POTUSburg

Pontifications on partisanship, politics and pop culture

[potusburg]

Glad We’re Not Sick!

POTUSburg started with a reference to the 1978 film “Superman” — a movie featuring an implausible plot and numerous film making shortcuts, and which only holds up as a parody of itself.  1983’s “Spies Like Us” boasts similar qualities.  Which is to say, we love it!  Two low-level career government employees, Austin Milbarge (Dan Akyroyd) and Emmit Fitzhume (Chevy Chase), aspire to do high-level intelligence work in the field and are caught cheating on a requisite foreign service exam.  Their bumbling incompetence intrigues a shady group of intelligence operatives monitoring the exam, who are about to send an elite pair of agents, known as GLG-20’s, on a dangerous and critical mission.  Why not, the operatives decide, send these two nitwits on a parallel mission to serve as decoys?  Hilarity ensues.

The ensuing bumbling hilarity is set against a backdrop of an ostensibly serious, complex, and dangerous construct of national security and Cold War machinations.  This construct, however, is put together in such a slapdash fashion, that it’s not entirely clear whether the filmmakers splurged on their stars and had little else left with which to build a supportable plot, or whether the whole thing is just another layer of an intentionally silly spoof.  Clues abound that point to the latter, such as when we first meet Fitzhume shirking work at his desk by watching a small TV playing the 1952 musical, “She’s Working Her Way Through College”, featuring, in an apparent wink to the audience, future President Ronald Reagan.

Shifting gears to current events, the completion of the Mueller report, and the information about it that has so far become public, got Your Faithful Blogger thinking about three groups of people that look, well, kind of stupid, based on what we’ve learned. The second of the three groups we’ll discuss, and the one to which Your Faithful Blogger sadly belongs, is the group whose thinking draws parallels to Spies Like Us. We’ll cover that as we go through the three groups.

Let’s start with Group One:  The Trump-Is-Evil Conspiracy Theorists.  Let’s face it.  Anyone who thought Trump was capable of deviously planning, strategizing, and coordinating with anyone — Russians or otherwise — hasn’t been paying attention.  The campaign — or at least the portion that relied on planning, coordination, and strategy, was run largely by the RNC.  Trump’s unique energy and personality was necessary icing on the cake, but any allegation of deliberation or intricate scheming on his part is ludicrous.  His campaign’s impulsiveness has continued into an administration where aids, advisors, lawmakers, and officials scramble to assimilate to and implement a chaotic on-the-fly agenda that reveals itself through off-the-cuff tweets triggered by Presidential binge-watching of Fox News (now euphemistically dubbed “executive time” — thanks for that comedic legacy, John Kelly).  Look at this from the standpoint of the Russians.  Trump would be a TERRIBLE asset.  No one could be less controllable, predictable, or capable of coordination and cooperation.  Trump may be evil, but he is clearly incapable of engaging in a conspiracy.

The second of the three groups brings us back to Spies Like Us. These folks, including your blogger, subscribed to what we’ll call the GLG-20 theory:  Trump was an unwitting accomplice.  He surrounded himself with people who were compromised, in the process compromising his own presidency.  That Trump was susceptible to this, the thinking went, was a reflection of a unique blend of ego, dishonesty, carelessness, hubris, and good old-fashioned intellectual ineptitude.  The thought was that the Russians wouldn’t work with him directly, or count on him to carry out a specific agenda, but that he could be directionally influenced to their benefit through an unscrupulous and poorly vetted supporting cast of grifters and third rate talents.  Trump was sort of a spy, but like Millbarge and Fitzhume, his utility as an agent was grounded in his bumbling incompetence.   This theory seems, to the best of our ability to assess, to have been debunked.

The third group of stupids is the Deep State/Hoax/Witch Hunt crowd.  The narrative here was that a mix of angry Democrats, liberal media types, and career bureaucrats concocted an investigation on false pretenses in order to get Trump.  This crowd is so busy taking a victory lap now, that they apparently either don’t understand or don’t care about the fact that the results of the report expose this conspiracy theory as a massive farce.    Why exactly would the accused conspiracists work tirelessly to produce something that would ultimately support the “no collusion” mantra?  If Mueller and his team had an agenda and couldn’t be trusted to objectively follow the facts—a cry that was repeatedly uttered by the President and his right-wing media supporters—how can Trump and his supporters now hold up the results of that very investigation as vindication?  In Trumpland, they’ve pivoted from painting investigators as corrupt manufacturers of evidence, to calling for an apology for what they describe as a waste of time and resources.  Putting aside the point that Presidential golf outings reportedly have cost us more than the entire investigation, let’s recap the original purpose:  to investigate potential Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election and any matter that arose directly from said investigation.  The independent counsel was appointed because US intelligence agencies believed the Russians had interfered, and Trump was demonstrating defensiveness about, hostility toward, and an inclination to fire those who pursued an investigation.    The investigation produced numerous indictments of Russian nationals, along with convictions by plea agreement AND actual jury trial of American citizens for engaging in and/or lying about unscrupulous activities and transactions with foreign enemies.  Additional matters have been referred to Federal prosecutors for further investigation.  The body of work produced by the investigation affirms its necessity and legitimacy.  To treat that body of work as some sort of buffet whereby one selects only the portions that are convenient for one’s own world view is worse than a joke.

We all must come to grips with the following. First, we all could stand to watch Spies Like Us again. Second, Trump, whether it’s the man himself or Trump as an avatar for what’s broken in our politics, inflames a lot of passions in large swaths of our society, present company included.  That’s not a recipe for clear thinking.  And the greatest service of the Mueller report to all of us may be that it exposes our deep biases.

--SKS

[potusburg]

Silver Linings?

