Wishing for a Tank-Free Fourth
It could be worse. There’s always James Buchanan.
By Gail Collins
July 3, 2019
Happy Fourth of July, everybody. I want you to have a great day. No moaning about the state of the nation.
Don’t obsess about Donald Trump! It’s true he thought watching a bunch of tanks roll through Washington, D.C., would be a great way of celebrating our national character. Fortunately, it turned out the city streets couldn’t support his vision. The military came up with a compromise, dragging in tanks and other tanklike vehicles on flatbed trucks, in a very expensive show totally unrelated to their actual function.
Some people might think of this as a metaphor for the whole Trump administration. Feel free. It’s Independence Day.
This is a moment when we’re meant to think about our founding fathers, and it’s good to remember the warts along with the heroics. We celebrate Thomas Jefferson as the author of the Declaration of Independence, who risked everything to throw off the yoke of British tyranny. But he was also a rich kid who inherited a fortune from his father and then lost most of it due to business ineptitude.
Pause to contemplate whether that reminds you of anybody we know.
The Declaration of Independence was actually written by a committee of five — besides Jefferson there was John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman of Connecticut and Robert Livingston of New York. Franklin was 70 at the time — younger than Joe Biden! We don’t remember much about the last two, and perhaps you could look them up as a holiday project.
As a start, I can tell you they were both great citizens who would never have staged a parade in their own honor with taxpayer money.
Besides being a military hero, George Washington set the country on its course to democracy by quashing talk about making him king after the Revolution and refusing to allow his fellow citizens to call him “Your Excellency.”
We will stop here for a second to recall that Donald Trump’s friendship with Kim Jong-un got a big boost when Kim wrote Trump a letter referring to him as “Your …” Well, you can guess.
Although Trump has taken only a few steps into North Korea, he must have seen those massive military parades in Kim’s honor and maybe gotten a little jealous. Back in 2017, when he made his first official visit to France, Trump was wowed when he got to join President Emmanuel Macron reviewing the Bastille Day parade. There was something about all those guys with guns marching past you.
We’ve been careening toward tankification ever since. It’s really a shame he didn’t start his presidency with a visit to Indonesia, where they celebrate Independence Day with pole-climbing contests.
Trump is sort of the anti-George Washington, a president who thinks everything should be about him, including holidays. Last year, when he was asked the traditional Thanksgiving question about what he was most grateful for, the answer almost instantly turned to, um, himself. (“I’ve made a tremendous difference in the country. This country is so much stronger now than it was when I took office that you wouldn’t believe it.”)
Well, he did pardon the turkeys.
Maybe we should feel lucky that the special parade plans weren’t a lot worse. Imagine the possibilities. We could have Ivanka skipping along in front, tossing flowers to the common folk while Jared follows behind on a leash.
The president doesn’t think the whole affair is going to be very expensive — after all, the government already has a bunch of tanks and planes. “All we need is the fuel,” explained the man whose first term is going to run up a $5 trillion deficit.
We’ve had Independence Day celebrations at the White House since Jefferson’s time, and some have worked out better than others. In 1845, when James Polk was president, wayward fireworks killed two bystanders. Polk was not really a lucky guy. When he was a teenager, he was operated on for a urinary stone removal without anesthetics, and it’s possible the procedure left him impotent. I am telling you all this as a reminder that there’s a whole lot more to our national history than military hardware.
Exactly 50 years after the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died on the same day. They had been huge rivals, but in retirement they started exchanging letters and became friends. It’s a lovely story, right? And I believe it’s true, even though it was a lot easier to manipulate political legends back in the days before the Freedom of Information Act, which was signed into law on July 4, 1966.
We’ve had a lot of great moments and national heroes, but the best thing about the American story is how we’ve moved forward even through totally terrible administrations. This is a country that elected Washington, Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But it also survived Millard Fillmore, Franklin Pierce and Warren Harding.
Enjoy the fireworks and drink a toast to awful presidents. If we got through James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson and Watergate, we can probably get through anything.
Which is pretty much our current challenge.
Happy Independence Day.
Showing posts with label Gail Collins. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Gail Collins. Show all posts
The Great Al Franken Moment - Gail Collins
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/08/opinion/al-franken-sexual-harassment.html?rref=collection%2Fcolumn%2Fgail-collins&action=click&contentCollection=opinion®ion=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=collection
DEC. 8, 2017
Ten years from now, do you think we’ll be talking about where we were when Al Franken announced he was resigning from the Senate?
You never can tell.
It was a historic moment that had virtually nothing to do with Franken himself. In the grand cavalcade of sexual assault charges we’ve been hearing lately, his list — from fanny-gropes to tongue-thrusts — is appalling but pretty minor league. And the picture of Franken feeling up the well-protected breasts of a sleeping colleague on a tour could have been subtitled “Portrait of a Comedian Who Does Not Suspect He’ll Ever Run for Senator.”
“Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,” he said in a rather bitter farewell address.
Franken was a good politician, and many Democrats hoped he might grow into a presidential candidate. But it was his destiny to serve history in a different way. He was caught up in a rebellion of epic proportion, one that was not just about unwanted groping but a whole new stage in the movement of women into the center of public life.
For most of the long span of Western civilization, they were consigned to the home. (Back in the 1860s, the A. T. Stewart Dry Goods Store in New York City installed a ladies’ restroom in what was possibly the first acknowledgment that respectable women might be outside their homes long enough to need to go to the bathroom.) A century ago they won the right to vote, but it didn’t come attached to the right to walk down the sidewalk alone.
Over the last 50 years or so, the rules about a woman’s place were shattered. It’s still hard to appreciate how vast the change was. It began at a time when, in many states, jury duty was regarded as an inappropriate task for women since it would take them away from their housework. They almost never worked in the outside world unless they were too poor and desperate to stay in their proper place.
Now we live in a world where men who were hoping to hand over their business to the next generation, or maybe have a doctor in the family, look at their new baby girl without a shred of disappointment. I saw all this happen, and it knocks me out whenever I think about it.
But it’s a revolution still in the making. The struggle for equal opportunity is far from over, and men haven’t all adapted to the presence of women at the next desk, in the conference room or driving together to the big meeting in Dayton.
Some are lecherous bosses who think their power gives them a version of the right of the old lords to sample the favors of every girl in the neighborhood. Some are otherwise nice people under the deeply mistaken impression they’re so attractive no woman would mind a surprise hand up her skirt.
It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’d need to go through a huge social trauma that would firmly establish the new rules. And here we are. We’ve had three resignations from Congress this week. (One involved a lawmaker asking female staff members if they’d act as a surrogate mother. Try to imagine a female representative inquiring whether men in the office want to be sperm donors.) There are sexual harassment crises in state legislatures from Alaska to Florida. The entertainment and communications worlds are rocking.
“This is our moment,” said Representative Jackie Speier, the San Francisco Democrat who’s been one of the leaders of the anti-harassment forces in Congress.
The moment won’t really have arrived until the same thing is happening everywhere from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to fast-food franchises. But it’s a start.
“It does feel like a tipping point,” said Estelle Freedman, a Stanford University historian who’s written extensively about the way earlier generations of American men cheerfully recast rape as “seduction” and sexual harassment on the streets as “mashing.”
The critical combination, Freedman said, was a new ethos combined with the movement of women into positions of power. Franken was forced out of the Senate because there were women senators who could lead the call for him to go. “And it was women journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story,” Freedman noted. “All these strains are coming together.”
Franken thought he was one of the leaders of the revolution. And he was, on a political level. But he’s an excellent example of why the uprising had to be extreme and dramatic. As the accusations mounted, he often claimed not to have remembered the incidents. It’s been a pretty common response in the recent uproar.
But we have to have elected officials — and movie stars, and journalists, and professors, and choreographers — who, when confronted with charges of feeling up a constituent or forcing a wet kiss on a co-worker, can honestly and instantly say: “Good Lord, no. I’d never do that.” Just as they would if they were charged with stealing cash from the register or kicking a puppy.
We haven’t had many opportunities lately to contemplate the world moving in exactly the right direction. But here we are. I’m sorry about Al Franken, but still — savor the moment.
DEC. 8, 2017
Ten years from now, do you think we’ll be talking about where we were when Al Franken announced he was resigning from the Senate?
You never can tell.
It was a historic moment that had virtually nothing to do with Franken himself. In the grand cavalcade of sexual assault charges we’ve been hearing lately, his list — from fanny-gropes to tongue-thrusts — is appalling but pretty minor league. And the picture of Franken feeling up the well-protected breasts of a sleeping colleague on a tour could have been subtitled “Portrait of a Comedian Who Does Not Suspect He’ll Ever Run for Senator.”
“Some of the allegations against me are simply not true. Others I remember very differently,” he said in a rather bitter farewell address.
Franken was a good politician, and many Democrats hoped he might grow into a presidential candidate. But it was his destiny to serve history in a different way. He was caught up in a rebellion of epic proportion, one that was not just about unwanted groping but a whole new stage in the movement of women into the center of public life.
For most of the long span of Western civilization, they were consigned to the home. (Back in the 1860s, the A. T. Stewart Dry Goods Store in New York City installed a ladies’ restroom in what was possibly the first acknowledgment that respectable women might be outside their homes long enough to need to go to the bathroom.) A century ago they won the right to vote, but it didn’t come attached to the right to walk down the sidewalk alone.
Over the last 50 years or so, the rules about a woman’s place were shattered. It’s still hard to appreciate how vast the change was. It began at a time when, in many states, jury duty was regarded as an inappropriate task for women since it would take them away from their housework. They almost never worked in the outside world unless they were too poor and desperate to stay in their proper place.
Now we live in a world where men who were hoping to hand over their business to the next generation, or maybe have a doctor in the family, look at their new baby girl without a shred of disappointment. I saw all this happen, and it knocks me out whenever I think about it.
But it’s a revolution still in the making. The struggle for equal opportunity is far from over, and men haven’t all adapted to the presence of women at the next desk, in the conference room or driving together to the big meeting in Dayton.
