Sarah Palin Donald Trump Interview

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Sarah Palin Donald Trump Interview

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1Urquhart
Editado: Ago 29, 2015, 10:58 am

The interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oeju2SG7UMA

Can someone help out and put these two people in a historical context for me?

Would the Know Nothing party be somewhat similar?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Know_Nothing#Underlying_issues

Would Marine Le Pen a French politician and the president of the National Front (FN), be somewhat comparable?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_Le_Pen

2Phlegethon99
Ago 29, 2015, 11:53 am

Marine Le Pen has no access to corporate money, hence the credit deal with a Russian bank in order to finance her election campaign. Currently the FN is being transformed into a mainstream party open to gays, atheists, non-whites similar to what the Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) already did in the early 90s. Similar to Italy the old guard will break away and form traditionalist parties, in the French case probably around Jean-Marie Le Pen.

Trump is just standing for Trump and Palin caters to the large demographic group of uneducated, anti-intellectual trailer park white trash, hysterical millenialists and other assorted crazies deeply rooted in the American soil of religious deviancy. This seems to be the only political constant here. Unlike the Know-Nothings they´d probably be happy about German and Irish immigration nowadays although they´re much harder to exploit than illegals from south of the border.

3Urquhart
Ago 29, 2015, 1:18 pm


Unlike everyone else, I like the style of Donald Trump and Sarah Palin because:

1-They make me feel both intelligent and insightful. In this day and age it is easy to feel one doesn’t understand or have all the facts. And I don’t. But I certainly have more than either of the two.

2-They bring laughter to the daily news and the presidential debate and I can think of no one and no thing in this world that causes me to smile and laugh so consistantly the way they do. This world needs more smiles and laughter amidst all the sorrow and suffering.

3-They have confidence. If I had just 10% of the confidence of either one I am sure I could navigate the everyday world far more easily. Please note, I don’t want all of the confidence of either one, all I need is to have just 10%.

So their style is wonderful however their substance is an entirely different issue.

4Phlegethon99
Ago 29, 2015, 3:23 pm

From a European perspective everything American is at best amusing, but in the case of Trump and Palin vicariously embarrassing as well. The antithesis to the concept of man being the crown of creation.

5Muscogulus
Editado: Ago 31, 2015, 6:19 pm

>2 Phlegethon99:

the large demographic group of uneducated, anti-intellectual trailer park white trash, hysterical millenialists and other assorted crazies deeply rooted in the American soil of religious deviancy.

Hey, those are my people you’re talking about! ;-)

Seriously, though, the United States does have a unique Christian culture, where democracy has given rise to an incredible array of contradictory beliefs that even most Americans never come to grips with. Secularly inclined Americans tend to dismiss all forms of Christian piety with a single stereotype. Fundamentalists of all stripes (including secular fundies like Sam Harris) look at this cacophony and deplore all the deviance from Truth.

Of all the uniquely American innovations in religious life, the one I identify most strongly with is the "wall of separation" tradition, keeping government out of religious matters. We have never done this perfectly, and perhaps we shouldn't be too concerned about getting it perfectly right. (I've been reading early 19th-century acts of Congress appropriating public money for missionary schools, for instance, when there was no federal Department of Education.) But this seems to me to be the most important single factor in Americans' relatively high involvement in religion. If there had been an American state church, I feel sure that Americans would be at least as irreligious as western Europe now is. (I've seen anecdotal evidence of a similar process under way in Iran; the Islamic Republic cultivates hostility to religion in young people who've been indoctrinated all their lives by the state.) Another consequence of state-controlled religion is that the reaction to it tends to promote simplistic thinking about religion, especially in intellectuals.

The innovation I would most like to abolish is the cult of Dispensationalism, typified in the Left Behind books, the earlier Late Great Planet Earth and other (highly commercialized) productions. This is the modern belief, based on some bizarre biblical exegesis, that the world is going to end Real Soon Now and the Book of Revelation is a set of cryptic prophecies explaining exactly how it's all going to go down. It promotes an obsession with the afterlife and reduces Christianity to a system of magic spells that will ensure eternal life for Precious Snowflake Me while condemning billions of less informed people to eternal torment in the fiery lake of hell. I had to pick my way through this ideological swamp in my youth. It's inescapable in the South, and commonplace everywhere in the USA (except maybe Hawaii, and I'm not sure about Salt Lake City).

