National Review online, perhaps.  Not sure.

But somebody commented that the most frustrating thing (to the other side) about Trump's scurry of activity/EO's is that they are generally pretty popular, individually, with the American folk.  He's sort of an uncontrolled (it may seem) train hurdling down the tracks, but he gets exactly to where he waid he was going.

Immigration reform?  Pretty popular.

Vetting of immigrants/refugees from ISIS"linked" areas?  Pretty popular.

Federal funds for abortion?  Not very popular.

TPP?  Not very popular.

Reducing regulation?  Pretty popular.

Keystone Pipeline?  Pretty popular.

Edit:  Forgot Sanctuary Cities, didn't I?  Not very darn popular, even in California.

Etc.

None of that means, of course, that protesters won't march and chant, but they do so essentially after they've lost the shortterm fight.  I don't see any of those areas where the Court will ultimately step in and block such action.

Trump has beat them and the Democratic Caucus. 

And he did it in about 240 hours.  It is driving some folks nuts.

To tell you the truth, which is fair that I do, I think I can only really differ with Trump on one of the issues above.  I wrote in Paul Ryan, btw.

Polls seem to show that people generally don't "like" Trump (approval ratings are below the waterline, generally) but they like his policies.

People eventually "liked" Obama, while still not liking his policies.

I find Trump a bit less "authoritarian" than Obama.  Obama's message was often "Take this, it's for your own good!"  His Citizen of the Workd schpiel eventually played poorly here, too.  IMHO, Obama lived in a presidential world where all problems are complicated and the critical element is how a president presents the problem-solution to the American people, who need his "explaining."  Trump sees problems and solutions as relatively simple. He's a man used to making decisions quickly, often on the fly.  The last ten days shouldn't surprise anyone.

As a history teacher, I find Obama most like Woodrow Wilson, of 20th Century presidents.  An egghead, one who was sure he and his ilk knew better.  I am not being critical, just pointing out what I think was his presidential approach. He had that Wilsonian detachment with people, as well.  With a bit of time and massaging, he felt he could convince you as to his righteousness.  He was a crusader, but a cerebral one.

Trump reminds me at times of Teddy Roosevelt, at times of Franklin Roosevelt (his impatience) and at others of Harry Truman.  I especially like the Teddy/Truman comparison, but there are some FDR similarities, too.  All three of them really liked people and we're "men of the little guy."  Teddy and FDR even pulled that off despite the silver spoon they were born with.  I think they all brought a rousing/charging style to the presidency, one that the common man appreciated.  They could be obstinate, but they liked people, too.  Like Obama, Trump is also a crusader, but one following a different battle cry. 

"Deus Vult?"  Obama sees god in the details.  Trumps finds god in action.

Obama could have a laser focus on minutiae, Trump's is on getting to a quick winning deal. 

I make no effort to predict Trump's eventually Presidential ranking.  I don't know if he gets much done way down the line, as he may wear everybody out, GOP Capitol Hillsters, as well.  But I will give him this: He does what he said he would do.  There should have been no surprises so far.

And I long ago came around to the idea that he is likely better for the nation than Ms. Clinton would have been.  That said, Margo Channing was ahead of her day:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKHUGvde7KU

Of course,  your mileage may vary.

Respectfully,

Keith

Truman liked people, I think.  His win in '48, sneaking it out over Dewey, was really a result of his whirlwind campaign, one that spoke plain, right to the people.  Trump may have borrowed some of that iin the last couple of weeks.

Truman was not afraid of the tough decision, popular or not.  Hiroshima (which he didn't think was that tough of decision), Israel, Berlin Airlift, Marshall Plan, canning MacArthur, desegregation of military (by an EO), Korea, etc.....

Hard political nuts to crack, but he waded in, moved quickly and decisively. He acted!  He wasn't particularly popular (ala Trump) but I think folks (like him or not) admired his plain talking ways.

Hillary?  I'm not sure I can come up with a decent presidential comp.  Well, Obama is probably the best, but that one is unfair.  I'm not sure any 20th Century president was as unlikeable as Ms. Clinton, nor did any return the favor with such aplomb.  My sense is that people were "in her way."  That includes most staffers, secret service agents, voters and other hoi polloi.

