Category Archives: Politics

Lyndon Johnson and Donald Trump

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I thought of this last week when I was sitting at dinner and heard everyone there disparage President Trump. I was bothered by my own silence. Here is what I might say next time this happens.

Have you ever studied the character of President Lyndon Johnson? It is pretty clear that he was deeply corrupt, a raging tyrant, and suffering from personality disorders. If you are familiar with Lyndon Johnson, I think that you would be hard pressed to make a convincing case that his personal qualities compare favorably to President Trump’s.

So why are people so much harder on Mr. Trump than on Mr. Johnson? Here are my thoughts, in order of importance.

1. The media environment is different. If we could transport today’s media back to the 1960s, everyone would be keenly aware of Johnson’s cruel temper and ruthless use of power. The journalists and Washington insiders who found Johnson a frightening figure would be much more outspoken and their scary anecdotes would receive much more attention.

2. We know that we survived the Johnson Presidency, but the Trump Presidency is not over, so we are not so sure. Note that I would not say that Johnson’s flaws were without consequences. If you think he managed ok in spite of his personality defects, then come to D.C. some time and let me show you a black granite wall with a bunch of names carved into it.

3. Johnson was a Democrat, and he espoused progressive ideals. As with President Trump, President Johnson had (and still has) a lot of people who were willing to overlook his character because of what he stood for.

4. The culture is more strident now. Back then, people did not expect to be able to “call out” someone and make them unacceptable.

Internet culture and legacy culture

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Tyler Cowen writes,

In the internet vs. culture debate, the internet is at some decided disadvantages. For instance, despite its losses of mindshare, culture still holds many of the traditional measures of status. Many intellectuals thus are afraid to voice the view that a lot of culture is a waste of time and we might be better off with more time spent on the internet. Furthermore, many of the responses to the tech critics focus on narrower questions of economics or the law, without realizing that what is at stake are two different visions of how human beings should think and indeed live. When that is the case, policymakers will tend to resort to their own value judgments, rather than listening to experts. For better or worse, the internet-loving generations do not yet hold most positions of political power (recall Zuckerberg’s testimony to Congress).

For a different perspective, Jordan Hall writes,

the dynamic of Culture War 2.0 shows up as one of intense fragmentation and disorientation, where none of our 20th Century techniques for generating social coherence stand up to the rapidly changing reality. From this level, the experience will likely be one of increasing chaos in all aspects of culture, society and individuality. If you are running a 20th Century sensemaker, it will feel like a descent into some flavor of madness.

Is Hall’s essay an insightful piece or a word salad? Maybe a bit of both. He links to a somewhat more digestible essay, by Peter Limberg and Conor Barnes.

We define a culture war as a memetic war to determine what the social facts are at the core of a given society, or alternatively, to determine society’s boundaries of the sacred and the profane. Political arguments have become indistinguishable from moral arguments, and one cannot challenge political positions without implicitly possessing suspect morals. This makes politics an exhausting and unproductive game to play, and it makes the culture war intractable.

What I take away from the latter two essays is that our culture is splintering. If our political system reflected this, then we would have many small parties.

Politics used to consist mostly of negotiation about interests. The legacy political parties used to be coalitions. Members with somewhat divergent interests were willing and able to work together and aim for common objectives. The median voter model was in force.

Today, politics is about cultural identity. That is not something that is negotiable. It does not lend itself to coalition politics.

Going back to Tyler’s post, I think that the denizens of legacy culture are not equipped to deal with the fragmentation that the Internet has wrought. So I think they are mostly at a disadvantage.

Another commenter’s question: Nixon vs. Trump

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The questions:

Why was Watergate such a big deal? I’m no expert, but it seems like a relatively mild level of corruption compared to what I see generally?

Was Nixon a popular and successful president? His electoral results blow my mind sometimes, 520 electoral votes in 1972! Why did he fall from grace? Did he deserve it?

Watergate created a problem because of what it exposed about the atmosphere inside the Nixon inner circle. I believe that this was when the saying “It’s not the crime. It’s the cover-up” became established. Beyond the Watergate burglary itself, Nixon had a group dedicated to violating the civil rights of his enemies, including someone who broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist. Back then, people cared about this sort of thing.

Nixon had to contend with a Democratic Party that continued a long period of dominance in Congress. His domestic policies were pretty far to the left (wage-price controls, big increase in Social Security payments, Environmental Protection Agency). He personally only cared about foreign policy, and although he was more hawkish than the Democrats on Vietnam, his policies with respect to Russia and China were well to the left of Republican orthodoxy. So if he was popular and successful, it was by appeasing the left.