Some are lecherous bosses who think their power gives them a version of the right of the old lords to sample the favors of every girl in the neighborhood. Some are otherwise nice people under the deeply mistaken impression they’re so attractive no woman would mind a surprise hand up her skirt.
It was inevitable that sooner or later, we’d need to go through a huge social trauma that would firmly establish the new rules. And here we are. We’ve had three resignations from Congress this week. (One involved a lawmaker asking female staff members if they’d act as a surrogate mother. Try to imagine a female representative inquiring whether men in the office want to be sperm donors.) There are sexual harassment crises in state legislatures from Alaska to Florida. The entertainment and communications worlds are rocking.
“This is our moment,” said Representative Jackie Speier, the San Francisco Democrat who’s been one of the leaders of the anti-harassment forces in Congress.
The moment won’t really have arrived until the same thing is happening everywhere from Wall Street to Silicon Valley to fast-food franchises. But it’s a start.
“It does feel like a tipping point,” said Estelle Freedman, a Stanford University historian who’s written extensively about the way earlier generations of American men cheerfully recast rape as “seduction” and sexual harassment on the streets as “mashing.”
The critical combination, Freedman said, was a new ethos combined with the movement of women into positions of power. Franken was forced out of the Senate because there were women senators who could lead the call for him to go. “And it was women journalists who broke the Harvey Weinstein story,” Freedman noted. “All these strains are coming together.”
Franken thought he was one of the leaders of the revolution. And he was, on a political level. But he’s an excellent example of why the uprising had to be extreme and dramatic. As the accusations mounted, he often claimed not to have remembered the incidents. It’s been a pretty common response in the recent uproar.
But we have to have elected officials — and movie stars, and journalists, and professors, and choreographers — who, when confronted with charges of feeling up a constituent or forcing a wet kiss on a co-worker, can honestly and instantly say: “Good Lord, no. I’d never do that.” Just as they would if they were charged with stealing cash from the register or kicking a puppy.
We haven’t had many opportunities lately to contemplate the world moving in exactly the right direction. But here we are. I’m sorry about Al Franken, but still — savor the moment.
We’ll Be Cheerful if It Kills Us - GAIL COLLINS
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/06/opinion/guns-conceal-carry-reciprocity.html?emc=edit_th_20171207&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
By Gail Collins, Dec. 6, 2017
Hey, there are a lot of big movies opening up this month. One is a “Star Wars” installment and another involves Matt Damon becoming five inches tall.
I am mentioning this just to prepare you for a short discussion of gun laws. There’s been another big vote in Congress, and attention must be paid. But I promise to break up the story with totally unrelated cheerful information whenever possible.
First, the news: On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it impossible for states to do anything about people who carry in guns from other states.
We have seen this idea, known as “concealed carry reciprocity,” before. It basically says gun owners only have to follow the laws of the state they hail from. Some states will give a permit to carry a concealed weapon to an 18-year-old. Some don’t care about a record of stalking. Some don’t have any rules at all — you’re O.K. to pack a pistol if you can breathe.
“The Republicans yell states’ rights all the time, but they’re hypocrites,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. He claimed, in a phone interview, that the last time Congress passed a bill to impose the laws of one state on a different state “it was the Fugitive Slave Act.” We can look forward to more of this discussion since Nadler is now the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. It used to be John Conyers, but then there was that sexual harassment matter.
Did you know “Top Chef” is coming back to TV this week? Perhaps you’re tired of reality cooking contests. But imagine how relaxing it could be to spend an entire hour in a world where the worst possible thing that could happen involves under-seasoning.
The gun bill’s Republican handlers refused to permit an amendment banning bump stocks. Those are the devices that were used by the gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas. But you knew that, right? We now live in a country where average people know what’s required if you want to make an assault rifle work like a machine gun.
The concealed-carry bill is also now chained to another measure aimed at making background checks more efficient. This modest, bipartisan plan came up after the Texas church shooting, when it turned out the gunman had a criminal background that should have precluded him from buying firearms.
The Senate, which really likes the background check bill, is going to have to take the two of them up together. “A cynical ploy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, one of the co-sponsors.
This year a Brussels griffon named Newton won the National Dog Show. His handler said he likes ice cream and is “happy all the time.”
Blumenthal thinks the Senate Democrats can separate the two ideas, kill the concealed-carry bill and send the good background check plan back to the House for passage. This sounds promising, except for the part where it depends on the House Republican leadership taking a principled stand.
On Wednesday, those leaders had everything well under control. So there was no suspense whatsoever and the gun debate took place in a near-empty House, with a half-dozen people hanging around waiting for their turn to say something … inevitable. Democrats decried the fact that the Republicans didn’t want to work together. Republicans said carrying a gun made you safer.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming declared the right to carry a concealed weapon is “God given.” We will not pursue the question of What Would Jesus Pack.
American Airlines, which accidentally gave its pilots Christmas vacation, has worked out a deal so there will actually be people available to fly the planes.
Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who was in charge of getting the gun bill through the House, expressed dismay at the tenor of the debate, such as it was. “Shame on us,” he said.
Collins seemed particularly offended when a Democrat called him a “puppet” of the National Rifle Association. Which seems a little impolite, if reasonably accurate. However, Collins did refer to the opposition as “a group who enjoys killing babies.”
A family in Florida says a cat saved their kids from a rattlesnake. The cat’s name is Oreo and he is recovering from a nasty bite.
The Democrats complained that there were much better ways for the House to spend its time. Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida — home of Oreo! — suggested that instead of trying to mess with the states’ right to do their own gun regulations, the members should be working on preventing a government shutdown. Which is right around the corner.
Actually, it could come on Saturday. Followed by the deportation of 800,000 Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children.
And did you know the queen of England has invited Prince Harry’s new fiancée to Christmas dinner? This is highly unusual, but that Meghan Markle is so nice.
By Gail Collins, Dec. 6, 2017
Hey, there are a lot of big movies opening up this month. One is a “Star Wars” installment and another involves Matt Damon becoming five inches tall.
I am mentioning this just to prepare you for a short discussion of gun laws. There’s been another big vote in Congress, and attention must be paid. But I promise to break up the story with totally unrelated cheerful information whenever possible.
First, the news: On Wednesday, the House of Representatives passed a bill that would make it impossible for states to do anything about people who carry in guns from other states.
We have seen this idea, known as “concealed carry reciprocity,” before. It basically says gun owners only have to follow the laws of the state they hail from. Some states will give a permit to carry a concealed weapon to an 18-year-old. Some don’t care about a record of stalking. Some don’t have any rules at all — you’re O.K. to pack a pistol if you can breathe.
“The Republicans yell states’ rights all the time, but they’re hypocrites,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler of New York. He claimed, in a phone interview, that the last time Congress passed a bill to impose the laws of one state on a different state “it was the Fugitive Slave Act.” We can look forward to more of this discussion since Nadler is now the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee. It used to be John Conyers, but then there was that sexual harassment matter.
Did you know “Top Chef” is coming back to TV this week? Perhaps you’re tired of reality cooking contests. But imagine how relaxing it could be to spend an entire hour in a world where the worst possible thing that could happen involves under-seasoning.
The gun bill’s Republican handlers refused to permit an amendment banning bump stocks. Those are the devices that were used by the gunman who killed 58 people in Las Vegas. But you knew that, right? We now live in a country where average people know what’s required if you want to make an assault rifle work like a machine gun.
The concealed-carry bill is also now chained to another measure aimed at making background checks more efficient. This modest, bipartisan plan came up after the Texas church shooting, when it turned out the gunman had a criminal background that should have precluded him from buying firearms.
The Senate, which really likes the background check bill, is going to have to take the two of them up together. “A cynical ploy,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, one of the co-sponsors.
This year a Brussels griffon named Newton won the National Dog Show. His handler said he likes ice cream and is “happy all the time.”
Blumenthal thinks the Senate Democrats can separate the two ideas, kill the concealed-carry bill and send the good background check plan back to the House for passage. This sounds promising, except for the part where it depends on the House Republican leadership taking a principled stand.
On Wednesday, those leaders had everything well under control. So there was no suspense whatsoever and the gun debate took place in a near-empty House, with a half-dozen people hanging around waiting for their turn to say something … inevitable. Democrats decried the fact that the Republicans didn’t want to work together. Republicans said carrying a gun made you safer.
Liz Cheney of Wyoming declared the right to carry a concealed weapon is “God given.” We will not pursue the question of What Would Jesus Pack.
American Airlines, which accidentally gave its pilots Christmas vacation, has worked out a deal so there will actually be people available to fly the planes.
Representative Doug Collins, a Georgia Republican who was in charge of getting the gun bill through the House, expressed dismay at the tenor of the debate, such as it was. “Shame on us,” he said.
Collins seemed particularly offended when a Democrat called him a “puppet” of the National Rifle Association. Which seems a little impolite, if reasonably accurate. However, Collins did refer to the opposition as “a group who enjoys killing babies.”
A family in Florida says a cat saved their kids from a rattlesnake. The cat’s name is Oreo and he is recovering from a nasty bite.
The Democrats complained that there were much better ways for the House to spend its time. Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida — home of Oreo! — suggested that instead of trying to mess with the states’ right to do their own gun regulations, the members should be working on preventing a government shutdown. Which is right around the corner.
Actually, it could come on Saturday. Followed by the deportation of 800,000 Dreamers, who were brought to the country illegally as children.
And did you know the queen of England has invited Prince Harry’s new fiancée to Christmas dinner? This is highly unusual, but that Meghan Markle is so nice.
How to Handle Donald Trump - Gail Collins
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/17/opinion/trump-divisive-charlottesville-racism-response.html?smid=fb-nytopinion&smtyp=cur
How to Handle Donald Trump
Gail Collins
AUG. 17, 2017
Donald Trump is still president. Hard to know what to do with this, people.
