Political Theatre category archive

At The Roanoke Times, Nancy Liebrecht skewers the notion that successful business persons are ipso facto qualified to run governments.

Let alone unsuccessful ones.

We have the romantic view in this country that successful businessmen have special gifts that will make them better stewards of the economy than politicians and bureaucrats. A common trope is that the government “should be run like a business.” In fact, skills honed in the business world do not translate to running governments. Governments must do things in service to the public that corporations would never do . . . .

Unfortunately, Donald Trump is not a successful businessman. He is talented at creating that image, but his trail of bankruptcies, scams, and failed businesses should have warned voters of his inherent incompetence. 200,000 deaths later, we are paying the price for ignoring his record.

More at the link.

Mendacious twits.

Aside:

Many years ago, maybe a decade and a half or so, I heard one of the founders of Twitter interviewed on NPR about what a great contribution Twitter would make to our discourse.

Methinks he was, as my old boss would have said, in error.

The San Franscisco Chronicle’s John Diaz takes a measured look at the question of whether, given the chaotic nature* of last Tuesday’s debate, the remaining ones should be cancelled. He concludes no. A snippet; follow the link for his reasoning:

The argument for canceling the remaining debates is that Trump simply can’t be deterred from his alpha-dog act, no matter the rules and no matter the skill of the moderator.

This would be regrettable for American democracy. The debate was tough to watch, but it also was illustrative.

____________

*Not forgetting that the chaos emanated from a single source.

Jack Ohman.

(Misplet tag corrected.)

Warning: Language.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Jeremy Sherman suggests that the motivations for members of right-wing “populist” movements may be simpler than many theorists believe. In that context, he opines that Donald Trump’s behavior during this week’s “debate” was not to be unexpected.

Methinks his comments are worth consideration; here’s a tiny bit:

Whatever else MAGA might be about with its many conflicting messages, there is this underlying theme that can hardly be a coincidence: Everything it stands for demands that others accommodate the movement. The movement shall not be moved. It will correct the world; the world will never correct it.

Trump is the perfect embodiment of that proud stance and this week’s debate was the first test of that stance in four years, Trump’s first public moment in four years as an equal to others, not the dominant leader granting audience to respectful supplicating subordinates.

. . . His best and only remaining strategy is simple: Continue to pose as indomitable; imply inevitable and absolute dominance with ever-louder dog-whistles.

All he had to do was demonstrate continued unflappable dominance and he pulled it off brilliantly running roughshod over every social norm. He didn’t blow the debate; he nailed it.

Sherman, I think, makes a telling point. I suspect that Donald Trump does indeed believe that he nailed it.

Follow the link to put that little bit I quoted in context. It’s worth the five minutes.

Aside:

I put quotations around the word “populist” because the usage of the term has morphed significantly. Initially, it denoted a progressive movement, rather than, as it does today, a regressive one.

Seth looks at the Presidential debate and at Fox News’s attempts to spin it into an alternative reality so as to put Donald Trump’s behavior in a positive light.

Mike Littwin pretty much sums it up:

I’ve been watching this stuff for approximately forever, and I’d never seen anything like it or close to it. I mean, you’d think that people would be condemning Biden for calling the president of the United States “a clown” and telling him to “shut up, man.” Instead, they were praising him for his restraint for settling on calling him the worst president in American history.

I don’t know how well Biden did in the debate. No one knows how well he did. Trump talked over him and interrupted him at every turn. If anything was clear, though, it’s that the dementia argument should be over by now.

More of Littwin’s summation on the debacle at the link.

Image via Job’s Anger.