In 1998’s “Sliding Doors”, Gwyneth Paltrow executes, to the ears of this west coast American anyway, a very passable English accent in an intriguing “what if” exploration of two parallel universes.  Paltrow’s Helen is not having a good day when she is fired from her job in London one morning.  It gets marginally worse when she packs her desk and begins the commute back to her flat, only to have the train doors at the tube stop slide shut just before she boards...or do they?  From this point in the movie we are toggled back and forth between two story lines — one in which Helen barely catches the train, and the other in which she barely misses it and awaits the next.   The divergent paths hinge on a moment when Helen is descending the stairs to the tube stop and a child grabs the rail in front of her—or doesn’t—resulting in the split second difference between stepping through the sliding doors and missing them.

In the Catch the Train story line, Helen’s unexpected return home during the workday causes her to catch her philandering live-in boyfriend in flagrante delicto.  In the Miss the Train story line, her workday return, while still unexpected, occurs a few minutes later, allowing her boyfriend and his secret lover (played by the fabulous Jeanne Tripplehorn) just enough time to cover their tracks.  This changes everything.

While Helen suffers the dual indignities of being fired and cheated on in quick succession in the Catch the Train story line, it triggers an end to a bad relationship and the impetus to a fresh start.  Helen begins a new relationship with a kind and funny man whom she’d met on the train home, and is inspired to start her own business.  Helen’s life starts to really come together.

In the Miss the Train story line, Helen doesn’t catch her boyfriend in the act, doesn’t meet the nice guy on the earlier train, and stays in a toxic relationship with no real support as she struggles to earn money and get her career back on track.  We learn how truly spineless and parasitic her boyfriend is, and how unhappy she is in their relationship.

In a twist (spoiler alert—look you had twenty years to see this movie, ok?), Helen is fatally struck by a car at the end of the movie in the “happy” Catch the Train story line.  In the Miss the Train story line, she hits rock bottom, but thereafter meets the same guy from the train in a hospital elevator, leading us to believe things will now get on track for her.  

To put it bluntly, this movie is a mind fuck dressed up as a rom-com.  Or maybe vise versa.  It is "Jacob’s Ladder”, but without all the darkness, war and hallucinations, and with a whole lot of “When Harry Met Sally” laced in.  It’s an easily digestible and somewhat lighter (for the most part) way to make the point that life turns on the smallest of moments, and one can never really know when that moment happens, or even, really, what’s for the best and what isn’t.

Your faithful blogger recently brought “Sliding Doors” up to Mrs. Blogger, longing wistfully for an alternate reality where some fateful moment in 2016 played out differently—the timing of the Comey memo, the HRC campaign “strategy” in Michigan and Wisconsin, perhaps a Russian troll farm hitting slightly fewer marks on a Facebook post, pick your poison—and Donald J. Trump is not President.  Wouldn’t everyone be happier?  Including Trump himself?  No legal jeopardy, riding the financial wave and glory of his Quixotic candidacy, Hannity and his fans could foam at the mouth daily about HRC, we could all just have the normalcy we crave, I whined.

But, Mrs. Blogger asked, would that be better?  Look at how socially and politically engaged and mobilized so many women are, she argued.  I, she pointed out herself, care so much more about voting and the democratic process than I otherwise would.  Look at all the new Congressional women heading into DC, many of whom likely wouldn’t have been motivated to run in a “President Hillary” alternate universe.  

Look at the grassroots energy you see to confront climate change, reform immigration and the justice system, and combat racism and sexism.  What if the election of Donald Trump was really the overturning of a rock that revealed slimy slugs interwoven into our social fabric, and now we’re dealing with the slugs?  She may have put all this in a slightly less pedantic way; we sometimes paraphrase at POTUSberg.

So here we are.  Two years in.  In the command center of the executive branch of our government, at the levers of our democratic institutions, sits an attention craving monkey throwing feces at a mostly accommodating audience.  What will have the most lasting and significant effects:  the damage wrought by the monkey, or the awakening of the forces that emerge to contain the damage and right the ship?  Time will tell.  As “Sliding Doors” demonstrates, it is hard to ever know for sure what the long term net positives and negatives are, and how they balance out.

--SKS

[potusburg]

White House of Cards

If you enjoyed Weekend at Donnie’s, well have we got some good news for you! It’s time to consider Donald Trump and his supporting cast of characters through the lens of the film “Rounders”.   Previously we asked why anyone would choose to hitch their professional political wagon to Donald Trump.  “Weekend at Bernie’s” provided some answers.  Rounders will provide some more.

If you’ve played poker with a group of friends in the last 20 years there’s an excellent chance that you played no-limit Texas Hold ‘em. This is a cultural outgrowth directly attributable to Rounders.  What’s more, at the poker table with said friends, you have probably used words like flop, turn, and river.  Perhaps someone at your table even exclaimed, with a terrible Russian accent, “Lays. Down. A Monster”.  These things didn’t happen before Rounders.  Prior to its release, poker nights generally consisted of dealer’s choice versions of limit-style, everybody-antes-up draw and stud, and it was generally acceptable to quote the now-forgotten Mel Gibson flick “Maverick” (“I’ve got two small pairs… eights…and eights!”).  When Rounders arrived on the cinematic scene it supplanted Maverick as the definitive poker film of its generation, a title it will likely hold for some time.

But it was so much more than that!  Rounders is an epic film featuring strong character development, a fast-moving plot, a really strong cast, and one of your faithful blogger’s two or three favorite single movie scenes of all time – the “our destiny chooses us” scene between Matt Damon and Martin Landau over two glasses of gin at a quiet table in the dark corner of bar.  If you have never seen “Rounders”, or even if you have only seen it once or twice, go watch it immediately.  POTUSburg will wait right here.

OK, you’re welcome, and welcome back!  It seems to this blogger that several of the people taken in by Trump resemble the core group of Rounders characters. Those supporting characters see an amazing talent in Mike McDermott, but perhaps one still figuring out who he is, and each vies desperately for his soul. McDermott’s gift is playing poker (or as his girlfriend Jo chose to see it, the ability to “read people…calculate odds on the spot”).  In Donald Trump’s case, his gift is his ability to communicate in a manner that persuades and mobilizes a previously dormant but significant element of the American psyche.   Who are some of the people who have positioned themselves around Trump, thinking they might have something to offer to a nascent policymaker who demonstrates signs of a rare talent for persuasion?  Let’s find out! 