In less than a week he’s managed to put on one of the most divisive, un-helpful, un-healing presidential performances in American history. It’s been a great stretch for fans of Richard Nixon and James Buchanan.
On Wednesday Trump had to dissolve his business advisory councils because the C.E.O.s were fleeing like panic-stricken geese from a jumbo jet. We now have a president who can’t get the head of Campbell Soup to the White House.
Trump also announced plans to hold a rally next week in Arizona, where he’s said he’s “seriously considering” a pardon for former sheriff Joe Arpaio, the loathsome racial profiler who never met a constitutional amendment he didn’t ignore. Arpaio’s treatment of Latinos won him a criminal contempt conviction, but of course that’s nothing to our leader.
We had no idea how bad this guy was going to be. Admit it — during the campaign you did not consider the possibility that if a terrible tragedy struck the country involving all of our worst political ghosts of the past plus neo-Nazism, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would know the appropriate thing to say but Donald Trump would have no idea.
George W. Bush would have been at the funeral for the slain civil rights demonstrator in a second. About the best Trump could do was to praise Heather Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, for writing “the nicest things” about him. Bro did indeed express appreciation for the president’s denunciation of “those who promote violence and hatred.” That was his written-by-someone-else statement, which preceded the despicable impromptu version.
We’re only safe when he’s using prepared remarks. The extemporaneous Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville wasn’t just tone-deaf and heartless; you had to wonder about the overall mental balance of a man who managed to both defend the alt-right demonstrators in Virginia and brag about his real estate in the neighborhood.
“Does anyone know I own a house in Charlottesville?” Trump asked the stunned reporters. “I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It’s in Charlottesville.”
It was truly the kind of performance you expect from a deranged person, brought out to explain why he blew up a large government building and inquiring cheerfully: “Has anybody seen my car? It’s really nice. A Ford Pinto.”
Also, Trump does not own one of the largest wineries in the United States. Trump Winery is one of the largest wineries in Virginia, which is like bragging you own one of the largest ski resorts in Ohio.
(There’s something about catching these wild misstatements and lies of self-aggrandizement that can actually be soothing in the worst of times. It’s a diversion that gives you a little break from wondering what’s going to happen to the country.)
Meanwhile, business executives were concluding it was morally compromising to be on the White House manufacturing council. It’s hard to imagine what else could happen before autumn kicks in.
We are just beginning to fully understand how critical it is for a president to have at least a minimal understanding of American history. This one seems to have only recently discovered he belongs to the same party as Abraham Lincoln. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” Trump told a political gathering. “Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that. We have to build that up a little more.”
His response to the biggest challenge of his presidency began by blaming “many sides” for the crisis. Then there was the reading of an appropriate, if way overdue, statement. Then came the disastrous press conference on Tuesday, when he was just supposed to read a brief description of the administration plan for infrastructure — something about giving road-builders a reprieve from having to consider the possibility of future flooding.
But he started to take questions and actually say things from his own mind. His staff looked worried, then nervous, then despairing.
Even when Trump is not historically wrong, or making things up to extol his own self-image, or failing to do even the least modicum of national healing at a time of crisis, he’s so incoherent that it’s possible to misunderstand what should be a simple thought.
“I didn’t know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts,” he blathered at one point, then lapsed into that terrible tendency to refer to himself in the third person. “And the facts, as they started coming out, were very well stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful. …”
This can’t go on. We don’t have time to wait for impeachment. Patriotic Republicans and administration officials have to get together and find a way to make sure that Donald Trump will never again say anything in public that is not written on a piece of paper. It’s their duty to the country.
How to Handle Donald Trump
Gail Collins
AUG. 17, 2017
Donald Trump is still president. Hard to know what to do with this, people.
In less than a week he’s managed to put on one of the most divisive, un-helpful, un-healing presidential performances in American history. It’s been a great stretch for fans of Richard Nixon and James Buchanan.
On Wednesday Trump had to dissolve his business advisory councils because the C.E.O.s were fleeing like panic-stricken geese from a jumbo jet. We now have a president who can’t get the head of Campbell Soup to the White House.
Trump also announced plans to hold a rally next week in Arizona, where he’s said he’s “seriously considering” a pardon for former sheriff Joe Arpaio, the loathsome racial profiler who never met a constitutional amendment he didn’t ignore. Arpaio’s treatment of Latinos won him a criminal contempt conviction, but of course that’s nothing to our leader.
We had no idea how bad this guy was going to be. Admit it — during the campaign you did not consider the possibility that if a terrible tragedy struck the country involving all of our worst political ghosts of the past plus neo-Nazism, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz would know the appropriate thing to say but Donald Trump would have no idea.
George W. Bush would have been at the funeral for the slain civil rights demonstrator in a second. About the best Trump could do was to praise Heather Heyer’s mother, Susan Bro, for writing “the nicest things” about him. Bro did indeed express appreciation for the president’s denunciation of “those who promote violence and hatred.” That was his written-by-someone-else statement, which preceded the despicable impromptu version.
We’re only safe when he’s using prepared remarks. The extemporaneous Trump’s response to the violence in Charlottesville wasn’t just tone-deaf and heartless; you had to wonder about the overall mental balance of a man who managed to both defend the alt-right demonstrators in Virginia and brag about his real estate in the neighborhood.
“Does anyone know I own a house in Charlottesville?” Trump asked the stunned reporters. “I own actually one of the largest wineries in the United States. It’s in Charlottesville.”
It was truly the kind of performance you expect from a deranged person, brought out to explain why he blew up a large government building and inquiring cheerfully: “Has anybody seen my car? It’s really nice. A Ford Pinto.”
Also, Trump does not own one of the largest wineries in the United States. Trump Winery is one of the largest wineries in Virginia, which is like bragging you own one of the largest ski resorts in Ohio.
(There’s something about catching these wild misstatements and lies of self-aggrandizement that can actually be soothing in the worst of times. It’s a diversion that gives you a little break from wondering what’s going to happen to the country.)
Meanwhile, business executives were concluding it was morally compromising to be on the White House manufacturing council. It’s hard to imagine what else could happen before autumn kicks in.
We are just beginning to fully understand how critical it is for a president to have at least a minimal understanding of American history. This one seems to have only recently discovered he belongs to the same party as Abraham Lincoln. “Most people don’t even know he was a Republican,” Trump told a political gathering. “Right? Does anyone know? A lot of people don’t know that. We have to build that up a little more.”
His response to the biggest challenge of his presidency began by blaming “many sides” for the crisis. Then there was the reading of an appropriate, if way overdue, statement. Then came the disastrous press conference on Tuesday, when he was just supposed to read a brief description of the administration plan for infrastructure — something about giving road-builders a reprieve from having to consider the possibility of future flooding.
But he started to take questions and actually say things from his own mind. His staff looked worried, then nervous, then despairing.
Even when Trump is not historically wrong, or making things up to extol his own self-image, or failing to do even the least modicum of national healing at a time of crisis, he’s so incoherent that it’s possible to misunderstand what should be a simple thought.
“I didn’t know David Duke was there. I wanted to see the facts,” he blathered at one point, then lapsed into that terrible tendency to refer to himself in the third person. “And the facts, as they started coming out, were very well stated. In fact, everybody said his statement was beautiful. …”
This can’t go on. We don’t have time to wait for impeachment. Patriotic Republicans and administration officials have to get together and find a way to make sure that Donald Trump will never again say anything in public that is not written on a piece of paper. It’s their duty to the country.
Discovering the Limitations of Statues - Gail Collins
Discovering the Limitations of Statues
Gail Collins
AUG. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/statues-trump-confederates-charlottesville.html?emc=edit_th_20170819&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
I believe I have an answer to our statue problem.
There are two ways to look at what happened this week in Charlottesville, Va. One is as a crisis over racism, anti-Semitism and violence. The other is as a crisis over the removal of Robert E. Lee on a horse. We know where our president went. “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” wrote Donald Trump.
Sure, a different president — oh God, for a different president — would have had a larger vision. But for the moment let’s think small and focus on the statue. The nation has around 700 public memorials to the Confederacy, and most people would say that’s more than plenty. But getting rid of statues, any statues, has become very difficult. “They become sacrosanct once they’re erected,” said Kirk Savage, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who’s an expert on the subject. “It’s as if the monuments had been dropped from the sky.”
Pittsburgh, for instance, has a truly awful 100-year-old statue of Stephen Foster, the composer of “My Old Kentucky Home,” looking down in white benevolence on what was commissioned to be “an old darkey reclining at his feet strumming negro airs upon an old banjo.” But city officials haven’t been able to make it go away.
Here in New York we have the problem of Dr. J. Marion Sims in Central Park. Sims is known as the father of American gynecological medicine, and he pioneered a surgical procedure to repair tears that some women suffer during childbirth.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that people living around the statue learned that the way he had perfected his technique was by experimenting without anesthesia on slave women. The city is wrestling with that one, aware that it’s managed to get rid of only one statue in modern history — Civic Virtue, a fountain depicting a large naked man standing (virtue) astride vanquished female figures representing vice and corruption. (A politician named — yes! — Anthony Weiner held a press conference demanding that it be evicted.)
There have always been ways of getting around the problem of unwanted statuary. Erika Doss, a professor in the American studies department at Notre Dame, pointed out that when the American revolution began New Yorkers pulled down a memorial to King George III in Bowling Green. It shouldn’t be all that difficult, she said. “Memorials and monuments have a life span, not unlike the human body. They’re symbols at certain moments. Values change, histories change.”
But these are sensitive times, and we could use a more efficient way to cycle out the pieces that have overstayed their welcome. Suppose they just had expiration dates? Every 20 years, a statue would come up for renewal. A commission could hold hearings, take public comment and then issue a decision. Evictees could go off to a new life at museums or private collections.
It would be a good way to get rid of the huge overrepresentation of military men. When I walk my dog in the morning, I almost always run into the Civil War general Franz Sigel, sitting on a horse looking out over Riverside Park. Actually, the neighborhood only knows about the horse, since our view is mainly equine derrière.