But this is veering away from Donald and Sarah. I did watch the interview and found it quite interesting. Only in America would a presidential candidate be asked for his favorite Bible verse, and there is no doubt that this was a cheap journalistic effort to cause a gaffe by getting The Donald to misquote a verse. (I have nothing but contempt for gaffe stories; they among are the lowest forms of journalism, just above boilerplate state propaganda. Gaffe stories write themselves and tell us nothing except that the writer is a lazy cynic. The fear of gaffe hedlines has a chilling and stultifying effect on political speech on-the-record.)

One thing I learned as a journalist is that even in the "Bible Belt" few people are actually familiar with the Bible. Yet everyone, it seems, even allegedly hard-nosed journalists, pays a knee-jerk deference to Bible references. Reverence and ignorance are a volatile mixture.

6Urquhart
Editado: Ago 31, 2015, 9:34 pm

I gather no one knows the answer posed in the OP:

"Can someone help out and put these two people in a historical context for me?"

Or put another way, what well known people in history have taken a similar approach?

Both claim to be populists, and Huey Long did as well but Long would appear to be quite different at the same time. Also, George Wallace is similar in some ways and yet different in others.

I just sense Trump and Palin are not truly unique knock offs, historically speaking.

7dajashby
Ago 31, 2015, 8:03 pm

#6
I thought that Muscogulus did a pretty good job, speaking as an ignorant foreigner who finds both of them too creepy to be genuinely amusing.

Perhaps you could clarify what exactly you want to know.

8carmody
Set 1, 2015, 7:00 am

Ur

If you are looking for personages in history then Joseph McCarthy might be one example. He was the man who played to the masses and stirred up much of the Red Scare of the 50s.

"He was noted for making claims that there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere. Ultimately, his tactics and inability to substantiate his claims led him to be censured by the United States Senate."

Joseph McCarthy, Palin, and Trump deal with fear and ignorance.

9TLCrawford
Set 1, 2015, 9:15 am

William Jennings Bryan was goo at finding and exploiting "they are coming after us" issues. For that matter it has been the primary political tactic for one party since the "Southern Strategy" But I don't see Trump and Palin in that light.

The last book I read, Wall Street Under Oath was written in 1939 and the author, introducing one tactic used to exploit investors mentioned a man I had never heard of and said there was no need to go into his story, everyone will know it, he has been in the headlines for decades. Like I said, I never heard of him. If I had the book with me I would look up his name to see if anyone has. My point is that I see Palin and Trump as disappearing flashes in the pan. In 10 years they will be curiosities and trivia questions in 20 they will be forgotten completely. That might be why we are having trouble finding similar personalities in history. To be remembered you have to accomplish something, good or bad, and these two have not accomplished anything but make headlines and like old newspapers their legacy will be best used to take out the trash.

10Phlegethon99
Editado: Set 1, 2015, 12:12 pm

The Dynamic Dimwit Duo is a product of a TV nation, the living antithesis to the axiom "cogito ergo sum". As creations of the mass media they do not qualify as politicians at all in my book. Comparing them to actual political figures (Joe McCarthy, Robert Welch, Dan Smoot, Barry Goldwater - add your favorite right-wing bogeyman here - ) gives them far too much credit.

11Muscogulus
Set 1, 2015, 2:37 pm

>10 Phlegethon99:

As creations of the mass media they do not qualify as politicians at all in my book.

Well, politically influential. And if you're running for president (or vice president in 2008), I think you have to be admitted to the category of politician. I admit that if there were an entrance exam, both The Donald and The Sarah would probably have flunked.

Still, it's true that both are primarily media figures, and Trump's skill at exploiting the media (as a self-publicizer and entertainer, as well as a master of the Twitterverse) has everything to do with his current prominence. The interview — highly scripted in advance, it seems clear — uses a lot of field-tested tropes calibrated for maximum impact. (Then there are the visuals, like the enormous waving flag behind Palin, which I can’t help thinking should look ridiculous to most people. And Trump's choice of a shopping-mall backdrop — projected onto a screen, I'm sure, to avoid gawkers congregating on the stairs, but it gave the impression that Trump had just paused in the middle of a shopping trip, out among the people, to take a video call from Sarah.)

As a media figure, I've red someone who compared Trump with Father Charles E. Coughlin, the 1930s radio personality who eventually veered from anti-establishment leftism to pro-fascism. The Roosevelt (FDR) administration finally resorted to prior-restraint censorship and pressure on the Roman Catholic hierarchy to force him off the air and suppress his newsletter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

Of course there are as many differences as similarities. Rush Limbaugh has also been compared to Coughlin and is an enthusiastic supporter (at the moment) of Trump.

12TLCrawford
Set 1, 2015, 2:52 pm

#11 Then you would consider Pat Paulsen a politician? What about Gracie Allen? She ran in 1940 at the head of the Surprise Party.

