Predicting the 2016 race

The New Neo Posted on by

Fred Barnes says that “everybody got everything wrong” in trying to predict the 2016 race:

Nearly everything that was expected to happen in the 2016 presidential race hasn’t, and many things that weren’t expected have. The rise of Donald Trump””even that he would run””was not predicted. Nor was the fall of Scott Walker or the weakness of Jeb Bush’s candidacy. Polls have proved to be unreliable indicators of where the Republican and Democratic campaigns are headed. Hillary Clinton’s coronation as Democratic nominee, we were told, was a sure thing. Now she’s sliding toward underdog status…

The biggest change is the revolt of angry conservatives, who make up a large chunk of the GOP base.

I’ve got respect for Barnes, but my goodness: anyone with even a cursory familiarity with conservative blogs (or who has listened to Mark Levin’s show at least once, as I have) has to have known about the angry conservatives for at least the past four years, and probably a great deal longer than that.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one who doubted Jeb Bush’s drawing power in 2016, despite his money. In a post in early April titled “Jeb Bush: the candidate without a constituency” I wrote the following:

I’ve heard for years about the Republican “establishment” pushing this candidate or that candidate on the rank and file. Most of the time it’s seemed untrue to me.

But it seems absolutely on target with the current talk of Jeb Bush for 2016. He has no natural constituency. There is nothing special””or especially appealing””about him as a candidate. His name, IMHO, is a liability rather than an asset, both with Republicans and with Democrats.

So who would be voting for Bush in a primary? Darned if I know.

[NOTE: In choosing a category for this post, I thought about including him in “people of interest.” But the opposite is the point: he’s a person without interest.]

That’s not to say that Bush couldn’t pull it off somehow. But I consider it, and have always considered it, a longshot. One advantage Bush has, however—and it could end up mattering—is that aforementioned money. The candidates with less support will drop out because they can’t sustain their campaigns without an influx of money, and Bush already has a big war chest. Trump, of course, can go on and on, even without many donations, as long as he’s willing to spend his own money. Money is a big factor in campaigns, but as we’re learning with Bush, it’s not the only thing.

As for Hillary Clinton, she’s fallen further faster than I would have thought. It’s not so much because of the emails, although that hasn’t helped; I doubt her base cares much about them. It’s because her performances when put on the spot by a couple of tougher-than-usual questions has been less than stellar. She doesn’t appear sharp and she doesn’t appear trustworthy; she seems shifty, evasive, uncertain, false.

You may say that she’s always seemed that way. But if so, it’s a great deal more apparent now, so apparent that even some of her base is uneasy and is casting about for an alternative. Unfortunately for them, no really good alternative has shown up. If Biden is the best they can offer, he certainly might win, but I wouldn’t call that a strong candidate.

Who was it who said that Republicans were the party of old white folk? It appears right now to be the Democrats who answer to that description.

Russia and Syria: maybe this…

The New Neo Posted on by

…is what Obama meant by a red line in Syria:

Russia’s launch of air strikes against rebel targets in Syria will not alter the strategy of the US-led coalition fighting the Islamic State, American officials have said.

“The US-led coalition will continue to fly missions over Iraq and Syria as planned and in support of our international mission to degrade and destroy ISIL,” State Department spokesman John Kirby told reporters.

Explaining the dramatic sequence of events, Kirby said: “A Russian official in Baghdad this morning informed US Embassy personnel that Russian military aircraft would begin flying anti-ISIL missions today over Syria.

“He further requested that US aircraft avoid Syrian airspace during these missions,” he said.

In Syria, between ISIS and Assad there are no good actors. Instead, there are actors of greater or lesser badness, in different ways. Russia and Assad have long been allied, so it’s no surprise that Russia would support him and see the crisis there—and the vacuum left by the US, as I wrote yesterday—as a golden opportunity.

There’s certainly no reason Putin would or should pay much attention to the bluster of President Obama or Secretary of State John Kerry. I don’t think anyone else does, either:

Secretary of State John Kerry on Tuesday called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s involvement in Syria a possible “opportunity” for the United States.