Joey Knish — “The closest thing to a friend in a place like this...” Knish is a “rounder” (makes his living at cards), and more specifically a “grinder” (prefers to play conservatively for extended periods and make small amounts of money at a time).  Knish recognizes Mike’s formidable ability and wants to mentor him as a professional card player who forgoes playing for thrills or glory.  Mike respects Knish and is grateful, but knows deep down that he won’t reach his full potential grinding away as Knish does.

Rex Tillerson tried to be Trump’s Knish.  A Secretary of State really has two jobs that entail different skill sets:  shaping an administration’s strategic foreign policy agenda and running a large federal agency.  Tillerson shared Trump’s unconventional views about the second part of the role but not the first (interestingly, the more newly-minted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo seems to be the exact opposite).  The Tillerson agenda was very Knish-ish: like a fiscally conservative card player, focus on penny pinching and shrinking the State Department in a mind-numbing grind of an approach.  Avoid disruptive and destabilizing moves like pulling out of the Paris Climate Agreement and the Iran Nuclear deal (i.e. going head to head in large stakes games with Teddy KGB and Johnny Chan).  Ultimately, both Knish and Tillerson are unsuccessful and unconvincing, winding down their relationships with their muses by respectively offering astute appraisals:  Knish saying, “I never doubted your talent”, and Tillerson famously calling his boss a “moron”.

Jo — “So you were nowhere near a card game...”  Jo, Mike’s girlfriend and fellow law student, believes deeply in Mike and his smarts and wants him to stay focused on the pursuit of a respectable career in law, not something as self-destructive, in her view, as poker.  In the opening scene of the movie, Mike loses $30,000 (“three stacks of high society”), and we later learn that he’s subsequently promised Jo to quit poker for good.

Ivanka is the Jo in Trumpland.  Much as Jo dreamed of life with Mike as a power couple of respected attorneys, Ivanka set up camp at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with visions of being a national policy mover and shaker and working alongside her father to Make America Great Again.  Her struggles to dissuade dear old dad of his basest instincts and steer him toward respectability mirror Jo’s utter failure to keep Mike away from poker games.

Worm — “You know what cheers me up when I’m feeling shitty?  Rolled up aces over kings...”  Worm is a childhood friend of Mike’s who travels in poker circles, but is more of a con artist and cheat than a serious player. Worm believes that he and Mike form a brilliant duo, and wants to work his scams with Mike as a partner. Neither Jo nor Knish, especially Knish, approves of Worm, but Mike believes he owes him his loyalty.

While Steve Bannon and Trump lack the history that Mike and Worm have, Bannon fills the Worm role.  Like Worm, his agenda was more cynical and destructive than the other characters.  Without their respective opportunities to ride the coattails of Mike and Trump, both Worm and Bannon would otherwise be irrelevant small-timers.  Ultimately neither relationship would last, but like Worm, Bannon tapped into to the darker tendencies of his muse, and seems likely to leave a lasting impact even after the relationship crumbled.  

Professor Petrovsky — “Our destiny chooses us...”  Abe Petrovsky, though he appears in only four scenes (three if you count scenes in which he has lines), and is far less often a regular actor on the stage of Mike’s life than the other characters who are vying for his soul, has a significant impact on both the protagonist and the viewer, delivering the aforementioned “our destiny chooses us” scene, and ultimately coming through in a pinch with a $10,000 loan to Mike that changes everything.

As the professor dipped into his modest savings to make an ill-advised loan to Mike, so Nikki Haley put her reputation as a serious, credible, and policy-minded professional on the line when she agreed to be Trump’s UN Ambassador.  Like Petrovsky, she has improbably emerged unscathed, and as was the case with the Professor and Mike, Haley and Trump’s briefly intersecting paths now diverge.  Haley played a Petrovsky-esque role in the Trump circle as a wiser, above-the-fray counselor who largely didn’t seem to interact with the others jockeying for influence.

Bonus character (since your blogger doesn’t want this to be over):  Even though she wasn’t a serious contender for Mike’s soul, we’ll add in Petra, the unrealistically gorgeous card player and worker-bee at The Chesterfield, one of Mike’s regular underground poker venues.  Petra really wants a relationship with Mike, who politely (and somewhat unrealistically) rejects her advances, but her main purpose in the plot seems to be to serve as a visually appealing red flag for Mike and the viewer about Worm.

In a similar vein, Rudy Giuliani, Chris Christie, and Newt Gingrich were adoring, visually revolting red flags about Trump very early on as they each in turn became his de facto surrogates.  Despite their publicly-displayed adoration, Trump spurned them all when it came time to hand out jobs in his administration.  And no, bringing on Rudy this year as his incomprehensible but very confident public “advocate” doesn’t count.

Extra bonus:  So who is Teddy KGB, the dangerous Russian surrounded by unsavory thugs, the master of his domain who wants to own Mike, get in his head, and casts an ominous shadow over the entire movie? Hmmm, do we know any Russians who fit that description in the context of today’s political landscape? Your blogger is drawing a blank...

And so, it could be said that the President’s Administration is playing out just like Rounders, that is if you substituted the character of Mike McDermott with the proverbial raccoon with its head stuck in a peanut butter jar.  And therein lies the rub—the cast of characters who came to DC thought they were getting Mike McDermott when in fact they had…Bernie Lomax!

--SKS

[potusburg]

POTUS 2020

We’ve been fantasizing about the identity of the next President almost since the inauguration of the present one.  Conducting a friendly POTUS 2020 prediction dinner party auction competition amongst friends provided an opportunity to indulge our fantasies.