And we could whittle down the politicians. A little later I pass Samuel Tilden, who was governor of New York in the 1870s and an unsuccessful candidate for president. The statue was built from the estate of, um, Samuel Tilden.
Both men were fine Americans, and you wouldn’t want to disrespect them. But if they had due dates it might be possible to give somebody new a turn. We’ve never, for instance, had a statue of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a black city teacher whose refusal to get off a white-only trolley car in 1854 led to the legal integration of New York City mass transit a century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat.
Didn’t even know about Graham, did you? But maybe you would if she had a statue.
Trump, of course, just likes white guys on horses. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced,” he moaned in a Robert E. Lee tweet.
Future generations are never going to see a bronze version of Trump astride his mount. Besides the detail of being perhaps the worst occupant of the White House in American history, our president doesn’t ride. He did once buy a racehorse named Alibi. One of Trump’s former executives has claimed that the colt had to have part of his hooves amputated when his owner forced him to be exercised over the trainer’s objections.
Trump denies this. But if we had more room for new statues, concerned citizens might want to put up some money to erect one of Alibi, limping.
Gail Collins
AUG. 18, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/18/opinion/statues-trump-confederates-charlottesville.html?emc=edit_th_20170819&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
I believe I have an answer to our statue problem.
There are two ways to look at what happened this week in Charlottesville, Va. One is as a crisis over racism, anti-Semitism and violence. The other is as a crisis over the removal of Robert E. Lee on a horse. We know where our president went. “Sad to see the history and culture of our great country being ripped apart with the removal of our beautiful statues and monuments,” wrote Donald Trump.
Sure, a different president — oh God, for a different president — would have had a larger vision. But for the moment let’s think small and focus on the statue. The nation has around 700 public memorials to the Confederacy, and most people would say that’s more than plenty. But getting rid of statues, any statues, has become very difficult. “They become sacrosanct once they’re erected,” said Kirk Savage, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh who’s an expert on the subject. “It’s as if the monuments had been dropped from the sky.”
Pittsburgh, for instance, has a truly awful 100-year-old statue of Stephen Foster, the composer of “My Old Kentucky Home,” looking down in white benevolence on what was commissioned to be “an old darkey reclining at his feet strumming negro airs upon an old banjo.” But city officials haven’t been able to make it go away.
Here in New York we have the problem of Dr. J. Marion Sims in Central Park. Sims is known as the father of American gynecological medicine, and he pioneered a surgical procedure to repair tears that some women suffer during childbirth.
It wasn’t until fairly recently that people living around the statue learned that the way he had perfected his technique was by experimenting without anesthesia on slave women. The city is wrestling with that one, aware that it’s managed to get rid of only one statue in modern history — Civic Virtue, a fountain depicting a large naked man standing (virtue) astride vanquished female figures representing vice and corruption. (A politician named — yes! — Anthony Weiner held a press conference demanding that it be evicted.)
There have always been ways of getting around the problem of unwanted statuary. Erika Doss, a professor in the American studies department at Notre Dame, pointed out that when the American revolution began New Yorkers pulled down a memorial to King George III in Bowling Green. It shouldn’t be all that difficult, she said. “Memorials and monuments have a life span, not unlike the human body. They’re symbols at certain moments. Values change, histories change.”
But these are sensitive times, and we could use a more efficient way to cycle out the pieces that have overstayed their welcome. Suppose they just had expiration dates? Every 20 years, a statue would come up for renewal. A commission could hold hearings, take public comment and then issue a decision. Evictees could go off to a new life at museums or private collections.
It would be a good way to get rid of the huge overrepresentation of military men. When I walk my dog in the morning, I almost always run into the Civil War general Franz Sigel, sitting on a horse looking out over Riverside Park. Actually, the neighborhood only knows about the horse, since our view is mainly equine derrière.
And we could whittle down the politicians. A little later I pass Samuel Tilden, who was governor of New York in the 1870s and an unsuccessful candidate for president. The statue was built from the estate of, um, Samuel Tilden.
Both men were fine Americans, and you wouldn’t want to disrespect them. But if they had due dates it might be possible to give somebody new a turn. We’ve never, for instance, had a statue of Elizabeth Jennings Graham, a black city teacher whose refusal to get off a white-only trolley car in 1854 led to the legal integration of New York City mass transit a century before Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat.
Didn’t even know about Graham, did you? But maybe you would if she had a statue.
Trump, of course, just likes white guys on horses. “The beauty that is being taken out of our cities, towns and parks will be greatly missed and never able to be comparably replaced,” he moaned in a Robert E. Lee tweet.
Future generations are never going to see a bronze version of Trump astride his mount. Besides the detail of being perhaps the worst occupant of the White House in American history, our president doesn’t ride. He did once buy a racehorse named Alibi. One of Trump’s former executives has claimed that the colt had to have part of his hooves amputated when his owner forced him to be exercised over the trainer’s objections.
Trump denies this. But if we had more room for new statues, concerned citizens might want to put up some money to erect one of Alibi, limping.
Couldn’t We Just Trade Presidents? Gail Collins JULY 14, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/14/opinion/couldnt-we-just-trade-presidents.html?emc=edit_th_20170715&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
Couldn’t We Just Trade Presidents?
Gail Collins JULY 14, 2017
Why can’t Emmanuel Macron be our president?
American citizens watching Donald Trump’s visit to Paris must have wondered how we got the wrong guy. Macron seemed so smart, so charming. The fact that he didn’t father any children would not normally be a big selling point, but right now we are yearning for a president with no offspring.
Speaking of which, the Paris journey was dogged by questions about that meeting Donald Trump Jr. took during the presidential campaign. The one at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who was advertised as the bearer of “information that would incriminate Hillary.”
Every day the meeting guest list grows larger. First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner was there. Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, was there. Rob Goldstone, the British P.R. guy who likes to post pictures of himself in funny hats was there — representing a Russian pop singer whose dad is besties with Vladimir Putin.
Latest addition: Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer who’s currently a lobbyist in Washington. Akhmetshin is rather well known in our nation’s capital, where he was recently mentioned by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter complaining about people who register as lobbyists when they really ought to be registering as foreign agents.
And Akhmetshin might have brought somebody else along. Possibly an interpreter. Or something. This information came from Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer, who is not to be confused with Jared Kushner’s lawyer or President Trump’s lawyer.
Pop Quiz: Who else do you think might have been present for that Trump Tower meeting?
A) Ivanka
B) Tiffany
C) Ryan Seacrest
D) Boris and Natasha
Donald Trump was not at the meeting. Didn’t even know about it. Until later. Even then only barely. Lately, when he’s defending his son, Trump has taken to using terms that suggest Junior was accused of cheating on a Boy Scout swim test. Talking with reporters on his flight to Paris, Trump called his eldest “a good boy. He’s a good kid.” This was, as many people observed, while he was on his way to a meeting with the president of France, who is, at 39, exactly the same age as Donald Trump Jr.
On that plane ride, the president also took a question about whether he was really serious about building a Mexican wall with solar panels on top. The answer is, totally. Also, the wall is going to be transparent.
You heard me. This administration is very committed to transparency in everything from releasing Junior’s emails 10 minutes before The New York Times was going to publish them to the border barrier.
“You have to be able to see through it,” the president of the United States explained, because otherwise “when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff. It’s over.”
Once he was back on the ground, Trump had a great time in Paris. Macron pulled out all the stops. Dinner at the Eiffel Tower. Big parade with lots of guns and airplanes. Although the French were celebrating Bastille Day, they added in the 100th anniversary of American troops’ entry into World War I. So you got the impression everything was really all about Trump, which is the best way to our president’s heart.
Trump was so touched he grabbed Macron in a handshake that evolved through so many expressions of affection it could have been featured on a dating site. He also attempted to compliment Macron’s glamorous 64-year-old wife by saying, “You’re in such good shape.”
We should note here that Melania Trump did fine. The Parisian press praised her wardrobe. Unlike her husband, she didn’t say anything weird. Nobody accused her of having sinister meetings with Russians. Give the woman some credit.
Macron was such a successful host that Trump seemed to develop second thoughts on the global warming thing. “And yeah, I mean, something could happen with respect to the Paris Accord. … And if it happens, that’ll be wonderful. …” Trump also took back his previous blasts at Paris, a city he’d claimed wasn’t safe because of the terrorists they’d let come in.
“You know what, it’s going to be just fine, because you have a great president,” he said. The sun rises and sets, and then a new reality is born.
The matter of Junior and the Russian meeting did come up during a brief press conference Trump and Macron held. (Trump, who was supposed to call on two American journalists, called on one American and one Chinese TV reporter.) “I will not interfere in U.S. domestic policy,” said Macron. Trump, who liked that answer a lot, said his son was “a great young man” who did something “a lot of people would do.”
It’s beginning to sound like a lot of people did do it. Of course, they were all either Russians and their associates or top members of the Trump inner circle. If only they’d met in a transparent room.
Couldn’t We Just Trade Presidents?
Gail Collins JULY 14, 2017
Why can’t Emmanuel Macron be our president?
American citizens watching Donald Trump’s visit to Paris must have wondered how we got the wrong guy. Macron seemed so smart, so charming. The fact that he didn’t father any children would not normally be a big selling point, but right now we are yearning for a president with no offspring.
Speaking of which, the Paris journey was dogged by questions about that meeting Donald Trump Jr. took during the presidential campaign. The one at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer who was advertised as the bearer of “information that would incriminate Hillary.”
Every day the meeting guest list grows larger. First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner was there. Paul Manafort, the Trump campaign manager, was there. Rob Goldstone, the British P.R. guy who likes to post pictures of himself in funny hats was there — representing a Russian pop singer whose dad is besties with Vladimir Putin.