13Muscogulus
Editado: Set 1, 2015, 3:05 pm

>12 TLCrawford:

And she would have gotten my vote!

(Touchstones: Pat Paulsen, Gracie Allen)

14DinadansFriend
Set 1, 2015, 9:42 pm

The stage persona of Gracie Allen could be seen as the mother, or Granny of Sarah Palin? What a delightful thought!

15TLCrawford
Set 2, 2015, 11:02 am

#14 NO! Gracie Allen was a sweetheart. She might not have been very bright but she never had a mean bone in her body. The same cannot be said about SP.

16chagonz
Set 4, 2015, 10:42 pm

Here is a large difference between the Donald and Mrs. Palin. He has tapped into a rich vein of discontent in the US that is broader and deeper than the lowest 10% we would like to believe is his natural constituency. Mrs. Palin is a non entity and has proven that over the past 7 years; she is forgettable and a sideline to the conversation taking place today. The Donald on the other hand has demonstrated beyond doubt that close to a third of Americans are buyin into his rhetoric. That's something to take seriously, and anyone who doesn't is asking for trouble. Listen to his interviews with Mark Helprin, a Washington insider if there ever was one , and you will find a smart guy trying to run the table, just as he did in NY real estate .
Is he good for the process of American democracy? Can he actually win the nomination? I am not betting against him and the Demos would be smart not to do the same. I for one am not sure if Hill is up to it .

17DinadansFriend
Editado: Set 8, 2015, 5:25 pm

As one of your neighbours to the north, Mr. Trump is a very great danger indeed! If elected but defeated in his Middle Eastern and Mexican adventures where will he cast his mean-spirited eyes next? And I just notice that a northern American Governor has suggested a wall between Canada and the USA already! But that could be comforting then....;-)

18Muscogulus
Set 8, 2015, 8:02 pm

>11 Muscogulus:

The interview — highly scripted in advance, it seems clear — uses a lot of field-tested tropes calibrated for maximum impact.

I made this remark above but didn’t give examples. Here are the ones I noticed:

  • Rebuild the nation's infrastructure.

  • Protect our border.

  • We need good jobs.

  • Simplify the federal tax code.

  • Veterans should be treated better.

Except for the border protection (an issue I can't get worked up about), it's hard to find fault with this list. In fact, it's encouraging to see a leading candidate speak out about the government's persistent failure to invest in public goods. Thanks mainly to his comfort with talking in a spotlight, Trump really sells this list, insted of giving the impression that it was fed to him by consultants.

There were unfavorable characterizations of politicians and media "idiots." But Trump missed an opportunity to mention how campaign finance distorts politics, insted making a general complaint that politicians are cynical. Apparently our flawed political culture is caused by bad character.

On the media angle, he agen made effective use of anecdote. This time it was the story of Jorge Ramos, the Univision reporter, confronting him in an allegedly unfair way. Palin backed up Trump with another anecdote, the one about a reporter asking the "gotcha question" about his favorite Bible verse.

Anecdotes are the Trump campaign's meat and drink, and we can expect to hear many more. In lieu of an analysis of immigration we get the story of Kathryn Steinle dying in her father's arms on a San Francisco pier and the Mexican immigrant who fired the bullet that killed her in broad daylight. Outrageous! Something must be done! White Americans, especially the older ones who show up religiously at polls, respond strongly to stories of white people being victimized by <whisper class="stage">those people.</whisper> This probably explains why they implicitly believe the myth of hordes of brown people massing to overwhelm our borders. It's probably also why Trump can portray himself as a victim of journalists, like Megyn Kelly and Jorge Ramos, and expect that his supporters will rally to him rather than seeing him as an insufferable whiner.

Trump is a master of staged confrontations, on par with the ever-indignant Bill O'Reilly. It's a fantastic way to "win" debates if you're brazen enough to pull it off. So in lieu of any adult talk about gender discrimination, we get this sterile controversy about whether Trump should apologize to Fox News or Fox News should apologize to Trump. And in lieu of an immigration debate that is in any way tethered to facts, we have the tableau of Trump v. Ramos. Trump's supporters get to vicariously enjoy these confrontations, along with the dog-whistle signals they send about race and gender.

Now that's entertainment.

19TLCrawford
Set 10, 2015, 11:30 am

Kinky Friedman ran for governor in Texas a few years ago and when he was asked about the wall along the Mexican boarder he said he did not think it was a good idea. He said that the way things are going here we might want out in a few more years.

You need to include the Tea Party subtext with the talking points.