Surprisingly, she was generally well liked by her senate colleagues and I think she generally liked them.  They were "equals," of course,

While her husband was all about connecting with "the people" (no pun intended), she had no skill set for it.  In some ways, I think a Hillary presidency would have been a regal one.  Not as in the "Camelot" Kennedy way, but in the Queen Elizabeth II sense.  There would have always been an extra-thick layer of insulation between she and the nation, and a coldness coming from her. 

Maybe Hoover and Nixon are the best templates.  And I don't mean that in any derogatory way.  Hoover's actions to forestall the impact of The Crash were active and aggressive,  for their time.   But he had little ability to connect with people.  Nixon's first term was one of the most revolutionary in modern history: EPA, China, SALT, Title IX, ended the draft, etc.   He had no connection with the people, however.

He was a brilliant, but deeply flawed man. Hillary is not in his intellectual-political class, but she wold have lived in a White House with a gate-keeper mentality around her.  I hadn't thought about it until right now, but she would have been surrounded by "All the Queen's Men (and Women)."  There is a Nixon-ness to her, personally, not politically.

During the election season, I had Trump pegged almost entirely incorrectly.

I believed that he was (a) not genuine about any of his campaign promises and that he would govern as a leftist (b) not competent to make political deals because they don't operate like business deals and (c) likely to be too difficult to work with to get any sort of traction in the legislature and thus too likely to try to do everything with executive action. I also believed the appeal he had with his supporters during the primaries was rooted in a new strand of isolationism and populism and not in core American principles of generosity, liberty, and faith.

It, so far, looks like (a) he was deathly genuine about his campaign promises, at least insofar as he can accomplish them given the system in which he is operating (b) entirely capable of sizing up his political position and applying business acumen to cutting directly to what the best move for him is, within the law and (c) very difficult to work with but also the BMOC.  He grabbed the GOP by the man-berries during the primary fight, then he grabbed HRC and her campaign team by the hair, and now he is grabbing congress, holding down their heads against those little desks they use on the hill, and demanding that they say uncle. I way...way underestimated his alpha status.  Oh...and he has the media sniffing its own behind in an endless tailspin like the silliest golden retriever.

The problem is...

We actually aren't supposed to be run like a business with that sort of efficiency because one man with too much ambition can seriously endanger our representative framework and separated and limited powers. If he is too successful, he will establish a precedent by which our entire way of life could be destroyed by an equally effective crusader from the wrong political strain. And if he fails, he will set back the causes he champions for fifty years and likely destroy the Republican brand.

The media's coordinated assault on him will either work or it will not.  So far, most Americans don't seem to be taking the media narrative as gospel, but I think what could happen is that even the folks who generally support him may get really tired of being hated by their friends and watching protests in the cities nonstop as the press screams about chaotic white house and capital hill in disarray. Because one thing about Americans is...we like peace. We got tired of fighting the war on terror until the terrorist attacks got frequent enough that we decided not fighting it was not bringing us peace.We got tired of fighting in Vietnam and watching the protests over it and the damage it did to our boys. We get tired of political melodrama...and we seem to always self-correct whenever one party gets too much power. If the story of Trump's presidency begins to look like it disturbs the peace too much and makes life hard to live for his defenders...we'll probably forget how badly we wanted Washington to change and long for the days when there wasn't constant scandal from the press, riots in the cities, and bluster from the president.

Any president can issue a flurry of executive orders. Most have preferred to be more modest and respectful of institutions. That said, Trump never even hinted he'd be that so, yes, what he said is what we get. But you shouldn't confuse a bunch of presidential edicts with governing. The reason the founders prefered restraint was because they recognized most problems as complicated and solutions as difficult.

Banning immigrants from a handful of countries is a solution to a problem that doesn't exist, much less a solution to terrorism. But it sounds good, I guess, if you're a certain kind of political being. Look: 9/11 was dreamed up by a Pakistani, funded by a Saudi, executed by a mixed bag of people only one of whom, a Yemeni, would have been affected by the new order and he was blocked from coming to the US anyway - he couldn't get a visa becaus ehe was a suspected economic migrant.

