Today in 1976, after a concert in Memphis, Bruce Springsteen scaled the walls of Graceland … where he was arrested by a security guard.
Today in 2003, a $5 million lawsuit filed by a personal injury lawyer against John Fogerty was dismissed.
The lawyer claimed he suffered hearing loss at a 1997 Fogerty concert.
The judge ruled the lawyer assumed the risk of hearing loss by attending the concert. The lawyer replied, “What?”
Two weeks ago I wrote here about Gannett’s swallowing up of what used to be Journal Communications, formerly Wisconsin’s largest media company.
Having gobbled up Journal Media Group, Gannett is now looking south, reports the Chicago Tribune:
Gannett announced Monday an offer to buy Tribune Publishing, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times, for $815 million, including the assumption of $390 million in debt.
The unsolicited, all-cash offer, which translates to $12.25 a share, represents a 63 percent premium over Friday’s $7.52 a share closing price, as well as a premium over the $8.50 share price at which Tribune recently issued common shares, Gannett said.
Robert Dickey, president and CEO of Gannett, said in an interview Monday the company has been eyeing Tribune Publishing since June, and that it sees $50 million in savings annually and a platform for expanding its recently launched USA Today Network online. He said Tribune Publishing markets such as Chicago, Los Angeles, Baltimore and Orlando specifically “filled a number of geographic gaps” for Gannett.
Poynter provides a preview:
A hostile $815 million bid for Tribune Publishing by Gannett, owner of USA TODAY and 100 other properties, inspired anxiety in Tribune newsrooms for reasons that Gannett shouldn’t deny. Staffers I spoke with at the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune and The Baltimore Sun — three of Tribune’s best-known dailies — are nervous, partly because of Gannett’s lingering image of being in a different league qualitatively, even with the success of USA TODAY (of which I am a fan). After nearly a decade of internal tumult, including bankruptcy, they’re well-practiced at being shell-shocked. This time, the news reinforced their falling fortunes. Not long ago you would have needed far more money just to buy either the Tribune or Times, forget all 11 papers.
Whether you’re “the best orthopedic surgeon in town” or a “sleazeball lawyer,” reputations are hard to lose. Thus, here was industry analyst Ken Doctor’s Cliff’s Notes on Gannett in a phone chat: “Middle-brow, small towns, tight rein on management, publishers ascendant and editors not as strong, excellent financial engineers, best balance sheet in the business, still searching for its community voice.” And there are few Pulitzer Prizes around their newsrooms.
It is not necessarily true that size means mediocrity, and it is not true that chain ownership of media properties is necessarily a bad thing. It depends on who the owner is. And that requires some state media history.
I became a Journal Communications employee in 1994, as editor of the late great Marketplace Magazine. Journal owned the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel (which would merge in 1995), the most established AM radio station in the state, the first commercial TV station in the state, and numerous weekly newspapers. Journal was an employee-owned company, heavily invested in Wisconsin and the Milwaukee area specifically (though even then Journal owned out-of-state TV and radio stations), and the preferred employer for us media types.
At the time Gannett owned only the Green Bay Press–Gazette and the Wausau Daily Herald. The big print competitor was Thomson Newspapers, a British company that owned the Appleton, Fond du Lac, Manitowoc, Sheboygan, Marshfield and Wisconsin Rapids newspapers. The Oshkosh and Stevens Point newspapers were independently owned until Thomson purchased the Stevens Point newspaper and, after the Oshkosh newspaper was sold to an out-of-state company, Thomson bought the Oshkosh newspaper one year after its sale.
Gannett already had a reputation for trying to kill its competition, in Green Bay’s case the Green Bay News–Chronicle, a newspaper started by striking Press–Gazette employees in the early 1970s. The News–Chronicle’s owner, Frank Wood, brought in Richard McCord, who had experience with Gannett in New Mexico, for a project to save the Newx–Chronicle, which prompted a book, The Chain Gang: One Newspaper Versus the Gannett Empire. (Long story short: Gannett ended up buying the News–Chronicle and closing it. Wood’s sons, however, are still in print, and own the portion of Journal I used to work for.)
Gannett’s business practices were one thing. How Thomson ran its newspapers was another thing. A friend of mine in Appleton told the story about how, in the early days of his marriage when he and his wife lacked money for entertainment, they would have a nightly contest to find typographical errors in the newspaper, with the loser having to do the dishes that night. To call the rest of Thomson’s newspapers “mediocre” would have been a compliment.
Thomson then came upon what management thought was a great idea. In this country, unless you’ve been in the profession for a long time, journalism requires a four-year degree. In Britain, journalism is considered a trade instead of a profession, requiring the British equivalent of a two-year degree. (Which is interesting given that one of the things journalism students learn is libel law; in Britain libel is a criminal offense, and lacking a First Amendment newspapers are forced to apologize for misreporting.)
