Quote of the Day (Mark Shields, on Avoiding Losing Candidates)

“People come up with very creative excuses why they can’t be with you when you’re losing. Like ‘my nephew is graduating from driving school,’ and ‘I’d love to be with you but we had a family appointment at the taxidermist.’”— TV political commentator and former Democratic campaign strategist and Mark Shields (1937-2022), quoted in Clyde Haberman, “Mark Shields, Political Analyst Known for His Sharp Wit, Is Dead at 85,” The New York Times, June 19, 2022

(The accompanying photo of Mark Shields was taken May 19, 2010, by DC_Rebecca from Washington, DC.)

Quote of the Day (Gail Collins, on Candidates’ Desperate Fundraising Campaigns)

“Cynics might presume that no candidate has ever, in history, actually reached a fund-raising goal. Really, do you ever remember getting a note saying: ‘Thanks, guys! We’ve got all the money we need now! Give to your pet shelter.’

“You do have to feel some sympathy — Senate campaigns are wicked expensive. The question is whether you should respond to this barrage of email requests for donations. The downside, as you probably suspect, is that it will make you an even more popular target.”—Political commentator Gail Collins, “Do You Think Your Newfound Popularity Has Something to Do With Politics?” The New York Times, Sept. 8, 2022

Quote of the Day (Warren Buffett, on Donald Trump and Debt)

“The big problem with Donald Trump was he never went right. He basically overpaid for properties, but he got people to lend him the money. He was terrific at borrowing money. If you look at his assets, and what he paid for them, and what he borrowed to get them, there was never any real equity there. He owes, perhaps, $3.5 billion now, and, if you had to pick a figure as to the value of the assets, it might be more like $2.5 billion. He’s a billion in the hole, which is a lot better than being $100 in the hole because if you’re $100 in the hole, they come and take the TV set. If you’re a billion in the hole, they say ‘hang in there Donald.’” —Warren Buffett on Donald Trump, in a spring 1991 speech to Notre Dame University students, quoted in Julia La Roche, “Warren Buffett Nailed Why Donald Trump's Businesses Failed in a Lecture 25 Years Ago,” Yahoo Finance, June 21, 2016

You really have to hand it to Donald Trump (pictured, of course, in a typical "mouth that roared" moment). Here he is the other day, in between lunges at “corrupt Hillary,” deciding that counterpunching on policy would make him look Presidential—or, at least, like a candidate with gravitas. So what’s the ground he chooses for his fight? Debt.

That takes the same kind of hubris required if Bluebeard ever ran for President on a platform criticizing his opponent’s proposals as bad for women. (Oh, wait: twice-divorced, philandering, STD-was-my-personal-Vietnam Trump has done that, too.)

Trump would probably have been better off with the “corrupt Hillary” spiel. Sure, it’s so tiresome now that even The Donald must be bored by it. But, for every voter who claims the charge is a lie or at least overblown, there’s another for whom Hillary Clinton reeks of inauthenticity.

Even trade might have worked as a wedge issue against Hillary. Bill Clinton, after all, had signed NAFTA, an agreement more problematic (certainly for manufacturing workers) than proponents claimed at the time.

But debt? By the end of Bill's second term, the federal deficit had been erased and the budget balanced. He was not solely responsible for that, of course (stock-market gains, the dot-com bubble, and fiscal restraints imposed by a GOP Congress also played their part).  But the tax hike (chiefly on upper-income brackets) passed early in his term played a considerable role—and without inciting a recession, as Republicans claimed it would. Bill Clinton developed a justified reputation for untrustworthiness. But problems with the debt cannot be laid at his door. No, debt increased under his Republican successor in office.

On the other hand, if reducing debt is a virtue, then Trump is utterly without credibility on this issue. Indeed, in an interview with Norah O’Donnell that aired on “CBS This Morning,” he admitted to having “made a fortune by using debt.”

You might say that that is what builders like Trump do, where the practice is to borrow and make up for it on the back end. But in these enterprises, he was dealing often with private investors who were willing to put up not just with these norms but with his shenanigans. As President, he would deal with other people’s money. You know, tax revenues.

