Where We Are This Debate Week 08/25/2023

The GOP debates begin, Trump plays hooky, and Putin gets his man.

No intro this week because, you guys, it’s debate week. As Lewis Carroll’s White Rabbit might say, “No time to say hello, goodbye. I’m late!”

Instead, I’ll offer up a quote from the great Pete Townshend that is so accurate it’s cliché and epitomizes an election cycle where it is not only figuratively true but likely to be literally true, as well.

“Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

---

The Chef is Dead

According to reports and videos circulating the internet, a private plane that was carrying Yevgeny Prigozhin crashed in Russia on Wednesday.

So, it only took about two months or so for those chickens to come home to roost, yeah?

I take a little pride in knowing that my finger rests on the pulse of global affairs (sarcasm) but I have to give credit where credit is due. I only learned of this update from a text from a good friend of mine. She’s quite the newshound.

If I could take a moment to make this about myself - as I’m often want to do - it brings me great satisfaction what my friends decide to message me about. It’s a pretty decent reflection of who I think am - and the different interests that galvanize the few friendships I maintain. I get texts about sports, music, and politics. Messi, Paul McCartney, and political assassinations. Nice.

The Pentagon confirmed that it believes the cook-turned-mercenary was aboard the airplane as his name was on the passenger ledger. And while it’s still a little early to be absolutely certain, this is about the outcome we all expected after the attempted ‘coup’ earlier this summer.

Putin then offered extremely conciliatory terms to the man who has been overtly critical of the strategy and operation of the war effort, who shot down Russian helicopters during his ‘march of justice’, and, if the reports are to be believed, led an actual military coup against the President. It doesn’t sound typical of the character of a man who routinely imprisons - or poisons - his political opponents in peacetime.

~ me

If the coup seemed like a thoroughly fool-hearty exercise - did he really expect to march straight to the Kremlin? - Prigozhin’s post-coup actions are consistent with that behavior.

For a moment, it looked as if the leader of the Wagner Group would resurface as he reportedly offered his services to the military junta in Niger, but that possibility never bore fruit. One would think that after a failed coup attempt, one’s modus operandi would be lying low. Like subterranean. But not Prigozhin, apparently.

He wasn’t exactly making Russian headlines in recent weeks, but it’s odd he was acting as if it were business as usual. But who in their right mind boards a plane inside the country of the pseudo-dictator who just loves eliminating his domestic enemies?

Of course, this could be an elaborate ruse where Prigozhin fakes his death and absconds to some sympathetic nation - and judging by the praise he was getting from American neocons, he’d probably turn up as a Washington DC consultant in a matter of months, but even though that would be hilarious, it’s admittedly the least likely of scenarios. John Grisham ought to write this novel pronto.

Extenuating circumstances aside, President Putin has once again consolidated power inside the Russian Federation, exhibited the strength of the FSB (Federal Security Service), and evinced what has become a near axiomatic truth: dissidents and traitors don’t live long under the Putin regime.

Death, taxes, and plane crashes.

---

The No Debate State

Wednesday night marked the very first debate of the 2024 Presidential race. Midweek, eight GOP nominee hopefuls took the stage in Milwaukee, WI to disparage each other, entertain the audience, and capture the hearts and minds of the American public. Okay, maybe not the hearts or minds, but certainly their votes.

Glaringly, the debate was incomplete. About 51.6% incomplete according to the most recent polls because the current frontrunner, former President Donald Trump, was missing from the stage. No, not because he’s in jail - though after the Georgia indictment, that seems increasingly a likely outcome, and yes, a Trump mugshot has been released - but because he didn’t feel like turning up.

Politically, it was probably a smart move. Why publicly subject yourself to the criticisms and scrutiny of the electorate if you don’t have to? In reality, however, it’s an affront to the whole democratic process that we claim to champion as a nation.

We live in an entirely different predicament than 2020, and even by contemporary Republican standards, the Trump presidency wasn’t exactly a rousing success. He ballooned the national debt, whiffed when it came to his COVID response, and lost the presidency and Congress. The voters deserve to see the former president defend his record from his first term and address the new challenges facing the country. The fact that he feels as if the public isn’t owed an interrogation of his current policy prescriptions is disqualifying in itself.

Not that the debates are entirely revelatory devices, but at a bare minimum you can observe how any given candidate handles scrutiny, criticism, and complex issues - at least for a couple of minutes. What’s worse is that if Donald Trump refuses to engage in any of these primary debates - and while he’s so far ahead in the polls, he shows no indication of reversing course - it shows that Republican voters don’t particularly care for the democratic process and it forebodes a general election that will feature no public debate.

President Biden had to be dragged and coerced out of his basement to debate Trump in 2020. If Trump is to win the nomination in the way he currently is, it’s very likely there will be no debate between the Democrat and Republican candidates. Biden will be able to skirt criticism for his absence on the stage by simply pointing out that his opponent did the same thing only a few months prior.

The question of the primary debates might be a moot point, however. Many voters seem to have already made their decisions and are holding fast to it. A recent CBS poll of Trump voters showed that they were more likely to trust Donald Trump to tell them the truth rather than their own family members. Even worse, however, wasn’t that Trump easily beat family members and conservative media figures, but also religious leaders. 71% of respondents trust the former president to tell them the truth while only 42% had faith in what their religious leaders told them.

