Posted on 03/06/2017 4:08:38 AM PST by SteveH
did not see this posted; good interview
I hope BO has to spend millions of dollars on lawyers in his new life.
Good job. Glad you wrote it.
It is a nice summation of looking at this from a power politics point of view.
I am sure that Trump has studied Machiavelli, and he has superb advisers that have been in the system and know it very well. Gingrich is one of the best.
Might have had to put a muzzle on Gingrich, but I really believe Christie, Giuliani, or Gingrich, for starters, would have been much better to bring in as CoS.
If he had found the right role for each of them and brought them in from the start, I think things would be going much more smoothly right now—even though two of them are, obviously, past their prime.
Or, put everyone under Bannon to make sure they are all on the same ideological page.
gingrich is great but imho overexposed and possibly even a bit prone to bluster. if trump passed on him for something like that it would in my mind be understandable. sometimes it takes a corporate type guy to do corporate type work. gingrich might be a better leader than a follower. absent a leadership role, gingrich might actually be best as an advisor— think advance scout perhaps. then he can be quiet when he needs to but can still take short rides off the reservation so to speak — so long as he does not stray too far, and presumably that is clear to all parties in advance. i had an impression that he even stated that he wanted to be an outside advisor himself and felt that he would be more effective in that role.
I don’t mind a corporate guy—as long as it’s not a corporate guy like Priebus (GOPe-loyal, Paul Ryan pal), but someone loyal to Trump and Trump’s agenda — and it is someone tough who already well understands how all the levers of the federal government work in practicality. No time for learning on the fly at this point.
the best of both worlds would simply be if trump and priebus go to gingrich whenever the need arises on a case by case basis, and gingrich makes himself maximally available by cell phone or whatever.
(hmm, better make that scrambled cell phone or whatever, lol)
No—Priebus should never been let through the front door of the WH. He is a Ryan mole, and Ryan is not Trump’s friend.
You can look as well at good Ryan buddy Pence’s role in forcing out Flynn. He’s populated the rest of the WH with GOPe operatives as well. E.g.: A business partner of Karl Rove as the head of communications.
priebus may be one of those cases in which we are being called upon to take a leap of faith on behalf of trump.
trump presumably knows as well as any of us and better than almost all of us who he can trust, who he needs to keep on short leash, and who he needs to take a pass on completely. we all need to realize that trump is a product of the american system of government, which has been relatively stable for about 250 years and counting (a very good record). if we can’t trust trump to lead and to choose who he wants to help him lead, we do not really have any other good options. all of us, including trump, are doing the best we can— trump by choosing his lieutenants, and us by trusting trump to choose his lieutenants, and to accept his judgment, at least until proven wrong by events or until the next presidential election. for better or otherwise, this is the way that our system of government is designed to function.
as a businessperson, trump can reasonably be presumed to know how to lead and how to manage an organization. he has been the leader of his own companies for several decades with reasonable if not very good success. this is presumed to be a part of his qualifications for why he was elected president by the voters (through the electoral college process).
so trump has his selection process and management process in place and in use when it comes to WH personnel. At this point our job, for better or otherwise, is mainly to hang on for the ride. we may be a bit better off if we cut him some slack rather than try to second guess him on every decision that on the surface we find reason to disagree with. the old adage, lead, follow, or get out of the way probably applies. trump needs to lead. if the adage is correct, our choice is largely between whether to follow or get out of the way. we don’t have to like it, but things might go smoother for all concerned if we accept it.
this is the fatalistic viewpoint. the optimistic viewpoint is that priebus will work out well and our concerns are unfounded. the same is true for ryan.
i for one would not be so presumptuous as to think that trump needs to be reminded to “trust, but verify.”
:-)
Trump is not infallible.
And the proof is in the pudding. (As well as reports from Trump allies.)
Duh— hopefully no one here is claiming that anyone is infallible. So it is not worth any time debating one way or another.
The proof is in the pudding? —You lost me... maybe I should just get some sleep...
BO probably has 10s of millions of $ tucked away in foreign accounts and trust funds by now, and enough allies domestic and foreign to help him fight and fight well in any prospective legal battles. I have a rather cynical view of American politics, at least since JFK. All of the presidents were human, and no doubt at least several were not quite as saintly as they have been presented in conventional history texts.
If Sessions actually did do something stupid, then hopefully either Sessions and Trump can come up with some ad hoc workaround. From what little I understand, in the worst case, they could advocate for a special prosecutor. As long as they have done nothing wrong and can vet the special prosecutor, all should in theory remain reasonably well.
The optimistic view is that they considered cases a few moves in advance on a board of which none of us on the outside has a clear view, and figured out that it was optimal that Sessions recuse himself at this time.
Remember, the important stuff is passing the Trump agenda, getting the right SC and other court nominees, and developing and maintaining coattails in state and local elections.