Rebuild the nation's infrastructure. (But not use any tax money to do it)

Protect our border. (From brown people, Canadians and Europeans are OK)

We need good jobs. (But we have to remove the minimum wage so only the employer benefits from them)

Simplify the federal tax code. (Shift the tax burden totally off the wealthy)

Veterans should be treated better. (As long as it does not cost any tax money)

20chagonz
Set 11, 2015, 10:43 pm

Say what you will about him, and I think he is a joke; but the Donald has tapped into the very deep vein of paranoia and fear that an increasing slice of Americans feel. He is the actual, flesh and blood Bullworth, albeit from a different political angle and dealing in the real world. Most politicians are timid, too correct, too concerned with their money, too afraid of being authentic and don't really understand governing. So to cure a sound bite government , we get the super sound tie candidate. Somehow it all makes sense, we get the candidates we deserve and want. The Dems offer us a pallid choice of pseudo socialist from. Vermont by way of Brooklyn (pre hipster) and some quietly innocuous but well meaning politicos to challenge the queen bee. Is that party really so bankrupt of ideas and people that they are left with this?
I am so hoping for an intelligent discussion of the really serious issues and plans for remaking this country and not going down the rabbit hole of tired inside the beltway prescriptions from left and right. I am not optimistic. Bullworth where are you?

21TLCrawford
Set 14, 2015, 8:28 am

#20 It seems that there was a well known 20th century politician that you could say all that about. Now who could I be thinking of? Could you explain to me how it is that otherwise well educated Americans are incapable of understanding what a Democratic Socialist is?

22DinadansFriend
Set 14, 2015, 3:31 pm

>21 TLCrawford::
The idea that a political party could exist that doesn't declare that every action of government should somehow meet the demands of returning a profit as identified by the commercial classes is categorically denied by the boards of education across the USA. Composed generally of businessmen with spare time, or their spouses, for the poor don't get much of a look-in for such local and unpaid or badly paid posts, or of retired educators on the look-out for donations for the schools they have experience with, the program sets the students very firmly into the "Market prices everything, and the value to the community as a whole is defined by that market price", mold.
The antipathy to the very word "Socialist" or "Socialism" can be found as early as the Red Scare of 1919, where the excesses of the Russian Civil War of that period were well publicized in the USA. So, you don't get funds to publicize or carry out democratic socialist action, instead you get an encouragement of charities run by unpaid (well-off) volunteers, who entertain the well off in return for small donations that allow small amounts to be spent on the worst cases of social damage created by a mainly-for-profit economic system.
You rigorously control the education in the Social Sciences, usually by vetting the teachers and materials so that a monolithic picture of wide-spread misery in all areas not controlled by regimes friendly to the USA can be presented. Thus any tale puffing up the advantages of the free market is given full range while any disquieting tales are simply not shown to the USA public. When there is no knowledge, any fairy tale will be believed.
Remember the "awfulness" of the Cuban regime under Castro which replaced the wide-open gambling and prostitution playground of the Mafia under Batista. But under Castro with no money, Cubans created a remarkably high quality public health regime that is the envy of Puerto Rico today. (Michael Moorer took some poor Americans down there and got them fixed up, I recall.)
And you define the European social democratic states as "Somehow rotten, and teetering on the edge of collapse".

23chagonz
Set 18, 2015, 10:27 pm

There are very good reasons that everyone on this discussion knows for why socialism or "democratic socialism" has not flown here. Its a bit rich to say that our educational system is to blame for the "money centric" philosophy of this nations political culture as higher education in particular has been the major breeding ground since before my college years 40+ years ago, for anti commercial thinking. We need to face the fact that if socialism in whatever form cannot survive in its homeland of the UK, what hope is there of it finding fertile ground here?

The description of Cuba is romantically near truthful were it not for the fact that the Revolution replaced a merely corrupt Micky Mouse police state with a completely totalitarian police and military state. As someone who was exiled from Cuba, and whose namesake was murdered by Batista's secret police, I have had a profoundly complicated relationship with the island. Ultimately however, whatever pluses the Castros have delivered have been overwhelmed by the complete and utter evil they have perpetrated on that island nation.

24DinadansFriend
Editado: Set 19, 2015, 2:21 am

>23 chagonz::
"There are very good reasons that everyone on this discussion knows for why socialism or "democratic socialism" has not flown here."
As a member of this discussion, I require you to give the reasons "that everyone knows". A closer reading of your own(American History) history, could prove illuminating to us both.

