For Republican Officeholders; How to Answer the Trump Endorsement Question

Professional politicians should be far better at this than I am or wish to be. But as so many are failing, here are a couple of suggestions to political officeholders as how to answer the question of Trump support:

1. The endorsement/non-endorsement:  As a Republican I have in the past always supported the Party's nominee.

2.  The Modified Buckley:   As a Republican, the presumption is always to support the Republican nominee.

Note, that answers #1 and #2 here are not actual endorsements. If pressed the politician can always insist that he’s answered the question and wishes to move on, or feign humility by stating that the public probably doesn’t care what he thinks and that he doubts Trump's prospects hinge on his endorsement.

3.  The Early Voting Issue:  Use the question as a jumping off point to critique early voting. Note that Trump isn't actually the nominee yet and that the general election isn't until November. Close by stealing from a colleague of mine who in a different context remarked "I reserve the right to get smarter." If pressed, insist again that there is no rush and therefore no reason to relinquish your right to get smarter.

 

Donald Trump, and Having to Play a Very Bad Hand

I'm noticing lately, a bit of sympathy insinuating its way into my thought for unlikely characters.

For example, Republican Party Chairman Reince Priebus. At least among many of those I follow on Twitter, Reince is getting killed for supporting Donald Trump. But what honestly is he supposed to do? He is the party chairman and Trump is the party’s presumptive nominee. It’s either stated or implicit that at the top or very near it of his job’s objectives is to get the party’s nominee elected to the presidency. And the party chairman is more grocery clerk sent to collect a bill than philosophical head of the party. Reince, in short, is just doing his job (which is the most one can say for him).

Or consider Trump’s opponents in this election who are now endorsing him to some extent or another. My guess is that these endorsements are mostly based on a 2020 calculation. Candidate X is running through the following:

- I gave my word during the debates to support the nominee [see, this is why you don’t answer silly questions]

- When I’m the party’s nominee in 2020 I’m going to want the whole party behind me.

- How will I answer the inevitable George Stephanopoulos question as to why everyone should get behind me after he rolls the tape of me NOT supporting Donald Trump?

- The #NeverTrump people seem to think that in short order anyone who supported Trump will be toxic within the Republican Party. Why? What other moments of epistemic clarity can they point to that supports this belief?

And so—perhaps just like Tessio—they end up supporting Trump because it’s the smart move.

The senators and reps are making the same calculation and arriving at the same conclusion. They can’t change things in Washington if they don’t win, and they can’t feel good about winning if Trump’s supporters don’t vote for them. And so we witness what we’ve witnessed.
 

But it does raise the question of how Trump managed to lose money with a casino. Because if there is one thing that has become clear in this cycle it is that Donald Trump has mastered the art of dealing everyone else a very bad hand to play.

Republican Politicians and Rusher's Gap

This afternoon it was reported that former Texas Governor Rick Perry made public that he would support Donald Trump. Shortly after on there was the following tweet:

Phineas Fahrquar ‏@irishspy:

It bears repeating: "Politicians will always disappoint you. Always."

In short order I thought of Rusher’s Gap, a concept that was shared in William F. Buckley book or column that I can no longer place. The aforementioned Rusher is Bill Rusher the long time publisher of National Review. Rusher’s Gap goes like this:

Suppose you need some work done on your house. You call in a contractor or two and get an estimate of what it will cost. Let’s say the estimate is $10,000. But you’re a wise man of the world, you know the actual cost is going to be higher so you make what we might term a cynic’s adjustment and tack on say another $2,000. Rusher’s Gap is the amount that the actual cost exceeds your revised, adjusted cost estimate.

Yes, you and I know that politicians will always disappoint. But for conservatives, the Rusher’s Gap this cycle has really been something to behold.

Be Wary of the Businessman as Politician

If I were capable of writing a book it would be titled Untapped: Michael Oakeshott and the American Conservative Movement. You may have noticed that Oakeshott’s thought appears disturbingly often (is this guy obsessed?) around here. It’s because his thought clarifies to a degree I haven’t found anywhere else.