The rules of the game:

Each participant has $20 to spend, in increments of $0.25, auction-style.  The winning participant will be the one whose group of candidates collectively has the most points after the November 2020 Presidential election.  Points will be awarded as follows:

500 points to the owner who “buys” the candidate with the most electoral votes in 2020.

250 points to the owner who “buys” the candidate with the second most electoral votes in 2020.

100 points to the owner who “buys” any other candidate who receives at least one electoral vote, but does not come in first or second.

200 points to the owner who "buys" the candidate selected to be vice president by the winning Presidential candidate.

100 points to the owner who "buys" the candidate selected to be vice president by the Presidential candidate with the second most electoral votes.

50 points to the owner who "buys" a candidate who is invited and actually appears in a nationally-televised Presidential (not vice-presidential) debate hosted and/or aired live by CNN or NBC; provided, however, that (1) no candidate may receive more than 50 points for participation in debates, and (2) no candidate who subsequently receives any electoral votes may receive any points for having appeared in a debate.  

Participants shall each nominate candidates and include with such nomination at least a $0.25 bid, until such time as no participant wishes, or is able, to make any further nominations, or no participant has any money left.  The participant who bids the most on any nominated candidate “wins” that candidate.  The “Presidential Field” and the "Vice Presidential Field" shall each be recognized candidates, and shall include all people in the world who are not otherwise “bought” by another participant.  In order for either Field to earn points, a person not otherwise “bought” during the auction MUST WIN the Presidency or Vice Presidency.  No points will be awarded to the Field for debates, electoral votes, or second-place. 

If you find yourself confused by the rules outlined above -- fear not -- most of last night’s participants were as well, and their confusion did not seem to adversely affect their enjoyment of the auction.  Despite the byzantine and wholly arbitrary rules, and the fact that the winner won’t be determined for nearly two years, seven intrepid dinner party attendees took the plunge.  Here are the results:

ANTHONY:  Bernie Sanders (8.25), John Kasich (2.75), Sherrod Brown (2.00), Adam Schiff (0.75), Mark Cuban (0.75), Tom Steyer (0.50), Ted Cruz (0.50), Chuck Schumer (0.50), Julian Castro (0.50), Jay Inslee (0.25), Lincoln Chaffee (0.25), Mitch Landrieu (0.25), Jason Kander (0.25), Pete Buttigieg (0.25), Tim Ryan (0.25), Jeff Merkley (0.25), Seth Moulton (0.25), Martin O’Malley (0.25), Howard Schultz (0.25), Eric Swalwell (0.25)

CHU:  Kamala Harris (7.25), Andrew Cuomo (4.75), John Hickenlooper (2.75), Condoleeza Rice (1.25), Hillary Clinton (1.00), Gavin Newsom (1.00), Paul Ryan (0.75), Michael Avenatti (0.75), Stephen Colbert (0.25)

FOX:  Beto O’Rourke (6.50), Elizabeth Warren (5.75), Eric Holder (3.25), Jerry Brown (1.50), John Delaney (0.75), Elon Musk (0.75), Andrew Gillum (0.25), Ellen DeGeneres (0.25)

KIRK:  Kristen Gillibrand (7.00), Joe Biden (7.00), Cory Booker (5.75), Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson (0.25)

LEE:  Donald Trump (11.00), Deval Patrick (2.50), Amy Klobuchar (2.50), Tulsi Gabbert (1.75), Michelle Obama (1.25), Sarah Palin (0.50), Kanye West (0.50)

SABO:  PRESIDENTIAL FIELD (7.00), Mike Pence (5.50), Bill de Blasio (1.75), Michael Bloomberg (1.75), Mitt Romney (0.75), Oprah Winfrey (0.75), Bob Corker (0.75), Jeff Flake (0.50), Tim Kaine (0.50), Ben Sasse (0.25), Maggie Hassan (0.25), Jamie Dimon (0.25)

SIEVERS:  VICE PRESIDENTIAL FIELD (8.75), Eric Garcetti (2.25), Terry McAuliffe (1.75), John Kerry (1.00), Steve Bullock (1.00), Marco Rubio (0.75), Roy Cooper (0.75), Nikki Haley (0.50), Joe Kennedy III (0.50), Mark Zuckerberg (0.50), Chris Murphy (0.50), Rudy Giuliani (0.50), Ben Casey (0.50), Luis Gutierrez (0.25), Jeff Bezos (0.25), Bruce Springsteen (0.25)

My team didn’t come together as planned.  Mistakes were made, opportunities were missed.  I blame the Sierra Nevadas (a common refrain of mine recently) and the unexpected skill of my competitors.  Women are turning out to vote in record numbers.  Last November brought record numbers of women candidates, many (most?) of whom won.  The chances of a woman becoming president in 2020 are quite good, and yet a survey of my team’s roster the morning after the auction reveals no women, while everyone else has at least one.  FeeltheBern I guess?  Looks like I won’t be banishing this t-shirt to the rag bag for at least another two years.

--RFA

[potusburg]

Weekend at Donnie’s

Who are the people around Donald Trump and why are they there?  Given that, in the words of John Oliver, the general climate of the Trump administration resembles that of Watergate, but only if you substitute Nixon for a raccoon with its head stuck in a peanut butter jar, who would want to work for, partner with, or otherwise be associated with it?

There is a camp which appears to think of Trump as similar to Mike McDermott of the film “Rounders”, and another which thinks he’s more akin to Bernie Lomax. That’s right.  Bernie Lomax. The corpse from 1989’s “Weekend at Bernie’s”.  In Part 1 of a two-part post, we consider the Lomax camp.