25Muscogulus
Set 22, 2015, 5:33 pm

>23 chagonz:
>24 DinadansFriend:

You're both wrong. :-)

Commercialism in the United States is a good deal older than systematic public education. Some of the better known literary evidence comes from old man Thomas Jefferson's late letters, where he deplores the money-grubbing behavior of the punk kids of the 1810s and '20s. This tendency to weigh almost everything according to its commercial value led to a utilitarian attitude toward the arts, for instance.

But for a lot of Americans, this commercialism blended with idealism that seems incredibly naive now — for instance, Americans believed and often said that free trade between nations would bring world peace. It was very much the vision in Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. And when the warring British and French imposed trade restrictions on the whole Atlantic world, the indignant Americans endured the Embargo (the moat catastrophic and heavy-handed state intervention in the market in U.S. history) with remarkable patience, all things considered. With an inflated sense of how much harm their revolutionary boycotts had done to the British economy, they anticipated that this embargo on British goods — and then of virtually all imports and exports — would help topple monarchical trade limits and bring about the millennium of world peace.

I'd say our own political-economic ideas today are similarly distorted by recent history — in our case, the global struggle between "the Free World" and "the international Communist conspiracy." We did a pretty poor job of assessing that threat, and we failed to anticipate how that struggle would end, viz., in the USSR calmly abolishing itself. We've scarcely known what to do with ourselves since then. But one thing we can do is reject anything that smacks of socialism as a version of the Evil Empire that was threatening to destroy the world. Honest, it really was.

26chagonz
Set 22, 2015, 10:27 pm

Interesting argument as I believe that commercialism as you describe it has been a fundemental part of our culture since our birth; it is represented by the conflicts between the Hamiltonian vision of America and Jefferson's idyllic vision of colonial Virgina throughout the US. Both were strangely side swiped by the emerging raw, impolite and hurried race towards doing business in the newly independent nation. The draw of the frontier, independence , lack of central authority, freedom to change one's story at will against the establishment on the coast, all created a very unique brew unknown elsewhere in the world and, as Gordon Wood shared in Empire of Liberty , mostly unexpected by the Founders including Hamilton. I am a proud Hamiltonian, believing that it is his vision of America that was the blueprint for our continental greatness . But even he was unprepared for the nation that ultimately developed. His vision for centrally planned growth ala Korea and Japan was not to be as the genie was let out of the bottle in the early 19th century.

I know I am dragging on here, and I beg your indulgence as I am free associating here with brandy and cigar.

My point being that our commercial, non-statist approach was very early in the making, and, notwithstanding the Progressives, Cross of Gold and Henry Wallace, baking a bigger pie has always been central to our vision. I would argue that the "socialist bogey man" most recently brought out in 2009 in response to the President's mainly statist capitalist agenda, have been just that , straw men having no real connection the Americans sense of themselves , Bernie notwithstanding .

I hope you all can make some sense of my wired thinking here and apologize in advance for any inelegant musings.

27Muscogulus
Editado: Set 26, 2015, 12:49 am

>26 chagonz:

Empire of Liberty is a great book.

Is "commercial, non-statist" a synonym for "Hamiltonian" in your view? Because Hamilton was as statist as they come. His vision of the independent American republic was essentially to grow a second British Empire — expansive, militant, debt-funded, guided by qualified gentlemen.

28chagonz
Set 29, 2015, 9:40 pm

Good point; the statist descriptor can be misleading. Hamilton's vision and policies can be interpreted to be "statist" in the way of British mercantilism, and he did see the British Empire as a more suitable model for the US than any other European state structure. On the other hand, a close reading of his Report on Manufactures suggests a man who saw the reality of America's emerging manufacturing and artisanal capability as being led by small organizations who needed support and finance, not be taken over by government. Hamilton's great contribution to American greatness was his understanding of the role of finance and especially debt in creating demand and supply of money. Is what drove Jefferson, Jackson and the rest of the agrarians crazy. Hamilton saw the need for grease, in the form of money, and that the strong, central national government was the only way to accomplish that. Was it messy? Sure. Did it facilitate inequality? Absolutely. Was the America of the 1850's and 1860's possible without it? No.

I was initially curious about Hamilton's "statism" , focusing on the large Paterson, NJ manufacturing center he helped to design and build. So it appeared that he was in support of a grand government led industrial policy, to use a modern term. In truth that was not his real intent or actual contribution. The Treasury bond market and The Bank of New York, which he established in 1796 and which today is part of the Chase empire represents his true legacy to American economic success.

29Muscogulus
Set 30, 2015, 12:22 pm

>28 chagonz:

a man who saw the reality of America's emerging manufacturing and artisanal capability as being led by small organizations who needed support and finance, not be taken over by government.