Kerry predicted, in an interview with CNN’s Elise Labott, that Russia’s presence in Syria means Moscow could find itself in a “complicated” situation that could affect its policy toward the war-torn country and its leader, President Bashar al-Assad.

“If he’s going to side with Assad and with Iran and Hezbollah, he’s going to have a very serious problem with the Sunni countries in the region,” Kerry said of Putin. “That means he … could very well become a target for those Sunni jihadists.”

Kerry explained: “It’s an opportunity for us to force this question of how you actually resolve the question of Syria. And the bottom line is, you cannot resolve it without including the Sunni(s) in a political solution, a political agreement ultimately, and that will mean that you’re going to have to have some kind of transition, some kind of timing. Because as long as Assad is there, you simply can’t make peace. Period.”

Kerry also said that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad must leave as part of an “orderly transition,” rather than calling for his immediate ouster, marking a change in the U.S. position.

“Assad must this” and “Assad must that.”

I don’t doubt that Putin is in a “complicated” position. I assume he will negotiate it more or less successfully, taking heed of his own best interests. If we entered the fray in Syria more than we already have, we would be in a “complicated” position, too. But we already are in a complicated situation. As I said, there are no good actors there—or, if there are any, they are remarkably weak.

However, I’ve come to assume that our administration will not act in our own best interests.

As time goes by, I keep thinking of that famous moment in the second presidential debate of 2012. You know, the one where Obama snarked back at Romney’s assertion that Russia was our number one geopolitical foe on the world stage with the cute little quip “the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back.”

So, speaking of the 80’s [and in the following excerpt, “Assad” refers to the present-day Assad’s father]:

In the 1980s, Assad’s government established a military cooperation with the Soviet Union. Sophisticated Soviet arms and military advisers helped the development of the Syrian Army, which raised the tension between Israel and Syria. In November 1983, a Soviet delegation arrived in Damascus to discuss the opening of a Soviet naval base in the Syrian city of Tartus. The countries’ relationship encountered problems: Syria had supported Iran during the Iran-Iraq War, while the Soviet Union supported Iraq, and when the rebellion against Yasser Arafat broke out in al-Fatah in 1983, Syria supported the rebels while the Soviet Union supported Arafat. In 1983 the Syrian Foreign Minister Abdul Halim Khaddam visited Moscow. Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko argued that Syria and the Soviet Union must resolve their differences concerning the Palestinian movement as stopping the internal conflict would allow the “anti-Imperialist struggle.”

During the diplomatic crisis between the United States and Syria, which escalated into minor clashes, Syrian counted on Soviet help if war should break out. Vladimir Yukhin, the Soviet ambassador in Damascus, expressed his country’s appreciation “for the firm Syrian position in the face of Imperialism and Zionism.” The Soviet attitude did not satisfied Syria completely. Assad’s government considered entering the Warsaw Pact to gain Soviet support and to match the United States and Israel. Syria and the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation in October 1980, which was focused on cultural, technical, military, economic, and transport relations.

It was “complicated” back then, too, and in the late 80s, as the USSR faltered within and then fell, the alliance between the two countries was weakened:

The collapse of the Soviet Union on 31 December 1991 marked the end of the main source of Syria’s political and military support for more than two decades.

Then in 2011, with the advent of the Obama administration and the Syrian civil war, the ties between Russia and Assad Junior were strengthened considerably. This move of Putin’s is the latest in a series in which we’ve been caught without influence and without credibility.

[ADDENDUM: And—in news that should be no surprise whatsoever—Putin appears to be bombing anti-Assad forces and not ISIS forces at all:

Hours after the airstrikes took place, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter compared the move to “pouring gasoline on the fire” because it’s contradictory to say that fighting ISIS and supporting Syrian President Bashar Assad can work together.

“It does appear that they were in areas where there probably … were not ISIL forces and that is precisely one of the problems with this whole approach,” said Carter.

Okay, Ash. Let us know what you plan to do about it.]

