A reader writes concerning Hillary’s tactic:
I hope she’s that crafty, because to judge by the number of minutes MPR spends blabbing about, quoting and playing clips from Trump in the morning, Trump’s going to win. The amount of free press he’s getting is, well, huge.
During the primaries, Trump seemed to know precisely how to dance on the knife-edge of ridiculousness – he must have received about as much free press as the other sixteen GOP candidates put together. Now that he’s the nominee, anything he says is newsworthy, so he gets more free press. Sadly, the press hasn’t figured out that puerile assholes don’t deserve coverage – or they figured that if they didn’t cover him, they’d be accused of bias.
And I do continue to worry that apparently a large percentage of my fellow citizens can be taken in by this consummate con-man. The idea that we need to “shakeup” things in D.C. may be true, but it would be more effective to eject the current majority in both branches of the legislature, who is responsible for the logjam and frankly amateurish behavior that we’ve witnessed over the last six years, than to put a man who doesn’t even understand the world-wide consequences of using nuclear weapons in a position where he can shoot them off whenever a fellow world leader mildly annoys him.
Experts should not be judged by how much their recommendations upset you or how much they agree with your preconceptions. Economist Art Laffer is a vivid example. He is the creator and advocate of the Laffer Curve, the idea that tax cuts will pay for themselves. Sounds wonderful to a conservative tired of paying taxes and seeing it sometimes used to fund odd proposals, doesn’t it?
But it never worked out. As Steve Benen puts it,
Perhaps the first sign that Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback (R) was pursuing a misguided economic policy was when he chose a high-profile advisor: Art Laffer. The far-right economist, best known for his ridiculous “Laffer Curve” that says tax cuts can pay for themselves, guided the Republican governor’s agenda.
The “experiment” failed spectacularly: the Kansas plan fell short on every possible metric, from growth to job creation to revenue. The state’s finances are in shambles, leading to Kansas’ bond rating getting downgraded, and then downgraded again.
Steve’s article is from 2014; Kansas has actually become much worse since. It may be the worst State in the Union these days. Adherence to an ideology that never worked, because, damn, it sounds good!
Back to my point, experts should be judged on results. This isn’t a revolutionary thought; it, in fact, is right at the heart of the concept of the United States as a meritocracy, where the measure of the person is in their results, not in their big talk (like Trump), nor their birthright (which is why we don’t elect a new King every time the old one dies). This is really a very conservative idea that can be shared by everyone on the political spectrum that is not engaged in a search for power, but for the betterment of society. When Representative Ryan disdained experts, he was, inadvertently, betraying this very conservative principle at the heart of the nation. He may not pay for that betrayal immediately. It may take a few terms for his approach to implode, damaging the Nation in some awful manner. And then he’ll deny it.
It’s what politicians of all stripes do.
But it clarifies the question at hand: Donald Trump has no accomplishments in the public sector. None. I won’t even bother to explain how his accomplishments in the private sector are tainted, I’ll simply note they have little to no applicability. Hillary Clinton? Elected service; service as a government lawyer; service as a Cabinet level Secretary. Accomplishments AND mistakes. Mistakes she acknowledges and learns from.
And Trump? After years of being a salient member of “birther” chorus, just this week he agreed that President Obama was, indeed, born in the United States. Via NBC News, here’s how Trump admits to a mistake:
In acknowledging that the president was born in the U.S., Trump, however, falsely claimed that his rival, Hillary Clinton, was the original source of the theory.
“Hillary Clinton and her campaign of 2008 started the birther controversy. I finished it, I finished it,” Trump said. “You know what I mean.”