In his magnum opus, On Human Conduct, Oakeshott distinguished between civil association and enterprise association in regard to political activity. Conceptually this is far better than left/right (a low bar), liberal/conservative, or negative/positive liberties.

Civil association rules or laws are neutral and are in Oakeshott’s words “subscribed to” rather than carried out. They are purposeless except in the sense that they minimize the clashes that occur as free people pursue their own choices. The rule that we drive on the right side of the rode belongs to civil association. It merely specifies that if we decide to drive we do so on the right side, but it is indifferent as to where we go or whether we drive at all.

Enterprise association is of a completely different character. As its name suggests it is government as enterprise. An enterprise (think of business) is directed to a goal and everything it does is with that goal in mind. You are hired if you can contribute to the enterprise’s goal and you’ll be fired if your contribution is inadequate.

Oakeshott argued that neither civil association or enterprise association was possible in pure form but that civil association was compatible with free people, a populous who enjoy and value making their own decisions. He also believed that viewing government as enterprise association has regrettably become the dominant way of thinking about government (for Oakeshott, what the government should do was the critical question not its form).

Now with the above in mind it should surprise no one that men and women who have spent most of their adult lives in business and are running for office on the back of their business success will naturally view government as an enterprise association. Immersed in a world of getting things done, delivering results, of the constant pursuit of efficiency they cannot but see the idea of government as a neutral activity, one that values checks and balances, and one that deliberately sets up impediments to action as an absurdity.

In short, at least from the conservative perspective, there is much in the businessman’s outlook that should make him wary. Unless the businessman is that rare person who views government as a wholly different activity, he or she is likely to be more of a progressive/rationalist than a conservative.

Never Trump!

During the weekend the journalist/commentator Megan McArdle, noting the #NeverTrump trend on twitter, asked life-long Republicans to send her emails as to why they’d decided they would not support Donald Trump if he is the nominee. The piece is here: http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-02-29/the-die-hard-republicans-who-say-nevertrump and there is a link within it to some of the material that was not included. It’s a fascinating and I think important column.

My submission, a slice of which made it into the column, is below [Note: I stayed away from any policy differences because I didn’t want to give the impression that not supporting a, b, and c would be enough for me to break with the Party’s nominee]:

I first started exploring conservative thought in 1977 after attending a speech by James Buckley as a high school student. My first presidential vote was for Reagan in 1980. I've sat out some elections because the result in my state was a foregone conclusion (example Dole vs Clinton when I lived in California), but I've never voted strategically for a Democrat or Independent.

I didn't like McCain in 2008 but voted for him. Thought Romney was the wrong nominee (because he was neutered on ACA) but voted for him in 2012. Living in Chicago my last vote was for Rahm--who I loathe--against Garcia because, this being Chicago, Rahm is the Buckley rule candidate. Vote for the video suppressor, it's important!

But I won't vote for Trump if he is the nominee. It's not just that I don't think he's conservative. It's that as President I think he'd be quite capable of doing anything, except governing reasonably well. Trump as President would essentially ruin the Republican/conservative brand for decades.

To my mind, if Trump is the nominee the conservatives have to break with the Republican Party in the clearest and most explicit manner possible. I have no illusions about Hillary. I realize the Supreme Court hangs in the balance. But something can be salvaged from being in opposition. In power with Trump at the head is to lose everything.

"The Prime Minister said that the nations [read in this context, political causes] which went down fighting rose again, but those which surrendered tamely were finished."

Five Days in London: May 1940, John Lukacs

 

Thoughts on Christie Endorsement of Trump; from Chinese Philosophy

“Wealth and high station, these are what men would like to have; but it they cannot be obtained in conformity with principle [Tao] they must not be held.”

“The Master said, ‘A man of honor is not a mere tool.’”

