I've recently been batting around the question of whether I really WANT presidential candidates doing deep dives on policy. Ideally, I want that from my Congressional and Senatorial candidates. I'm becoming more interested in how a presidential candidate thinks directionally and what they're likely to do in the foreign policy realm. This is a (severely) outdated example, but FDR didn't campaign in 1932 on a laundry list of legislation proposals. He spoke in larger, directional terms, which, given how rarely a final bill actually resembles the proposed plan, seems like the better way to operate. That doesn't strike me as necessarily a bad thing.
Totally. To paraphrase something Jeff said last week: I don't need Kamala to be a policy expert, I just need her to have policy experts on staff, and trust her to listen to them.
What concerns me is that the “policy experts on staff” are likely to be younger and more ideological, not in line with the “tacking hard to center” version of Kamala that has repudiated many of her 2019 positions.
After all, Joe Biden decided that the right nuclear policy expert to have on staff was Sam Brinton.
John McCain was my favorite politician ever, and it completely broke my heart that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him when he ran for president. The reason was that the tone of his campaign was so completely at odds with his personal character. If he couldn’t staff a campaign to be consonant with his worldview, I couldn’t have any confidence that he would do any better staffing his administration. As soon as Obama won, the old McCain magically reappeared in his concession speech. Tragic.
What party did you identify with in 2001? I was a Republican. I’m from Lubbock, TX, just two hours (a stone’s throw by TX standards) from W’s ranch. My father spent his career in the Air Force winning the Cold War, and I spent mine in the defense industry winning the War on Terror. I’ve always thought Gulf War II was the least-bad option available, WMD or no. Just this year I started calling myself a Democrat because I absolutely can’t back a party that wants to let the USSR rise again. If you were an anti-Bush Democrat who is now pro-Trump, then I understand how you got there. But if you backed Bush in 2001, I’m curious to know by what path you arrived at being okay with Russia taking a bite out of Ukraine.
Not from anything you said. I suppose one can be overall in favor of Trump while disagreeing with some policy points. It’s such an important issue for me that I have a hard time envisioning voting for a candidate that doesn’t support giving Ukraine the means to win.
Another big policy issue that FDR totally ignored in 1932 was whether and how to fight World War 2. Because it hadn’t happened. When we’re talking about presidents, I agree that principles and priorities matter more because the defining challenges of most administrations are things nobody saw coming. But as you say, legislative careers are different, and specific policy ideas matter more.
Well, duh. But he also was unabashedly an internationalist by 1932 and carried those principles with him through his subsequent terms. When it became clear that war was inevitable--something he recognized long before the electorate or Congress did--he worked to move the country in a direction that would allow the US to face it. So to my original point, guiding principles and character strike me as mattering much more than specific policy positions.
We’ve had three big crisis in the last two decades.
9/11, housing crash, and Covid.
On Covid the GOP was way better than the dems. I would trust any gop candidate to default to “leave people alone and keep the schools open” if something similar happened again.
On 9/11 I used to trust the dems more not to start a war. Now I think it’s reversed and the good is safer.
On the housing crash I think both parties are bad but dem fiscal policy during covid was really bad and blue states suck at building houses.
Another problem is that we punish politicians more for changing their minds on policy than we do for promoting crappy policies well after it’s obvious they are crappy.
A dynamic which leads to stuff like Kamala’s remarkable own goal “my values haven’t changed”.
I think you hit on it at the end of your column. As much as it might seem tired to say "this is all Trump's fault!!", it really is all his fault. He encourages the worst in the American electorate and because he's literally incapable of having any kind of policy discussion, asking the Democrat running against him to specify her own position because it's the right thing to do is essentially asking her to play the Conan O'Brien role in Old-Timey Gentleman Boxer sketch.
Perhaps when we have two functional adults running for control of the country, we'll be able to have a real discussion. But it's not possible to have a real conversation between an adult and a toddler.
Perhaps when we have *more* than two adults with an actual shot at the presidency, our discourse can improve, hence the article's mention of ranked choice voting.
I only skimmed your piece. There was one thing that made no sense to me though.
"Though we don’t know a ton about Harris and Trump’s policy plans, we basically know where they stand. Harris wants more access to abortion, Trump wants less."
Trump seems to me to not care. He made some promises to pro-life on the judicial front, but says it's up to them to make it work electorally. I suspect he's had women get abortions personally.
On IVF the propaganda is much starker. Trump is very pro-IVF. Elon musk has had like 11 IVF kids or something. 88% of Americans, including a majority of pro-life, support IVF.
I personally met with a close friend and tried to talk him into doing IVF last week, and I've voted for Trump twice and will again.