Right now, IMHO Obama is being more and more isolated and discredited by Trump’s strategies. I would expect Trump to have such a strategy of isolating Democrat leadership. It makes a lot of sense if one is interested in making forward progress in the three main categories of political accomplishments that I listed above.
There is no urgent need to put Obama into prison ASAP under this view. The longer Obama is isolated and discredited, the more his political power base declines. The more his political power base declines, the more vulnerable he becomes in most senses of the word. The more Obama becomes a political nothing burger, then the more Trump wins, we all win, the USA wins, and the world wins. his ultimate fate could be living a recluse’s life in a mansion behind a fence a la Howard Hughes, or in prison, or under a freeway underpass, or in a cheap bedbug ridden motel room. that is relatively unimportant, if the obama agenda is obliterated from the law and most people either forget him or perceive his legacy as one of failure. the important stuff is making america great again, not dwelling on how best to get rid of a cockroach.
If obama was found to be in jepoardy of being indicted for criminal conduct while president, it might (in the worst case) cause a constitutional crisis. we’ve been through this before with the Ford pardon of Nixon after Nixon resigned. There is (iirc) a school of thought that believes that Ford did the right thing in pardoning Nixon and sparing the country the agony of a criminal trial against Nixon for his alleged role in the Watergate scandal coverup. A similar reasoning could be applied to a prospective trial for Obama. In this particular case, the reasoning would be that there is no sense in going after Obama in the first place if we are eventually just going to be faced with the prospective situation of placing obama in prison and giving rise to a generation of politicians who might cite Obama’s imprisonment as political persecution and/or racism and (in the extreme) thus justification for an insurrection.
here is an article (which i found via drudgereport this morning, though it seems to have been first published on 3/5) which seems to back you up in part on priebus:
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/trump-reince-priebus-white-house-235703
i am not sure exactly what to make of it, although it does not sound altogether flattering about priebus.
i think these kinds of personnel clashes are not totally unheard of in new administrations. if some of the claims in the article are correct, it does sound as if priebus might not have been a net win for trump. however, the article is not altogether flattering to trump either, in the sense that trump may have undermined priebus’ ability to operate autonomously from the outset.
could gingrich have done better? i am not sure. i do suspect that it would be a given that gingrich would have done at least some things differently. would gingrich have succeeded where priebus is alleged in the article to have faltered? that seems possible. however, it also seems possible to me that gingrich could have found ways to put his foot in his mouth very readily and very publicly on some matters, and priebus might have been better in general at dodging those types of “opportunities.”
it does sound as if trump is inviting a certain amount of mayhem on himself by acting as a loose cannon without coordinating with his staff on some announcements. i believe he undercut kellyanne at least one point in time on something (forgot exactly what), and that she handled it as gracefully as she could. preibus is bearing the full brunt of that changeability every day, day after day. i’m not so sure that it is something deliberate, or even a mismatch of temperment. trump has to learn to delegate, and learn quickly. this means, most importantly, support those who he has put in place to support him. trump needs to do this or else he is going to go through chiefs of staff and other appointees to high level positions like a hot knife through butter, and it won’t help him get where he wants to go. is priebus actively undermining trump? the article seems to suggest that. i do think trump will eventually figure that out by himself. i can only conclude with platitudes. i hope that trump and priebus can figure out procedures by which all this alleged internal thrashing can be minimized immediately. if that means priebus needs to be replaced, then so be it. if that means trump has to change his manner of operation, so be it. it would be unfortunate if trump is his own worst enemy. for all of our sakes, let’s hope not.
Gingrich may not be the guy. But a Ryan minion certainly isn’t the answer. There was no reason for Trump to build a “coalition” management team—as Bannon called it at CPAC.
aha. and may i take it that bannon was being dismissive of the concept of a coalition management team at the time? (sorry, was not there, have not followed it that closely, just wondering— hey, i’m in flyover territory lol and i was just believing that all this was supposed to be running smoothly or something...)
i do however recall trump’s victory announcement and trump dragging priebus to share the microphone. that was something that i did not quite get the full implications of. was it genuine gratitude for a job well done, or was it a politically expedient nod and a peace pipe offering to the country club republicans? (dunno one way or another)
“...dragging...” -> “...iirc trump dragging...” was it priubus? i only vaguely recall that it was. it seemed to be expected that whoever it was, the guy would get something rather large as an appointment if he wanted it.
They do and did work together, and this was the two of them playing up how well they get along to tamp down rumors to the contrary.
Note, Bannon, Miller, Conway, Sessions and of course Trump have all been targets. Nothing has been aimed at Priebus or Pence.
They do and did work together, and this was the two of them playing up how well they get along to tamp down rumors to the contrary.
Note, Bannon, Miller, Conway, Sessions and of course Trump have all been targets. Nothing has been aimed at Priebus or Pence.
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