Monday, June 12, 2017

Wake up, sheeple!


I would just point out that Team Trump thinks last week went well because they wanted to present a consistent message out of the White House and, despite the Comey testimony, they pretty much did (come the weekend, of course, Trump was off and tweeting again).

So this is their measure of "success."  Keeping Trump off Twitter and harping on "infrastructure" as much as possible.  Not, however, doing anything about it.  As Matt Yglesias points out, of 16 positions requiring appointments at the DOT (if it's a Presidential appointment, it's a high-level position, right?), only 3 people have been nominated.  So how is it the Dems are being "obstructionist"?  But the more important point is this:  without staff, plans can't be drawn up.  Without plans, programs can't be formulated.  Without programs, all the talk about infrastructure and schedules is completely meaningless.

Presidency by tweets is a non-starter.  The Presidency is not an endeavor in which will creates reality.  Beyond tweeting, Trump is literally doing nothing.

And yet he admires himself for being ahead of schedule.  It isn't just that he thinks saying it makes it so; it's that he thinks all the President has to do is maintain a viable image before the public, and the business of governance will take care of itself.  We've moved beyond the "keep 'em distracted" style of governance (Reagan, IOW) to "distraction IS governance."  The AHCA?  Last report I read, it might die because two Senators (one of them Rand Paul) don't think the Senate version is restrictive enough, leaving McConnell two votes shy of the 50 he needs.  Is anything else coming out of Congress?  Trump doesn't even have a proposal to give them.  His "tax plan" was two pages that don't begin to outline, much less establish, how tax law will be altered (forget the effects his "plan" would have; it has to become a law first).

What else has he got?

Yes, the "Russia thing" is consuming all the attention in D.C. and among pundits around the nation, but the perverse upside of that is that it obscures the fact nothing is getting done in D.C. anyway.  No one is being appointed to positions that would actually aid and implement the Trump agenda; no laws are actually being proposed by the White House, much less debated in Congress, much less on the way to the President's desk.  If it wasn't for Russia, we might be noticing this.

If anything disturbing is being "normalized," it's the Trump Administration's complete inability to administer.

3 comments:

  1. I'm waiting for him to start blaming Kushner.

    The Republicans proved they couldn't govern when they had control of the Congress. Trump proves they can't even do it when they've got all three.

    Considering what they want to do, I'm all in favor of them not being able to do anything.

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  2. It is kinda convenient, isn't it?

    Gonna remember this next time people tell me Democrats need to move in lock-step like the GOP does.

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  3. I found out about the North Korean style cabinet meeting. If he's not out soon, holy cow!

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