Remember quantum computing, about how computers built using memory using quantum effects, known as qubits, will be so much faster because a qubit can assume all possible values at the same time, thus making computations of various reality that much faster?
OK, that’s a weird lead-in to a political post, but who can resist?
I wish I could have simultaneous bugs on the walls of Speaker Pelosi’s office, and the Oval Office, aka President Trump’s office, in relation to this recent tit-for-tat imbroglio over the State of the Union address to Congress, or lack thereof, and Speaker Pelosi’s aborted trip to Afghanistan. What would we have heard, I wonder? I mean, besides a blizzard of misogynistic profanities from Trump, of course.
Chris Cillizza of CNN thinks this is a big counter-punch from Trump:
Pelosi’s decision, like Trump’s on the CODEL [congressional delegation traveling abroad], was within her powers to do. (The speaker of the House invites the President to address a bicameral session of Congress. The President’s only role is to accept or reject the ask.) But just because the two principals can do what they’ve done doesn’t mean they should do it.
As a reminder: 800,000 federal workers are either furloughed or working without pay today. And they have been doing so for the last (almost) month. Bills aren’t being paid. Sacrifices are being made. Real life is happening.
Amid that backdrop, the childish one-upmanship between Trump and Pelosi feels deeply out of touch. But, more than that, it’s actively detrimental to the re-opening of the government. No one can argue that the actions of Trump and Pelosi over the last 24 hours have brought us closer to compromise that would re-open the government. Hell, no one can even argue that what’s happened between two of the most powerful people in the country has had a neutral impact on the shutdown showdown. This is a bad thing for the country. Period.
Kevin Drum is paying it never no mind:
Hah! That’ll show her! I can see in my mind’s eye Trump spending a couple of hours writing this letter and then adding little fillips to it. “Hey how about excursion? That’ll piss her off. Hee hee. And can we put public relations event in there somewhere? Oh man, this is so great.”
Me? I very much doubt that Pelosi was surprised by the return volley of President Trump. There are key differences between the two politicians, and perhaps the largest is Pelosi’s capacity for political planning. Speaker Pelosi is a planner. She has a reputation for getting major legislation through the House in a legitimate manner, and you don’t do that off the cuff. She makes alliances, persuades waverers, makes deals.
And she became the Speaker because she wanted the post. Her campaign to regain that post after the midterms is well known, and while pundits speculated that she might not attain it, in the end the election wasn’t even close, as many initially negative Democratic Representatives ultimately cast votes for her. Contrast that with former Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), who nearly had to be forced to take the prestigious post, and once in he utterly punted on some of the most important legislative opportunities, such as the Tax Bill of 2017, as well as the failed AHCA (replacement for ACA), passing straw-man bills and leaving it explicitly to the Senate to write them any way the GOP-controlled Senate pleased. Historians may disagree, but I think Ryan’s fumbling will leave him one of the most lowly-rated Speakers in American history.
And does Trump have the capacity for planning? By just about all reports, no, although one must remember the report that he’s deliberately attempted to discredit the mainstream media from the get-go, although it’s not difficult to link that stratagem to his hypothetical Russian handlers. It’s also worth noting that there’s a big difference between mass media planning and political planning.
Nor are most of his political advisors really up to the task. In my view, the Republicans, outside of their suddenly-suspect marketing machine, are a pack of third-raters, from the now-retired Ryan to the stripped-of-his-assignments Steve King (R-IA). There’s little reason to believe Secretaries Pompeo, Whittaker, Mnuchin, or any of the others in the Cabinet, along with the various political advisors, have much capacity for planning, for the game Pelosi is playing. Pelosi, on the other hand, is a shark who knows how to get what she wants. That her approval ratings nation-wide are considered abysmal is irrelevant, as that’s the result of the advanced social media attack she’s been under for nearly a decade, and perhaps more.
In a way, that’s been a compliment.
Pelosi’s played the game honestly. She’s supported legislation to reopen the government as specified by the then-GOP majority in the House, back before January. That legislation was passed by both the House and the Senate on voice votes, but was vetoed, whether officially or informally, by our weak President Trump[1]. When she took the gavel, she repassed that same legislation, presumably still Republican approved, but now the Senate, still under McConnell’s (R-KY) leadership, won’t even consider it. Having established her legitimacy, she then undertook to take the Congressional stage away from President Trump for the traditional State of the Union speech.
But now I suspect that Pelosi was unsurprised by the cancellation of her flight to Afghanistan. She may have even ticked it off her list of expectations yesterday. Trump raged and spat and hit back bigly, Pelosi may have been smiling and planning not her next move – but the one five more steps ahead. She’s like Obama, a planner who knows what she wants and is confident that it’ll be good for the nation, no matter how the Republicans howl.
Meanwhile, Trump is being shown as an intemperate child.
I don’t know how this will play out. The shutdown will eventually be ended, of course, and either completely on her terms, or a good political compromise. But does Pelosi care if Trump leaves through resignation or if he leaves through impeachment? Or will she be satisfied with having an impotent, torpid nobody in the Oval Office for two more years? Personally, I find the latter a little hard to stomach, particularly given recent speculation that Trump may be a Russian asset. But if that’s the best we can hope for, well, that’s how it goes sometimes.
But I think Speaker Pelosi is playing the long game, much like President Obama often did. I don’t see Pelosi as being surprised by the cancellation of the CODEL. I see it as part of a chess game being played by Pelosi. It’ll be fascinating to see how this plays out, particularly since it doesn’t appear that the White House is up to the challenge.
1 I wonder if Fox News, the entity responsible for manipulating him into vetoing the funding resolution that would have avoided this shutdown, if impermanently, actually intentionally put him into the box called The Shutdown in hopes that he’d resign!