Latest addition: Rinat Akhmetshin, a former Soviet military officer who’s currently a lobbyist in Washington. Akhmetshin is rather well known in our nation’s capital, where he was recently mentioned by the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee in a letter complaining about people who register as lobbyists when they really ought to be registering as foreign agents.
And Akhmetshin might have brought somebody else along. Possibly an interpreter. Or something. This information came from Donald Trump Jr.’s lawyer, who is not to be confused with Jared Kushner’s lawyer or President Trump’s lawyer.
Pop Quiz: Who else do you think might have been present for that Trump Tower meeting?
A) Ivanka
B) Tiffany
C) Ryan Seacrest
D) Boris and Natasha
Donald Trump was not at the meeting. Didn’t even know about it. Until later. Even then only barely. Lately, when he’s defending his son, Trump has taken to using terms that suggest Junior was accused of cheating on a Boy Scout swim test. Talking with reporters on his flight to Paris, Trump called his eldest “a good boy. He’s a good kid.” This was, as many people observed, while he was on his way to a meeting with the president of France, who is, at 39, exactly the same age as Donald Trump Jr.
On that plane ride, the president also took a question about whether he was really serious about building a Mexican wall with solar panels on top. The answer is, totally. Also, the wall is going to be transparent.
You heard me. This administration is very committed to transparency in everything from releasing Junior’s emails 10 minutes before The New York Times was going to publish them to the border barrier.
“You have to be able to see through it,” the president of the United States explained, because otherwise “when they throw the large sacks of drugs over, and if you have people on the other side of the wall, you don’t see them — they hit you on the head with 60 pounds of stuff. It’s over.”
Once he was back on the ground, Trump had a great time in Paris. Macron pulled out all the stops. Dinner at the Eiffel Tower. Big parade with lots of guns and airplanes. Although the French were celebrating Bastille Day, they added in the 100th anniversary of American troops’ entry into World War I. So you got the impression everything was really all about Trump, which is the best way to our president’s heart.
Trump was so touched he grabbed Macron in a handshake that evolved through so many expressions of affection it could have been featured on a dating site. He also attempted to compliment Macron’s glamorous 64-year-old wife by saying, “You’re in such good shape.”
We should note here that Melania Trump did fine. The Parisian press praised her wardrobe. Unlike her husband, she didn’t say anything weird. Nobody accused her of having sinister meetings with Russians. Give the woman some credit.
Macron was such a successful host that Trump seemed to develop second thoughts on the global warming thing. “And yeah, I mean, something could happen with respect to the Paris Accord. … And if it happens, that’ll be wonderful. …” Trump also took back his previous blasts at Paris, a city he’d claimed wasn’t safe because of the terrorists they’d let come in.
“You know what, it’s going to be just fine, because you have a great president,” he said. The sun rises and sets, and then a new reality is born.
The matter of Junior and the Russian meeting did come up during a brief press conference Trump and Macron held. (Trump, who was supposed to call on two American journalists, called on one American and one Chinese TV reporter.) “I will not interfere in U.S. domestic policy,” said Macron. Trump, who liked that answer a lot, said his son was “a great young man” who did something “a lot of people would do.”
It’s beginning to sound like a lot of people did do it. Of course, they were all either Russians and their associates or top members of the Trump inner circle. If only they’d met in a transparent room.
Putin Meets Tons of Trumps - Gail Collins, JULY 7, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/07/opinion/putin-meets-tons-of-trumps.html?emc=edit_th_20170708&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
Putin Meets Tons of Trumps
Gail Collins JULY 7, 2017
Say what? Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin. American officials claim he pressed Putin on Russia’s messing in our presidential election. Putin’s people insist Trump accepted Russia’s assurances that nothing happened.
We will now explain how this outcome was inevitable.
Our president, as you know, has ever-changing personas, ranging from statesmanlike Reader-of-Speeches to Nearly Unhinged Trump, a version frequently seen on Twitter.
And Diplomacy Don, who seemed to fall head over heels for Putin.
“President Putin and I have been discussing various things and I think it’s going very well. We’ve had some very, very good talks,” Trump said. This was before the meeting even began. What do you think he was referring to? A late night pajama party? The two had never met in person before, even though, as a candidate, Trump seemed to nurse memories of an imaginary encounter.
Then off they went, for a meeting that went on for more than two hours. Halfway through, Melania came in to remind Trump they had other things to do. Naturally, he ignored her.
The two presidents agreed to a prearranged limited Syrian cease-fire. And they did talk about Russian meddling in the American election. But which Trump do you think brought the subject up? The day before, a version who took a few questions from reporters in Poland seemed to regard the whole matter as the sort of moral equivalent of jaywalking. (“A lot of people interfere. I think it’s been happening for a long time.”)
That was Ad Lib Trump, who is always … interesting. Then Nearly Unhinged emerged overnight and took to Twitter, blaming the election hacking scandal on the Democrats: “Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!”
Several questions arose, the chief one being why the leaders of the most important nations in the world would be talking about Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager, whose current occupation was taking a cross-country drive with his wife.
Nearly Unhinged disappeared before the big sit-down and was replaced by a Trump version we’ll call Good At Meetings. GAM sits there nodding a lot, leading the other side to think he’s in agreement when in fact he’s just wondering what he’s going to have for dinner. Across from him was Putin, the guy who assumes that he’s won every debate unless the other side makes resistance so clear that they have to be arrested.
Perfect match! No wonder Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there was “a very clear positive chemistry between the two.”
Previously, Europe had gotten a look at a number of other variations of our president. Speechreading Trump, who usually makes a good impression, went on a Crusader kick in Poland, calling for a defense of Western civilization from “radical Islamic terrorism” and “the steady creep of government bureaucracy.”
At around the same time, Japan and the European Union announced a big trade deal, which will be great news for Japanese automakers and European farmers. People, would you rather have a big speech or a big trade deal? Or a tweet about John Podesta? The various Trumps have already given you two out of three. What are you complaining about?
In Poland, people also got quality time with Ad Lib Trump, who popped up at a gathering of Eastern European countries. After complimenting his hosts (“Beautiful nations, by the way”) the president then went on to brag about the American economy (“Our stock market just hit an all-time high …”), and to complain that he isn’t personally making any money off it. (“Everyone else is getting rich. That’s O.K. I’m very happy.”)
This is presumably because he has to spend all his time being president. But his business empire is being run by his sons. Did they manage to lose money in this stock market? If so, it’s time to have a very serious talk with Eric.
Then Trump bragged in general about the United States. (“We make the best technology and we make the best, best technology for fighter jets and ships and equipment, military weapons. There’s nobody even close.”) At this point, he had begun to resemble a dinner guest who does nothing but talk about his superior tennis skills, better car and more interesting vacations.
Later in the day, Trump took part in a very, very short press conference during which he bragged that Polish-Americans “came out in droves. They voted in the last election and I was very happy with that result.”
By Trumpian standards, this barely even counted as boasting. However, it’s getting embarrassing when the rest of the world watches him go on like that. Maybe on future foreign trips they could arrange for him to be introduced as “the president of the United States who won the election and got better ratings than Arnold Schwarzenegger on ‘The Apprentice.’ ” That would at least get it over with at the beginning.
So Europe, we sent you an entire fleet of Trumps. I hope you’re grateful. And feel free to keep a few.
Putin Meets Tons of Trumps
Gail Collins JULY 7, 2017
Say what? Donald Trump met with Vladimir Putin. American officials claim he pressed Putin on Russia’s messing in our presidential election. Putin’s people insist Trump accepted Russia’s assurances that nothing happened.
We will now explain how this outcome was inevitable.
Our president, as you know, has ever-changing personas, ranging from statesmanlike Reader-of-Speeches to Nearly Unhinged Trump, a version frequently seen on Twitter.
And Diplomacy Don, who seemed to fall head over heels for Putin.
“President Putin and I have been discussing various things and I think it’s going very well. We’ve had some very, very good talks,” Trump said. This was before the meeting even began. What do you think he was referring to? A late night pajama party? The two had never met in person before, even though, as a candidate, Trump seemed to nurse memories of an imaginary encounter.
Then off they went, for a meeting that went on for more than two hours. Halfway through, Melania came in to remind Trump they had other things to do. Naturally, he ignored her.
The two presidents agreed to a prearranged limited Syrian cease-fire. And they did talk about Russian meddling in the American election. But which Trump do you think brought the subject up? The day before, a version who took a few questions from reporters in Poland seemed to regard the whole matter as the sort of moral equivalent of jaywalking. (“A lot of people interfere. I think it’s been happening for a long time.”)
That was Ad Lib Trump, who is always … interesting. Then Nearly Unhinged emerged overnight and took to Twitter, blaming the election hacking scandal on the Democrats: “Everyone here is talking about why John Podesta refused to give the DNC server to the FBI and the CIA. Disgraceful!”
Several questions arose, the chief one being why the leaders of the most important nations in the world would be talking about Hillary Clinton’s former campaign manager, whose current occupation was taking a cross-country drive with his wife.
Nearly Unhinged disappeared before the big sit-down and was replaced by a Trump version we’ll call Good At Meetings. GAM sits there nodding a lot, leading the other side to think he’s in agreement when in fact he’s just wondering what he’s going to have for dinner. Across from him was Putin, the guy who assumes that he’s won every debate unless the other side makes resistance so clear that they have to be arrested.
Perfect match! No wonder Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said there was “a very clear positive chemistry between the two.”
Previously, Europe had gotten a look at a number of other variations of our president. Speechreading Trump, who usually makes a good impression, went on a Crusader kick in Poland, calling for a defense of Western civilization from “radical Islamic terrorism” and “the steady creep of government bureaucracy.”
At around the same time, Japan and the European Union announced a big trade deal, which will be great news for Japanese automakers and European farmers. People, would you rather have a big speech or a big trade deal? Or a tweet about John Podesta? The various Trumps have already given you two out of three. What are you complaining about?