Weekend at Bernie’s is a film that, if your faithful blogger was flipping through cable channels in high school, and it was on, he always stopped and watched.  It was one of the great re-watchable movies of your blogger’s youth…or one that he personally re-watched at any rate.  It’s the kind of film that fits in a category of movies that 1) we should be afraid to re-watch today for fear of how badly they will hold up, and 2) would probably be hard to find anyway.  The premise of Weekend at Bernie’s is delightfully absurd:  In a vehicle that showcased solid comedic chops on the part of Jonathan Silverman and Andrew McCarthy, yet somewhat inexplicably failed to launch either into stardom, two young insurance analysts are invited to spend Labor Day weekend at their boss’s beach house in the Hamptons. When they show up, they find their boss Bernie dead.   Due to a chain of events that can only come to fruition in the script of an 80s movie, the two main characters are the only ones who realize that Bernie is, in fact, dead. As such, they decide to just go with it in order to enjoy gatherings of the rich and beautiful that they otherwise would be unable to attend.  The key to it all is the perpetual presence of a dead body dressed in weekend boating attire.  Morbid hilarity ensues.

If Trump is Bernie, an intellectual “corpse” who unwittingly provides access to the policy reins of the executive branch for party-goers who either fail to grasp that he is, in fact, the cerebral equivalent of a cadaver in a suit, or pretend otherwise, then who are the sometimes-calculating handful of opportunists playing the role of the protagonists from Weekend at Bernie’s?  One such opportunist would be Mike Pence, a politician of famously stratospheric personal ambition who was on the outs with the conservative establishment before the chance presented itself to grab onto Bernie and hold his nose.  Pence will keep this party going as long as he can. 

Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell are two more.  Both differ from Pence in that 1) they are less skilled at concealing, or less inclined to conceal, their obvious distaste for Bernie, and 2) they are motivated not so much by personal ambition, but by the policy agenda opportunities afforded by the soirees at Bernie’s beach house (i.e. “this is our chance to truly attempt to repeal Obamacare, fill the bench with conservative judges, and enact tax cuts, so let’s prop this thing up and walk around with it, smiling and carrying a cocktail”).

John Kelly probably was initially in the Ryan and McConnell camp, but eventually took on a more distasteful and less policy-driven role in order to prolong the party as his protégé got installed into the role he cared about more. Other party-goers include hangers-on who simply need a party to attend and are far more oblivious to the transformed state of affairs in Washington from which they benefit:  We’re looking at you Ben Carson and Betsy DeVos!

Perhaps no opportunist party-goer has cut a more compelling-- and elfish-- figure in the Trump Administration than erstwhile ally Jeff Sessions.  Sessions, who seemed prepared to play the role of Trump’s RFK, may have actually believed in Trump early on.  The skullduggerous plot of Weekend at Bernie’s is predicated on the title character’s involvement with unsavory mob elements, which gets him killed and sets the stage for subsequent events.  Sessions, a man who was deemed too racist to be a federal judge in an era that predated three subsequent decades of presumed social progress and during a time when conservatism largely ruled the day, could be seen by progressives and centrists alike as wielding a rather dark policy agenda, to say the least. Sessions could therefore perhaps be likened to Bernie’s cartoonish mob associates.  In an unexpected turn of events, however, Sessions is the one who gets whacked.  

So, there you have it readers.  Behold your cast of Washington rogues parading an orange corpse up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, laboring to extend their dumpster fire of a beach house party as long as they possibly can.  Tune in next week for Part 2, where we’ll introduce a significant upgrade in cinematic muses, but alas without change in the Oval Office backdrop.

--SKS

[potusburg]

Axis of Abhorrents

A brief survey of the aftermath of Tuesday’s “blue wave” reveals that it failed to wash quite a few abominable elected officials out to sea.  I offer the following Congressmen, in order of abhorrence they inspire:

Steve King.  Most racists and homophobes, when speaking publicly at least, use certain commonly-recognized turns of phrase to betray (or actively signal) their bigotry.  Evidently, Steve King understands that the use of such subtlety comes with some risk.  Namely, the risk that his intended audience won’t understand just how bigoted he is – so he hits them over the head with it so bluntly that his own political party rejects him.  I’m not aware of any other elected official who casually celebrates his own intolerance to this degree.  He’s clearly unfit for public office.  

Dana Rohrabacher*. Almost all spies working for foreign governments take great pains to conceal their true loyalties.  Dana Rohrabacher doesn’t bother.  His advocacy on behalf of Russian interests is long and well-documented.  The Russian government considered him such a valuable asset that it assigned him a codename. His own political party stripped him of power for fear that he was a risk to wield that power for Russian benefit. He’s a foreign agent, if not a particularly secret one, and is clearly unfit for public office.  

Duncan Hunter.  He and his wife have been indicted on 60 counts of violations of federal campaign finance laws.  For several years, the Hunter family spent campaign funds on all manner of personal expenses and lied about it.  When challenged, they claimed such expenditures were mistakes.  When challenged further, Duncan Hunter courageously denied all knowledge of the alleged violations and claimed his wife was solely responsible.  Whatever benefit of the doubt Hunter deserved for having honorably served in the U.S. Marines seems pretty far in the rearview mirror at this point. He’s likely to be found guilty of several felonies in short order.  He’s clearly unfit for public office.

I submit that all three of these despicable people are of a kind worse than other commonly-scorned national figures like Ted Cruz and Lindsay Graham – who are not anything more than successful panderers and sycophants – but I will consider arguments to the contrary.

While I ranked Duncan Hunter as the least abhorrent member of the axis, his election underscores the most troubling truth about the effects of partisanship.  Shortly before the election, the San Diego Union-Tribune conducted a poll and reported that 53% of voters in Hunter’s district believed he was guilty of campaign finance crimes, 28% were not sure, and 19% believed he was innocent.  Even in the extremely unlikely event that every voter who was unsure of Hunter’s culpability eventually came to believe he was innocent, that would mean no more than 47% of the electorate believed in his innocence – yet in the event, nearly 55% of the voters voted for him.  It’s likely that at least 8% (and probably significantly more) of the voters believed Hunter had committed crimes while in office, was likely to be found guilty and possibly incarcerated prior to the end of his upcoming term, and voted for him anyway.  Presumably party loyalty trumped criminal conduct, although I suppose the fact that his opponent is named Ammar Campa-Najjar could have had something to do with it.