Moe, to suggest that Obama was unpopular and his policies moreso is simply wrong. Obama left office the most popular and beloved, least scandalous president of the last half century. People liked Obamacare if you called it something else. They loved the policies underlaying it hence Trump and the GOP are struggling to find anything to replace it without duplicating the thing they were replacing. Most Americans are worried about climate change. Most Americans favor progressive taxation. Most Americans think alternative energy is a good idea. Most Americans think qualified voters ought to be allowed to vote. These aren't my opinions - they're borne out again and again in surveys.

And I'd put Hilary's nearest analog as George H W Bush, a dedicated careerist from more or less the middle of the political spectrum.

To the larger point: Of course, people want to get things done. Quick action is preferred over inaction. But what has actually been done other than to alienate most of the world except Putin? Do we really want to destroy the global order because it was tilted to the benfit of rich people? Do we not want economic and security cooperation? Do we not want a more inter-connected world rather than an isloated, hostile one?

Doc, Trump was never an entrepeneur, at least not as we've come to define it. He's a commercial real estate developer. Think Martin Selig. He didn't care about anything but making a deal. Terms? Who cares? It's somebody else's money. That's why he could walk away from so many bankruptcies. It was always OPM. When he finally got driven out of that busines by uncooperative lenders, he brcame a branding impresario. Calling that an entrepeneur is belittling to those who actually are. 

I don't get it.

Doc, you raise in me the image of a skiier standing on the side of the slopes for three months...without a flake of snow.

Then--out of nowhere--a blizzard and an avalanche!  No one can cram more ideas into a single post than you.  I feel incapable of responding to everything you raise.

So i'll start with a brief comment on what appears so far above...and then add some fuel to the fire.

First, with all respect (honestly), I see you and Moe as calmly talking to each other inside the bubble...unaware of what's going on outside.

On the other hand, Matt and TJM--who I do not suspect to be political 'brothers'--range from actual fact to near brilliance.  I can't read those posts enough.

So, apologies in advance for noses put out of joint, but here are some bullet points:

--Donald Trump is president.  I accept that.  But for the second time in 16 years, the will of the people has been overturned. First by Scalia, then by Putin.  I wonder how the GOP would respond if the shoe were on their foot?

--I understand the idea of 'genius' vs. 'committee'.  Well said. But in what sense (other than brand manipulation) would you consider Trump that genius?  I won't even venture a guess as to his IQ.  But I sincerely believe that the man is mentally ill.  In a full, clinical sense.  He has a disorder.  And he leads th nation.

--Part of his brand is bravado, which is easily accomplished in the short term with the executive orders.  But how long can this 'subject changing' last?  I think his long term viability is about that of a single Fourth fo July firework lasting until October.  He will burn himself out.  But he will still be expected to govern.

--I am baffled with the idea that he's a 'negotiator'.  I'll wait for one, single example.  The point here is that when he acts like the bully, he makes enemies.  The little guy he stiffs on a contract to decorate Mar A Lago can't fight back--he'll get buried in court.  But when you give Lindsay Graham's cell phone number on national TV...or discredit the heroism of John McCain...you've made enemies for life.  

--Congress is 'bought'?  Shocking!  We've had this discussion before.  The key now is who do the spineless McConnell and Ryan bow down to in the end?  Trump?  Or the businesspeople who realize Trump's moves will hurt THEIR businesses?  That will be interesting.

--The truest moments of this presidency so far came when different spokespeope said, "facts don't matter anymore"...and "alternative facts" counter the truth...and that the true opposition wasn't the Democrats, but the media.  This is the real battle.  I don't thnk the Orwellian analogies are overblown one bit.  Democracy is more fragile than most people realize.  

Finally, in the end, I have to say that personally I've had it with people saying, "don't blame me--I didn't vote for him!"

Whatever the motivation, if you didn't cast a vote for Hillary, all that follows is on you.  

Thanks for raising a topic that's been laying in repose for too long.

Trump Tower, Trump airlines, Trump Steaks, Trump University, Trump vitamins(?), The Apprentice. Most business ideas fail, but Trump figured out his persona and name was a winner.  

Trump knows how to sell, and that is key to an entrepreneur - sell the vision and fill in the details later.  He sold himself to America. Actually, I see him as the Billy Beane of big league politics: he found underappreciated assets (the deplorables) and rode to victory on half the budget of his opponent - after destroying Jeb Bush in similar fashion.