In Poland, people also got quality time with Ad Lib Trump, who popped up at a gathering of Eastern European countries. After complimenting his hosts (“Beautiful nations, by the way”) the president then went on to brag about the American economy (“Our stock market just hit an all-time high …”), and to complain that he isn’t personally making any money off it. (“Everyone else is getting rich. That’s O.K. I’m very happy.”)
This is presumably because he has to spend all his time being president. But his business empire is being run by his sons. Did they manage to lose money in this stock market? If so, it’s time to have a very serious talk with Eric.
Then Trump bragged in general about the United States. (“We make the best technology and we make the best, best technology for fighter jets and ships and equipment, military weapons. There’s nobody even close.”) At this point, he had begun to resemble a dinner guest who does nothing but talk about his superior tennis skills, better car and more interesting vacations.
Later in the day, Trump took part in a very, very short press conference during which he bragged that Polish-Americans “came out in droves. They voted in the last election and I was very happy with that result.”
By Trumpian standards, this barely even counted as boasting. However, it’s getting embarrassing when the rest of the world watches him go on like that. Maybe on future foreign trips they could arrange for him to be introduced as “the president of the United States who won the election and got better ratings than Arnold Schwarzenegger on ‘The Apprentice.’ ” That would at least get it over with at the beginning.
So Europe, we sent you an entire fleet of Trumps. I hope you’re grateful. And feel free to keep a few.
What Do We Have a Government For? - GAIL COLLINS and BRET STEPHENS JUNE 27, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/27/opinion/health-care-london-fire-travel-ban.html?emc=edit_th_20170627&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
What Do We Have a Government For?
The Conversation
By GAIL COLLINS and BRET STEPHENS JUNE 27, 2017
Gail Collins: Bret, let’s talk about rules. President Trump, like virtually all Republicans, thinks we have too many. Getting rid of government regulations is one of the cornerstones of his administration — if you can imagine anything as shaky as this administration having cornerstones.
The idea of streamlining government always sounds good. I live in Manhattan and half the buildings seem to be under construction sheds in order to comply with various regulations. When I was covering city government, the Department of Buildings was so inefficient people made entire careers out of standing in line for contractors.
But the ungodly fire in London put the whole thing in a different light. Officials were under pressure to be business-friendly, so they refrained from demanding that buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers. It also sure looks as if they went easy on building materials, although the investigation is still underway.
What are your thoughts?
Bret Stephens: My first thought is that every hot-blooded libertarian should read The Times’s cold-eyed investigation of the regulatory failures that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster.
My second thought is that we have to learn from the tragedy, but keep it in its right proportions. As the article notes, about 350 people die in fires in the U.K. each year, next to 3,000 in the U.S. — a favorable comparison for Britain even if you account for the fact that our population is about five times as large.
Third, I wish the debate about regulation was less ideological. There are good rules and there are dumb ones. Governments aren’t all-knowing and markets aren’t flawlessly self-regulating. Over- and under-regulation are both real problems. This is common sense to most of us and shouldn’t descend into a stereotyped left-right debate.
And another thing: Theresa May’s gotta go. My feelings about her are approaching yours about Joe Lieberman.
Gail: Wow, that’s very bad news for Theresa May.
We’re in agreement about good rules/bad rules. I have fond memories of the Clinton administration’s war on government inefficiency. Al Gore had his little hammer .… Ah, those were the days.
There are some things that will work out if you just let the free markets take care of themselves like, um, popular music. But there are others that won’t. And their number is legion, from building safety to … health care.
Bret: Building safety is a core responsibility of government, assuming it’s competently and honestly executed. I lived through a horrific earthquake in Mexico City in 1985, which at the time had some of the most stringent building codes in the world. They didn’t help because too many buildings, including dozens of public schools and hospitals, had been cheaply built in violation of the codes. Rules are good only if they are sensible, affordable — and enforced.
Gail: I would barge in here and point out that good enforcement requires government funding, but that’d just be cranky. Plus it’s your turn. Go on.
Bret: On health care, the libertarian conceit that health care is just another marketplace where consumers can make their own choices according to their own tastes and budgets, as they might at Whole Foods or Walmart, is silly. The real problem is that, as with buildings, it’s hard to define the upper limit of how much safety — or health — we want, especially when it comes at the expense of other goods: affordability, availability, experimentation, innovation and so on.
Notice I’m avoiding the elephant in this chamber, so to speak.
Gail: How did you feel about that government-efficiency order Trump signed calling for doing away with two regulations every time a new one was implemented? I’m stacking the deck here, given that it was based on a British model that could well have been one of the reasons there was no rule on retrofitting apartment sprinklers.
Bret: I liked that executive order — one of the very few things for which I’ve ever praised Trump. Maybe it’s Procrustean, but I’m hard-pressed to think there weren’t two outdated U.K. regulations that could have been retired for the sake of installing fire sprinklers in older housing projects. The license fee for the privilege of watching TV in black-and-white, for instance?
Gail: You may have more faith in bureaucracy than I do. I wouldn’t want to bet everything on officials having the energy to change the status quo and retract two rules that somebody somewhere probably has a stake in keeping on the books.
While we’re talking rules, I want to ask you about one in Obamacare. It requires most people to buy health insurance or face tax penalties, and it’s possibly the thing Republicans hate most in the entire program.
Can you explain that to me? I thought requiring people to take responsibility for themselves was a very conservative ideal. Mitt Romney used to say that all the time — at least back when he was governor.
Bret: The conservative answer would be that it’s an infringement on liberty to require people to purchase a product they don’t want; and that it doesn’t work. I’m more persuaded by the second point than the first, since it’s also an infringement on my liberty to have to subsidize, through my tax dollars, the bad choices of others. In Massachusetts, what was once “Romneycare” has mainly amounted, as a good op-ed essay in The Boston Globe pointed out last year, to a near doubling of Medicaid enrollees, declines in the number of people with employer-provided insurance and more than a doubling of costs.
I know everyone wants to pile on when it comes to the G.O.P. health bills. But I haven’t really seen my liberal friends come to terms with the fact that Obamacare was leading private insurers to pull out of Obamacare exchanges in one state after another, while Medicare premiums kept going up.
Gail: This liberal friend would say that Obamacare could quickly be repaired if the two sides worked together on it. It would still be a deeply imperfect program, of course. (Listen and you will hear the trees whispering, “Single-payer option!”)
But about requiring everyone to have health insurance: It’s the only possible way you can have a plan that allows people with pre-existing conditions to buy coverage. Otherwise they can just coast while they’re healthy and opt in when they’re looking at large bills.
Also, we’re committed as a nation to providing emergency health care to all — I believe our current president came out very strongly against letting people “die in the streets.” And it’s a crushing burden for hospitals when the people come into ER.s uninsured.
The most sensible answer is to have national health care for all. But if that isn’t going to fly I think part of being an adult citizen should be having at least adequate health insurance to pay for a crisis. Otherwise, we’re … encouraging spongers.
Bret: For those of us on the conservative side of politics, the chief problem of the Senate bill is that it is basically an Obamacare rescue package, as Philip Klein pointed out in The Washington Examiner. The Senate bill promises a lot of spending in the next three or four years to sustain Medicaid’s current expansion. The spending is pared only after that, which is to say, sometime during the Warren-Booker administration (or is that Harris-Sanders?). Which is all another way of saying, it’s never going to happen. That’s why I’ve been so skeptical of the whole G.O.P. exercise.
I suspect you’re going to get your wish for single payer, sooner or later. Even if the G.O.P. bill goes through, it won’t survive the eventual Democratic wave election, whenever it hits. And to me single payer sounds like a lousy outcome: a two-tier system in which middle-class Americans get lower-quality medicine while the fortunate few maintain access to expensive private clinics.
By the way, what’s your read on Supreme Court ruling in the travel ban case?
Gail: I don’t know that it’s a big deal in terms of the actual consequences, but this whole thing was born out of a clear, specific attempt to discriminate against one religion, and as far as I’m concerned, any piece of it is still tainted.
Bret: Uh-oh, we’re back to agreeing about something. The whole thing stinks. The stated purpose of the travel ban was to give the government three or four months to deal with supposed gaps in vetting procedures. On those grounds alone the executive order is moot. Then the court split the baby, upholding the ban only with respect to foreigners with no “bona fide relationship” with someone in the United States. But who’s going to figure out what’s a “bona fide relationship”? And then there’s the larger point that this is unmistakably a Muslim ban, awkwardly tailored to pass constitutional muster.
I hope Justices John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy consider what will happen when they rule in the administration’s favor — only to see Trump gloat over his “Muslim ban” in a tweet the morning after the ruling.
Gail: Speaking of tweets, you wrote a great column last week announcing that you were giving up twittering, except for occasions when you wanted to say something nice.
Welcome to the non-tweeting tribe! I have to admit my two reasons for pretty much avoiding Twitter are 1) fear of saying something really stupid and 2) fear of having it turn into another occupation. Yours seem much more elevated. How’s it been going?
Bret: I gave one last parting glance at the Twitter reaction, much of it obscene, to the column, and it made me feel that much better about the decision. Twitter is supposed to be just another communications tool, and in theory it has its uses. In practice, it has a way of turning its users into jerks. And yes, God save you (or me), from tweeting something impulsively and then regretting it for the rest of the week.
At the risk of being self-congratulatory, let me just say that part of what we’re trying to do with these conversations is model a certain kind of discourse — disagreement minus nastiness — that we could all use a little more of. Now, did I mention that your readers are demented morons if they think Betsy DeVos is the worst member of the cabinet?
Gail: Ah, the beat goes on. See you after our Independence Day vacation next week, Bret. And meanwhile, if you can’t tweet something nice about somebody, don’t tweet anything at all.
What Do We Have a Government For?
The Conversation
By GAIL COLLINS and BRET STEPHENS JUNE 27, 2017
Gail Collins: Bret, let’s talk about rules. President Trump, like virtually all Republicans, thinks we have too many. Getting rid of government regulations is one of the cornerstones of his administration — if you can imagine anything as shaky as this administration having cornerstones.
