Politics

‘Boys come up, I’m going to be president.’ That’s what John Kerry, Massachusetts senator and the Democratic nominee, told a close group of sometime-advisers at 8 p.m. on election night in 2004, or so a source familiar recounts. That year, and his near unseating of George W. Bush, still shape most Americans’ public perception of the 74-year-old: regal but aloof. That campaign seems prehistoric now: pre-Twitter, and preceding the candidate himself using Twitter for the day’s cavil. But that would be giving 2004 short shrift: the contest was as acrimonious as any prior.

Should President Trump be afraid of Bob Woodward’s new 448-page book Fear: Trump in the White House? Both CNN and the Washington Post are featuring scoops from the book which is slated to be released on September 11. So far, the White House itself has remained mum about the book, which is a major mistake that indicates it is as ill-prepared for Woodward’s assault as it was for Michael Wolff’s. But it seems likely to elicit further fire and fury from Trump, at least in the form of aggrieved tweets that will inadvertently serve to confirm the veracity of the very statements they are meant to impugn.

The New Yorker’s cancellation of Steve Bannon’s appearance at the New Yorker Ideas Festival shows that the New Yorker has no idea what it is doing. Not because it invited Bannon to be interviewed on stage by New Yorker editor David Remnick, but because Remnick reneged on the invitation only eight hours later, and because the reneging was so hasty that it cannot be presented as a thoughtful statement of journalistic principle. It looks more like the result of panic and fear, the emotions that Steve Bannon, by his own admission, exploited so successfully in 2016. https://twitter.com/JuddApatow/status/1036732535957422080 The New Yorker in turn attempted to exploit Bannon’s whiff of sulphur.

The centre of political gravity in the early 2000s moved comprehensively toward default, unrelenting hawkishness, but not necessarily because of George W. Bush and Dick Cheney. If liberals went along with the Bush/Cheney foreign policy project, it was often reluctantly and begrudgingly, out of a sense of duty — and in friction with their residual grief over a recent presidential election deemed stolen. The figure who instead inspired the genuine trust of liberals, and gave them confidence in the righteousness of America’s aggressive military path, was John McCain.

Here we go again. Donald Trump is on a fresh Twitter orgy, around 20 or so in the last day, attacking everyone from ‘degenerate fool’ Carl Bernstein to CNN chief Jeff Zucker to Nellie Ohr. Believe it Ohr not, her sin is not only to be married to Justice Department official Bruce Ohr, but also to — gulp — be fluent in Russian. ‘She worked for Fusion GPS where she was paid a lot,’ Trump wrote. ‘Collusion!’ There are two theories circulating about Trump’s collusion effusions. The first is that he’s simply going bonkers. The poor fellow, so the thinking goes, is cracking up under the strain of the stream of revelations about his misdeeds, concupiscent and otherwise.

Democrats will face a dilemma if they win control of the House of Representatives in November’s midterm elections. Should they impeach President Trump over the Russia affair? Or should they impeach him over the Stormy Daniels porn-star payoff? Or should they impeach him over something else? There’s no doubt the party’s base of voters is more than ready to stick it to Trump. A recent poll by Axios found that 79 per cent of Democrats believe Congress should begin impeachment proceedings. And that’s right now. Imagine how they will feel if they are fired up by victory in November. The problem is, Democratic leaders are scared of alienating independent voters the party needs to win.

Is Donald Trump right about Google? His latest fusillade came early this morning as he kvetched about Google being ‘rigged’ against conservatives. The Week called it ‘rage-googling.’ In part he was probably peeved because the death of John McCain stole the spotlight from him. Like Norma Desmond, he is always ready for his closeup. His economic adviser Larry Kudlow promptly followed up Trump’s complaint by saying he would take a ‘hard look’ at the tech giant, a familiar target of obloquy from the left. Now the right is getting on on the game. For its part, Google piously announced that its search results aren’t biased toward any ‘political ideology.’ Surely not.

I am not going to comment directly on the passing of Senator John McCain. Although I voted for him in 2008, I thought him a deeply flawed candidate. His behaviour subsequently, especially after Donald Trump became the Republican nominee and then President, was in my judgment petty, self-aggrandising, and harmful to the country. What interests me now, however, are the hallelujahs of praise and commendation that surrounded his passing. He has always been a hero to the neo-conservative faithful. But here we have The New York Times running a fawning obituary with the title ‘War Hero, Senator, Presidential Contender.’ It was the full lion-of-the-Senate treatment: ‘proud naval aviator . . .

Oh, how Vice President Mike Pence must be licking his chops today. One by one, Donald Trump’s retainers are jettisoning their old boss. Yesterday it was David Pecker who apparently has a safe bulging with unflattering stories about Trump’s escapades. Today it is Allen Weisselberg, the chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, whose flip in exchange for immunity about his payments of $420,000 to Michael Cohen is perhaps the most damaging blow yet to Trump’s political fortunes. These defections suggest why Trump’s tried and true playbook of piling the Pelion of distraction on the Ossa of calumny will no longer work. Each day seems to bring another hammer blow.

The Paul Manafort conviction and Michael Cohen plea deal were met with the usual hysterically gleeful shrieks from the usual anti-Trump suspects: ‘The president is finished!’ ‘Impeachment inevitable!’ ‘Watergate redux!’ None of which is true and all of which is wishful thinking by card-carrying members of the perpetual outrage machine who must #Resist Donald Trump As President. Many of these people who profess indignation over a Trump payment to a porn star to keep quiet over an alleged affair defended Bill Clinton in the face of credible rape allegations and coordinated smear campaigns of his female accusers.