He sees America like a billionaire team owner sees his city fans: his joy is in bringing his fans joy, and it of course feeds his ego to do so as well. He says they will win so much they will get sick of it. I think of Kraft, Tom Brady and the Pats when I hear that. Boston fans are spoiled by success. Sick of winning? Well, they sure take it for granted anyway. It's interesting the affinity the Pat leadership and Trump share. Co-incidence? Trump's inaugural sounded like something a big league owner would give to his fans after buying a team. Those in the streets see America as a global community. Trump sees the global community as a global competition, the way a Seahawk fan sees the Packers and 49ers. Seahawks first. 

I wanted to see if Trump had the discipline to stay on message and finish strong, after straying all over the map and taking that Access Hollywood body blow. That would have destroyed any other politician that did not have the press covering his back. I think he has a real affinity for his deplorables, and I think he got it when they didn't abandon him then. I think he really feels he owes it to them to keep his promises.

Thanks for indulging me, Doc. And Terry, I am still working on your 9-11 book. Solid reportage and at times I can see myself in Germany, and the flats and streets. I'm having a real hard time keeping all those characters and names straight. You know what would have been helpful? A nickname that descrIbes each one's personality, like the seven dwarfs. 

tjm,

I most did certainly say that most people "liked" Obama.  I used the " " because he went from popular to unpopular to popular, again.  The surge at the end was (IMHO) mostly due to the nasty campaign going on at the same time, not to his governing abilities.

Climate Change?  Most Americans are worried about climate change and do support alternative energy, but most still support the Keystone Pipeline, by a wide margin.

And most American do not support the Paris Accords.

Progressive taxes?  Trump supports a 3-bracket progressive tax code. Mosty Americans support tax cuts, as well.  I think Trump does, too.   I would prefer a Flat Tax, btw.  I didn't mention tax cuts, but I appreciate you bringing it up.

Please remind me on the "qualifed voter" issue?  Is there one?  Trump is concerned about "unqualifed voters" voting.  We should all be.  My uncle is a Canadian citizen, has never been an American Citizen, even though he's been here for nearly 60 years and is a US Army vet.  With Oregon's new automatic voter registration law (linked to driver's licenses) he was recently informed that he was now a registered voter, Independent, in Oregon.  I imagine he's not the only one.

Nixon was pretty centrist in his policies, but I specifically mentioned that my comps for Hillary-Nixon were not political; they personal and insularly.  Hillary the MOR candidate would have won, even the Electoral Count.  But she isn't very MOR, or at lease wasn't perceived that way by a significantly large number of voters.  I'm not sure I get the G.H.W. Bush comparison, but will consider carefully.  As I said, I think she best comps to Obama, and others are a bit of a reach, although I sort of like the limited NIxon comp I made.

Most of the people of the world have been alienated?  Such was said, in their first days, about Reagan and Bush, the younger, too.  But the English just voted for the most conservative referendum in their history (OK, it's close, anyway); France is a mess; Germany it recoiling from its own failed immigration policies; Russia, as many on the left would have us all believe, is dancing a joyful jig; Israel? Alienated? Really?; Haven't heard much ado from India;  The Saudis?  I bet not!  And so it goes. China is reevaluating, surely, but that's because their own ecnomic interest is a bit cloudier right now. 

And like it or not, a President's oath isn't to Preserve, Protect and Defend global order.  And even if it were, global order and globalism aren't necessarily the same thing (altough you did not actually make that point, I must admit).  BTW, along those lines, I think Trump's one policy error so far has been the TPP withdrawal.  He was dead right on the Keystone and the DAPL and I've even got some street cred in the alternative energy sector.  

As I've said, I didn't vote for President Trump.  I don't have to defend a ballot cast.  He has personal and professional issues that kept me from going his way. Government (or campaign) by tweet offends the dinosaur in me.  He will never be a classic statesman as he won't have the demanding patience for statecraft, but I will stand by my appraisal; he's better for the US than a Hillary presidency.   Had she the political skills of her husband she would be nominating a supreme court justice today. She doesn't.  

Donald Trump was a deeply flawed candidate.  Hillary was just a bit more so.