Whether Thomson wanted to drag down reporter salaries lower than they already were, or wanted its reporters to do whatever editors wanted to them to do, Thomson decided to create the Reader Inc. Editorial Training Center. According to Editor & Publisher:
Motivated by high editorial staff churn and difficulty landing journalism graduates for the long haul, Thomson Newspapers is launching an in-house journalism school for aspiring reporters with as little as a high school diploma or equivalency.
The plan to spend over $1 million of corporate training funds was propelled by the desire to reverse the trend shared by many newspaper companies — the revolving door of reporters on community beats. Thomson executives say the turnover creates confusion and diminishes credibility in the 58 community papers Thomson operates in North America.
Dubbed the Reader Inc. Editorial Training Center, after Thomson’s Reader Inc. initiative aimed at fostering newspaper readership, the center will ensure “new journalists bring a passion for readers to their work, unencumbered by lofty preconceptions of what journalism is all about,” says Stuart Garner, president and CEO of Stamford, Conn.-based Thomson Newspapers.
The venture, apparently the only U.S. effort of its kind, mirrors features of the Thomson Editorial Training Center in Great Britain, which became Trinity Editorial Training Center after Toronto-based Thomson Corp. sold some U.K. properties in 1994. The school has trained thousands of journalists in the past two decades, says Jim Jennings, vice president and editorial director, Thomson Newspapers, who directed the British program in the 1990s.
“We brought the best of what we had done and added a North American feel,” Jennings says. Thomson plans a program in August 1999, and three programs per year starting in 2000. Recruiting will start in a few months in each newspaper’s own circulation area.
The initiative raises the longstanding argument over whether journalism schools should be trade schools or should provide a broader perspective of how the world operates. Eric Meyer, professor of journalism at the University of Illinois, calls the Thomson training course a dangerous move because journalism shouldn’t be about technical training. “We believe you must know something about the world before you begin reporting about it,” he says. “We want [journalism students] to take political science, meteorology, [and] biology to give them a broad understanding about what the issues really are. … If you don’t do that, you run a serious risk of simply transcribing notes.”
Thomson’s Jennings says Meyer is absolutely right. “Journalists need a broad-based education,” he says. But Jennings doesn’t think academic journalism programs are always the right answer.
Meyer believes the move is only designed to save Thomson money. “They very often look for the least expensive solution,” he says. “If they can hire 100 reporters at $15,000 per year instead of $25,000, they are saving a lot of money.
I was aware of one “graduate” of the Thomson School of “Journalism,” a person who made my life difficult at a later employer by blocking (or so I thought) coverage of my employer in the newspaper he worked for because (we believed) he had been asked to leave my employer. He denied that was the case, but once he left, magically the newspaper started covering my employer much more.
I predicted in Marketplace that Thomson would end up buying out Gannett’s Wisconsin newspapers because it didn’t make sense for Gannett to own just two newspapers in the state. I was correct, though I got the buyer and seller confused. In 2000, Gannett ended up buying all of the Thomson newspapers when Thomson decided to get out of newspapering.
In between my stints at Journal, Journal made the decision to sell its stock privately, in order to grow. That ended up, as you know, with the ultimate death of Journal, when Journal and Scripps “merged,” with Scripps controlling Journal’s former broadcast properties and, one year later, Gannett buying Journal’s remaining print properties. Change is not necessarily positive change.
Lawrence W. Reed writes:
Last Sunday, at a height of 35,000 feet, I was reading the generally anticapitalist but profit-seeking New York Times while speeding from Salt Lake City to Atlanta at 400 miles per hour in a giant, metallic, winged tube whose precursor was invented by two profit-seeking bicycle mechanics in Dayton, Ohio (on their own nickel, by the way).
I peruse the Times mainly for the obituaries. Even that paper will sometimes offer a kind word about a capitalist once he’s been taxed good and hard or is gone altogether. That’s where I learned of the death from Alzheimer’s disease of Richard K. Ransom, founder of Hickory Farms, on April 11, 2016. He was 96.
The obit explained that not long after returning from fighting for his country in the Pacific theater of World War II, a young Ransom was tired of driving a vegetable truck around rural Ohio for his parents’ wholesale produce business. So he started selling hand-cut cheeses at flower shows and boat shows. Soon he added summer sausage, then expanded to county fairs around the Midwest.… By the time he sold it in 1980, Hickory Farms was a $164-million-dollar-a-year specialty food business, with outlets in every state but Mississippi.
One of the pioneering features of his stores was the free sample. Lots of them. Free cheese. Free sausage. Free crackers. Imagine that: giving free food to people whether they actually became customers or not. But of course, an awful lot of them did, because they liked what he offered.