There's an anachronistic assumption here. The question was not one of whether the USA would be capitalist or socialist; those words weren’t even current in the 1790s. No one was thinking of creating a state-run economy, which is what you seem to mean by "grand government led industrial policy."

And if the manufacturing operations of the period were small-scale — most were situated in a single household that also farmed — that didn't mean Hamilton was satisfied with that arrangement or considered it healthy. (Meanwhile, Jefferson and Madison moderated their idealistic agrarian views as they gained experience with governing.)

Hamilton's belief was that all men are not created equal, and that wealth is a sufficient index of which men are entitled to a greater share of power. Government should be the servant of such men. The outcome of the collaboration would be a bustling, expansionist mercantile empire.

As a bastard son of the West Indies, Hamilton's views of politics and economics may well have been shaped by his youthful familiarity with the New World's most brutal and lucrative slave system. In any case, in his maturity he had little time for sentimentality, or what we now call human rights.

You can probably tell I'm not Hamilton's biggest fan. I do appreciate his analytical intelligence and his work ethic, and apparently he was quite an artillery officer. But as early financiers go, I much prefer Albert Gallatin.

30chagonz
Out 5, 2015, 10:19 pm

You make a good point about Hamilton's preferences and philosophical leanings. Whatever their origin, he was probably not on anyone's list of do gooders. His huge ambition and ruthlessness in trying to carry out his plans made him more enemies than friends and led to the ongoing debate and criticism of his personality and policies. Gallatin was indeed a wonderfully competent Secretary, without whom Jeffersons Presidency is incomplete, but the country we inhabit today is not of his design, its Hamilton's. The power of deficit financing, so criticized by conservatives today, helped to create the financial and economic foundation that we so securely inhabit today. The existence of the Federal Reserve is a direct descendent of Hamilton's efforts at nurturing a national financial system. You can imagine that I am on the plus side of Hamilton. Its worse, I inhabit his beliefs and priorities. I detest Jefferson's contradictions while I admire his democratic republican soul. Its just that he peaked early and Hamilton never had the chance.

31Muscogulus
Out 12, 2015, 5:00 pm

We've certainly veered a long way from Sarah Palin and Donald Trump. ;-)

FWIW my antipathy to Hamilton does not imply adoration of Jefferson. I appreciate his many talents, but the more I have studied early American history, the lower Jefferson's stock has fallen — while Washington's has risen more than I imagined it would.

Hamilton seems to have always assumed he was the smartest man in the room. This was usually a safe assumption, even in Jefferson's presence. But it also fed his arrogance and led him into serious errors, including paranoia about the intentions of the Jeffersonian republicans: Even in a generally paranoid atmosphere ca. 1800, Hamilton's expressions of impending doom stand out. He persuaded Washington to return from retirement to head an expanded army, supposedly for the preservation of the republic from a French atheist invasion. But it doesn’t seem to have taken long for Washington to mistrust Hamilton and resign, which killed the project.

Washington was a sincere republican; Hamilton had the soul of a tyrant. If Hamilton had ever attained the presidency, and assuming he didn’t change his views, I believe the United States would have likely devolved into a caste-based pseudo-republic, with power passing between two or three elite factions, sometimes violently — and with commerce and foreign affairs dominated by the British Empire, to the enrichment of the American elites and the starvation of the poor and of most domestic industries. More like 19th-century South America, in other words.

32chagonz
Out 12, 2015, 9:09 pm

One of those very interesting historical what ifs, Hamilton as President. Thanks ,I hadn't thought about that, but it is intriguing . He would have had a long wait, the Federalists being not much of a party post 1800, though what an election campaign it would have been to see an old survivor Hamilton battling the Jacksonian hordes. That's something I wold have paid to see.
Alas, even if he wanted to run, his naturalized status under his own Constitution would have prevented it. Hamilton was a shooting star, whose story is more truly American than any of the his founder peers. I admire and am grateful for Washington, Adams and Jefferson, but Hamilton is guy I would want to spend the evening with at Fraunces Tavern.

33TLCrawford
Out 13, 2015, 10:55 am

Jefferson is as significant to US history as always but the adoration from both the left and the right is gone. The left struggles with his words not matching his deeds, writing that all men are created equal but owning slaves. The right is put off by his insistence that religion and government stay separate.