I noticed this in the debate, too. As a Trump voter, what does your gut say about whether his mild position on abortion will win him more votes in the middle than it will cost him on the right?
There was a mobile abortion van at the DNC, eight abortions were provided. In what world would voting Democrat be the pro-life move?
I think in general Trumps position on abortion is one of the reasons he's the nominee. A lot of people wanted DeSantis, but his decision to go with an unnecessary six week ban was not a sign of intelligence.
There is a loud faction that wants some extreme position on abortion, but they have nowhere to go politically. And anyway, basically every other aspect of the GOP is aligned with them better. It's not like abortion is the only reason they are voting GOP.
Probably the best way for them to pursue pro-life is to get school vouchers passed and then send their kids to schools that teach their kids not to get abortions.
Politically, I think state level referendums will eventually solve this problem. Apparently the abortion referendum in Florida has 69% support. This is in a state that voted for DeSantis 60%. Not all legislation can be made via referendum, but abortion can.
I am definitely in favor of RCV in the primary and for that matter in the election. As a Republican I would like to have a Republican choice in this election besides Trump. If both major parties had at least two candidates in the general election, there would be more time to examine their ideas and character.
I think it prevents someone with a fanatical base from running away with a small plurality while a crowd of generally palatable but unexciting candidates cannibalize each others votes and prevent the actual consensus from being revealed.
(E.g. arguably Trump won in 2016 not because he had a true majority of Republicans behind him, but because everyone opposed to him didn’t converge on an alternative until too late)
But then again, it doesn’t necessarily make things more moderate if the party actually does have a lot of wingers who want to vote for wingers rather than triangulating to an “electable” candidate.
Jeez, Kamala Harris is trying to set a record for how many lies and misrepresentations she can fit on a billboard. Even PolitiFact rates her statement about [Not Donald Trump's] P2025 banning IVF and contraception as "Mostly False".
Voters demand politicians tell them what they want to hear, and then pretend to be mad that politicians lie.
This. We get more of what we incentivize, and holy heck to we incentivize pandering.
I've recently been batting around the question of whether I really WANT presidential candidates doing deep dives on policy. Ideally, I want that from my Congressional and Senatorial candidates. I'm becoming more interested in how a presidential candidate thinks directionally and what they're likely to do in the foreign policy realm. This is a (severely) outdated example, but FDR didn't campaign in 1932 on a laundry list of legislation proposals. He spoke in larger, directional terms, which, given how rarely a final bill actually resembles the proposed plan, seems like the better way to operate. That doesn't strike me as necessarily a bad thing.
Totally. To paraphrase something Jeff said last week: I don't need Kamala to be a policy expert, I just need her to have policy experts on staff, and trust her to listen to them.
What concerns me is that the “policy experts on staff” are likely to be younger and more ideological, not in line with the “tacking hard to center” version of Kamala that has repudiated many of her 2019 positions.
After all, Joe Biden decided that the right nuclear policy expert to have on staff was Sam Brinton.
John McCain was my favorite politician ever, and it completely broke my heart that I couldn’t bring myself to vote for him when he ran for president. The reason was that the tone of his campaign was so completely at odds with his personal character. If he couldn’t staff a campaign to be consonant with his worldview, I couldn’t have any confidence that he would do any better staffing his administration. As soon as Obama won, the old McCain magically reappeared in his concession speech. Tragic.
If they are the same policy experts from the last four years, why is she repudiating the last for years?
What party did you identify with in 2001? I was a Republican. I’m from Lubbock, TX, just two hours (a stone’s throw by TX standards) from W’s ranch. My father spent his career in the Air Force winning the Cold War, and I spent mine in the defense industry winning the War on Terror. I’ve always thought Gulf War II was the least-bad option available, WMD or no. Just this year I started calling myself a Democrat because I absolutely can’t back a party that wants to let the USSR rise again. If you were an anti-Bush Democrat who is now pro-Trump, then I understand how you got there. But if you backed Bush in 2001, I’m curious to know by what path you arrived at being okay with Russia taking a bite out of Ukraine.
I never said I'm okay with Russia taking a bite out of Ukraine, and I'm adamantly opposed to that. Not sure where you pulled that from in what I said.
To answer your question, I was in 8th or 9th grade in 2001, so I'm not sure any political opinions I held at that point are worth a shit.
Not from anything you said. I suppose one can be overall in favor of Trump while disagreeing with some policy points. It’s such an important issue for me that I have a hard time envisioning voting for a candidate that doesn’t support giving Ukraine the means to win.
Another big policy issue that FDR totally ignored in 1932 was whether and how to fight World War 2. Because it hadn’t happened. When we’re talking about presidents, I agree that principles and priorities matter more because the defining challenges of most administrations are things nobody saw coming. But as you say, legislative careers are different, and specific policy ideas matter more.