Ransom appears to have lived a good and full life: active in community affairs and philanthropy; married to the same woman for 63 years; a son and 3 daughters; 9 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren; a leader on the boards of local banks, a private school, and the Toledo Zoo; and a fundraiser for children’s charities ever since he witnessed the suffering of children on the island of Okinawa, Japan.
An April 13 story in Toledo’s daily newspaper, the Blade, quoted a longtime associate’s summation of him: “He had really good basic values — honesty, integrity. He could relate to people and could make great friends that would last.”
I never had the pleasure of meeting Ransom, but as I read his obit, I thought to myself:
Here’s a man who built a fine enterprise from scratch. It brought employment and goods and services to a great many people. It was successful enough during his tenure that it surely put him in what some would disdain as “the 1 percent” of income earners, though his personal wealth was an insignificant fraction of what he created and a small price to pay for the risks he took. He and his company paid millions in taxes over the years, much of which was squandered by politicians and bureaucracies. Then he founded a wonderful charity that locates families who will adopt children in foster care. He was a generous, long-time donor to Assistance Dogs of America as well.
And yet there’s a ubiquitous barbarian mindset afoot that wants us to view people like Ransom with suspicion and disgust so we can feel good about demagogues who will “protect” us from them. This barbarianism typically makes no distinction between creators who make their fortunes the honest way on their own and the far smaller number who use their political connections to do it. We’re to punish them all and empower the noncreators in government to buy votes with the fruits of their life’s work. Something in history, economics, and basic morality tells me that this evil way of thinking cannot end well, and never, ever has.
I’m reminded of the words of Tacitus some 2,000 years ago: “When men of talents are punished, authority is strengthened.”
By what twisted principle of justice do we sneer at successful people like Ransom? Did the wealth he created — including the relatively small portion he enjoyed himself — make someone else poorer? Would the rest of us have gotten as much out of him if, instead of a life in business, he had pursued the life of a reclusive hermit or a cloistered monk or even that of a tenured, socialist academic?
It seems obvious to me that Ransom baked a bigger pie; he didn’t simply claim a larger slice for himself. He gave the world far more than he took. He didn’t think he was entitled to much, other than the freedom to peacefully put his talents and ideas to work for others as well as himself. I have known a great many such people. In fact, I shun the ones who (unlike Ransom) sully the reputation of capitalism with their very uncapitalist seeking of favors from government. They don’t donate to groups like FEE, I might add, and I’m proud they don’t.
Inebriated with never-ending anger and victimhood, so-called progressives and democratic socialists can’t bring themselves to single out a Richard K. Ransom and praise his accomplishments, let alone the profit motive that played an important role in them. Bernie Sanders, for instance, has built a national campaign around denigrating success. He says, “We are living in a world where greed has become for the wealthiest people their own religion, and they make no apologies for it.”
Not some of the wealthiest, but all of the wealthiest, by virtue of their wealth itself, are irretrievably “greedy” according to Sanders’s flippant declaration. Their greed is nothing less than a “religion,” he pontificates. And, of course, allof them must be taxed more, so people like Bernie can buy votes with their money. He’s telling you, whether he’ll admit it or not, that wealth must be punished because it’s not his or yours. It’s theirs.
In any other walk of life but the dirty business of politics, demonizing an entire class of people with such sweeping verdicts would be dismissed as the meanest, most superficial bigotry. We would see through the demagogue’s flimsy logic. We would immediately think of the many exceptions we personally know. If someone stupidly, offensively proclaimed that all people of a particular viewpoint are bad and must be punished, decent people would rise to the defense of those of that perspective whom they know to be good and undeserving of retribution. We would condemn the demagogue for his carelessness, for his cruelty, and for his ignorance.
But in wide swaths of today’s America, this antisocial behavior turns out huge, cheering throngs to beg for more.
In a genuinely free, capitalist economy, rich people don’t cause poor people. Five hundred or a thousand years ago, the gap between rich and poor was immense and intractable. Mobility from one income level to another was minimal. Most people were economically frozen in place because the rich enjoyed the one thing that ensured and enforced that deep freeze — political power. Not until that power was diminished by ideas that blossomed in the Enlightenment were the enterprising Richard K. Ransoms of the world able to work their magic.
When I hear the class-warfare nonsense of the wealth-destroying Bernies of the world, I feel as though I need a good, hot shower. The millions of hard-working, risk-taking entrepreneurs that Bernie and his friends lump with the few bad eggs don’t deserve such treatment.
RIP, Richard K. Ransom. No one ordered you to, but you did so much to lift people up. You created the wealth that the barbarians in our midst only talk about, steal, and squander. By every measure, you were so much better than they are.