34Muscogulus
Out 13, 2015, 4:17 pm

>33 TLCrawford:

I suppose this puts me in danger of being identified as a leftist, but I consider Jefferson a moral coward when it came to slavery. Several of his peers urged him to take a stronger stand agenst it, but he clung to his fearful "wolf by the ears" thinking (i.e., we can neither keep "the Negroes" nor let them go, lest they fall prey, alas! to their own savage nature). You might say he was ahed of his times, but only in that he adopted pseudo-scientific racist apologetics for slavery about a generation earlier than most American slaveholders did. Hell of a thing to be a trailblazer for.

35Rood
Out 14, 2015, 11:53 am

Jefferson was an awesome person, but is it true he used his own half-black children as servants?

36TLCrawford
Out 14, 2015, 1:02 pm

#35 Yes. He also took his brother in law / bondsman to France with him, had him trained as a chief, and eventually followed through with giving him his freedom. Thanks to that Cincinnati had possibly the first classic French restaurant in the nation. Thomas Jefferson's Creme Brulee He also refused to free his sons that were born into bondage. He did let them leave Monticello. I am not sure what he was thinking when he took those contradictory steps but, as much as he was a man of his time, I have to wonder if he realized that an ex-Presidents property would be safer than a free black man.

37Limelite
Out 15, 2015, 9:30 am

Donald Trump is the first 21st C American HUCKSTER on the national stage. Using pushy and devious methods, he's trying to sell questionable goods --himself -- to the gullible who want a magic elixir that will make them like him. He thinks himself too big to fail.

Sarah Palin was a pop idol of the deviant religious nuts and gunsuckers made popular using a Cinderella fairy tale make-over scenario that ultimately failed because she insisted she could see Russia from her front porch. She proved herself too stupid to succeed.

DT and SP would make the perfect ticket of the Ignoramus Party. I can't imagine why we don't have such an entity and can only surmise that the Tea Party is proving to be a suitable substitute.

38Phlegethon99
Out 15, 2015, 10:09 am

On the other hand the other part of the duopole is the Jackass Party. Nomen est omen.

39Limelite
Out 15, 2015, 4:03 pm

Sadly, false equivocation doesn't work. Your statement is neither fair nor balanced, it's simply illegitimate to truth. There are no jackasses, as you intimate, on the other side of the political aisle. All one had to do to prove that to themselves is watch the clown show called the Republican debates and contrast it to the sober presidential policy-oriented Democratic debates.

There was/is no Democratic equivalent in the '08, '12, and '16 election cycles to either Palin, Trump, or Rand Paul, or Dr. Carson, Mike Huckabee, Jim DeMint, Rick Santorum, John Bolton, or Ted Cruz. To name a few legitimate jackasses.

40Muscogulus
Editado: Out 15, 2015, 7:35 pm

>39 Limelite: waxed partisan, saying:

There are no jackasses, as you intimate, on the other side of the political aisle.

Maybe not, but it would take a bold man to claim that there never have been. The first who springs to mind is Sen. "Pitchfork Ben" Tillman of South Carolina, a staunch Democrat and jealous defender of white supremacy.

In some instances I think the jackass is far too mild a mascot for the party. In the South, ca. 1877-1967, the Democratic Party was the only permitted party, resorting at times to violence to maintain "the Democracy," a term perversely redefined to mean one-party rule. In the 1920s in Alabama, the revived Ku Klux Klan was associated with the liberal wing of the Democratic Party.

Still, times have changed. If it were up to me, I would replace the donkey mascot with a street sweeper wielding a very large broom — following a parading elephant.

41TLCrawford
Out 16, 2015, 9:39 am

#40 Using party labels here is a mistake, a common one but a mistake. Tillman and every other "jackass" named here has been a conservative. The parties change from progressive to ostrich like conservative but you always find the clowns in the ranks of the most extreme conservatives.

42Muscogulus
Out 17, 2015, 4:28 pm

>41 TLCrawford:

Using party labels here is a mistake, a common one but a mistake. Tillman and every other "jackass" named here has been a conservative.

Sure, the Republican Party started out on the left, and all that. That's what I was referring to with "things have changed."

But the label "conservative" isn't always a useful way to describe the "clowns," even though they favor it themselves these days. To call Ben Tillman or Rep. Paul Ryan or Donald Trump a "conservative" is to abandon any pretense of letting the word have stable semantic content.

And of course this happens all the time in political discourse. Among the content-free placeholders: democracy, freedom, liberty, modernity, liberal, fascist, terrorist,…. All could be replaced with "fer it" or "agin it".

43Limelite
Out 17, 2015, 5:09 pm

If a person self-identifies "conservative," (as Trump described himself much more than once) too bad for "stable semantic content." It went out the window with "Republican" (before), by your own example.