In the end, that was not enough. The left still hated him, in part because of his history during the McCarthy period, in part because the left always hates prominent opponents (and, yes, the right also always hates its prominent opponents), and in part because Nixon had an unlikable personality.

Nixon also had to contend with a media environment in which the major news outlets had total control over the narrative. There were no outlets to give widespread voice to any counter-narrative.

Nixon fired his special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Trump retained his special prosecutor.

Nixon’s scandals also had momentum. As new information came out, the surprises were that things were worse than previously thought. In contrast, Trump’s scandals have not produced momentum. They produced the opposite. Expectations were raised in the media, and when the scandals fell short of those expectations, scandal-mongering became a spent force.

The 1972 electoral-vote landslide? You could never do that now. California would not vote for a Republican for President today even if the Democrats put up Josef Mengele. But in the 1970s, voters were more flexible. They seemed to care about stuff other than just party label. In 1964 the landslide went the other way, toward the Democratic incumbent, Lyndon Johnson, because they perceived him as a candidate of peace and prosperity. The 1974 post-Watergate Congressional elections were a major landslide for the Democrats, because people were sick of scandals and unhappy with economic performance.

In 1972, Nixon’s opponent, George McGovern, did not have popular policy proposals. Most Americans wanted “peace with honor” in Vietnam, not a humiliating withdrawal. It was the post-Watergate Congress that prohibited any spending on Vietnam, making it impossible to deter North Vietnam from violating the agreement. Another policy of McGovern’s that Americans rejected was a $1000 income floor for every citizen–a universal basic income.

By 1976, Warren Zevon was singing

Everybody’s desperately trying to make ends meet

Work all day, still can’t pay, the price of gasoline and meat

Alas, their lives are incomplete

The price of gasoline was driven up by the actions of the international oil cartel. The price of meat was driven up in part by the “Russian wheat deal,” in which the U.S. sold grain to the Soviet Union, which had suffered from bad harvests.

Between Watergate and high prices for gasoline and food, the Republican Party “brand” was in bad shape. So the country elected Jimmy Carter, whose idea for gasoline was to continue with oil price controls and to establish a Department of Energy. By 1980, the failure of these efforts was evident, and Carter was defeated by Ronald Reagan. By 1984, the price of oil had plummeted, the overall direction of the economy was positive, and we saw another landslide, re-electing Reagan.

But as I said, back then voters cared about such strange things as war and peace, the unemployment rate, the cost of gasoline, and maintaining the appearance of propriety. Today, your party is inherently good, and the other party is inherently evil, regardless.

Another commenter’s question: third party

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The commenter asks

Arnold, what do you think of the new “Alliance Party” taking form over at Walter Russel Mead’s site?

1. I find the Alliance Party more attractive than the Niskanen Center in trying to formulate what I might call a centrist-libertarian agenda.

2. Third parties face structural barriers that are well known.

3. In addition, a centrist-libertarian party has no momentum going for it. There are very few of us.

Most important, the major political parties have managed to convince most politically engaged people that there is a lot at stake in the current cold civil war between progressive elites and conservatives/populists. In that context, most people aren’t asking about a third party, “Is this the middle ground that I am looking for?” Instead, they are asking, “Whose votes is this party going to siphon away?” The center-left does not rally to Howard Schultz; instead they are wary of him. The center-right is likely to react similarly to the Alliance Party, if it ever gets beyond the 3-thinkers-with-a-manifesto stage.

The 1960s and today

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How does the political and cultural polarization today compare to that in the 1960s?

I was a teenager in the late 1960s, and I was paying rapt attention to what was going on. So I speak from that perspective.

1. The most bitterly polarizing issue was the Vietnam War. From 1965-1968, the most bitter division among political office-holders was Democrat against Democrat. President Johnson and his supporters defended the war. Senator Fulbright and other leading Democrats in Congress opposed it.

2. When Richard Nixon became President and continued the war, with expanded bombing, the issue became more clearly partisan, with Democrats opposed. But a lot of the public pressure to end the war slowly eased, because Nixon drew down the number of troops, ended the draft, and ultimately signed a peace agreement.

3. Culturally, the hippies were a big phenomenon in the late 1960s. They contrasted with working-class youth, who were known as “greasers” because of the product that young working-class men wore in their short hair. But by the mid-1970s, there was no more divide between hippies and greasers. Guys of every social background had long hair, along with those mutton-chop sideburns and thick mustaches so emblematic of the decade. And the hippies grew up, took showers, and got jobs. So I would say that by about 1975 American culture was more blended than separated. And of course back then everyone saw the same movies, watched the same TV shows, and had the same news sources.

4. Today, I would say that there is nothing as politically divisive as the Vietnam War. There is no enduring political issue per se. Like Seinfeld, politics these days is a show about nothing.