* - It appears that Rohrabacher is likely to lose -- but as of this writing it’s too close to call.  The fact a Russian agent is in a race for Congress that remains too close to call 48 hours after polls close is troubling.

[potusburg]

Vote Early, Vote Often

Welcome to the 2018 POTUSburg Midterm Voter Guide!  Assuming most everyone (anyone?) reading this has already voted by mail, then this guide will affirm decisions already made, or perhaps leave you with some regrets!

We’re familiar with the conventional wisdom that suggests no single vote actually matters in the eventual outcome of any widely-contested general election -- so why vote?  Because it’s your civic duty, and people’s lack of attention to their basic civic duties is in large part what has led to the current political “unpleasantness”.  If every citizen spent just a bit of time independently researching candidates and propositions and considering the potential effects of his or her vote, in the process becoming invested in the outcome of the election, the country would be a better place. So vote!

Here are our decidedly non-comprehensive thoughts on this Tuesday’s ballot:

Insurance Commissioner.

In acknowledgment of the fact that readership likely dwindles with each passing paragraph, we want to give top billing to our most fervently-held positions – one of which, somewhat unexpectedly, concerns the position of Insurance Commissioner.  Steve Poizner was the California Insurance Commissioner from 2007 through 2011.  We haven’t the slightest idea what the Insurance Commissioner’s job entails, but by all accounts, Poizner was good at it. Previously a registered Republican, Poizner switched his affiliation to “Decline to State” and is running for the office this time as an independent, without the endorsement or financial assistance of either major political party.  He has accepted no donations from the insurance industry.  He’s very wealthy, so doesn’t appear to be in it for the paycheck or the pension.  He seems passionate about the job and competent.  We don’t know about his opponent Ricardo Lara’s competency, but we suspect that everything he knows about insurance he learned from a Geico commercial, and that his only motivation for seeking the position is that it’s an entry-level stepping stone to build name-recognition for future runs for Lieutenant Governor and Governor, respectively.  Vote Poizner.  

Proposition 4.

Proposition 4 authorizes the issuance of $1.5 billion worth of bonds, the proceeds of which are to be spent on constructing, updating and equipping children’s hospitals (many of which are privately-owned).  We question whether there is currently an acute need, or any need at all, for additional or upgraded children’s hospitals.  We suspect that the proponents of this measure consist of a partnership of (1) private hospital operators whose bottom lines would be helped by cheap public financing, (2) construction trade unions whose rank and file could use the jobs, and (3) political consultants who are made to look smart by suggesting that inclusion of the phrase “children’s hospital” in a ballot measure title makes it a sure-fire winner.   Similar measures funding children’s hospitals appeared on the November 4, 2008 (Prop 3) and November 2, 2004 (Prop 61) ballots -- both winners.  While passage of Prop. 4 certainly wouldn’t have us up in arms, we find this type of “appeal to the heartstrings” ballot measure to be misleading.  Neither POTUSburg nor the League of Women Voters are fooled.  You shouldn’t be either.  Vote NO on 4.

Governor.

Gavin Newsom has seemingly been ticketed for stardom since the first day he was appointed to public office by Democratic powerbroker Willie Brown in 1996.  He has won numerous local and Statewide elections, each time with the backing of the Democratic Party, and each time by a fairly healthy margin. His good looks, shocking marital infidelity, turns as a television host, and recent redemption as a stalwart progressive liberal make him a caricature of a politician.  He strikes us as an empty suit who nevertheless has managed to ride the party machinery to the top.  We don’t have many good things to say about Gavin Newsom, and under normal circumstances would not recommend him.

But we’re not operating under normal circumstances.  Newsom’s opponent, Republican John Cox, actively sought (and received) the endorsement of Donald Trump.  Vote Newsom.

U.S. Senator.

The aforementioned party machine remains in most circumstances a necessary evil for candidates seeking higher office. An aspiring politician either embraces the machine or finds something else to do, like start a Tumblr blog that no one reads.  POTUSburg has great respect for -- and aims to celebrate -- those candidates who, once installed in higher office, show a willingness to think and act independently of their party, consequences be damned.  Vote Feinstein.

--RFA

[potusburg]

Moderates Under Siege

Several months after Donald Trump’s surprising electoral college victory, long-time Senator Diane Feinstein offered the following thoughts about him to Democratic attendees at a rubber-chicken dinner:  “I just hope he has the ability to learn, and to change. And if he does, he can be a good president.”  

A perfectly reasonable sentiment, and one that I assumed a large majority of Americans would agree with, no matter how unlikely it was to actually come to pass.  Who wouldn’t hope that the recently elected and completely inexperienced President would learn on the job, take such lessons to heart, and get better at his job?  Apparently a lot of Democrats.  Feinstein was widely scorned for expressing any support at all for President Trump, even if such “support” basically boiled down to hoping that the President would do a good job rather than a terrible one.  

The California Democratic Party responded by endorsing Feinstein’s challenger, Democrat Kevin de Leon, based on both his solidly liberal positions on all issues and presumed fealty to the Party.  The Party would rather the President do a bad job, advancing the interests of the Party, than do a good job, advancing the interests of the nation.  Partisanship at its worst?  Not quite!

Months later Senator Feinstein would find herself in the crosshairs of partisan fury from Republicans, due to her central role in identifying Brett Kavanaugh’s accuser and in the process setting off a sequence of events which don’t need to be recounted here.  In order to “punish” Feinstein for her role in the Kavanaugh hearings, California Republicans are supporting her opponent, Kevin de Leon, in the general election, despite the fact that he’s more liberal than Feinstein in just about every possible respect.  California Republicans are promoting a candidate who directly opposes every basic principle on which their party is based in order to exact revenge upon a perceived enemy of the Party.  Now THAT’S partisanship at its worst!  Or maybe not:

Dianne Feinstein expressed hope that the President would change his behavior for the better, and she encouraged (at best clumsily, at worst forcibly) a person claiming to have damning evidence against a Supreme Court nominee to publicly share such evidence.  As a result of these reasonable positions, and possibly the measured manner in which she expressed them, she found herself the enemy of both major American political parties.  Something’s broken.

