The View from Right Field

Farewell to Paul Ryan. And “Auf Wiedersehen.”

I wrote about Paul Ryan retiring back in April, when he announced he would not be running for reelection to the House of Representatives.  With Speaker Ryan’s term ending January 2, let me add a few final thoughts. 

If you want to know why Paul Ryan is leaving, I would refer you to two things.  First, a column by Megan McArdle at the end of November:

“‘It’s such a depressing time for people like you and me,’ said my dinner companion on Thursday. I raised a querying eyebrow.

‘We’re policy people,’ he explained. ‘And policy is dead.’

Election Results In the Age of Trump

The main thing we can say about the results yesterday is something we could have said before the election: Divisiveness and partisanship will increase next year, and political consultants will get even richer.  Six months from now, everybody will look back on the last two years as the good old days of peace and calm (except political consultants – see the prior sentence).

While neither side in the tweet- and spending-fest that ended on Tuesday focused on it very much, the 115th Congress actually accomplished some important things.  The Democrats didn’t like them, but Congress passed a tax reform bill, finally increased defense spending, and beat back a number of late-term Obama administration regulations via the previously little-used Congressional Review Act.   Not to mention the judges Mitch McConnell got through the Senate.¹

Voting In the Age of Trump

So, what do you do next Tuesday if you’re not a Democrat (and will probably never be as they move more and more to the left) and yet you’re appalled by much of what Donald Trump says and especially how he says it.  Plus, good Republicans, like Paul Ryan, are leaving.  But you still have to vote.

One idea might be to figure out who you want to be happy on Tuesday night.  Or, alternatively, who you don’t want to be happy on Tuesday.  Maybe, in an ultimate case of “the lesser of two evils,” the question is whose victory party would be more obnoxious?  The Democratic celebrations could be pretty bad, and their policy ideas, to the extent they have any other than “Trump’s horrible” and “Medicare for All will be free,” are not where I think the country should go.

Brett Kavanaugh: Thoughts on a Story That May Never End

While Brett Kavanaugh has been confirmed as a justice on the Supreme Court, one assumes the controversy over his nomination will go on for a long time (forever-?), so it is probably not too late for me to make a few comments.

First, there is the question of whether we must automatically “Believe Women,” as a full-page ad said in The Wall Street Journal (and probably lots of other papers).¹  With respect to this question, Megan McArdle’s column in The Washington Post on Susan Collins’s vote on now-Justice Kavanaugh’s confirmation, talked about some things I hadn’t thought of before:

“Women know, in a visceral way that men never can, what it is like to live your life in consciousness of a single, inescapable fact: that virtually every man you meet is capable of physically overpowering you and taking what you won’t give them freely. We also know that if some man attacks us, it is likely to be in a private place, with no witnesses, and that the physical evidence will often be little different from the aftermath of consensual sex.

Kavanaugh, Clinton, and Kennedy

Let me see if I understand the view that some people have.  It didn’t matter what Bill Clinton was accused of doing when he was Attorney General and Governor of Arkansas.  It didn’t matter what Teddy Kennedy did when he was Senator from Massachusetts.  But it is absolutely critical what Brett Kavanaugh is alleged to have done when he was a teenager in high school and college.

My Strategy for the 2020 Presidential Election

As the 2018 political campaign picks up speed (assuming it ever slowed down), Democratic presidential hopefuls are already planning for 2020.  I don’t know if Donald Trump is thinking about 2020 yet, but given that he normally doesn’t seem to think even a week ahead, let alone two years, it is perhaps doubtful.

In any case, I have come up with my strategy for the 2020 election – and it mirrors what worked so well in 2016.  First, the Cubs make the postseason.  Then, they win the NLDS and the NLCS.  Finally, the World Series goes the full seven games – and the Cubs win!  Then comes the victory parade.  And presto, by the time the parade is over, the election is the next week.

In 2016, that gave me a presidential campaign of about four days, which was more than enough.  With a little luck, the Cubs can do it again in 2020.  For that matter, it sounds like a good plan for this year, too.  Though it would be okay if the World Series didn’t go the full seven games – as long as the Cubs win.  I could handle a slightly longer campaign, if necessary.

The Media Is “Shocked, Shocked” That Companies Are Paying Consulting Fees to Michael Cohen, Et Al.

The media are aghast at the payments companies made to Michael Cohen for consulting services with respect to the Trump administration.¹  Apparently, even Robert Mueller is investigating some of the payments.²  Which raises the question: What kind of rock have these people been living under?

Of course, companies are going to pay big bucks to people who they think they might have connections with, or insight into, the powers-that-be in Washington.³  That’s the system.  That is part of the swamp that Donald Trump said he was going to drain.  I realize President Trump is not doing all that much to drain the swamp, but given all of the other things he has said that were not entirely accurate, why would anybody have believed him on this one?

TDS: Trump Derangement Syndrome

We have previously had ODS and BDS (i.e., Obama Derangement Syndrome and Bush Derangement Syndrome [George W. Bush, that is]).  ODS and BDS can be explained as stressing out over President Obama or President Bush all the time, thinking that everything wrong was their fault, and worrying that the country might never recover.  We had a form of CDS (i.e., Clinton Derangement Syndrome) back in the nineties (particularly during Bill Clinton’s second term), even if it wasn’t called that.¹  There was probably a RRDS (i.e., Ronald Reagan Derangement Syndrome), though it, too, would not have had that name.  There definitely was a NDS (i.e., Nixon Derangement Syndrome), which started not in 1969 or 1973 (with Watergate), but in 1948.²  However, I don’t think any of them, even ODS, was as all-consuming as TDS (except maybe NDS during the last few months of Watergate).

TDS has been going full strength since Donald Trump was inaugurated – if not since he was elected (or before).³   It’s hard to read a newspaper or watch a news show (or check your smartphone, for those who get their news that way) without seeing all kinds of things about Donald Trump: good, bad, crazy, porn, etc.  And we have 33 months to go (at a minimum).

Paul Ryan Is Retiring

This is truly sad.  Paul Ryan was one of the most principled and thoughtful members of Congress.  Instead of tweets and unrealistic positions, he actually tried to make a difference.  He pushed for programs to actually help people who needed help.  For him, being in Congress wasn’t all about getting re-elected. 

In 2008, he proposed “The Roadmap for America’s Future,” which was a plan to increase economic growth by reforming the tax code and Medicare and Social Security.  When he became chairman of the House Budget Committee, he wrote “The Path to Prosperity.”  While most politicians seem to focus on looking good, Paul Ryan wanted to do good.

The Advantage of Not Voting for Donald Trump

As the world seems to going pretty much to he** in a handbasket, an argument can be made that Republicans who did not vote for Donald Trump are the lucky ones.

When Democrats come up with more of their ideas to solve the problems of the world with more and more government, we can be glad we’re not Democrats.  Because we understand that the fact the Berlin Wall has been gone for almost 30 years, doesn’t make those kinds of ideas any more sensible now than they were then.

When President Trump comes up with another of his “really unusual” ideas, fires somebody on Twitter, or yet again says something that just isn’t true, we can honestly say that we didn’t vote for him – and not feel like we have to defend him because we supported him.