“If the way prevails among the states, you can make yourself prominent; but if it does not prevail, then keep in retirement. If it prevails in your area, it is a disgrace to be poor and humble. If it does not prevail, it is a disgrace to be rich and honored.”

Chinese Philosophy in Classical Times, edited by Ernest Rhys

To Bring Down Trump Remember Acton and Focus on His Power

"…that soul [Kurtz] satiated with primitive emotions, avid of lying fame, of sham distinction, of all the appearances of success and power."

"He could get himself to believe anything—anything. He would have been a splendid leader of an extreme party. ‘What party?’ I asked. ‘Any party’, answered the other."

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
If you follow twitter and other media sites you will notice that the emphasis in the anti-Trump camp is that he is not a conservative, is woefully uninformed about politics, and is too erratic to be trusted with nuclear weapons. They will highlight his absurd, innacurate boasts about having warned against the invasion of Iraq and the oddity of a thrice married casino owner being supported by evangelicals.

To understand why Trump has thrived despite these weaknesses and to gain a better sense of how to actually take him down, it is better to think of Kurtz in Heart of Darkness and to recall Lord Acton's observation that "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." And here it is important to understand that Acton the historian was speaking not of the actor, the person in a position of power, but the observer or how people respond and evaluate people in power.

Trump is invulnerable to normal political attacks because he occupies a position of perceived personal power, like Kurtz as demi-god, that is unlike the normal politician. This is the key to all of the free media that he has been able to garner. It isn't just the exposure, it is the constant reinforcement of the idea that this a man to whom attention must be paid.

If the above is correct then the point of vulnerability isn't the incoherence of his political pronouncements, his personal behavior or even his business tactics such as his use of eminent domain. All of these can be ignored, pace Acton, of the powerful wielding and benefiting from their power. To truly damage Trump you have to take down the perception of Trump as wildly successful businessman. That's the source of his power.

And a good place to start would be to focus on Trump's involvement in the USFL as related by Joe Nocera. The USFL was set up as a professional football league that would operate in the NFL's offseason. It had a very successful first season. Trump came in as an owner of the New Jersey Generals and characteristically, in thinking only of Trump, disrupted the salary discipline by signing stars like Herschel Walker and Brian Sipe. Then he got the League's games moved to the fall--only losers play spring football?--where they would compete directly against the NFL. And that was the end of the USFL. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/20/sports/football/donald-trumps-less-than-artful-failure-in-pro-football.html?smid=tw-nytimes&smtyp=cur&_r=1


The beauty and utility of Trump's destruction of the USFL is that it is so easily communicable. This isn't a Hillary cattle futures trade or Whitewater. This is professional football. The ONE business that every american understands. And one thing they will all be able to grasp is that for a new league to face off directly against the NFL is lunacy. Start there and then go on to his bankruptcies and other business failures. Bring down Trump the successful businessman and you will bring down Trump the putative political leader.

Addendum: Note the Trump searches

The Christie Critique of Repetition in Politics is Nonsense

As you probably know, Chris Christie is widely regarded as landing a solid blow to the Marco Rubio candidacy by claiming that he frequently repeats the same material in his speeches and debate answers. This as part of a larger argument that Rubio is a scripted, inexperienced candidate in stark contrast, one supposes to Gov. Christie.

Now I will admit that of the remaining candidates I favor Rubio. That said, I find the Christie jab to be on the merits rather ineffectual, and it becoming such a big story just shows the silly importance attached to these ‘debates’. For it seems to me that anyone who runs for president should have arrived at a substantial body of understandings in regard to politics. They should have a set of stable, but not rigid, political ideas such that certain expressions, quotes, phrases will appear frequently in their speeches and comments. This isn’t improvisational comedy. The LAST thing we should seek in a potential president is day to day originality.

If we embrace the Christie rule than the obvious choice isn’t Christie, who not surprisingly gave a packaged answer in the debate to a question on drug abuse, but Donald Trump. The lightly thought out, spur of the moment, incoherent ideas of the real estate magnate is apparently what we should value in a president.