]

Nature abhors a vacuum

The New Neo Posted on by

And the nature of power is no different:

The baton was officially transferred Monday to the world’s new sole superpower ”” and Vladimir Putin willingly picked it up.

President Obama (remember him?) embraced the ideals espoused by the United Nations’ founders 70 years ago: Diplomacy and “international order” will win over time, while might and force will lose.

Putin, too, appealed to UN laws (as he sees them), but he also used his speech to announce the formation of a “broad international coalition” to fight ISIS in Syria and Iraq…

And who’d lead this new coalition? Hint: Moscow has always celebrated the Allies’ World War II victory as a Russian-led fete.

Oh, and if anyone wondered which Syrian players the coalition would rely on as allies, Putin made it clear: “No one but President [Bashar al-]Assad’s armed forces and Kurd militia are fighting the Islamic State.”

Recall this from 2012.

And also this.

See also this, which I wrote in 2009. An excerpt:

If Obama has anything to say about it, there will be further steps in America’s journey of penance and redemption through the mechanism of his presidency…Foreign policy is a major mechanism by which this country will be made level with other countries–just one nation among the rest, stripped of much of its power and its weaponry.

More From F. L. Lucas: on style in writing

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: I wrote previously about Lucas here and here.]

Here’s a quote from F. L. Lucas that remains all too true. In fact, I believe it’s only become more true since he wrote it. Although I’m not sure when that was, it had to have been some time between the Second World War and Lucas’ death in 1967:

The two World Wars came in part, like much modern literature and art, because men, whose nature is to tire of everything in turn… tired of common sense and civilization.

Lucas was quite obviously a great prose stylist (he was also a poet, it turns out). What’s more, he wrote a book on style in writing that contains many nuggets of good advice. Some stylish excerpts:

Communication [is] more difficult than we may think. We are all serving life sentences of solitary confinement within our bodies; like prisoners, we have, as it were, to tap in awkward code to our fellow men in their neighboring cells. . . . In some modern literature there has appeared a tendency to replace communication by a private maundering to oneself which shall inspire one’s audience to maunder privately to themselves–rather as if the author handed round a box of drugged cigarettes.

…a writer may cultivate the obscure, to seem profound. But even carefully muddied puddles are soon fathomed. Or he may cultivate eccentricity, to seem original. But really original people do not have to think about being original–they can no more help it than they can help breathing. They do not need to dye their hair green.

…without passion little gets done; yet, without control of that passion, its effects are largely ill or null.

Swedish banks charge you for the privilege of letting them have your money

The New Neo Posted on by

Is this the wave of the future?:

Central bank policymakers had believed they had run out of room to support their respective economies, with their interest rates held close to the floor.

…Cut rates too deeply, [they thought], and savers would end up facing negative returns. In that case, this could encourage people to take their savings out of the bank and hoard them in cash…

[But as] central bank rates have turned negative, the rates offered on bank deposits have followed. Yet rather than stuffing cash under mattresses, people have left their money in the bank or spent it.

This is already happening in Sweden.

One of my first thoughts on reading that people are not pulling their money out of the banks was that perhaps the Swedes are just used to the habit of banking and don’t quite know where else to put their money. After all, a few hundred thousand kronor would be hard to stuff under a mattress, and perhaps anxiety-provoking. And it is true that Sweden already has a very high savings rate.

But wait; it actually may become worse. Some folks in charge have gotten the bright idea of giving people no alternative to banking it or investing it:

One solution is to give savers nowhere else to go. This idea was floated by the Bank of England’s chief economist in recent weeks, who made the case that sub-zero rates will be needed in the near future.

Andy Haldane, a member of the Monetary Policy Committee (MPC), the UK’s equivalent of the FOMC suggested that to achieve properly negative rates, the abolition of cash itself might be necessary.

Apparently, that’s one reason why the negative interest policy has been successful in Sweden, which is reported to already be practically cashless. If people aren’t used to cash anymore, they may be willing to pay to avoid using it. Of course, cash has the advantage of usually being untraceable, and people may come to value that aspect of it.