I’m not bringing this up to disparage Trump voters, I’m sure Obama voters during the peak of his political prowess would have had a similar result. I’m not including Biden because half of what he says is unintelligible. It’s an indication of how divisive and tribal our politics have become so much so that political leaders are thought to have a better grip on Truth than those whose job it is to seek it. The executive office has become the new pulpit.

Things Kamala Harris says could not be included in this diagram.

In the debate, which we’re about to cover, Mike Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy had a little spat concerning American identity. Pence feels as if the American people know exactly who they are as a polity, Ramaswamy was less bullish. Our propensity to follow the charismatic figure de jour like buffalo over a cliff is confirmation of the latter opinion.

---

A Brief Word on the GOP Debate

The podcast era has undoubtedly ruined me for whatever faith I had left in the cable news debate forum. Hearing candidates interrupt each other’s two-minute policy platforms on such simple matters as inflation, education, and geopolitics is anathema to an actual discussion of the most pressing matters that face the nation.

But nevertheless, this is the mechanism that the major parties and cable news networks have devised so, for the time being, we’ve got to use the tools available to us.

If you didn’t manage to tune in Wednesday night or you’re in need of a recap, let me give you the highlights from the first GOP Primary hosted by Fox News:

• Ron DeSantis was granted the opening, very hard-hitting question, about the song sweeping the nation, Rich Men North of Richmond, after we were all subjected to its chorus being played on air. It’s a shock the whole audience didn’t break out in song.

• Chris Christie was asked about UFOs. The question and his answer were irrelevant.

• Fox News aired live footage of the Fulton County jail where Donald Trump surrendered himself the following day. Literally, nothing was happening, it was 9 p.m.

• After each candidate agreed that China was the United States’ principal national security threat, Fox News broke to commercial. The first commercial that ran was an ad for TikTok.

• Everyone Hates Vivek™. DeSantis wasn’t targeted nearly as often as Ramaswamy, signaling who their fellow hopefuls perceive as the biggest threat.

An Even Briefer Word on the Candidates

• Chris Christie was cranky and, curiously, likened Vivek to Obama.

• DeSantis forced the strangest, most manufactured smile at the end of his opening statement. He wasn’t terrible, just hard to watch.

• Vivek smiled a lot and raised his hand high several times. At least someone was having fun.

• Mike Pence was unruly and aggrieved while showing utter disregard for debate decorum. Looks like he learned something from those four years with Trump.

• Tim Scott is from South Carolina.

• So is Nikki Haley. She also said ‘if you want something said, ask a man, if you want something done, ask a woman’ which is a funny thing to say at a debate where all you have to do is say things.

• Asa Hutchinson has a weirder name than Vivek. Stage left.

• Doug Burgum carries a pocket constitution which was a weird, useless prop. Stage right.

The Audience

The audience wasn’t strictly comprised of the same sort of activist wing of the Republican party that attended last month’s The Blaze event hosted by Tucker Carlson but one thing remains clear. They love Trump. Like really love him.

They cheered Vivek for his stance on dissolving the FBI and Department of Education, but viscerally booed him for calling all of his opponents ‘super-PAC puppets’. As a point of interest, DeSantis’ super-PAC Never Back Down - just one word away from a Tom Petty estate lawsuit - published a memo last week clearly aimed at the Florida Governor detailing a debate strategy that looked awfully like the one he employed Wednesday night.

Many of them were actually fairly warm to Christie which much be a residual of his 2016 performances, but they didn’t care for Pence. It’s like Christie is given a pass for some reason, but Pence is Trump’s Judas - probably the most offensive historical analogy that could be levied against the devout former vice president.

My Thoughts

1. Gone are the days when public television would air debates like that between Gore Vidal and William F. Buckley, but hopefully, there’s a sea change at hand.

   This is the first podcast election and RFK Jr and Vivek Ramaswamy are the podcast candidates. Their successful, early polling shows that there are plenty of Americans who are embracing a new type of candidate and have an appetite for long-form, thoughtful discourse. If by the end of this election season, the whole campaigning apparatus isn’t completely transformed, it likely will be by 2028.

2. Is there any developed nation where the two main political parties are so far apart culturally? Obviously, as institutions, Democrats and Republicans alike love Wall Street, corporations, and war but where they do differ, the canyon between them is immense.

   If the Democrats were holding debates, conventional DNC candidates would be promising to expand government bureaucracies and strengthen public sector unions. Republicans don’t just want to limit those institutions but abolish them entirely. I understand that’s normal in America, but is that normal globally? Should we have a consensus? Or should we even be a country at this point?

3. If we are indeed a representative democracy and obliged to behave as one, where - if anywhere - does the federal government have the right to rule against the majority opinion of the citizenry?

   DeSantis passed the heartbeat anti-abortion bill in Florida earlier this year and, using that as an indication, would be willing to pass similar federal legislation. Judging by polling and abortion referendums of 2023, a bill like this would be deeply unpopular with the general electorate.

   Does the federal government have the responsibility to legislate certain moral questions and not others, regardless of public opinion? Or should policies only reflect popular sentiment? See also the topics of war, gender reassignment of minors, or vaccines to double-check your biases.

Buckle up, folks, this election cycle is going to be a wild ride.

To a better next week.

Cheers,

~FDA