 

It Wasn't the Candidate or the Campaign; Jeb Never Had a Chance

In the Iowa post mortems one thread has been that the Jeb campaign has been a historical failure. I disagree with that only in the sense that the blame is being put on Jeb and his political skills. These aren't completely irrelevant, but the biggest factor is that Jeb never had a chance. His and his donors failure is that they didn’t see that he never had a chance.

Before I explain, what I mean by establishment in what follows is that prevailing sense of ‘respectable opinion’ which if it doesn’t persuade at least is taken into account, such that if you see things differently you at least pause to consider that you’ve lost the plot. And that relationship between establishment and conservative is somewhat adversarial with the tension increasing as the conservative viewpoint becomes more ideological.

So why was Jeb doomed? Because he came after the following:

1) His father, Bush I, picks up the mantle of Reagan and promises not to raise taxes. He then raises taxes

2) His brother George, Bush II, is supported fervently for his actions after 9/11, but conservatives aren’t please with the notion of “compassionate conservatism” nor with the explosion of spending that occurs under his watch (zero vetoes!).

3) McCain as nominee in 2008 is widely perceived as the establishment choice. Conservatives aren’t thrilled but they go along with it. They don’t like losing to Obama, but deep down they understand it. Base/conservative wariness with the establishment has increased but hasn’t disappeared.

4) And now we get to the point that finally kills the Jeb campaign. In the 2012 race the perception is that Obama is a colossally bad president. If the Republicans don’t screw it up they’ll win. While the conservatives have doubts about Romney, they eventually give way to the establishment view--after a frantic and failed attempt to find a suitable alternative—on the argument that Romney is the only candidate who can/will beat Obama.

Then the Romney general election barely brings up the subject of Obamacare, which is kind of a big deal for conservatives, and ends up losing. Queue The Who’s Won’t Get Fooled Again.

That is what Jeb had to overcome, plus the fact that most conservatives weren’t pleased with the royalist suggestions that would come with a third Bush presidency. The surprise isn’t that Jeb failed, it’s that so many pundits didn’t see from the start that he would (and my twitter followers will know that I had Jeb as the John Connally of this race—see 1980—from the start). Jeb was always the longest of long shots in this cycle.

Does it Matter That Ted Cruz is Disliked?

A thread on Twitter began with a post questioning why Cruz being disliked would matter if he was president with an expression of doubt that senators would actually block him out of spite. A following tweet, pointed out that all Republicans would have self-interest in cooperating. And finally that while there was disagreement over tactics there was agreement on policy.

Now all of this is true up to a point, but as argument to wave away the issue of animus directed towards Cruz by his colleagues (and I would guess it goes beyond the Senate) this fails to convince. Are we really supposed to believe that being strongly disliked doesn’t matter in politics? If so, then politics is truly alone in human endeavors.

Yes, at the general level there is policy agreement, but probe a bit and real differences emerge. Tactics in politics are hardly a matter of little importance. The extent to which cooperating conforms to self-interest doesn’t exist in the abstract it is determined.

And we need to consider why Ted Cruz isn’t liked. To some extent it is that he is intent on shaking things up and this I take to be positive. But another aspect is that he is thought to have made some serious tactical blunders (see the shutdown) that have cost the party, and to be concerned with Ted Cruz well beyond anything else. You’re really trying to tell me that this is of no account? That it won’t in anyway impede Cruz’s ability to get things done as president?

To be considered a successful conservative president, Ted Cruz will have to persuade his colleague’s and the people to go beyond what they are comfortable with; to trust him and his judgement. Everything else being equal or near equal, I’ll take the guy who is generally liked and charming over the guy who is despised.