The planners aren’t going to boil that cash frog all at once, though. They’ll do it slowly, carefully:

No politician is likely to prohibit cash entirely, at least not until it has already all but disappeared from day to day life. Concerns about surveillance and the power of the state are likely to grow, as electronic money is completely traceable.

“Cash is useful for small transactions, and until it disappears naturally, I would be loathe to say let’s outlaw it,” says Sir Charles.

“Sir Charles” is Sir Charles Bean, former deputy governor at the Bank of England. One of the first steps will be to outlaw large-denomination notes, which are often used in drug transactions.

If you think of it, cash is a form of liberty, isn’t it?

The Middle East “migrants” in Europe: no end in sight

The New Neo Posted on by

Europe has bitten off more than it can chew:

What’s happening right now in Europe far surpasses past migrations…

I don’t see it stopping,” Amin Awad, director of the Middle East and North Africa division of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, told reporters in Geneva. If anything, he said, the thousands of refugees arriving daily at the borders of European countries may be “the tip of the iceberg.”

The warnings came as the impact of the European Union’s decision on Tuesday to apportion 120,000 migrants among member countries ”” in some cases, against their leaders’ wishes ”” continued to ripple across the Continent.

…Up to 10,000 migrants have been entering Austria daily, mostly from Hungary…

What part of “if you reward a behavior you will get more of it” don’t the leaders of Western Europe understand? Why would it surprise anyone that this “migration” is surpassing all previous ones? Previous ones (except for “guest worker” programs) mostly involved bona fide refugees from the horrors of war, rather than welfare-country window shoppers. There are definitely some of the former here, fleeing the horrors. But what percentage of those are coming, compared to what percentage of the opportunistic window-shoppers?

Finland—it’s too cold and boring, say the “migrants,” who are leaving Finland for more temperate climes—lets you know what’s going on.

And the fact that the leaders of the Eastern European countries are not allowed by the EU to say “no” is chilling. This isn’t just an issue that involves sovereignty; this is at the very heart of sovereignty.

I wonder how far…

The New Neo Posted on by

…this effort will get:

…[A]n influential Republican Party official is now seeking the ouster of another GOP leader who has frustrated conservatives: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

“McConnell needs to resign!!” Louisiana GOP Chairman Roger Villere wrote in a Facebook posting..

“Mitch is a good and honorable guy, but the base is leaving our party,” Mr. Villere said in an interview with The Washington Times. “I’m out in the field all the time and we have all our elections this year for state offices, and it’s hurting us tremendously with our elections.”

I don’t think this will work, because I don’t think there are enough conservative GOP senators to pressure McConnell sufficiently.

And then there’s the same potential problem as exists with the Boehner ouster: who would replace him?

On the other hand, there’s no question that the base is deeply angry. If the GOP been paying attention to blogs all these years, they’d have learned that—way back in 2012, if not earlier.

Calling all Trump supporters

The New Neo Posted on by

I’m curious what you think of his “60 Minutes” appearance.

Some excerpts:

Scott Pelley: You say you’re gonna lower taxes on the middle class, what are we talking about?

Donald Trump: Well, we’re talking about numbers that will be announced over the next two days. And they’ll be significant for the middle class.

Scott Pelley: Do you know what the numbers are?

Donald Trump: I know ’em right now.

Scott Pelley: Well, why don’t you tell me? This is 60 Minutes. It’s time to tell the folks at home the details of what you intend to do.

Donald Trump: I know. I know. I will say this, there will be a large segment of our country that will have a zero rate, a zero rate. And that’s something I haven’t told anybody.

Scott Pelley: You’re talking about–

Donald Trump: We’re talking about people in the low-income brackets that are supposed to be paying taxes, many of them don’t anyway.

Scott Pelley: You’re talking about making part of the population exempt from income tax?

Donald Trump: That is correct.

Scott Pelley: You’re talking about cutting corporate income taxes?

Donald Trump: That is correct.

Scott Pelley: But there’s a $19 trillion federal debt.