I have no problem calling a spade a spade, even when it says, "I am a shovel." Libertarians aren't Progressives. Tea Partiers are ultra-conservative. Once upon a time (like Republicans of Lincoln's time) there existed within the Democratic Party, racist conservatives called "Dixiecrats." They all remained conservative and racist when they became Republicans of Lyndon Johnson's time. S. C. Sen., Lindsey Graham (R) is an example of what once was a Dixiecrat.

44Phlegethon99
Out 17, 2015, 6:05 pm

I would have thought of Strom Thurmond first. And former Klansman Robert Byrd remained a Democrat solely for electoral strategic reasons.

45Limelite
Out 17, 2015, 6:27 pm

>44 Phlegethon99:

In re the dear departed: Honi soi qui mal y pense.

You've far oversimplified Byrd's political values.

46Phlegethon99
Out 18, 2015, 2:42 am

He got softer with age. So did George Wallace.

47Muscogulus
Editado: Out 29, 2015, 1:57 am

Jamelle Bouie just published a comparison of Donald Trump with George C. Wallace, the Alabama populist who ran a strong independent campaign for president in 1968, then contested for the Democratic nomination in 1972. (Perhaps Wallace's most diligent pupil was his nemesis, President Richard M. Nixon.)

Bouie's article for Slate: Our George Wallace

Historian Brian Balogh interviews Bouie on Backstory: https://shar.es/15afw5 (See the last segment, "Populists at the Podium.")

48chagonz
Out 29, 2015, 10:20 pm

An interesting attempt to connect the two men, and the author makes solid points about the underlying insecurities in the society that both men tapped into. He goes too far in giving rhetorical credit to Trump. I remember Wallace in 68 and especially 72. Remember he was already a nationally known political/cultural figure from his days as the segregationist governor of Alabama. Wallace was 100% committed to his vision and beliefs and put them on the line when he stood in front of the college entrance to block young African American students from entering. Trump is a weak blowhard in comparison. One only has to understand Trump's history in the NYC real estate market to really get him. He is a deal maker thru and thru, interested only in his own fame, fortune and brand.
He has tapped into a rich vein of anger, resentment and fear among a slice of the electorate, which will easily drift to another politico who feeds the beast in a similar way.
In other words,I've seen and heard Trump, and he ain't no Wallace.

49JerryMmm
Editado: Out 30, 2015, 9:43 am

A comparison you may not be aware of I see is between Trump and Pim Fortuyn from my country, The Netherlands. The men could hardly be more different, but they tap into similar undercurrents.
Unfortunately Fortuyn was assassinated by a vegan radical. There's more to this of course. Fortuyn's party quickly dissolved into chaos and lost most of their votes next election. But now Wilders is saying worse things about 3rd generation immigrants and current refugees, I miss the smarter and bascially more reasonable Fortuyn.

50Muscogulus
Nov 1, 2015, 1:49 am

>48 chagonz:

Wallace was 100% committed to his vision and beliefs and put them on the line when he stood in front of the college entrance to block young African American students from entering.

Wallace started out as a racial liberal, known for according equal respect to white and black litigants when he was a state judge, and upbraiding any white attorney who showed disrespect to a black colleague. But when he ran for governor and was defeated by a race-baiter, he changed course and used bigoted rhetoric and fear-mongering to build his political base – which eventually reached across the country.

He had vowed to "stand in the schoolhouse door" to oppose school integration, but when the US Justice Department intervened on behalf of black enrollees at the University of Alabama, Wallace performed some political theatre and then backed down. He set up a podium in front of the door of a university building where, flanked by state troops, he read a forgettable statement of resolve. An assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy faced off with Wallace, cameras clicking and whirring. Then the show ended and the two black students started attending classes.

What Wallace was 100% committed to was gaining and holding political power.

51chagonz
Nov 1, 2015, 10:21 pm

Good point...so Wallace was a scheming, manipulative politician. He did use political theatre effectively and articulated his constituents fears, anger and racism. I guess I'm still not convinced by the Donald. Too many NY and Atlantic City experiences to forget about. Maybe it was the red baseball cap, but I still don't believe him, and this whole exercise is about him. I'm not sure he has core political beliefs or a philosophy, but is a fter the one thing that drives him, fame, power and wealth.
Perhaps what unites them is political demagoguery. ( is that spelled correctly?) anyway, those types don't have a great track record in presidential politics.
The fascinating process in the republican dance is the emerging battle between the know nothings (Trump/Carson) and the politicos over policy. After all, a standing senator or governor has to run on something. It makes for great theatre as the Dems just play out the clock.