Let's Not Oversell A Cruz Presidency

In a piece on Donald Trump, Roger Kimball by way of explaining the beltway Republican support for Trump, writes:

“As Rush Limbaugh put it, the GOP establishment hates Trump, but they fear Cruz. They are right to do so, because were he elected the gravy train that is business-as-usual in Washington really would come screeching to a halt.”

https://pjmedia.com/rogerkimball/2016/01/24/montgolfier-trump/

Welllllllllll, color me skeptical.

One of the causes of the Trump moment is that conservative politicians running for office have promised to end business as usual in Washington. Duly elected, they failed to deliver engendering disillusion or a search for someone who really means it. That Trump emphatically doesn’t mean it is beside the point. It’s the disillusion, stupid.

But for some reason conservatives can’t shake the habit. A Cruz presidency will probably mean a Republican majority in both House and Senate, but it probably won’t be filibuster proof. That the democrats will fight with tenacity to defend the current system should go without saying. If actual cuts are made the media will be sure to present them in apocalyptic terms.

A Cruz presidency will be different than Obama’s, hopefully significantly so. But there won’t be any screeching halts. K Street will go on being K Street. Sorry. The first step in political recovery is to distinguish and accept the possible from the impossible.

Jeb's Run for President Was Always Irresponsible

In last few days, besides Jay Costs tweets, there have been two pieces critical of Jeb Bush pointing to the irresponsibility of his campaign. Liam Donovan’s is here https://medium.com/@LPDonovan/in-defense-of-mike-murphy-b046e0dc0d0b#.pafylgli2 and in the Weekly Standard Steven Hayes http://www.weeklystandard.com/how-jeb-cleared-the-way-for-trump/article/2000726

The common thread is that Jeb has found it impossible to promote himself in the race so he’s opted for a strategy of destroying all the alternatives to Trump but himself in the belief that faced with no alternative voters will turn to him. Having raised a great deal of money Bush has been successful in stopping better candidates--$20m against Rubio—and that this is a dangerous, irresponsible game he’s playing.

But I would contend that this charge of irresponsibility which ends up circling on Bush’s inability to win the nomination and or win the presidency doesn’t go far enough. Even in best case scenarios Jeb’s campaign was irresponsible.

First, if Jeb won the nomination but lost in the general you would’ve had what is perceived as a establishment candidate losing after the McCain and Romney losses. The result of this would be I think the breakup of the Republican Party, which in the abstract doesn’t sound so bad, but its replacement could be just about anything or things and it would almost certainly hand power to the Democrats for a decade or more. So Jeb wins the nomination and there’s something like a 50:50 chance the party is destroyed. Not good.

But what if Jeb won the general and became President? Then it’s—policy differences aside—all good, right? Ah, no. In that case we’d have the following sequence: Bush I-Clinton-Bush II-Obama-Bush III with the loser in the race being Clinton II. That simply can’t be, if the idea of a democratic republic is to hold, and most conservatives know it.

Alone among commentators Jonah Goldberg has insisted that in the Hillary e-mail scandal the server IS the smoking gun. Similarly, I would insist that insist that the irresponsibility of the Jeb campaign was inherent, was present at the beginning. Before he announced Barbara Bush let slip that she didn’t want him to run. The lesson, as always, listen to your mother.

The Popular Two Lane Theory is Wrong and Hurting Rubio

On Sunday the NFL’s AFC and NFC champions will be decided pitting two teams in each conference against each other. And yet all season, I don’t recall hearing a single comment about there being two lanes to the championship, aided no doubt by the actual existence of four divisions in each conference.

But in politics where just like football the prize inevitably comes to down to two opponents there is no comparative objective marker to guide thought and so we get the two lanes framework. This concept is both ubiquitous and I believe wrong. At the end of October I had the following lanes which I still think is reasonably accurate:

Establishment/Old Guard: Bush, Kasich, Pataki

Young Guns/Reformers: Christie, Fiorina, Jindal, Perry, Rubio, Walker

Social Conservatives/Populists: Huckabee, Santorum

Purists/Reform Radicals: Cruz, Paul

Outsider/Outsiders: Carson, Trump

And as I pointed out at the time, it doesn’t follow from no one emerging from a particular lane that it didn’t exist.