Donald Trump: That’s right. We’re gonna grow the economy so much–

Donald Trump: Let’s say Ford– let’s say Ford moves to Mexico. If they want to sell that car in the United States they pay a tax. Here’s what’s gonna happen, they’re not going to build their plant there. They’re going to build it in the United States.

Scott Pelley: But there is a North American Free Trade Agreement.

Donald Trump: And there shouldn’t be. It’s a disaster.

Scott Pelley: But it is there.

Donald Trump: OK, yeah, but–

Scott Pelley: If you’re president, you’re going to have to live with it.

Donald Trump: Excuse me, we will either renegotiate it or we will break it. Because, you know, every agreement has an end.

Scott Pelley: You can’t just break the law.

Donald Trump: Excuse me, every agreement has an end. Every agreement has to be fair. Every agreement has a defraud clause. We’re being defrauded by all these countries.

Scott Pelley: Let’s assume your wall has gone up.

Donald Trump: Good.

Scott Pelley: Eleven, 12 million illegal immigrants–

Donald Trump: Or whatever the number is.

Scott Pelley: Still in the country, what do you do?

Donald Trump: If they’ve done well they’re going out and they’re coming back in legally. Because you said it—-

Scott Pelley: You’re rounding them all up?

Donald Trump: We’re rounding ’em up in a very humane way, in a very nice way. And they’re going to be happy because they want to be legalized. And, by the way, I know it doesn’t sound nice. But not everything is nice.

Scott Pelley: It doesn’t sound practical.

Donald Trump: It is practical. It’s going to work. They have to come here legally. And you know, when I talk about the wall, and I said it before, we’re going to have a tremendous, beautiful, wide-open door. Nice big door. We want people to come into the country.

Scott Pelley: You know, the problem with a lot of these ideas is that the president of the United States is not the CEO of America.

Donald Trump: That’s right.

ott Pelley: The constitution is going to tell you no.

Donald Trump: We’ll see.

Scott Pelley: The Congress is going to tell you no.

Donald Trump: We’ll see.

Scott Pelley: The Supreme Court is gonna tell you no.

Donald Trump: Well, we’ll see.

Scott Pelley: And you’re not used to working in an environment like that.

Donald Trump: Look–I do it all the time.

Scott Pelley: Who tells you no?

Donald Trump: I do it all the time. Not that many people– I do it all the time. And I deal with governments all the time. I have, overseas, I have vast holdings overseas.

Scott Pelley: What’s your plan for Obamacare?

Donald Trump: Obamacare’s going to be repealed and replaced. Obamacare is a disaster if you look at what’s going on with premiums where they’re up 40, 50, 55 percent.

Scott Pelley: How do you fix it?

Donald Trump: There’s many different ways, by the way. Everybody’s got to be covered. This is an un-Republican thing for me to say because a lot of times they say, “No, no, the lower 25 percent that can’t afford private. But–”

Scott Pelley: Universal health care.

Donald Trump: I am going to take care of everybody. I don’t care if it costs me votes or not. Everybody’s going to be taken care of much better than they’re taken care of now.

Scott Pelley: The uninsured person is going to be taken care of. How? How?

Donald Trump: They’re going to be taken care of. I would make a deal with existing hospitals to take care of people. And, you know what, if this is probably–

Scott Pelley: Make a deal? Who pays for it?

Donald Trump: –the government’s gonna pay for it. But we’re going to save so much money on the other side.

I’ll stop there, but there’s plenty more.

Read the whole thing. And obviously, despite the title of the post, I’m not calling only Trump supporters.

Pope Francis went to prison…

The New Neo Posted on by

…for a visit, that is.

And there he said a curious thing:

…[T]his morning at the Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility on the outskirts of Philadelphia…the pontiff spoke and met with roughly 75 inmates and their families. Slowly, he moved around the room, stopping to clasp hands and look into each face, murmuring a blessing to those who requested one and wrapping his arms around those who rose for an embrace…

…[A] necessary precondition for a society that locks people away and forgets about them is a comfort with sorting individuals into categories and determining that some are not worth saving. To this idea, Francis offered a stern, unambiguous rebuke: “Jesus ”¦ comes to save us from the lie that says no one can change,” he said, before repeating, “the lie that says no one can change.”