5. Instead, what we see now is plenty of political rage, directed against particular individuals or particular groups. The actual issues that attract attention are relatively minor incidents that get magnified in the media. Gone are the common sources of information, so that many people seem to live in bubbles in which those who disagree appear to be demons.

6. Today, the cultural divide is much starker. Social classes have much less interaction with one another, and this reinforces the tendency to demonize others.

On net, I believe that this is a more dangerous time than the 1960s. I suspect that many people would like to see the divisions healed. But the path that led to healing of the divides of the 1960s is not available today. We will have to find a different path.

Off topic: Democratic Presidential primary politics

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If playing fantasy baseball starts with knowing the rules of your league, then handicapping a Presidential primary race starts with knowing the primary schedule and the rules. Three items that struck me:

1. Super Tuesday is March 3, and it now includes California.

2. The Democrats have gone away from winner-take-all contests and instead will use proportional representation to assign delegates.

3. Under Democratic Party rules, candidates in most instances must amass at least 15 percent of the vote in a given primary to be awarded delegates.

Somebody should really dig into how these rules are going to work. I particularly do not understand the minimum of 15 percent. What if no candidate gets 15 percent? No delegates for anybody? That would be funny. Or what if one candidate gets 17 percent and the second-place candidate gets 14.9 percent? Does that mean winner-take-all?

The answer is in the details of the rules. But I have not been able to coax the details out of Google. Keeping in mind my ignorance, here are some thoughts:

Prior to Super Tuesday, there will only be four events: caucuses in Iowa and Nevada; and primaries in New Hampshire and South Carolina. These are supposed to winnow the field, but I don’t see how. If you thought you were a viable candidate before those events, your mind isn’t going to change based on the outcomes there.

Super Tuesday itself features the hard-left states of Vermont and Massachusetts (and maybe Minnesota and Virginia, considering that it’s the Democratic primary we’re talking about), the polyglot states of Texas and California, and the Southern states of Alabama, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Tennessee.

Massachusetts and Vermont should be friendly to Sanders and Warren, who appeal to white, hard-left voters. California should be friendly to Harris. Also, to the extent that African-American voters are identity-driven, she will contend with Cory Booker for those voters, who will be particularly important in North Carolina, Alabama, and Tennessee. Beto must be expecting to do well in Texas and Oklahoma. If Julian Castro inspires a Hispanic-identity vote, then maybe he gets some respectable vote totals in Texas and California. Virginia’s eclectic mix of Democratic constituents includes Federal government workers, who probably will want to vote for the candidate who at the time seems most likely to defeat Mr. Trump. Assuming Biden gets in the race, he may not win any state, but he probably finishes in the top five everywhere.

The way I look at it, the only way that one candidate can have a clear path to the nomination is with a lot of help from the media. But the media narrative after Super Tuesday might be “the race is still wide open.” From a news outlet’s self-interest perspective, that narrative has the advantage of maintaining people’s curiosity about the race.

Between now and Super Tuesday, the winnowing that does take place is likely to be executed by the media, by exposing candidates’ personal negatives and controversial past statements or connections. This gives an incentive for candidates’ campaign staff to put a lot of effort into feeding the media stories that weaken and embarrass their rivals. I would not be surprised to see “black ops” taken to a whole new level over the next twelve months.

The media also could give a candidate a favorable spin. For example, assume that Harris wins less than a majority of delegates in any state on Super Tuesday, but she rolls up big enough vote totals in California and the Southern states to be anointed the “winner of the popular vote.” If it is widely echoed in the media, such a narrative could enable her to claim the mantle of inevitability.

If it looks as though none of the candidates can beat Mr. Trump, then the media might encourage the arrival of a “savior.” The “savior” could be Oprah or Michelle, but that would be awkward if Harris is still in the running for the nomination.

I still would make my hypothetical bet with Elaine Kamarck, in which I would win if no center-left candidate were to arrive at the convention with more than 40 percent of the vote. One of the possibilities that she designated as center-left, Senator Sherrod Brown, has since declined to enter the race.

Yuval Levin on the college admissions scandal

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He writes,

So although the scandal revealed by last week’s arrests involves college admissions, it has touched a nerve not because of a widespread desire to get into Yale but because of a widespread perception that the people who go there think they can get away with anything. It isn’t aggravating because it’s a betrayal of the principles of meritocracy but because it is an example of the practice of it. That’s not a problem that can be addressed through more fair and open college admissions. It is a problem that would need to be addressed through more constraints on the behavior of American elites

Read the whole piece. I think that this is a point worth dwelling upon.

Levin sees today’s elites as un-moored from traditional institutional sources of accountability. I would put it this way:

–They don’t like working for a profit, which would enable consumers to hold them accountable. Instead, by working for government or in the non-profit sector, they can self-validate the worth of their jobs.