It is time for our annual observance (more like Roman Catholic martyred-saint days, certainly not a celebration) of Tax Freedom Day, described by the Tax Foundation as …
… the day when the nation as a whole has earned enough money to pay its total tax bill for the year. Tax Freedom Day takes all federal, state, and local taxes and divides them by the nation’s income. In 2016, Americans will pay $3.34 trillion in federal taxes and $1.64 trillion in state and local taxes, for a total tax bill of $4.99 trillion, or 31 percent of national income. This year, Tax Freedom Day falls on April 24th, or 114 days into the year (excluding Leap Day).
But it’s not April 24 for those of us in Wisconsin:
The total tax burden borne by residents of different states varies considerably due to differing state tax policies and the progressivity of the federal tax system. This means a combination of higher-income and higher-tax states celebrate Tax Freedom Day later: Connecticut (May 21), New Jersey (May 12), and New York (May 11). Residents of Mississippi will bear the lowest average tax burden in 2016, with Tax Freedom Day arriving for them on April 5. Also early are Tennessee (April 6) and Louisiana (April 7).
Of course, Wisconsin isn’t a “higher-income” state, though we certainly are a “higher-tax” state, and have always been, as the maps show:
It does make you wonder, however, why we must be sentenced to taxes in the highest quarter of U.S. states when (1) our government services are not to the level of our taxes and never have been, and (2) we are not a wealthy state and never have been, and given our punitive taxes never will be. (Remember: Every corrupt politician, every stupid idea coming from government, and every misstep by government, are all something you’re funding with your taxes.)
Measured another way, we’re still paying for government after today:
Since 2002, federal expenses have surpassed federal revenues, with the budget deficit exceeding $1 trillion annually from 2009 to 2012. In calendar year 2016, the deficit will grow significantly, from $592 billion to $698 billion. If we include this annual federal borrowing, which represents future taxes owed, Tax Freedom Day would occur on May 10, 16 days later. The latest ever deficit-inclusive Tax Freedom Day occurred during World War II on May 25, 1945.
Measured any way, this is ridiculous:
Proof that there is less difference than you might believe between Democrats and Republicans is that the state Legislature, controlled by Republicans as the result of the past three elections, has failed to push forward a Taxpayer Bill of Rights to enact strict constitutional controls on spending and taxes. This is despite the fact that state and local government is literally twice the size it should be, as measured by growth in population and inflation. TABOR is vital in order to prevent future legislators — and someday the Democrats will control the Legislature — from spending more money than we overburdened taxpayers have. We voters are supposed to vote for Republicans because they’re the fiscally responsible party, which is like voting for the GOP because it favors gun rights and Democrats don’t. “Rights,” properly defined, should not be up to one party to defend; rights are protection of citizens from government, which is why government must be permanently limited from spending taxpayer money.
We won’t even discuss a federal balanced budget here, since we’re not writing about fantasy.
Thomas C. Reed starts with this hard-to-argue premise:
Republicans, contemplating an avalanche of Donald-detonated losses in the fall, dream of a savior emerging from the Cleveland convention. Some seeJohn Kasich as a possible redeemer. But the nomination of a man, however good, who won only his home state would be anathema to the Trumpistas and Cruziacs.
The sight of House Speaker Paul Ryan parachuting across the Cuyahoga River would draw a rabid response from the zealots gathered below. “See, there’s the proof. The system is rigged!”
How about handing the parachute to a military hero? A political outsider, but a proven leader; a man or woman who can reach out to all Americans, who can stiffen the collective spines of our allies in this time of troubles.
Isn’t it time for another Eisenhower?
After leading the World War II crusade in Europe, Ike returned to the U.S., eventually to serve as president of Columbia University. He only entered the political arena in June 1952 at the urging of Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge (R., Mass.) and Lodge’s Texas allies. Those men saw Ike as a counter to the isolationist voices urging America’s withdrawal from the world stage. In November ’52, five months after entering the political arena, Eisenhower won the presidency in a landslide.
It’s time for a farsighted handful of men and women, like those who recruited Ike, to stand up and be counted. The Eisenhower Brigade—a group of policy advisers, convention activists and financiers—must coalesce into a force to be reckoned with at the Republican convention.
They need not focus on a name, a candidate, until after the California primary on June 7. The campaign to nominate Ike kicked into gear only a month before the 1952 Republican convention.
Who might merit the support of this Eisenhower Brigade?
Some have suggested James Mattis, the retired Marine general and former commander of U.S. Central Command, the forces deployed throughout the Middle East. Mr. Mattis devised America’s counterinsurgency concepts. His troops respected him, his intellect and his 7,000-volume library.