Well, duh. But he also was unabashedly an internationalist by 1932 and carried those principles with him through his subsequent terms. When it became clear that war was inevitable--something he recognized long before the electorate or Congress did--he worked to move the country in a direction that would allow the US to face it. So to my original point, guiding principles and character strike me as mattering much more than specific policy positions.
Yes, exactly. I agree.
We’ve had three big crisis in the last two decades.
9/11, housing crash, and Covid.
On Covid the GOP was way better than the dems. I would trust any gop candidate to default to “leave people alone and keep the schools open” if something similar happened again.
On 9/11 I used to trust the dems more not to start a war. Now I think it’s reversed and the good is safer.
On the housing crash I think both parties are bad but dem fiscal policy during covid was really bad and blue states suck at building houses.
Another problem is that we punish politicians more for changing their minds on policy than we do for promoting crappy policies well after it’s obvious they are crappy.
A dynamic which leads to stuff like Kamala’s remarkable own goal “my values haven’t changed”.
I think you hit on it at the end of your column. As much as it might seem tired to say "this is all Trump's fault!!", it really is all his fault. He encourages the worst in the American electorate and because he's literally incapable of having any kind of policy discussion, asking the Democrat running against him to specify her own position because it's the right thing to do is essentially asking her to play the Conan O'Brien role in Old-Timey Gentleman Boxer sketch.
Perhaps when we have two functional adults running for control of the country, we'll be able to have a real discussion. But it's not possible to have a real conversation between an adult and a toddler.
Perhaps when we have *more* than two adults with an actual shot at the presidency, our discourse can improve, hence the article's mention of ranked choice voting.
I only skimmed your piece. There was one thing that made no sense to me though.
"Though we don’t know a ton about Harris and Trump’s policy plans, we basically know where they stand. Harris wants more access to abortion, Trump wants less."
Trump seems to me to not care. He made some promises to pro-life on the judicial front, but says it's up to them to make it work electorally. I suspect he's had women get abortions personally.
On IVF the propaganda is much starker. Trump is very pro-IVF. Elon musk has had like 11 IVF kids or something. 88% of Americans, including a majority of pro-life, support IVF.
I personally met with a close friend and tried to talk him into doing IVF last week, and I've voted for Trump twice and will again.
I noticed this in the debate, too. As a Trump voter, what does your gut say about whether his mild position on abortion will win him more votes in the middle than it will cost him on the right?
There was a mobile abortion van at the DNC, eight abortions were provided. In what world would voting Democrat be the pro-life move?
I think in general Trumps position on abortion is one of the reasons he's the nominee. A lot of people wanted DeSantis, but his decision to go with an unnecessary six week ban was not a sign of intelligence.
There is a loud faction that wants some extreme position on abortion, but they have nowhere to go politically. And anyway, basically every other aspect of the GOP is aligned with them better. It's not like abortion is the only reason they are voting GOP.
Probably the best way for them to pursue pro-life is to get school vouchers passed and then send their kids to schools that teach their kids not to get abortions.
Politically, I think state level referendums will eventually solve this problem. Apparently the abortion referendum in Florida has 69% support. This is in a state that voted for DeSantis 60%. Not all legislation can be made via referendum, but abortion can.
First prize for you today for most brilliant similes and comparisons
“Feckless Whinging from Pundits” would be a great band name, though I don’t know what kind of music they’d play.
They’d be a Rage Against the Machine parody band
I am definitely in favor of RCV in the primary and for that matter in the election. As a Republican I would like to have a Republican choice in this election besides Trump. If both major parties had at least two candidates in the general election, there would be more time to examine their ideas and character.
Curious as to how RCV solves the ideological race to the wings in the Primaries. Not saying it doesn’t. Just curious as to how you think it does.
Kudos to your wit and your “take”.
I think it prevents someone with a fanatical base from running away with a small plurality while a crowd of generally palatable but unexciting candidates cannibalize each others votes and prevent the actual consensus from being revealed.
(E.g. arguably Trump won in 2016 not because he had a true majority of Republicans behind him, but because everyone opposed to him didn’t converge on an alternative until too late)
But then again, it doesn’t necessarily make things more moderate if the party actually does have a lot of wingers who want to vote for wingers rather than triangulating to an “electable” candidate.
Makes sense. I can see that. Thanks Gbdub
Jeez, Kamala Harris is trying to set a record for how many lies and misrepresentations she can fit on a billboard. Even PolitiFact rates her statement about [Not Donald Trump's] P2025 banning IVF and contraception as "Mostly False".
Wait... You can get herpes from a waterslide?!? Like I don't have enough on my plate already :(