Why care? Because as someone once pointed out, ideas have consequences. In our current race the idea of two lanes has I believe hurt Rubio. The same pundits who point to his being a tea party backed senator who is not very different from Cruz have consigned him to the prison of the ‘establishment lane’.

Rubio isn’t a, my way or nothing, conservative like Cruz, but he is no ‘establishment’ candidate either. That is being lost sight of because the over-simplified two lane concept is needlessly concealing important distinctions. $20M in negative ads directed at him is hurting Rubio. So is the two lane theory of nomination races.

A Comment on a Ponnuru Column in Regard to Republicans and Immigration

Over at BloombergView Ramesh Ponnuru had a smart piece on why immigration has become a much bigger issue for Republicans this cycle. http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2016-01-20/why-immigration-is-a-big-deal-to-conservatives

 I would like to address his second point because I think it’s the most important. Ponnuru writes:

Demographic changes among Republicans. If Republicans are more concerned than they used to be about the wage pressure that immigration puts on the low end of the labor market, it’s partly because more Republicans work there than in the past. The party has become more dependent over time on white voters without college degrees. These Americans, who are more exposed to competition from immigrants than white voters with more schooling, have seen their economic prospects stagnate or decline.

I have no reason to doubt that it is in fact demographic change that is driving this, but it shouldn’t be. Ultimately, a national political party and philosophy needs to be national and complete in its outlook. It is shortsighted to allow the current makeup of the party to determine its outlook.

It seems clear that the American economy is moving in the direction of requiring ever greater skill to be successful. The big challenge is how to find a place for those who inevitably will be on the lower end of the curve. This has to be a concern and a focus for conservatives beyond the immediate demographic.

One way or other the problem is going to have to be addressed. To argue that the economy overall benefits from immigration is to miss the point. It seems to me that to significantly reduce immigration—I am emphatically NOT talking about deporting the illegal immigrants already here-- is the least intrusive, least disruptive way to help the employment prospects of the less skilled. If conservatives do nothing on this front under the banner of maximizing GNP or we’ve always been a nation of immigrants they’ll have to deal with far less attractive approaches to the problem.

Donald Trump Doesn't Think Very Much of You

I still remember Murray Kempton’s appearance on Firing Line. Buckley asked him why supporting communism wasn’t considered as serious an offense as supporting fascism and Kempton replied that it was because communism was never a large enough force in America to matter. And then you heard off camera him say “I’m afraid that’s not a very good answer.” I started to look for my wallet and keys on the assumption that a modest public intellectual was worth checking out (and the book, Rebellions, Perversities, and Main Events, is very good).

Donald Trump is the polar opposite of Kempton. His every utterance is terrific, as he is only too happy to tell you. Trump went to the best (read toughest) schools and got terrific grades. He has made tremendous, JUST TREMENDOUS, amounts of money. The Trump candidacy isn’t about anything really except that he is the ubermensch.

And what’s amusing about Trump’s supporters is that, apart from their adulation, Trump would have nothing to do with them. Unless you’ve made a couple billion in the marketplace, won world championships in athletics, or agree with Donald Trump on everything, it’s pretty likely he would regard you as a loser. And if there is anything that is clear about his philosophy it is that the world is made up of winners and losers.

Trump the candidate brings immediately to mind the famous Whittaker Chambers review of Atlas Shrugged:

“The news about this book [read, candidate] seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do. …

I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal. In addition, the mind which finds this tone natural to it shares other characteristics of its type. 1) It consistently mistakes raw force for strength, and the rawer the force, the more reverent the posture of the mind before it. 2) It supposes itself to be the bringer of a final revelation. Therefore, resistance to the Message cannot be tolerated because disagreement can never be merely honest, prudent, or just humanly fallible. Dissent from revelation so final (because, the author would say, so reasonable) can only be willfully wicked. There are ways of dealing with such wickedness, and, in fact, right reason itself enjoins them. From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: ‘To a gas chamber–go!’”