Another military option the Eisenhower Brigade should consider: Stanley McChrystal,the retired U.S. Army general who, as commander of the Special Operations Command, nailed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al Qaeda in Iraq. Mr. McChrystal’s unflattering remarks to a journalist about Vice President Biden in 2010 got him fired as the U.S. commander in Afghanistan—but that would be to his credit in the presidential race. Mr. McChrystal now enjoys academic status as a member of the Yale faculty.
My candidate would be retired U.S. Navy Adm. William McRaven, former commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command, the folks who got Osama bin Laden.
Two years ago, Mr. McRaven retired from the Special Forces Command (70,000 troops, airmen and sailors), and in January 2015 he assumed new duties as chancellor of the University of Texas—a remarkable parallel to the Eisenhower trajectory. His commencement speech to the UT class of 2014 drew wide attention and was adapted inthese pages as “Life Lessons From Navy SEAL Training.”
A deadlocked convention turning to a military hero would allow the Trumpistas to proclaim victory: “We won. We beat the establishment.” And if Democrats nominate an untrusted woman awaiting her FBI moment, the result could be an Eisenhower-scale landslide.
The Hudson Institute’s Rebecca Heinrichs touts Mattis:
We are just months away from the Republican National Convention, and neither Donald Trump nor Sen. Ted Cruz are likely to have the necessary 1,237 delegates to secure the nomination on the first ballot. This means a dark horse candidate is a possibility. Given the complexity of the security environment and years of seemingly aimless warfighting, it is critical we have a national security candidate, preferably one who is an “outsider.” Several are eminently qualified, and among them one stands high above the rest: General James “Mad Dog” Mattis.
Among his higher-profile military achievements during more than four decades in the Marine Corps, Mattis led the successful 2003 charge in Baghdad and beat back insurgent attacks in Fallujah. Although his war-fighting prowess is enough to give him notoriety, he is most famous for his tough, colorful talk and his willingness to say unpopular things.
He once said to a recently surrendered group of Iraqi generals, “I come in peace. I didn’t bring artillery. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you ‘fool’ with me, I’ll kill you all.” In a speech dubbed “Dispelling the PTSD Myth,” Mattis challenged, “There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.” Few people could get away with a comment like that, but few people have enough credibility with veterans as Mattis.
His most recent command was head of U.S. Central Command where he did as well as any person could humanly do at implementing the strategies and operations as laid out (or as completely absent, as the case may be) by the civilian leaders in Washington. He did this all while pushing for greater clarity of mission and for full support to execute it.
He also sought to provoke his civilian bosses to think about how their decisions would cause second- and third-order consequences. For a perfect sampling of his teaching style and concerns, take a look at his testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. Rather than giving the standard “this is how we are achieving the president’s strategy” story, he told the senators which question they should ask. A few of the questions included:
Is political Islam in our best interest? If not, what is our policy to support the countervailing forces? In light of worldwide challenges to the international order we are nonetheless shrinking our military. Are we adjusting our strategy and taking into account a reduced role for that shrunken military?
Unsurprisingly, in an administration unfriendly towards dissenters, the general’s questions, style, and objections earned him early retirement with little fanfare.
This is not the first time someone has suggested the warrior-poet-sage run for the highest office. He has had a fan following in the Marine Corps for years and others have already promoted the idea of his candidacy. But it has always seemed impossible, until in a recent interview with the Daily Caller, Mattis, although clearly not excited about the idea, did not rule out the possibility of a run (so you’re saying there’s a chance!). With renewed hope, here are four basic reasons Mattis would make a timely, excellent president.
1. He Understands and Loves America
Anyone who has spent time with him will tell you that Mattis, although an extraordinarily outstanding man among impressive men, is humble. He does not consider himself better than his subordinates or better than the political class that makes modern warfighting so difficult.
There is nothing pretentious or elitist about him, and we can be confident he will not be remarking about the high prices of arugula.
He also seems to understand, at the most basic level, how and why the Constitution is the way it is. A man like Mattis, of strong will and clear ideas about how things ought to happen, willfully subordinated himself to his civilian leaders and explained that his duty was to be heard, not obeyed.
In an interview with Peter Robinson on “Uncommon Knowledge,” he explained the challenge of working with political leaders and how he understood his role in implementing America’s military aims. He said his job was and continues to be to try to give his best military advice without creating animosity with the political leaders, because, as he said, it is all “[p]art of maintaining a government of the people, by the people, and for the people. It needs military defenders but at the same time it does not exist for a military purpose.”
2. He Possesses Moral Clarity
President Obama’s tepid warfighting, his (and Hillary Clinton’s) inability to even utter the name of our foes, let alone their motives, his emotionless responses after horrific acts of terror, and his satisfaction with loserdom against a winnable foe have left a bulk of the American citizenry yearning for a strong leader who is unwilling to lose.