Up to this point, while I can dislike his tweeting style, I can't really disagree with many of his actions.  I'm not a fan of EO's, but there is little  (real and legal) concern that Trump has violated law or constitution in his actions.

He's done what he said he would do and done it promptly.  That isn't always the presidential case.

Respectfully,

Keith

I keep inadvertantly erasing my response so that by now I'm more irritated by myself than I am by Moe! Sheesh, can't even learn how to hate properly. The failure of the liberal imagination, I'd guess.

That said, a couple points:

On qualified voters - did he not just claim that many millions of same just voted for Hillary and therefore is launching a massive investigation into the election he kinda won? Maybe I missed something.

On progressive taxes, c'mon. Reducing the progressiivity but leaving some remaining in code if not in actual incidence doesn't count. You're being disengenuous.

World alienation: Almost all of Europe and Asia are in shock. Our security arrangements are in question. Our trade regime is in tatters. Wouldn't we be shocked if people weren't alienated?

I never sugested that Trump had violated anything other than common sense, but I'd be very surprised if the immigration ban was upheld in court as it was transparently aimed at particular religionists. Still, the EO was a provocation not a policy. It's Steve Bannon ginning up the white nationalists hordes.

I'll stop as I guess almost nobody wants us to go on with this discussion. Would love to have it instead over a beer sometime. Speaking of which, I'll be in Seattle for the launch of Off Speed in May. We should all gather to throw beer cups at one another and to insist that Doc get his hair styled. Come in for a game, Moe.

As usual an outstanding konspiracy korner and comments. I have been watching these first weeks of the Trump era with great interest, and especially how it is being reported by the mainstream media.

Looking outside of the MSM, I ran across an article by Abi Wilkinson in the Jacobin magazine. (More about how I found it in a moment.) The article is entitled The Specter of Democracy. It starts with an insightful deconstruction of a New Yorker cartoon, but here is the quotation that got me to read the whole thing.

“That nobody could possibly do a better job than the professionals is a core belief of elite liberalism. Suspicious of mass democracy and emboldened by the fall of the Soviet Union, elite liberals came to assume that we’d reached the end of history—that every other social order had been tried and proven inferior. Capitalist democracy, stewarded by sharp, well-intentioned experts, had allegedly emerged from the scrum as the unquestioned victor. For people like this, it’s been hard to understand the increasing rejection of the political and economic consensus as anything other than an outbreak of irrationality and self-sabotage. While there may be room to fine tune, why would anyone want to tear down or significantly alter something as good as what we’ve got? If politics is about nothing more than the effective administration of the current system … experience and technical expertise are the primary requirements.”

One of the outgrowths of the Enlightenment was the idea that the scientific method when applied to social and political systems would triumph in the same way the hard sciences of physics and chemistry had triumphed in explaining the physical world. For example, Henri de Saint-Simon envisioned a government run by bankers, lawyers, accountants, and other such technocrats/experts – a government controlled by the central planning of a small elite. It is an idea that has thrived (up to now) in late 20th and early 21^st century America. Its foundation is the belief that there is one set of Truths, all in harmony with each other, merely waiting to be discovered, and technocratic scientism is the way to do it. To oppose this is irrational, because what rational person rejects the Truth that will lead to Utopia?

Trump is not a technocrat, nor a scientific manager. From their point of view he undoubtedly is a disturber of the peace, a purveyor of irrationality and self-sabotage threatening a carefully constructed world order.

A rather breathless Politico article a few days ago described how Trump is making all these executive orders without consulting anyone in the agencies, or any lawyers, or anyone with any real knowledge of the rules and procedures and protocols, (Obama sure didn’t do it that way) and golly what a mess. The managerial elite are in fear for their professional lives, and they are going down (if they go down) swinging. But I give Trump a puncher’s chance all the same.

Not being a regular reader of the extreme left wing socialist/Marxist press, I ran across the excerpt from Abi’s article quoted above in a blog called zeroanthropology.net by a Canadian anthropology professor named Maximillian Forte. In May, shortly after Trump won the nomination, he wrote an article predicting Trump’s victory in the election, citing 12 reasons, which, given the event, now seem pretty well-argued. The quotation from Abi came in a post entitled The Dying Days of Liberalism, which is a thorough trashing of HRC, not something you want to read without your blood pressure medication if you are an HRC fan.