumptions were that such a person would come to power through charismatic leadership and overwhelming support from the masses. They built a bunch of counter-majoritarian institutions--like strong Federalism, the bicameral legislature, apportionment of Senators, lifetime appointments to the judiciary, and the electoral college--as a check on any one person's ability to assemble a strong enough coalition to push this stuff through.
But it was Republicans, who have been supercharging the impact of these counter-majoritarian institutions to absurd levels. It's because of the electoral college that Trump is in office despite losing the popular vote. It's because of the heinously lopsided representation in the Senate that no meaningful oversight of the President can happen. It's because of the rigid structure of the judiciary that the courts are packed by conservatives and we now have to seriously worry if Democrats will ever be able to meaningfully govern again. Conservatives have even taken all the guard rails off of the media, enabling massive consolidation and dominance by just a handful of ideologically motivated billionaires.
Frum is right in saying the Republicans have enabled the President, but he turns the structural and game theoretical reasons for this into questions of personal virtue and morality. So even if he has the diagnosis right, the treatment plan is going to all wrong because he doesn't understand the root cause.
Agreed on all points except the above--isn't the phenomenon of massive media consolidation a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed by Clinton?
Conservatives have even taken all the guard rails off of the media, enabling massive consolidation and dominance by just a handful of ideologically motivated billionaires.
Agreed on all points except the above--isn't the phenomenon of massive media consolidation a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed by Clinton?
Yes and no. One is that Clinton's whole thing was triangulating by picking up conservative positions to steal into the Democratic platform. Hence the anti-big government, pro-business,...
Yes and no. One is that Clinton's whole thing was triangulating by picking up conservative positions to steal into the Democratic platform. Hence the anti-big government, pro-business, anti-welfare, law-and-order bent of his government. This was especially the case after 1994 when Democrats lost the House.
Secondly, large pieces of legislation like that are usually attributable more to the legislators making it than the President signing it. This is less the case in modern times when partisan ideological sorting between the parties is really high, but in the 90s there were still lots of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. The Bill itself seems to have passed with fairly bipartisan support, but you'll notice almost all the nays were Progressive Democrats, including Feingold, Wellstone, and Leahy. The only Republicans were John McCain and Bob Packwood, both of whom kind of hung their hats on being anti-lobbyist, campaign finance crusaders.
This article is from David Frum, former speech-writer/advisor to George W. Bush and various other conservative movement and Republican Party operative stuff. He's also been a never Trumper from the beginning.
The analysis in here is mostly correct but I would like to see him and his fellow never-Trump Republicans accept or acknowledge their role in creating this state of affairs. The most significant part is here:
Yes the framers were obsessed with preventing a bad man from taking office. But their assumptions were that such a person would come to power through charismatic leadership and overwhelming support from the masses. They built a bunch of counter-majoritarian institutions--like strong Federalism, the bicameral legislature, apportionment of Senators, lifetime appointments to the judiciary, and the electoral college--as a check on any one person's ability to assemble a strong enough coalition to push this stuff through.
But it was Republicans, who have been supercharging the impact of these counter-majoritarian institutions to absurd levels. It's because of the electoral college that Trump is in office despite losing the popular vote. It's because of the heinously lopsided representation in the Senate that no meaningful oversight of the President can happen. It's because of the rigid structure of the judiciary that the courts are packed by conservatives and we now have to seriously worry if Democrats will ever be able to meaningfully govern again. Conservatives have even taken all the guard rails off of the media, enabling massive consolidation and dominance by just a handful of ideologically motivated billionaires.
Frum is right in saying the Republicans have enabled the President, but he turns the structural and game theoretical reasons for this into questions of personal virtue and morality. So even if he has the diagnosis right, the treatment plan is going to all wrong because he doesn't understand the root cause.
Agreed on all points except the above--isn't the phenomenon of massive media consolidation a result of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, signed by Clinton?
Yes and no. One is that Clinton's whole thing was triangulating by picking up conservative positions to steal into the Democratic platform. Hence the anti-big government, pro-business, anti-welfare, law-and-order bent of his government. This was especially the case after 1994 when Democrats lost the House.
Secondly, large pieces of legislation like that are usually attributable more to the legislators making it than the President signing it. This is less the case in modern times when partisan ideological sorting between the parties is really high, but in the 90s there were still lots of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. The Bill itself seems to have passed with fairly bipartisan support, but you'll notice almost all the nays were Progressive Democrats, including Feingold, Wellstone, and Leahy. The only Republicans were John McCain and Bob Packwood, both of whom kind of hung their hats on being anti-lobbyist, campaign finance crusaders.