This is the appeal of Donald Trump, of course. But Trump has leadership all wrong. Yes, Trump wants to win, but besides the fact that he has no idea how to do that, his style, tone, and instincts, including his full defense of targeting women and children, turn manliness on its head. What is the point of fighting if the targets are the very things good men find worthy of defending?
Enter Mattis, a man who, when talking about the wickedness of militant Islamists, and his “sorry not sorry” attitude about snuffing them out, frequently describes their mistreatment and brutalization of women.
You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them. (2005)
Gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible. We may not want this fight, but the barbarity of an enemy that kills women and children and has refused to break with al-Qaeda needs to be fought. (January 2015)
Having dealt with this enemy since 1979… we are up against an enemy that means what they say and we should not patronize them. When they say ‘girls don’t go to school’ you’re not going to talk them out of it… their views of the role of women, their views of modernity, their views of tolerance for people who think differently are fundamentally different than ours. (March 2015)
Here are the opening remarks of a speech he delivered: “Ladies, the wonderful ladies who exemplify grace & courage, who represent our better angels and what we fight for” (March 2014).
At a time when our country is seriously adrift regarding eadership and lacking in moral clarity, a President Mattis will give us a much-needed recalibration.
3. He Will Win
General Mattis knows how to win. He knows what is necessary to achieve military objectives, and therefore military victories. He knows how to identify the problem, and rout the enemy so it no longer wants to fight Americans. He understands what many in the political class do not: military battles are not merely fought with weapons; they are also a contest of wills. Or, as he said, “In my line of work, the enemy gets a vote.”
He understands the psychological and ideological side of warfare far better than the political classes in both the Bush and Obama administrations. For example, as a recently retired general, he testified before the Congress and said, “Specifically, if this threat to our nation is determined to be as significant as I believe it is, we may not wish to reassure our enemies in advance that they will not see American ‘boots on the ground’…If a brigade of our paratroopers or a battalion landing team of our Marines would strengthen our allies at a key juncture and create havoc/humiliation for our adversaries, then we should do what is necessary with our forces that exist for that very purpose.”
Catch that? Strengthen our allies and humiliate our adversaries. These objectives seem to have been underappreciated during the Bush years and inversely pursued during the Obama years.
Winning takes guts and sacrifice, but according to Mattis, current threats can be defeated. The real challenge is in identifying which adversaries warrant the threat of or the full force of American military might. Or, as Mattis asks, what does America want to do and what is it willing to tolerate? These questions aren’t easy for any commander in chief. But Mattis knows as well as anyone can what the U.S. military can achieve, and whose destruction is worth precious American blood and treasure.
4. He Is a Perpetual Student of History and People
Like Trump and Cruz, Mattis is not a successful professional politician, and that would be appealing to people; but unlike Trump, who is decidedly incurious, Mattis has a voracious appetite for reading, learning, and applying the lessons he learns. An administration run by a man like this suggests two departures from what we’ve witnessed from the Obama administration.
One, Mattis would look at things as they are and always have been, rather than as he wishes them to be or hopes to make them. Two, unlike President Obama, who seems to be in a constant state of surprise, Mattis cannot be surprised.
When asked why he always carried with him a copy of “Meditations of Marcus Aurelius,” among other books, he explained, “It was good for me to be reminded that I faced nothing new under the sun… the bottom line is the fundamental impulses, the fundamental challenges, and the solutions are pretty timeless in my line of work.”
The great challenge for America is that men like Mattis don’t want to run for political office. And who could blame them? Between the demagoguery, brutal and slanted media coverage, and the kinds of base discourse that makes for good TV, it looks like a miserable undertaking. As Ben Boychuk recently penned, “We need a candidate like Mattis this year of all years. But we don’t deserve him.”
But as Schramm said after his evening with the general, “One claim he made left us skeptical. [Mattis] spoke of his upcoming retirement, telling us how keen he was to go back to Walla Walla, Washington, and relax for the rest of his days…Later that evening [my friend] Mac remarked how foolish it would be for such a fine man, such a ‘master of war,’ to be retired. Surely in times like these there was more work for such a man to do.”
Well, we truly might not deserve him, but in times like these there is more work for such a fine man to do. I hope this master of war serves our messy, wonderful country just one last time.
No one knows what kind of campaigner Mattis, or someone else on this list, might be. No one can say with any certainty what any of these candidates’ positions on issues, including non-military issues, might be. No one therefore knows what kind of a president one of these retired military might be. But could Mattis be any worse than Trump? Could Mattis be any less popular among non-partisan voters than Trump or Cruz?
The number one single today in 1963 was recorded by a 15-year-old, the youngest number one singer to date:
The number one British single today in 1967 was that year’s Eurovision song contest winner:
The number one single today in 1985:
The explanation for Donald Trump’s success is not simple, but let’s see what we can make of a simple statement. “I love the poorly educated,” Trump said, and both the left and the right chortled. That response is understandable. The idea of President Trump would be laughable had it not become a distinct possibility.
