American Politics Discussion Thread

[The Black Sword]

It's sort of implied, but not explicitly stated, in your post Mardoc that you think that his performance has been acceptable? I'm curious if that is correct?

[Commodore]

It's sort of implied, but not explicitly stated, in your post Mardoc that you think that his performance has been acceptable? I'm curious if that is correct?

Mardoc is protected by the 5th amendment.

[darrelljs]

Singapore seems to have, by far, done the best job.

Darrell

[Commodore]

Singapore seems to have, by far, done the best job.

Darrell

Hot 'n Humid is the way to go.

[Bobchillingworth]

That would make more sense if the virus wasn't contemporaneously spreading in other nations with similar climates.


A better explanation is that Singapore has a small, easily monitored territory, advanced medical capabilities (including universal healthcare), and a government which tightly regulates and controls civil society at the expense of individual liberties.


I don't think the Singapore model is applicable for most of the world.

[darrelljs]

They’ve also used technology and organization to track contacts from infected patients. Data driven is the way to go. It’s noteworthy they’ve neither closed their borders nor shut down schools. In fact the Malaysia border closure caused a labor headache since 300,000 Malaysians work in Singapore every day.

Darrell

[Mardoc]

It's sort of implied, but not explicitly stated, in your post Mardoc that you think that his performance has been acceptable? I'm curious if that is correct?

I'm somewhere between 'too early to judge' and 'lesser evil'.  I don't think any president can do the job that's implied, but not explicitly stated, he should do.  The federal civil service is too big and too insulated - and the task is fundamentally too big as currently understood, anyway.  I understand the problems with the spoils system but the 'deep state' isn't seeming to be any better.  Which means that a Democratic president would have had the same results so far - the CDC would have had the lead, with likely the exact same people as the current administration.

Honestly, up to this point it's appropriate that the CDC have the lead.  Things have moved too fast to be able to go based on anything but pre-made plans.

To take Gustaran's list:

- Trump disbanded an NSC pandemic unit

Doesn't matter, just like it doesn't matter when my company shuffles VP's again.  What happened to the actual worker bees?  I bet you it was no change and a slight budget increase, just like every other government department.

- He was warned in January about Coronavirus, but declined to act for 2 months

So did the rest of the world.  Most specifically, so did the rest of the American political class.  It seemed like China had reacted in a brutal but effective way and that was going to keep it contained.

- Even worse, he caused people not to take it seriously by calling it a "Democrat's Hoax"

Moderately annoyed with this one, this one is actually within his remit too.  Not sure it was avoidable given the level of polarization - he'd have caused different people to not take it seriously if he was beating the drum.  You can share some of the blame here with Democrats and the Resistance, though.  I know I saw articles back in January hoping for a recession for the election, and I know if Trump said the sun rises in the east, there's be a slew of Op-Eds contradicting him by the next day.  

Still, he ought to have resisted the bait here, and I'm a bit concerned he doesn't have someone he can trust who knew better.

- He declined to use the WHO approved test invented by German experts (but let the CDC develop a test that was faulty at first and took way too long to be ready)

- Due to this, the US has horribly low test numbers. As of last week, the US apparantly tested as many people in two weeks as South Korea did per day.

Mistake.  I'm not sure it was knowable in advance, though, rather than hindsight.  I'm sure the WHO approved test would have had to be replicated by the CDC anyway, the WHO only provides physical tests to lesser developed nations.  I don't expect politicians to understand biology anyway - the failure is believing the CDC when they said they knew what they were doing. And possibly, a bit of failure in not routing around them - it was stupid to let them centralize and snuff out parallel approaches.

Tell me what mistake the CDC is going to make next, that Trump should overrule the expert advice they'll give him?  I know what mistake the FDA is going to make next (they're going to ban something vital) but the CDC is probably going to do a mix of good and bad things.  Seems to be getting fixed now - do I give Trump credit for fixing it?  I guess I can't if I'm not going to blame him for flubbing it.

- The latest thing I read is that Trump tells people about his "feelings" about what drugs to use to combat Coronavirus

Idiocy - if true.  He could be simply imprecise and be summarizing a report someone made to him, no idea whether he's literally reporting his feelings or whether he's using the idiom to mean 'the current semi-supported hypothesis of the medical community'.  I don't trust the media to ever put a Trump quote in context.

So all in all, I'd grade Trump approximately a C on the pandemic so far.  Middle of the class, floating along, not impressing me, but not flunking either.  The important question to me is what happens next.  Up to this point, we've pretty much been reacting along the lines of pre-made CDC plans.  I think we ought to follow South Korea and Japan's method once the current 'shelter in place' gets the caseload manageable.  That will require a change, though, not status quo benign neglect - the CDC will have to fundamentally operate differently, and so will some form of law enforcement.  And unlike 'lockdowns', it requires federal action, at least for the test/trace part of the job.  Up until now, I've been satisfied with status quo/no change on the Federal level, I don't know if Trump can actually deliver change.

And - I don't believe Bob's speculation, but if we start drifting in the direction of messing with elections I'll be up in arms.  We have an existence proof in East Asia that this can be managed with society mostly functioning.  If we can't copy their result by November, enough to run elections the same way we always have, then this will be a failure.

[Bobchillingworth]

For someone with a dim view of bureaucracies in general and the federal civil service specifically, you have an extraordinarily poor understanding of how government works.


Do you actually think that there's some sort of "deep state" wherein career employees (aka "worker bees") just go out and autonomously devise and implement national-level policy, absent or even contrary to executive direction? And that said employees enjoy some sort of mysterious, perpetually expanding revenue stream, across all departments?


Sheesh.

[Mardoc]

Do you actually think that there's some sort of "deep state" wherein career employees (aka "worker bees") just go out and autonomously devise and implement national-level policy, absent or even contrary to executive direction?  

Well, I don't really believe it's deep state, not in the conspiracy sense.  There's no shadow president, and I don't think they would defy a direct order.  But I do believe that career employees actually do the work, while the politicians mostly make speeches and come and go.  

Do you believe that civil servants stop working when they don't have a president looking over their shoulders?  They just sit around playing solitaire or something, rather than proceeding with their understanding of the mission statement of their division?

What do you mean by 'national-level policy', anyway?  I do absolutely believe that the FDA is willing to define, for the nation, which drugs are and are not legal to sell, and that they don't ask the politicians to weigh in when they get a new drug application, either.

In the pandemic case, I'm sure the CDC didn't create the travel ban without input from the president, but I'm sure he didn't write the posters on washing your hands.  Probably most of what's happened has been 'ok Mr. President we've got a plan for this' and he nods along and maybe makes a suggestion and then they go do the plan.

And that said employees enjoy some sort of mysterious, perpetually expanding revenue stream, across all departments?  

Without the sneer words, yes.  That's why we have a deficit in normal times.  They call it a 'cut' when they don't get the same budget increase they expected.  I'm not sure any department except maybe the Clinton-era military has gotten a true cut in the time I've been alive - and that one was reversed pretty quickly.

I mean, the Federal budget is hardly a mystery.  It's just big and boring and always a couple percent more than last year.

[darrelljs]

I’ve been waiting for a politician to say “enough is enough, the treatment is worse than the disease.”   Showing you were tough on crime^H^H^H^Horonavirus after what happened in the UK seemed to be the safe a.k.a. wimpy path.  I didn’t vote for him and could never have imagined a scenario where I would in 2020, but if Trump is going to actually be the only non-hysterical one in the room, this could be my first single issue election.

Darrell