Taxes are supposed to be an issue that the GOP owns, but it’s now in free play. Are voters going to trust a candidate who, if he continues his business practices once elected, will spend their money like a drunken sailor? (Trump likes to say he’s never declared bankruptcy. Personal bankruptcy, he means. He’s been involved with four corporate bankruptcies. Again, other people’s money.)

The interview with O’Donnell opened Trump up to other unforced errors. First, the self-proclaimed “king of debt” brags about his proclivities: “Nobody knows debt better than me.” A great Democratic attack ad could begin with that line, followed by his shamefaced reassurance about an education at the now-infamous “Trump University” that could set attendees back $35,000: “It takes money to make money.”

Second, he briefly opened a window revealing how he has largely escaped damage to his net worth: “I’ve made a fortune by using debt, and if things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt,” he told O’Donnell. “I mean, that’s a smart thing, not a stupid thing.” Most people don’t have that luxury: they are at the mercy of financial institutions with enough time and big pockets to wait out court proceedings. Renegotiation is at the banks’ mercy, not their own.

“If things don’t work out I renegotiate the debt.” Indeed.  It goes back to the difference that Warren Buffett underscored between a $100 debtor and a $1 billion debtor. The last decade has shown that there is a different law in this country for the one-percenters than for everyone else. A Trump victory in November would mean nothing more or less than an even more enduring one for them, his true natural constituency. 

If you think living in post-recession America is bad, you won’t want even to think about a post-Trump America. The lessons learned from that will be an education even harder to afford than Trump University.

(Donald Trump, on ‘Stupid’ Iowa Voters)

“How stupid are the people of Iowa? How stupid are the people of the country to believe this crap?"—Billionaire blowhard and GOP Presidential candidate Donald Trump, on the life story of rival Ben Carson, quoted in Daniel Strauss, “Trump Gets Slap on the Wrist for Rant on ‘Stupid' Iowa Voters,” Politico, Nov. 13, 2015

The question, Mr. Trump, is not  “how stupid” Iowa GOP primary voters are in believing Mr. Carson’s “crap” (or, indeed, that of other candidates), but how stupid they are in believing yours.

What a pity you couldn’t have lived in the 19^th century, sir.  Mark Twain could surely have found a place for you besides those con men plying their tricks among mid-American rustics, the “Duke” and the “Dauphin,” in Huckleberry Finn.

Quote of the Day (Timothy Egan, on GOP Presidential Rivals as a ‘Clown Bus’)

“Last election cycle, the Republican presidential field was a clown car, holding the thrice-married Newt Gingrich lecturing about values, the pizza magnate Herman Cain fending off sexual harassment claims, and Michele Bachmann confusing John Wayne with a serial killer. That was just the front seat. This time around it’s a clown bus, with as many as 17 Republicans expected to compete for the nomination.” —Timothy Egan, “Fringe Festival,” The New York Times, May 10, 2015

Despite what Egan writes, the GOP field calls for not one “clown bus,” but two. (Everyone knows that Chris Christie, with all that weight, requires one bus just for himself…)

(Pictured here are Carly Fiorina, Ben Carson, and Mike Huckabee—three bigger clowns, in a psychological, if not physical, way, than Christie.)

Quote of the Day (Ted Cruz, on ‘The Essential Battle’ in Law and Politics)

“In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative.  As Sun Tzu said, Every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.”—U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), quoted in Jeffrey Toobin, “The Political Scene: The Absolutist,” The New Yorker, June 30, 2014

When it comes to the Presidential race he launched today, Ted Cruz might have a different military philosopher in mind than Sun Tzu: Mao Zedong. Just as Chairman Mao began his epic “Long March” of 1934-35 with a long game in mind—i.e., positioning himself as undisputed leader of China’s Communists—Cruz hopes to solidify himself as the authentic voice of the Republican right wing—if not in this Presidential campaign, then a few quadrennial elections down the road.

Cruz might prefer another comparison, a bit closer to home, geographically and ideologically: Ronald Reagan. A dozen years elapsed between the Gipper’s first, half-hearted attempt at the Presidency in 1968 till his victory in 1980. It took that long for the party center to shift toward Reagan, as well.