The response is also not wrong. The fact that the campaign for the most powerful position on Earth produces front-runners like Trump and Hillary Clinton is a wonderful argument for limited government. It is a stunning indictment of the notion that we should allow much in our lives to be directed by politics and elections. But there is also a trap in dismissing Trump’s supporters as fools or haters. To be sure, they are badly mistaken, and there is certainly a good measure of racial resentment, if not racism, in Trump’s appeal.
But things happen for a reason. Populism, however ugly and ignorant, needs some real grievance upon which to work.
Trump’s invocation of the “poorly educated” was neither the cynical admission of a con artist (although he is that) or simply a statement of solidarity with those who resent our elites. It was a dog whistle directed at those who believe that politics as usual has left them behind.
On the left, there are both sympathetic and unsympathetic explanations for Trump’s success. The unsympathetic explanation is that this is all conservatism come home to roost. In this view, the American right has always been about hate and Trump is simply serving it up in larger and undiluted doses.
There are two problems with this explanation. The first is that it assumes a large number of people are motivated by nothing other than hate and ignorance. This is almost always a mistake. The other is that the organized right — consisting of movement conservatives — regards Trump as antithetical to everything that they believe in: limited government, individual freedom, free markets.
The more sympathetic explanation sees Trump’s support as a conscious rejection of traditional conservative policies. Trump voters, according to this view, have decided that they don’t want lower taxes and smaller government. They want redistribution of income but are simply seeking it in the wrong place. Today’s Trumpkins could be tomorrow’s Sandernistas.
I don’t think so. Trump’s supporters may not be Randian libertarians, but they don’t seem interested in a handout. They may feel that the political establishment has little regard for the working class, but they see the Democrats as a coalition of people who are not like them: racial and sexual minorities, union members, government workers and limousine liberals.
I don’t pretend to fully understand what’s going on. Part of it may be no more sophisticated than the sad fact that you can fool some of the people for quite some time. But the misguided and tragic support for Trump might also be a response to the failings of politicians on the left and the right. The left has lost the white working class because of its unconcealed contempt for the great unwashed who cling to their God and their guns. It is beside itself because a football team is named the Redskins, while it regularly makes sport of rednecks. It has forgotten that the American working class is not a European proletariat. Joe and Jill Sixpack understand, at some level, that American exceptionalism has worked for them, even if all of their aspirations have not yet been achieved. Denmark doesn’t look good to them.
But, in the wake of the financial crisis and a perception (however unfair) that capitalism failed to deliver, some Republicans feel the GOP has been indifferent to them. Trump’s working-class voters believe that Republicans, like the Democrats, are also on “someone else’s side,” i.e., business and the wealthy. It would be easy — and not completely wrong — to say that politicians must accept where people are. But I’d like to believe that reason and evidence still have space to work. And that’s exactly what happened in Wisconsin. In theory, our Rust Belt state should have been, like Michigan and Illinois before us, Trump territory. But Trump lost here on April 5, and it was no accident. While his core supporters did not waiver, conservatives in Wisconsin were largely united behind a single candidate and motivated by a desire not only to choose a candidate, but to save a movement. No matter what happens nationally,
It would be easy — and not completely wrong — to say that politicians must accept where people are. But I’d like to believe that reason and evidence still have space to work. And that’s exactly what happened in Wisconsin.
In theory, our Rust Belt state should have been, like Michigan and Illinois before us, Trump territory. But Trump lost here on April 5, and it was no accident. While his core supporters did not waiver, conservatives in Wisconsin were largely united behind a single candidate and motivated by a desire not only to choose a candidate, but to save a movement.
No matter what happens nationally, Wisconsin may have shown the way forward for conservatives. Over the past five years, we have developed a fantastic conservative infrastructure made up of think tanks and advocacy groups that have explained conservative ideas, not just conservative resentment. The activity of these groups has been augmented by conservative talk radio hosts who are a cut above — actually several cuts above — those found elsewhere and nationally. Our conservative politicians have cared about policy, not just the polls.
Here in Wisconsin, we have shown that ideas and reasoned discourse matter. Nationally, I am afraid that conservatives may be facing a time in the wilderness. In Wisconsin, we have demonstrated the way out and have begun to move forward.
I suspect that we have a lot of work to do.
The Democrats’ and Republicans’ mirror images made news for being themselves last week.
Politico reports:
There is “almost the question as to why” cigarettes are legal in the United States, Bernie Sanders said in an interview aired Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
The remark came as Sanders explained his opposition to a proposed tax on sugary drinks in Philadelphia, which would fund pre-kindergarten education, reiterating that it is a “totally regressive tax” that results in poorer people paying even more in taxes if they buy a bottle of soda.