–They disdain traditional religions. Instead, they invent their own norms in relation to race, gender, the environment, etc. They proceed to punish as heretics those who fail to Keep up with these rapidly-evolving norms.

–They don’t belong to organizations in their local community. Instead, they live dissociated from their neighbors, if not walled off from them completely. Their spirit of generosity is limited to the use of other people’s money.

Tyler Cowen on the SJW mentality

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He writes,

Many social justice warriors seem more concerned with tearing down, blacklisting, and deplatforming others, or even just whining about them, rather than working hard to actually boost social justice, whatever you might take that to mean. Most of that struggle requires building things in a positive way, I am sorry to say.

What concerns me about SJWs is their reliance on intimidation. To use a current example, AIPAC always aimed to be strictly non-partisan. It used to be able to get ambitious Democrats to speak at its convention. No more. The SJWs have successfully delegitimized AIPAC among Democrats. Going forward, Democratic Congressmen will think twice about receiving visitors from AIPAC. AIPAC has been castrated.

Maybe you don’t care much for AIPAC. I have never attended the convention, and I wouldn’t call myself a fan. The point I am making is not about AIPAC, but about the manner in which it was shot down.

If SJWs can scare Democrats away from AIPAC, then they can intimidate anybody. If this is what these folks can do as a cult minority, imagine the climate of fear we will live under once they seize the apparatus of the state.

Martin Gurri on the protest mentality

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He writes,

I am concerned with the public’s temper rather than the policy trimmings of the elites. And the public never takes yes for an answer. Does anyone suppose that OWS protesters were satisfied with regulations ordained from the top of the political establishment? Or that Black Lives Matter militants have been mollified by police reforms, any more than Tea Partiers were by the sequester?

Protests triumph or peter out – but the public is never satisfied. I can’t think of a single instance of an insurgency disbanding because of policy concessions.

The post is nominally a response to Noah Smith’s critique, but it is a wide-ranging discourse on human nature and our current condition.

I would claim that the anti-war movement of my youth was able to take yes for an answer. That is, when the Vietnam War ended, the protest movement ended as well.

In fact, a standard view of the 1960’s and 1970’s is that over time the radicals and protesters became “co-opted” and joined the elites. Some people expect history to repeat itself. Gurri himself writes,

The generation of elites that was young when industrial giants roamed the earth is now failing, literally and physically. Its enjoyment of the large corner offices within the pyramid will soon go the way of all flesh. Many expressions of extreme political despair coming from the elites can be ascribed to a panic of mortality. Young people are displacing old. The latter have had their day. Of the young, an analyst should say as little as possible, other than to wish them the best of luck.

We have seen on the left a meme of “pass the baton” to the younger generation. Perhaps that is sometimes the right thing to do. But when I hear the strains of “Tomorrow belongs to me” coming from today’s smug anti-capitalist social justice activists, I believe that one must put up some resistance.

Anniversary reflections

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This post is scheduled to go up on the 39th anniversary of my marriage. If you want to aim to replicate some aspect of my life, I recommend the family aspect.

When it comes to small-scale society, my personal views are extremely conservative. I really believe that the old-fashioned stable marriage, with children and grandchildren and a close-knit family, is the way to go. I see the cultural-elite disrespect for that sort of family as sad and disturbing.

Almost all of my writing concerns large-scale society. When you ask about the role of government, I believe that the libertarian response is usually the best. I don’t lose any sleep trying to come up with ways for government to promote social conservatism.

I try to maintain separation between micro-morality and macro-morality. I recognize that in some ways the two realms collide. But I believe that keeping them conceptually separate helps to avoid a lot of the worst intellectual errors.

I believe that micro-morality matters more than macro-morality. I have total respect for friends who have political beliefs that differ from mine and who have maintained solid marriages. I feel a sense of distance and distrust toward men whose political beliefs I generally share but who have left behind their families for the younger woman.

My wife is one of the few people I have known who appear to me to live their lives constantly asking “What would a righteous person do in my situation?” These are the people that I think of when I hear the term tzadik, which is Hebrew for “righteous one.” My wife’s sister’s husband is another tzadik. I did not know him well, but a businessman and philanthropist who was killed in a traffic accident earlier this month came across to me (and to others) as another tzadik.

I don’t see myself as a tzadik to that degree. In the realm of micro-morality, I avoid doing bad, but I don’t go out of my way to do good. I would grade myself as B+.

According to Helen Fisher’s personality theory, my wife and I are not a good match, and indeed our friction points are the ones that Fisher would predict. But the combination of a tzadik and a B+ has held up quite well.