--RFA

[potusburg]

Jay McWalsh

There is much to be saddened by as the US continues to spiral into a cesspool of extremism, anger, hate and violence.  However,  your shock and outrage at lack of civility in the current political discourse is not persuasive.  But we’ll get to all that.  Let’s go back thirty years.

In 1988 your semi-faithful blogger was 14 years old.  That was the year two movies came out that were hugely influential on a young life, and remain favorites to this day:  “Die Hard” and “Midnight Run”.  Die Hard’s terrorist-thwarting John McClane and Midnight Run’s mob boss tormentor Jack Walsh were in many ways the same character:  cigarette-smoking, wise-cracking, five-o’clock-shadow-bearing, firearm-wielding, haymaker-throwing, F-bomb-dropping, explosion-causing, lone-crusading assholes.  They were fighting bad guys and they were way too cool for school.

So much were they the same guy, that Bruce Willis and Robert DeNiro could have swapped roles at the last minute before filming those two movies, and neither movie would have missed a beat.  DeNiro had better comedic chemistry with his foil Charles Grodin than Willis did with Alan Rickman, but that could have been a script thing.  Essentially, John McClane and Jack Walsh were one and the same.  They were J. McWalsh.  Which we’ll morph into Jay McWalsh.  Your blogger wanted desperately to be Jay.  A knowing, wry smile while driving by a parked cop at 3 mph over the speed limit invoked an inner feeling of Jayness.  Too tough, too cool, and on way too important a mission to defer to convention and authority.

Jay McWalshes are everywhere.  They have both reflected and influenced generations of boys and men who grew up wanting to be them.  Jay McWalshes are littered across the landscape of 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s buddy cop and spaghetti western movies.  Think Martin Riggs (”Lethal Weapon”), or Jack Cates (”48 Hours”).  Would we not hide in a bunker and prepare for Armageddon should Clint Eastwood EVER play a character that is anything but Jay McWalsh? Jays are our favorite rock stars and rap artists.  They are the athletes we admire.  And they are politicians.  But we’ll come back to that later.

The influence of this persona extends beyond, and reaches back further than, late 20th-century pop culture.  This blogger grew up going to church and remembers being exposed as a young man to a New Testament story that has (by rough memory) Jesus going into a Temple and angrily knocking over tables of commerce.   If we are, as was sometimes taught to this blogger, to model ourselves after Jesus as best we can, this particular event models a willingness to defy authority, defy convention, and to do something that is, strictly speaking, quite angry and rude, in the name of what is right.  This is not to offend Christians by comparing Jesus to movie characters, but rather to point out the subtle and similar potential influence that this kind of Biblical story can have on the psyche of an individual or culture.

Jay McWalshism has probably gathered much more steam in this blogger’s lifetime, though, in a culture that identifies more with 70s era Han Solo than 40s era Superman.  Edginess trumps Boy Scoutedness.  We like—no, love—an asshole if he’s OUR asshole.  An asshole who’s really a good guy, who is really fighting for the good guys, is justified and even appreciated if they forgo civility and manners to get the job done.  There’s even a certain charm to the hero getting it done in a way that causes some pearl-clutching along the way.  It’s a bonus.  But did you ever notice a tendency to become much more focused on how rude, inconsiderate, offensive, and just flat out lacking in common decency the discourse is when it comes from the side with which you disagree?  Sort of like how the athlete on the team you aren’t rooting for is a punk and a disgrace when they display their Jayness in the arena of competition.

This is a pretty straightforward and harmless tendency in a movie, where it’s obvious who the heroes and villains are.  The audience isn’t divided on that.  There is division in sports, but usually those divisions are harmless.  Real life, however, is very different.  And that’s where it gets dangerous.   We have the same levels of certainty in politics about who the bad guys are that we had about who the bad guys were in Die Hard.  And if you’re that certain, of course you don’t want politeness.  Of course it is easy to justify massively elevated levels of anger and meanness.  So don’t be offended when the other side acts like Jay McWalsh.  You’re looking the other way when your side does it.   About eight different kinds of cognitive bias are firing in your brain whenever you make the argument that the other side has hit a new low.  You are setting higher standards for people who disagree with you than you are setting for people who agree with you.

Signs of this are everywhere.  Fox News and conservative talk radio do an outstanding job of keeping a rapt audience apprised of the latest assaults on decency, civility, and meaningful discourse, that have come from the left.  We have ample opportunity to tune in for accounts of Ted Cruz and his wife being harassed and chased out of a restaurant, death threats received by Brett Kavanaugh and his family, and a whole range of outrageous behaviors.  CNN and late night TV will similarly oblige us when it comes to recapping the transgressions of Trump and the right.  What’s more, being the more polite side might not be anything to brag about.  If the other side is behaving without maturity or persuasion, and yet half the country agrees with them, might that be because their beliefs actually have merit?  This may be a flimsy hypothesis, but the point remains—politeness doesn’t matter much in these debates except as a way to call foul on the other side.

Twenty years ago, President Clinton, whose preferred moniker at POTUSburg is Slick Willie, was the subject of a fierce debate over his conduct, and the direction of the outrage fell rather purely along party lines, just as it does today when it comes to President Trump.  A historical re-examination of Slick Willie’s behavior (your blogger recommends Season 2 of Slate’s “Slow Burn” podcast) points us toward the same sort of pathological narcissism that we accuse Trump of today.   The politics of the two differ, as do their communication abilities and styles, therefore invoking inverse reactions in the relevant demographics and media.  Let us make no mistake, though.  It is highly implausible that a sense of goodness, decency, and morality is what stopped Slick Willie from communicating with the same words and mannerisms that Trump uses.   It comes down to what communication tools each power-hungry and charismatic populist politician has in his personal arsenal to advance his own agenda.