When moderator Chuck Todd asked him if he felt the same way about cigarette taxes, Sanders said he did not.
“Cigarette taxes are — there’s a difference between cigarettes and soda,” the Vermont senator said. “I am aware of the obesity problem in this country.”
Todd replied, “I don’t think Michael Bloomberg would agree with you on that one,” referring to the former New York mayor’s infamous effort to limit the size of sugary drinks sold in the city. (The state’s highest court in 2014 ruled that the city had overstepped its regulatory bounds by implementing the rule.)
“Well, that’s fine. He can have his point of view,” Sanders said. “But cigarettes are causing cancer, obviously, and a dozen other diseases. And there is almost the question as to why it remains a legal product in this country.”
I have a hard time believing Sanders opposes “soda taxes.” I do not have a hard time believing that Sanders would favor bans on cigarettes. I do wonder how potential Sanders voters in tobacco states feel about his position. I also wonder how banning cigarettes and legalizing marijuana, both of which are smoked, is logically consistent, as well as Sanders’ apparent amnesia over the most famous attempt to federally ban something bad for you if misused, Prohibition.
Meanwhile, there is The Donald, of whom The Daily Wire reports:
Thursday morning, asked on the Today Show whether he believed in raising taxes on the wealthy, Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the GOP nomination for president, gave a reply that illuminated how much of a Democrat in GOP clothing the Orange-Haired One is, replying, “I do, I do.”
As time passes, Trump is becoming almost indistinguishable from Bernie Sanders. Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief saw this back in February, in a piece delineating how alike the two men were on numerous policies. For the sake of solely concentrating on their similarities vis-à-vis economic policy, here’s Shapiro’s section on that:
They’re both anti-establishment candidates who bash Wall Street. Here’s Trump from his victory speech last night:
It’s special interests’ money, and this is on both sides. This is on the Republican side, the Democrat side, money just pouring into commercials. These are special interests, folks. These are lobbyists. These are people that don’t necessarily love our country. They don’t have the best interests of the country at heart.
Here’s Sanders from his victory speech last night:
We have sent a message that will echo from Wall Street to Washington, from Maine to California, and that is that the government of our great country belongs to all of the people and not just a handful of wealthy campaign contributors, and their Super PACs.
Of course, when Trump says he believes in raising taxes on the wealthy, he also believes he will cunningly outsmart the system. As he said in January, “I mean, I pay as little as possible. I use every single thing in the book.”
Trump has boasted that his tax plan would help working people, but that simply is another Trumpian lie. As Robert Shapiro, chairman of economics and security advisory firm Sonecon, pointed out, “To the extent he says he’s fighting for working people, his tax plan refutes that — it’s a complete refutation. He’s fighting for himself, and those like him, at the very top of the income distribution. That’s what his policies do.” Shapiro added, “He’s actually going to provide a much larger tax break to hedge funds and private equity fund general partners than what the carried-interest loophole does.” …
Trump may say he’s for raising taxes on the wealthy just to curry favor with Democrats and establishment Republicans, but it simply isn’t true. And by saying he would do so, any credibility of Trump being a conservative is ripped to shreds.
Mick Staton adds:
I have argued for a long time now that Donald Trump’s “conversion” to Conservatism after a lifetime of being a Liberal Democrat was nothing more than a sales pitch to win him votes in the Republican primary. You don’t just change your mind on every single major political issue (abortion, gun control, taxes, health care, immigration, trade) and expect people to take your word for it.
Now, however, we see more of the real Donald Trump shining through as he is already abandoning conservative positions before he has even won the nomination. During an NBC Town Hall today, Trump made major moves to the left on two key social issues: abortion, and allowing transgender men to use the girl’s bathroom.
When asked about the current issues over the North Carolina law that requires people to use the bathroom based on the gender listed on their birth certificate, Trump sided with the Leftists and the Boycotters and declared that people should be able to use whatever bathroom they feel like. It is absolutely amazing that the “front runner” for the GOP nomination for President sides with the “Social Justice Warriors” against families. …
So for all of you who are supporting Donald Trump, are you now starting to wonder just what kind of President he’s going to be? Do you think he’s going to stand up for religious liberty? Do you think he’s going to put a hard core conservative on the Supreme Court? Seriously, ask yourself this question:
Did a 69 year old man who has been a Liberal Democrat all his life suddenly have a “Road to Damascus” conversion on every single important political issue we face today, right before he decided to run for President, or is a consummate salesman telling you exactly what you want to hear?
Imagine having tickets to today’s 1964 NME winner’s poll concert at Wembley Empire Pool in London:
Steve Prestegard.com: The Presteblog 