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18 Nov, 4 tweets, 2 min read
"Everyone ... has adjusted to a world in which US influence is declining" - @anneapplebaum in @TheAtlantic
today. To some degree, relative decline is dictated by objective facts. Trump hastened it. theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
During the Obama years, the late Charles Krauthammer declared, "Decline is a choice." That's quite wrong. The Romans never decided, "Oh yes, we could defeat these Goths if we wanted to, but we prefer to let our cities be sacked." Power rests on facts. But ...
... a relatively declining power can mitigate those facts. As European states recognized that they had ceased to be great individual powers after 1945, they created the European Union to join their strengths. Alliance-building should have been US response to China rise. Instead
... we have had four years of alliance-wrecking. It'll be a hell of a job for Biden foreign policy simply to restore partnerships to where they were before Trump started smashing things. And then the hard *real* work begins of actually deepening and strengthening them. - END -

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More from @davidfrum

David Frum Profile picture
19 Nov
No more happy talk about the "uniquely American transition of power." Trump presidency and this post-election period confirm that the US is *less* committed to democratic norms - and has *weaker* institutional safeguards for democracy - than peer wealthy democracies.
I asked a German diplomat friend to detail the safeguards against, say, a German chancellor trying to extend her tenure despite losing an election. He replied that such a thing was utterly impossible, he couldn't begin to enumerate the reasons why. And he was right of course.
Nobody wondered, "Will Gordon Brown or Theresa May leave office if defeated?" Ditto the Netherlands, New Zealand, and newer democracies like Portugal or South Korea. Democratic culture is deep, and election law is administered impartially. For all the boasting, not true in USA
Read 18 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
15 Nov
My latest in @TheAtlantic : the GOP's two paths away from Trump - forward toward democracy, back toward the methods of Jim Crow: leveraging anti-democratic local rule to wield national power theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/…
@TheAtlantic A last-ditch Trumpist plan to overturn the 2020 election results: beg GOP state legislators in Biden states like Pennsylvania to substitute pro-Trump electors.

This idea was thinkable because GOP had won majority in PA legislature with 500,000 fewer votes than Dems in 2018. 2/x
@TheAtlantic Similar outcomes in MI and WI: GOP had won majorities of the seats with minority of votes.

In the end, the legislators flinched. The idea was illegal anyway. (Little Trumpists care about that.) But it demonstrated ... 3/x
Read 12 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
13 Nov
Those of us who have lived in the vicinity of malignant narcissists will recognize Trump's behavior pattern 1/x
Trump has been abruptly and harshly cut off from his source of narcissistic supply. Here's what typically follows such a shock healthyplace.com/personality-di… 2/x
The deprived narcissist

"minimizes social interactions and uses 'messengers' to communicate with the outside."

3/x
Read 6 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
11 Nov
I think I've found the best yet explainer for Trump and GOP strategy post November 3. They are engaged in a form of play therapy verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
Play therapy is used with children and adults who lack verbal and cognitive skills verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
Play therapy is an effective way for children to deal with anger and loss verywellfamily.com/what-is-play-t….
Read 6 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
5 Nov
When do Fox News reporters start being assigned "Biden safaris"?

"Biden's electoral path spanned the country, largely bypassing unpeopled sagebrush to join dynamic city centers and the single-family suburbs that once formed the basis of the Nixon-Regan coalition ..."
"Biden supporters seemingly reveled in Trump's descriptions of them as 'rioters, looters, and Marxists,' seeing it as proof that they were looked down upon ..."
It's a lively genre, ready for a reinvention!
Read 4 tweets
David Frum Profile picture
3 Nov
"If there was a flaw in our strategy, it was probably that we forgot that women had the vote."
"If there was a flaw in our strategy, it was letting our campaign staff steal all the money instead of using it for campaign purposes."
"If there was a flaw in our campaign strategy, it was probably failing to deal with pandemic disease while plunging the economy into the worst slump since the Great Depression."
Read 5 tweets

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