Running for the Presidency at age 44, after only two years as a Senator, suggests a politician of startling impatience. But project yourself into Cruz’s mind: In 12 years, he’ll still be 13 years younger than Reagan when the latter was finally inaugurated—and still younger than the presumptive Democratic nominee this year, Hillary Clinton.

What I’m suggesting is simple: get used to the idea of seeing Ted Cruz around for a long while. He won’t be going away anytime soon.

Moreover, he’s not a gaffe machine like prior conservative favorites such as Rick Perry, George W. Bush, Dan Quayle—or, for that matter, Reagan--so progressives won't be able simply to laugh him out of this or any future races. At his announcement speech, more than a few commentators noted, Cruz spoke for 40 minutes without notes or a teleprompter. 

In fact, Cruz has argued nine cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Not only has he won five, but he also managed to peel away in those decisions a couple of normally liberal votes such as retired Justice John Paul Stevens.

Too bad he hasn’t figured out the art of persuasion in the Senate. There, of course, he has aligned himself with the forces of obstruction. Toobin’s article for The New Yorker points out that, though Cruz ranks 94^th out of the 100 members of the Senate, he still helped push the federal government into a 15-day shutdown in 2013 over extracting concessions from the Democratic administration over what he called "the disaster that is Obamacare"--a program whose benefits he would deny unlucky ordinary, but will gratefully accept now that his family will no longer be able to depend on his wife's private-sector job.

(There must be something in the water with these GOP newbies: No sooner had Tom Cotton of Arkansas managed to get himself elected to the Senate than he got 47 of his Republican colleagues to dash off that letter to the government of Iran about that treaty being negotiated with the Obama administration.)

All of this is not to say that I find Cruz’ politics appealing. No, sir. Appalling might be the better word for it. There’s no other way to put this: Anybody who thinks it’s a good idea to shut down the federal government, especially in an age of heightened national-security concerns, no matter his Ivy League credentials, is not a bright man.

And then there’s the matter of his record on science. From his Senate perch, Cruz has oversight of NASA. I don’t think this Tea Party devotee is the kind of politician that Dwight Eisenhower had in mind when he signed the original legislation for the agency in the 1950s.

And then there’s the matter of climate change. Cruz was even funnier than Seth Meyers when he told the talk-show host, “I just came back from New Hampshire where there's snow and ice everywhere. And my view actually is simple. Debates on this should follow science and should follow data. And many of the alarmists on global warming, they've got a problem because the science doesn't back them up. And in particular, satellite data demonstrate for the last 17 years there's been zero warming, none whatsoever.”

Had it been Reagan, Quayle or Bush, I might simply say: Hey, the guy mustn’t have gotten the memo about scientific consensus on global warming (or couldn't get past the second sentence). But this guy shows signs of actually having cracked a few books in his time. So, he must have overlooked satellite-data studies such as this one that conclude that “Over the past 35 years, the troposphere has warmed significantly…. The spatial pattern of warming is consistent with human-induced warming.”

No, I think a different book is uppermost in the mind of Cruz right now: the consultant's campaign manual that says a bunch of Iowa farmers don’t believe diddlysquat about global warming and will be damned if they’ll see any of their tax dollars going to a bunch of East Coasters coping with its consequences.

I wonder how much GOP voters are going to embrace him. I mean, get this: he’s a Senator with only a couple of years experience in that body before he decided to run for the biggest job of all in Washington, an Ivy League grad, a lawyer (educated at Harvard Law School, the gold standard), a polished speaker, a son with a foreign-born father, the product of a broken home, and someone who spent time out of the U.S. in his childhood.

On that last point, there is no doubt: Cruz was born in Canada—the northern neighbor that gave birth on this continent to socialized medicine, same-sex marriage, and who knows what else—and remained a dual citizen of that country and the U.S. until nine months ago.

All of that sounds a lot like our current Democratic incumbent—a fellow, you might recall, who has elicited the outrage of a group that became known as “birthers” because of their unusual, fact-free fixation. So far, no equivalent outrage from this group, except for one person—most famous for saying, “You’re fired”—who now seems to want to say the same thing to Cruz. Welcome to the circus, Senator.