The idea of streamlining government always sounds good. I live in Manhattan and half the buildings seem to be under construction sheds in order to comply with various regulations. When I was covering city government, the Department of Buildings was so inefficient people made entire careers out of standing in line for contractors.
But the ungodly fire in London put the whole thing in a different light. Officials were under pressure to be business-friendly, so they refrained from demanding that buildings be retrofitted with sprinklers. It also sure looks as if they went easy on building materials, although the investigation is still underway.
What are your thoughts?
Bret Stephens: My first thought is that every hot-blooded libertarian should read The Times’s cold-eyed investigation of the regulatory failures that led to the Grenfell Tower disaster.
My second thought is that we have to learn from the tragedy, but keep it in its right proportions. As the article notes, about 350 people die in fires in the U.K. each year, next to 3,000 in the U.S. — a favorable comparison for Britain even if you account for the fact that our population is about five times as large.
Third, I wish the debate about regulation was less ideological. There are good rules and there are dumb ones. Governments aren’t all-knowing and markets aren’t flawlessly self-regulating. Over- and under-regulation are both real problems. This is common sense to most of us and shouldn’t descend into a stereotyped left-right debate.
And another thing: Theresa May’s gotta go. My feelings about her are approaching yours about Joe Lieberman.
Gail: Wow, that’s very bad news for Theresa May.
We’re in agreement about good rules/bad rules. I have fond memories of the Clinton administration’s war on government inefficiency. Al Gore had his little hammer .… Ah, those were the days.
There are some things that will work out if you just let the free markets take care of themselves like, um, popular music. But there are others that won’t. And their number is legion, from building safety to … health care.
Bret: Building safety is a core responsibility of government, assuming it’s competently and honestly executed. I lived through a horrific earthquake in Mexico City in 1985, which at the time had some of the most stringent building codes in the world. They didn’t help because too many buildings, including dozens of public schools and hospitals, had been cheaply built in violation of the codes. Rules are good only if they are sensible, affordable — and enforced.
Gail: I would barge in here and point out that good enforcement requires government funding, but that’d just be cranky. Plus it’s your turn. Go on.
Bret: On health care, the libertarian conceit that health care is just another marketplace where consumers can make their own choices according to their own tastes and budgets, as they might at Whole Foods or Walmart, is silly. The real problem is that, as with buildings, it’s hard to define the upper limit of how much safety — or health — we want, especially when it comes at the expense of other goods: affordability, availability, experimentation, innovation and so on.
Notice I’m avoiding the elephant in this chamber, so to speak.
Gail: How did you feel about that government-efficiency order Trump signed calling for doing away with two regulations every time a new one was implemented? I’m stacking the deck here, given that it was based on a British model that could well have been one of the reasons there was no rule on retrofitting apartment sprinklers.
Bret: I liked that executive order — one of the very few things for which I’ve ever praised Trump. Maybe it’s Procrustean, but I’m hard-pressed to think there weren’t two outdated U.K. regulations that could have been retired for the sake of installing fire sprinklers in older housing projects. The license fee for the privilege of watching TV in black-and-white, for instance?
Gail: You may have more faith in bureaucracy than I do. I wouldn’t want to bet everything on officials having the energy to change the status quo and retract two rules that somebody somewhere probably has a stake in keeping on the books.
While we’re talking rules, I want to ask you about one in Obamacare. It requires most people to buy health insurance or face tax penalties, and it’s possibly the thing Republicans hate most in the entire program.
Can you explain that to me? I thought requiring people to take responsibility for themselves was a very conservative ideal. Mitt Romney used to say that all the time — at least back when he was governor.
Bret: The conservative answer would be that it’s an infringement on liberty to require people to purchase a product they don’t want; and that it doesn’t work. I’m more persuaded by the second point than the first, since it’s also an infringement on my liberty to have to subsidize, through my tax dollars, the bad choices of others. In Massachusetts, what was once “Romneycare” has mainly amounted, as a good op-ed essay in The Boston Globe pointed out last year, to a near doubling of Medicaid enrollees, declines in the number of people with employer-provided insurance and more than a doubling of costs.
I know everyone wants to pile on when it comes to the G.O.P. health bills. But I haven’t really seen my liberal friends come to terms with the fact that Obamacare was leading private insurers to pull out of Obamacare exchanges in one state after another, while Medicare premiums kept going up.
Gail: This liberal friend would say that Obamacare could quickly be repaired if the two sides worked together on it. It would still be a deeply imperfect program, of course. (Listen and you will hear the trees whispering, “Single-payer option!”)
But about requiring everyone to have health insurance: It’s the only possible way you can have a plan that allows people with pre-existing conditions to buy coverage. Otherwise they can just coast while they’re healthy and opt in when they’re looking at large bills.
Also, we’re committed as a nation to providing emergency health care to all — I believe our current president came out very strongly against letting people “die in the streets.” And it’s a crushing burden for hospitals when the people come into ER.s uninsured.
The most sensible answer is to have national health care for all. But if that isn’t going to fly I think part of being an adult citizen should be having at least adequate health insurance to pay for a crisis. Otherwise, we’re … encouraging spongers.
Bret: For those of us on the conservative side of politics, the chief problem of the Senate bill is that it is basically an Obamacare rescue package, as Philip Klein pointed out in The Washington Examiner. The Senate bill promises a lot of spending in the next three or four years to sustain Medicaid’s current expansion. The spending is pared only after that, which is to say, sometime during the Warren-Booker administration (or is that Harris-Sanders?). Which is all another way of saying, it’s never going to happen. That’s why I’ve been so skeptical of the whole G.O.P. exercise.
I suspect you’re going to get your wish for single payer, sooner or later. Even if the G.O.P. bill goes through, it won’t survive the eventual Democratic wave election, whenever it hits. And to me single payer sounds like a lousy outcome: a two-tier system in which middle-class Americans get lower-quality medicine while the fortunate few maintain access to expensive private clinics.
By the way, what’s your read on Supreme Court ruling in the travel ban case?
Gail: I don’t know that it’s a big deal in terms of the actual consequences, but this whole thing was born out of a clear, specific attempt to discriminate against one religion, and as far as I’m concerned, any piece of it is still tainted.
Bret: Uh-oh, we’re back to agreeing about something. The whole thing stinks. The stated purpose of the travel ban was to give the government three or four months to deal with supposed gaps in vetting procedures. On those grounds alone the executive order is moot. Then the court split the baby, upholding the ban only with respect to foreigners with no “bona fide relationship” with someone in the United States. But who’s going to figure out what’s a “bona fide relationship”? And then there’s the larger point that this is unmistakably a Muslim ban, awkwardly tailored to pass constitutional muster.
I hope Justices John Roberts and Anthony Kennedy consider what will happen when they rule in the administration’s favor — only to see Trump gloat over his “Muslim ban” in a tweet the morning after the ruling.
Gail: Speaking of tweets, you wrote a great column last week announcing that you were giving up twittering, except for occasions when you wanted to say something nice.
Welcome to the non-tweeting tribe! I have to admit my two reasons for pretty much avoiding Twitter are 1) fear of saying something really stupid and 2) fear of having it turn into another occupation. Yours seem much more elevated. How’s it been going?
Bret: I gave one last parting glance at the Twitter reaction, much of it obscene, to the column, and it made me feel that much better about the decision. Twitter is supposed to be just another communications tool, and in theory it has its uses. In practice, it has a way of turning its users into jerks. And yes, God save you (or me), from tweeting something impulsively and then regretting it for the rest of the week.
At the risk of being self-congratulatory, let me just say that part of what we’re trying to do with these conversations is model a certain kind of discourse — disagreement minus nastiness — that we could all use a little more of. Now, did I mention that your readers are demented morons if they think Betsy DeVos is the worst member of the cabinet?
Gail: Ah, the beat goes on. See you after our Independence Day vacation next week, Bret. And meanwhile, if you can’t tweet something nice about somebody, don’t tweet anything at all.
I’ve Overestimated Donald Trump - Gail Collins
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/29/opinion/ive-overestimated-donald-trump.html?emc=edit_th_20170630&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
I’ve Overestimated Donald Trump
Gail Collins JUNE 29, 2017
I have to confess I’ve overestimated Donald Trump.
Back in the day, he sent me a copy of a column he objected to, with some notes suggesting I was a “dog and a liar” with “the face of a pig.”
I’ve had many opportunities to make use of that story since Trump became a presidential candidate, so it’s all fine for me. However, I have to admit that it did not occur to me he’d keep doing that kind of stuff as president of the United States.
The latest story involves Trump taking umbrage at the MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. So he took to Twitter, insulting them both and claiming that Brzezinski had come to Mar-a-Lago “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” Both she and Scarborough are plenty capable of taking care of themselves. But the country is, you know, sort of a different matter.
Every time one of these tweeting disasters occurs, it reminds us that the United States president has no more discernible self-control than a 10-year-old bully who works out his failure to pass third grade by tormenting the little kids on the playground.
The tweeting took place around 9 a.m. on a weekday and I believe that I speak for almost all Americans when I wonder whether he should have been in meetings instead.
The official White House position appears to be that Brzezinski deserved it since she had said mean things about the president on TV. Among Trump’s small band of pathetic defenders we found Dan Scavino Jr., who is in charge of White House social media, who claimed “#DumbAsARockMika and lover #JealousJoe are lost, confused & saddened since @POTUS @realDonaldTrump stopped returning their calls! Unhinged.”
The important messages here are A) the White House expert on social media thinks dragging this out is a good plan and B) the White House expert on social media used to be Trump’s golf caddy.
A lot of top Republican leaders have expressed their dismay about what was obviously a sexist insult, but that’s hardly sufficient. This is the same party, after all, that recently produced its Senate health care bill drafted by a committee of 13 men. A bill whose defenders have argued, in effect, that making maternity health coverage more expensive is not a problem because guys don’t get pregnant.