The inspiration for this blog is the absurdity that is our current President.  This blogger believes in a distinct separation of three lenses through which one might view the President.  

The first lens is policy and ideology.  In our country, there are honest, informed, and well-intentioned disagreements on policy, and we don’t think attempting to persuade people to the other side of the deep policy and ideological divisions of today are a worthwhile pursuit for POTUSburg.  

The second is conduct.  The view enumerated above is that the conduct and tone of the President and his supporters probably only matters to you if you disagree with them on policy.  People criticize the manner of delivery when they don’t like the message.  We’ve all experienced this.  Therefore, a debate over the President’s conduct and tone is mostly a farce, just as the debate 20 years ago over our President’s conduct was mostly a farce, and is not the purview of this blog.  Recent threats and actions of political violence and hate are horrific and may well be manifestations of an environment sowed by uncivil rhetoric. The trouble is that extremism isn’t solely the domain of one side, and we only seem to recognize the toxicity when it emanates from others.   

The third is merit.  If the tactics of this President seem childish to you, it is because he is demonstrating the intellectual capacity, attention span, and self-awareness of a child.  Even more alarming than the antics are the leadership and cognitive abilities, or more specifically the lack thereof, that lie behind them.  The President’s techniques in persuasion (however effective with many) are unsophisticated because he is unsophisticated.  That should matter to us all.  It is dangerous.  It doesn’t mean his politics are dangerous (though you may find them dangerous for separate ideological reasons)—it means his leadership is.  Recognizing that our President is mentally incapable of grasping and navigating the ins and outs of his job doesn’t have anything to do with whether conservatives or liberals are right.   But it’s a recognition that is sorely needed and lacking.  We are witnessing the void that is left where there should be some semblance of coherence, being filled instead by ignorance, anger, and fear.

This is POTUSberg.

--SKS

[potusburg]

FLOTUS & Miss Teschmacher

A comparison of Melania Trump and Eve Teschmacher (funny that Gene Hackman seems to mispronounce her name as “Tessmacher” every time he utters it – either that or I just haven’t been listening closely enough) bears further exploration.

Although physical beauty and a willingness to show it off was presumably the primary factor in attracting Lex and President Trump to their respective amours, both Melania and Miss Teschmacher bring more to the table than good looks. Both seem to be somewhat concerned with the creeping megalomania of their respective partners and increasingly aware of the potential global consequences of the same.  Their body language and statements, on occasion if not consistently, suggest that they (1) do not blindly support their partners or their worldviews, (2) are no longer physically attracted to them (if they ever were), and (3) may be being held captive in their respective relationships.  

Neither are worthy of our sympathy, having entered into such relationships voluntarily, presumably attracted to big bank accounts and even bigger egos.  Once Lex’s world-conquering ambition and the brutal means by which he plans to achieve it are laid bare, Miss Teschmacher takes action to stop it.  One can only hope that Melania, if given the opportunity, will do the same.  

Not only was I not listening to “Superman” closely enough, but I haven’t been looking closely enough either.  I was delighted to notice today, for the first time despite dozens of viewings, that Lex Luthor planned to name one of his newly-created territories “Teschmacher Peaks”.  I’m still giggling about it as I type.  Do I feel a tinge of regret that I find such obviously sexist humor funny?  Yes.  Do I think the same character traits that lead me to find such sexist humor funny might somehow one day lead me to find “grab ‘em by the pu$$y” an acceptable thing to say to a passing acquaintance?  Maybe!  I like to think I’m not capable of that kind of casual sexism, but awareness of the possibility is the first step towards avoidance.

--RFA

[potusburg]

POTUSburg

The film "Superman" is a relic from our childhood. A favorite scene of your faithful bloggers is one in which Lex Luthor performs the classic James Bond movie plot dump, revealing all the intricacies of his evil plan for world domination to the hero, and hence the audience, before running him in. The plan? Quite simple, really. 1) Buy up a whole bunch of cheap real estate along the eastern side of the San Andreas fault. 2) Through an elaborate set of unlikely steps (including the use of a scantily clad damsel-in-distress), steal a nuclear weapon from the US military. 3) Detonate said weapon below the Earth's surface along the fault line. 4) When the west coast falls into the ocean, reap the rewards of beachfront property ownership along miles of newly formed coastline. Luthor wraps up his presentation with a flourish, dramatically revealing a new map of the western US, complete with newly-named communities. But, alas, his flamboyant visual aid has been sullied by the scrawling edit of one of the names of a beachfront community by Luthor's hapless assistant Otis. "Otisburg?!", Luthor sputters repeatedly in part disbelief and part mockery to a stammering Otis. "Otisburg?!?!".

And so it goes in Washington. Ostensibly serious people and efforts weave layers of absurdity wrapped around more layers, and leave you wondering who is in on the joke, and who (including perhaps yourself?) is the butt of it. An adult who proclaims himself brilliant functions intellectually at a 4th-grade level and is somehow capable of pulling it off. A Luthor-Otis hybrid has invaded the highest level of the executive, and he brought Miss Teschmacher with him!

Donald Trump may inflame passions in many for what they see as an assault on values, decency, women, minorities, or immigrants. We don't disagree, but our inspiration for this blog is specifically the assault on MERIT that is Donald Trump's Presidency. When the POTUS retweeted video of himself body slamming someone in a WWE stunt, but with a CNN logo superimposed on the head of the slamee, many marveled at what they viewed as a symbolic assault on the press. We marveled that our President -- who is currently the "leader" of the free world -- had previously performed WWE stunts! And this was widely known when he was elected! And it may have HELPED him get elected! We can, and will, go on.

This is POTUSburg.

--SKS & RFA