{"id":27380,"date":"2020-01-23T11:07:28","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T17:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=27380"},"modified":"2020-01-26T11:43:19","modified_gmt":"2020-01-26T17:43:19","slug":"but-is-it-important","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/01\/23\/but-is-it-important\/","title":{"rendered":"But Is It Important?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In the second part of Andrew Sullivan&#8217;s weekly tri-partite <a href=\"http:\/\/nymag.com\/intelligencer\/2020\/01\/andrew-sullivan-is-there-a-way-to-acknowledge-our-progress.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">diary entry<\/a>, he crystalizes my concerns about Senator Klobuchar&#8217;s (D-MN) bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Klobuchar, to my mind, is the better midwestern option. She is an engaging and successful politician. But there\u2019s a reason she seemingly can\u2019t get more traction. She just doesn\u2019t command a room, let alone a stage. Setting aside everything else, Warren is presidential in a way that Klobuchar is not.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>And so Sullivan nails the reason Klobuchar might lose a general election to Trump, and, yet, it&#8217;s an attribute of any candidate for President which is, at best, <em>secondary<\/em>, isn&#8217;t it? We take a commanding presence to be a proxy for being fit for command, when this is nothing more than bullshit: how many actors, competent at projecting the commanding presence that, say, King Richard III possessed, would you want to see as President?<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, me neither.<\/p>\n<p>A lot of voters, according to interviews I&#8217;ve read, have taken Trump&#8217;s manner to be that of a boss, and took that as a proxy for his future competency as President, and this, with no apologies at all to anyone, has worked out for <strong>shit<\/strong>. In fact, his performance makes Greta Van Susteren&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/01\/20\/theyre-a-sideshow-nothing-more\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">suggestion<\/a> for debates that show how a candidate operates, as well as his actual view, quite alluring, even if I don&#8217;t think they&#8217;d really influence anyone. I must admit I hope I&#8217;m wrong on this count.<\/p>\n<p>But Sullivan&#8217;s observation echos, far more succinctly, <a href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2019\/01\/31\/are-you-paying-attention\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">my own view of Klobuchar<\/a>: she just hasn&#8217;t the presence to win on her own. She might win, though, by surfing the anti-Trump wave and appealing to Midwestern voters.<\/p>\n<p>Or, if Trump is convicted and permanently removed from office in one of the biggest upsets of the entire American political history, and Vice President Mike Pence runs in Trump&#8217;s place, by being more interesting than dull-as-water Pence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the second part of Andrew Sullivan&#8217;s weekly tri-partite diary entry, he crystalizes my concerns about Senator Klobuchar&#8217;s (D-MN) bid for the Democratic Presidential nomination: Klobuchar, to my mind, is the better midwestern option. She is an engaging and successful politician. But there\u2019s a reason she seemingly can\u2019t get more \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/01\/23\/but-is-it-important\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27380"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27411,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27380\/revisions\/27411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}