 

I suspect Chambers is taking a bit of license with Rand—but then that’s probably why it comes to mind—and it isn’t quite fair to Trump either. But Chambers has it seems, even prospectively, a better handle on Trump than far too many who are experiencing him live.

 

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/213298/big-sister-watching-you-whittaker-chambers

 

Wanted: A Discussion of Government Administration

Quick, a refresher course. Congress passes laws and the Executive Branch, headed by the president, carries them out (stop laughing). It’s not a sexy topic, and polls don’t show it as a major voter concern, but it is past time that we ask our presidential candidates about what their plan is for government administration. And no, abolishing the IRS and shrinking the government will not do.

For I think it is incontrovertible that the actual administration of our government is a shambles. Wait times at VA hospitals are past the point of tragic. We apparently have a policy of NOT checking social media in the vetting process of VISA applications. Daily, thousands of us endure the theatre of the TSA at our airports. I would like to think that even progressives could eventually be persuaded that a neutral IRS would be a good thing before the return of a Nixon administration. Even the Secret Service, the one group that people thought were competent, have been exposed in one embarrassing story after another.

And it isn’t as if the administrative aspect of government is of minor importance. If people were confident of our ability to vet applicants our discussion of letting in Middle East refugees would change dramatically. Surely our constant security breaches aren’t helping our foreign policy. We have a huge debt problem. Does anyone believe that government services are being delivered efficiently?

To my mind a government job should, with special exceptions, always be a person’s last job, no one under the age of 55 need apply. A pre-requisite should be significant time in the private sector on the rationale that a manager should know what’s like to be a player.

Finally, we need to tilt the balance back in the direction of the public. A government job shouldn’t be a safe sinecure. We need to be able to fire those who are ineffective without making it so easy that a new administration means the wholesale change of one team for another.

Even I don’t trust my political judgment but I can’t helping thinking that government administration is a huge issue just waiting for someone to pick it up. Republicans who are always looking for a way to associate themselves with Ronald Reagan should remember that one of the high points of his domestic presidency was the firing of the air traffic controllers. There are many reasons why the public and the elite(s) are at odds. One of the more important is that when it comes to government, the elites have proven they can’t run anything. That needs to change.

The Long Game of Candidate Cruz and the Untameable Senator

@UWedge: "If you know you're going to lose then fighting is just theatre."

Have you noticed? A huge gap has opened up in the Republican nomination race. No, not Trump and the rest of the field in national polls. The gap between candidate and Senator Ted Cruz.

In the Republican field Cruz has been last and least in offering up any criticism of Donald Trump. As has been widely noted he’s playing a long game which recognizes that he is the second choice for Trump supporters. So the strategy is obvious, be patient, let the others take on Trump and bring him down, and then be there for his supporters on the rebound.

What I haven’t seen is anyone pointing to the dilemma implicit in this strategy. Cruz the presidential candidate opens up a different, and highly unflattering, perspective on Cruz the Senator. Put simply, Cruz the candidate can’t be squared with Cruz the Senator and the reason for candidate Cruz is Senator Cruz.

Cruz is popular with conservatives because he gave them in the Senate what they longed for. Not victories—he really doesn’t have any—but risk taking. As Senator he embodies what the base wants. The cause! The cause! and damn the consequences! That is his motto. He is the nothing ventured, nothing gained rebuke to Mitch McConnell who has a habit of infuriating conservatives with his McClellan like, maybe after the next election when we’re stronger, approach to politics.

The ever prudent, bide your time Cruz is now asking us to question just what Senator Cruz was up to. It doesn’t look like the exuberance of the conviction politician so much as advertisements for Ted Cruz. It raises the question who was less sincere, Marlon Brando playing Johnny Strabler in The Wild One, or Ted Cruz playing Ted Cruz. I had doubts about Cruz as president before, I have bigger doubts now.