Political Theatre category archive

Eli Lake opines,

One way you know the president is in trouble is that, accused of collusion, his best defense is incompetence.

(snip)

In addition to being incompetent in a national security sense, the flub is also politically embarrassing for the president. Remember that Trump campaigned on the idea that Hillary Clinton was unfit to be president because her use of a private email server was evidence of mishandling classified information. Clinton must find in this story a delicious Schadenfreude.

Follow the link for his reasoning.

You do know, it’s just going to get worse.

Continuing on the theme of “We are doomed,” not only are we doomed, we are doomed through our own inaction.

Jack Ohman suggests that it’s time to show -gate the gate. A nugget:

The trouble with Suffixgateghazi is that it’s straining a historical event to the maximum tensile point. No one goes around saying “-dome” anymore, in recognition of the Teapot Dome Scandal of the Harding administration. It has been lost to history, which is unfortunate because it was an excellent scandal with California connections.

And the Grant administration had the massive Credit-Mobilier Scandal, which shattered the careers of Gilded Age politicos. Frankly, I’d love to revive both: Suffixgateghazidomemobilier.

At Psychology Today Blogs, Ray Williams offers advice for the White House staff. A snippet (emphasis in the original:

Strategies in Dealing with The Narcissists in the WorkplaceFirst, I would argue that attempts to control, change or modify the behavior of an individual with NPD (Narcissistic Personality Disorder–ed.) will likely be unsuccessful and backfire, based upon my review of the research and my experience coaching narcissistic leaders. My best advice would be to get as far away from them as possible. The help they need is with an experienced psychotherapist. With respect to narcissists who don’t have NPD, but exhibit less pronounced narcissistic behaviors, here are some suggestions to deal with them.

• Ignore them and don’t react if they are abusive. They’ll move on to another target;
• It’s not about you when you get attacked. Their behavior is a disorder;

(snip)

Follow the link for the rest of his suggestions.

By the by, his introduction, in which he describes the characteristics of someone with NPD and cites numerous studies, will be eerily and frighteningly like someone who is frequently in the news these days.

My old boss used to say, “Even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes.”

Bret Stephens–yes, that Bret Stephens–says that Trump’s tells are an easy read.

With Donald Trump, the tells are always easy.

When the president says, “I’m, like, a smart person,” you know he nurses deep insecurities about his intelligence. When he says, “I’m really rich,” you know that he knows that you know that, really, he probably isn’t.

And when he writes, as he did in his letter to the now-former FBI director, James B. Comey, that “while I greatly appreciate you informing me, on three separate occasions, that I am not under investigation,” you know what keeps him up at night, too.

That wasn’t the only tell in Trump’s Comey canning.

Follow the link to find out what other stories the tells tell.

Josh Marshall suggests that Donald Trump is channeling Louis XIV.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., tries to make sense of Donald Trump’s obsession with President Obama, whom Trump did not defeat because Obama’s term was up. Here’s a bit:

Mr. So-Called President, this begins to look less like politics than obsession. Maybe it’s understandable. There you are, trapped in meetings with Paul Ryan, only able to golf a paltry 16 times or so in your first 100 days, stuck with a job that’s way harder than you thought it would be. Meantime, there he is, parasailing in the Virgin Islands, yachting in the South Pacific with Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks, still sleeker than you, still smarter than you, still speaking in complete sentences and, by all appearances, having the time of his life.

Is that the basis of this weird psychodrama? In your mind, is he Bugs Bunny to your Elmer Fudd? Moby Dick to your Ahab?

There is one small difference between then and now: There are no Howard Bakers or Lowell Wieckers left in the Republican Party. There are only multiple Batson D. Belfrys.