There is a reason I spent several chapters in the book on the presidency on the changing makeup of Congress and the Congressional electorate: fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-b…
It would seem impossible that an essay written by E.B. White about the presidency would slip my notice (and one on Eisenhower to boot!) but it's true... It contains this fun passage. It's called "One Hour to Think." Thank you to @arnielayne for sending it to me.
“In the 20 years since the country had created fusion centers in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this.” washingtonpost.com/politics/inter…
Jul 30, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
If you were to compile a list of those who held the line and did the right thing under direct pressure from the president after the election, who would be on that list?
I assume there's general agreement among the fair-minded that if placed in such circumstances we'd hope to act in a way that put us on that list, yes? Character is still a laudable quality?
Jul 30, 2021 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
"“Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me” and to congressional allies, [Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America] Mr. Donoghue wrote in summarizing Mr. Trump’s response in notes he took memorializing the call." nytimes.com/2021/07/30/us/…
Related content from @CarolLeonnig
Limited special @AmazonKindle price: essentially change you can find in the couch cushions. amazon.com/Hardest-Job-Wo…
Participants at Charlottesville and on 1/6 boasted they were there in the name of the same person, the sitting American president.
Jan 10, 2021 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
During the 2016 campaign (!) one adviser to a high-ranking GOP official said the official paused before criticizing Donald Trump because doing so would highlight all the times similar previous behavior by Trump had not merited a word by that official. 1/4
Many are faced with this challenge now because events are too horrible to stay quiet. They say they weren't delinquent, but that something changed in the president. The problem: officials were identifying in 2015 the behavior identified as wrong today. 2/4
Jan 8, 2021 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A president should have foresight. Some who would like to be president in 2024 are rushing to condemn the man they campaigned very hard for just months ago. A fatal foresight flaw to have not seen the seeds of what they now condemn? If not, why not?
Caution: if your answer includes the sudden identification of behaviors that were in evidence for years (but about which you did not speak up, despite, in some cases first-hand witness), you are undermining your case.
Jan 2, 2021 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The pull on the conscience of “knowing better” was watered down to near translucence over the last two months of those who know better saying and doing nothing.
), those unhappy with Senator Hawley have been holding the handle to the door through which the horse fled weeks (months?) ago.
Dec 28, 2020 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
"I will send back to Congress a redlined version, item by item, accompanied by the formal rescission request.” It's been a while since the Hill was my beat but is this a thing? From a president with less than a month on the clock?
This is why I was asking. With the ICA, if Congress doesn’t act in 45 days, the President’s proposal expires and the executive branch must spend the money as prescribed.
Dec 19, 2020 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
Many have responded to the president's escalations by saying it is wrong and out of touch to judge him based on standards of behavior. The only standard they recognize is that voters perceive these acts being undertaken on their behalf. If they're okay, then it's okay. Now what?
*This is essentially the 5th Avenue Standard. A standard so thoroughly at odds with the founding of the office you could power much of the cold northeast with the turbine energy of its creators spinning in their graves.
Nov 20, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
It was a very orderly transition, as Chris Christie, who worked on it for the six months mandated by law would attest. It included several national security exercises, including one on what the incoming team would do if faced with a pandemic from Asia. politico.com/news/2020/03/1…
Candidate Trump on the attacks of 9/11: “You always have to look to the person at the top,” Trump said. “Do I blame George Bush? I only say that he was the president at the time, and you know, you could say the buck stops here.” Same standard for Covid-19?
From this article: washingtonpost.com/news/politics/…
Jul 8, 2020 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
Here’s the thing about naming your book The Room Where it Happened, that song is about naked ambition...which the founders abhorred.
Patrick Henry: “If your American chief be a man of ambition, and abilities, how easy it is for him to render himself absolute.”
Jan 30, 2020 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Thinking about this argument against checking presidential power, it's actually an argument for doing so. Here's how: Dershowitz was arguing that all politicians think their re-election is in the national interest.
The framers knew this. They harnessed it. They wanted presidents of ambition. When Gouverneur Morris argued for more than one term he appealed to the beneficial nature of ambition. To stop a president at one term, he said, “may give a dangerous turn
Nov 12, 2019 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The Nikki Haley charge against Tillerson and Kelly raises an interesting question about presidential management. There is a tradition of ignoring presidents to protect them. Clifford did it with Truman and Haldeman and Kissinger did it with Nixon. Surely it happened with LBJ.
“It was surely one of the most intemperate documents ever written by a president,” Clifford recalled before spiking a Truman speech attacking labor leaders. "The president’s handwritten message struck me as perilously out of control."
Oct 1, 2019 • 7 tweets • 1 min read
Is there a president who has changed a party faster and more completely than Donald Trump in both ideological and cultural terms?
Revision: Donald Trump has transformed the Republican Party faster and more completely in both ideological and cultural terms than any president since Lincoln.
Sep 25, 2019 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
Am I reading this right? The president says the U.S. has done a lot for Ukraine and then says the relationship has not been reciprocal and then asks the Ukrainian president to do a number of things, all of them politically related? 1/4
"the United States
has been very ·very good to Ukraine. I wouldn't say that it's
reciprocal necessarily because things are happening that are not good but the United States has been very very good to Ukraine." 2/4
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