But has anyone ever heard anyone utter that particular lie? I haven’t encountered it in all my years listening to people talk about prison and the possibility of rehabilitation. I’ve never heard anyone say no one can change.

The idea that certain people can’t change; now, that I’ve heard. I’ve even heard that it’s hard to tell who can and who can’t change, or that not that many criminals can or do change (which the recidivism figures bear out).

But no one changing? Never heard of it. Of course people can and do change. They get religion. They get older and wiser. They get tired. They meet someone who gives them a reason to live.

Maybe what the Pope actually meant to say got lost in translation, because I don’t get it.

However, it did remind me of something I’ve long thought, which concerns the Catholic Church’s failure to deal with its abusing pedophile priest crisis in a way that adequately protected children. During its height, sometimes—after a short retreat for treatment and/or prayerful contemplation—abusive priests were merely shuffled off to a new venue. This seemed like a coverup, and effectively it was.

I do not have my finger on the pulse of the Church, to say the least. But many years ago it occurred to me that since the Church believes—really, really believes—in the power of prayer and redemption, it would make a certain amount of sense that, if an abusive priest reported that prayer and grace (and psychological treatment) had cured him, the Church would be disinclined to doubt him. I know it’s not the whole story of the Church’s failure to protect children. But I believe it was at least in part this belief in the power of even the worst people to change for the better that led the Church to trust these priests too easily, and to believe not only that it was a lie to say that none of them could ever change, but that it was a lie to say that any of them couldn’t and hadn’t changed.

[NOTE: That’s not an excuse on my part, by the way. It’s merely a tentative, partial explanation.]

[ADDENDUM: I just noticed this article which quotes the Pope’s statements yesterday to survivors of sexual abuse by priests.]

I challenge anyone…

The New Neo Posted on by

…to watch this video of Carly Fiorina being interviewed today by Chuck Todd and call her some sort of liberal in conservative clothing.*

I’ve been impressed with Fiorina from the start. In my mind, there are several leading candidates, and she is most definitely among them. But this particular interview may just put her over the top for me, for now.

Have a look and a listen:

[NOTE: * I’m pretty sure that someone will manage to do it.]

Conversations with my son

The New Neo Posted on by

I’ve been going through some old papers and trying to get rid of a lot of them.

Sometimes I even succeed in throwing something out. But some things need saving. Sometimes I come across notes I made about incidents I’d completely forgotten—which can include little anecdotes about my son when he was a toddler.

Here’s one that happened when he was 3 1/2 years old. We’d been looking at the pictures in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and the conversation began with a comment by my son about one of the Tenniel drawings in the book:

He: That’s old-fashioned.

Me: The man who did it lived long ago, so he didn’t think it was old-fashioned.

He: And we live in this time so we don’t think it’s old-fashioned.

Me: But 200 years from now, people will think our times are old-fashioned.

He: But they won’t think their times are, but people after them will.

Now, you may not believe this dialogue ever occurred. But I can assure you I didn’t make it up, and I labeled it with his age. He was a challenging child, and very very interested in numbers and time.

Here’s another one, from when he was somewhere around 4 or 5 years old. It occurred during a period when there was some trouble in my marriage, which I’d never spoken of to my son but which he’d probably picked up on:

He: How does it feel to be a grownup?

Me: [Pause] Well, that’s hard to say. It’s hard to describe in words. Anyway, it’s different for everyone. I guess it’s just something that has to be lived.

He: But what’s it like for you?

Me: [pause] It’s hard to say in words.

He: Try.

Me: Well, some parts are good, some parts not so good.

He: Tell me about the not so good parts.

Me: I just can’t describe it in words.

He: [joking] Why don’t you describe it in birds?

That one doesn’t seem possible, either. But there it is on paper, and in fact it’s very consistent with the personality of my son. Whom I love very, very dearly.

In words and in birds.