The Republicans’ many variations on “oh God” isn’t enough. The least they could do is hold a prayer vigil on the White House lawn.
I’ve Overestimated Donald Trump
Gail Collins JUNE 29, 2017
I have to confess I’ve overestimated Donald Trump.
Back in the day, he sent me a copy of a column he objected to, with some notes suggesting I was a “dog and a liar” with “the face of a pig.”
I’ve had many opportunities to make use of that story since Trump became a presidential candidate, so it’s all fine for me. However, I have to admit that it did not occur to me he’d keep doing that kind of stuff as president of the United States.
The latest story involves Trump taking umbrage at the MSNBC “Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough. So he took to Twitter, insulting them both and claiming that Brzezinski had come to Mar-a-Lago “bleeding badly from a face-lift.” Both she and Scarborough are plenty capable of taking care of themselves. But the country is, you know, sort of a different matter.
Every time one of these tweeting disasters occurs, it reminds us that the United States president has no more discernible self-control than a 10-year-old bully who works out his failure to pass third grade by tormenting the little kids on the playground.
The tweeting took place around 9 a.m. on a weekday and I believe that I speak for almost all Americans when I wonder whether he should have been in meetings instead.
The official White House position appears to be that Brzezinski deserved it since she had said mean things about the president on TV. Among Trump’s small band of pathetic defenders we found Dan Scavino Jr., who is in charge of White House social media, who claimed “#DumbAsARockMika and lover #JealousJoe are lost, confused & saddened since @POTUS @realDonaldTrump stopped returning their calls! Unhinged.”
The important messages here are A) the White House expert on social media thinks dragging this out is a good plan and B) the White House expert on social media used to be Trump’s golf caddy.
A lot of top Republican leaders have expressed their dismay about what was obviously a sexist insult, but that’s hardly sufficient. This is the same party, after all, that recently produced its Senate health care bill drafted by a committee of 13 men. A bill whose defenders have argued, in effect, that making maternity health coverage more expensive is not a problem because guys don’t get pregnant.
The Republicans’ many variations on “oh God” isn’t enough. The least they could do is hold a prayer vigil on the White House lawn.
You’ve Named Trump’s Worst! - Gail Collins JUNE 22, 2017
You’ve Named Trump’s Worst!
Gail Collins JUNE 22, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/opinion/betsy-devos-trump-worst-cabinet-member.html?emc=edit_th_20170622&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
It was a hard-fought race, people. But the results of our Worst Trump Cabinet Member reader poll are in.
And the winner is — Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos!
With a near tie for second place between Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “It’s hard to be worse than Sessions or Pruitt. But DeVos deals with … children,” wrote a Michigan reader.
DeVos really hates public schools — something you don’t find often in a secretary of education. Her goal seems to be replacing them with charter schools, none of which will need much oversight because, you know, the choice thing.
Many readers noted that our secretary of education does not seem to be … all that bright. (“DeVos is a solid choice based on irony alone.”)
But I can’t help thinking Sessions might have taken the prize if his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee had gone on just a little longer. He clearly wowed viewers with his alleged inability to remember things. (“Wins by a Pinocchio.”) Some were taken by his resemblance to a bad hobbit or gremlin (“malevolent pixie”). But others simply found Sessions … bad. (“He is detestable and should have little tiny horns on the back of his head.”)
Pruitt, the head of the E.P.A., is a former Oklahoma attorney general who prepared for his current job by suing the agency 14 times. His champions in the Worst competition contended that, in the words of a North Carolina correspondent, “he can do major damage which will take years to undo.”
When we last left our runner-up, he was celebrating the nation’s departure from the international climate accord and kicking scientists off the Board of Scientific Counselors. Once again, some voters did get a tad personal. (“I have to pick Scott Pruitt because, besides trying to poison our planet, he always has that damnable smirk.”)
Let’s be extremely clear that this was not a scientific survey. In fact, it was pretty hard to get any count at all since many readers couldn’t resist the temptation to take the easy route and pick all of the above. (“I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea.”) Or to name five. Or to complain that selecting one Worst was too hard. (“Trying to pick a winner from this bunch is like trying to knit a sweater with wet spaghetti.”)
It’s not that everyone was negative — there were a few kind words for James Mattis, the secretary of defense, and some mixed reviews on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But a lot of folks still seem to be in a state of trauma over that big meeting President Trump called last week, in which the cabinet members tried to one-up each other in the fulsomeness of their praise for their commander in chief. (“That cabinet meeting looked like one of those cheap TV ads you see where people praise a tomato slicer. …”)
Unfortunately, we couldn’t count the Worst Cabinet Member votes that were given to somebody who wasn’t actually in the cabinet. Donald Trump cannot get the prize. Nor can Jared or Ivanka or Omarosa. Also we cannot name Eric Trump’s wedding planner, even though she has just been named to one of the top jobs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
One reader was unnerved by rumors that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, after having finished wrecking his state’s economy, is now in line for a federal job and asked if he could be nominated Worst in advance.
Special tip of the hat to readers who chose Rick Perry. I have to admit I didn’t even mention him when I wrote the column proposing the Worst vote-off. But a number nominated him, generally pointing to the fact that when Perry took the job, he was unaware that the Department of Energy’s main responsibility was tending the nation’s nuclear arsenal, not traveling the world to boost the sale of American oil and gas.
Just as balloting came to a close, Perry gave an interview on CNBC in which he downplayed carbon dioxide’s role in global warming, explaining that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”
This is a man who just keeps on campaigning. Plus, as one correspondent noted, if Perry ever won the Worst award “his acceptance speech would be epic.”
We saw a lot of votes for Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, for his heroic efforts to ruin national health care and the social safety net. And Ben Carson got a surprising amount of support, considering that we barely ever hear about him doing anything. One reader was apparently won over by the painting the secretary of housing and urban development has in his home, showing Jesus with his arm around Ben Carson.
But DeVos is definitely our Worst Cabinet winner. For now. Do you think we should do this every few months? And what should the award look like? Anything’s possible. After all, we’ve got another three and a half years.
Gail Collins JUNE 22, 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/opinion/betsy-devos-trump-worst-cabinet-member.html?emc=edit_th_20170622&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=59914923
It was a hard-fought race, people. But the results of our Worst Trump Cabinet Member reader poll are in.
And the winner is — Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos!
With a near tie for second place between Scott Pruitt of the Environmental Protection Agency and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. “It’s hard to be worse than Sessions or Pruitt. But DeVos deals with … children,” wrote a Michigan reader.
DeVos really hates public schools — something you don’t find often in a secretary of education. Her goal seems to be replacing them with charter schools, none of which will need much oversight because, you know, the choice thing.
Many readers noted that our secretary of education does not seem to be … all that bright. (“DeVos is a solid choice based on irony alone.”)
But I can’t help thinking Sessions might have taken the prize if his appearance before the Senate Intelligence Committee had gone on just a little longer. He clearly wowed viewers with his alleged inability to remember things. (“Wins by a Pinocchio.”) Some were taken by his resemblance to a bad hobbit or gremlin (“malevolent pixie”). But others simply found Sessions … bad. (“He is detestable and should have little tiny horns on the back of his head.”)
Pruitt, the head of the E.P.A., is a former Oklahoma attorney general who prepared for his current job by suing the agency 14 times. His champions in the Worst competition contended that, in the words of a North Carolina correspondent, “he can do major damage which will take years to undo.”
When we last left our runner-up, he was celebrating the nation’s departure from the international climate accord and kicking scientists off the Board of Scientific Counselors. Once again, some voters did get a tad personal. (“I have to pick Scott Pruitt because, besides trying to poison our planet, he always has that damnable smirk.”)
Let’s be extremely clear that this was not a scientific survey. In fact, it was pretty hard to get any count at all since many readers couldn’t resist the temptation to take the easy route and pick all of the above. (“I’ve seen better cabinets at Ikea.”) Or to name five. Or to complain that selecting one Worst was too hard. (“Trying to pick a winner from this bunch is like trying to knit a sweater with wet spaghetti.”)
It’s not that everyone was negative — there were a few kind words for James Mattis, the secretary of defense, and some mixed reviews on Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. But a lot of folks still seem to be in a state of trauma over that big meeting President Trump called last week, in which the cabinet members tried to one-up each other in the fulsomeness of their praise for their commander in chief. (“That cabinet meeting looked like one of those cheap TV ads you see where people praise a tomato slicer. …”)
Unfortunately, we couldn’t count the Worst Cabinet Member votes that were given to somebody who wasn’t actually in the cabinet. Donald Trump cannot get the prize. Nor can Jared or Ivanka or Omarosa. Also we cannot name Eric Trump’s wedding planner, even though she has just been named to one of the top jobs in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
One reader was unnerved by rumors that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, after having finished wrecking his state’s economy, is now in line for a federal job and asked if he could be nominated Worst in advance.
Special tip of the hat to readers who chose Rick Perry. I have to admit I didn’t even mention him when I wrote the column proposing the Worst vote-off. But a number nominated him, generally pointing to the fact that when Perry took the job, he was unaware that the Department of Energy’s main responsibility was tending the nation’s nuclear arsenal, not traveling the world to boost the sale of American oil and gas.
Just as balloting came to a close, Perry gave an interview on CNBC in which he downplayed carbon dioxide’s role in global warming, explaining that “most likely the primary control knob is the ocean waters and this environment that we live in.”
This is a man who just keeps on campaigning. Plus, as one correspondent noted, if Perry ever won the Worst award “his acceptance speech would be epic.”
We saw a lot of votes for Tom Price, the secretary of health and human services, for his heroic efforts to ruin national health care and the social safety net. And Ben Carson got a surprising amount of support, considering that we barely ever hear about him doing anything. One reader was apparently won over by the painting the secretary of housing and urban development has in his home, showing Jesus with his arm around Ben Carson.
But DeVos is definitely our Worst Cabinet winner. For now. Do you think we should do this every few months? And what should the award look like? Anything’s possible. After all, we’ve got another three and a half years.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)