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Normally What Happens In A New Presidency Is The President Has A Big Agenda, And Congress Is Full Of People With Human Weaknesses. And So The President Indulges The Human Weaknesses Of Members Of Congress In Order To Pass His Agenda. This Time It's The Other Way Around. Donald Trump Does Not Have Much Of An Agenda. Congress Burns With This Intense Republican Agenda And So Does Congress That Has To Put Up With The Human Weaknesses Of The President In Order To Get A Signature On The Things It Desperately Wants To Pass.

-David Frum

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Normally What Happens In

David Frum

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Normally What Happens In A New Presidency Is The President Has A Big Agenda, And Congress Is Full Of People With Human Weaknesses. And So The President Indulges The Human Weaknesses Of Members Of Congress In Order To Pass His Agenda. This Time It's The Other Way Around. Donald Trump Does Not Have Much Of An Agenda. Congress Burns With This Intense Republican Agenda And So Does Congress That Has To Put Up With The Human Weaknesses Of The President In Order To Get A Signature On The Things It Desperately Wants To Pass.

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I Do Think Hillary Clinton, I Mean The Clintons, I`ve Got A Lot Of Critiques Of The Clinton Foundation. I Do Think They Bend The Law. But Hillary Clinton Accepts The Concept Of Legality, She Accepts That Courts Are Supreme, Laws Must Be Complied With And The Power Of The State Is Not To Be Used For Persona Revenge Or Personal Enrichment. And That`s Something - Not Something I Trust Donald Trump To Do.

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I Always Believed As A Speechwriter That If You Could Persuade The President To Commit Himself To Certain Words, He Would Feel Himself Committed To The Ideas That Underlay Those Words. And The Big Shock To Me Has Been That Although The President Said The Words, He Just Did Not Absorb The Ideas. And That Is The Root Of, Maybe, Everything.

People Need To Understand That In Washington, The Process Is The Punishment.

If You Watch A Movie From Between The End Of The Second World War And The Mid-1970s, Whenever Anyone Steps Out In A White Lab Coat, They're There To Offer A Solution. They're There To Tell You How The Laser's Going To Save The Day. They're Going To Give You James Bond's Array Of Tools. After About 1975, Whenever The Man In The White Lab Coat Steps Out, It's To Come Up With Some Crazy Idea That's Going To Bring Ruin On Everybody. "let's Clone Dinosaurs!" And The Last We See Of Him Is Disappearing Down The Gullet Of The Tyrannosaurus Rex.

That Is The Way Successful Countries, And Canada Has Been One Of The Most Successful Countries Over The Past Quarter Century, They Operate. That When You Win, You Win Within Limits, When You Lose, You Accept The Outcome.

Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America And Betrayed The Reagan Legacy.

If We Say Something Often Enough, We Come To Believe It. We Don't Usually Delude Others Until After We Have First Deluded Ourselves.

One Might Almost Say, To Adapt Von Clausewitz, That Modern Warfare Is Pr By Other Means. And War-winning Strategies Mean That Modern Armies Most Stop Treating Their Communications Operations As Secondary Assignments Or (as Still Too Often Happens) Dumping Grounds For Officers Who Have Failed At Everything Else - But As Missions Absolutely Essential To Success.

Republicans Originally Thought That Fox Worked For Us, And Now We Are Discovering We Work For Fox

In America, You Will See In Area After Area, Media Under Pressure, Businesses Under Pressure Not To Criticize Donald Trump Lest He Reduce Their Stock Value With An Angry Tweet.

World War Ii Proved A Hypothesis That Alexis De Tocqueville Advanced A Century Before: The War-fighting Potential Of A Democracy Is At Its Greatest When War Is Most Intense; At Its Weakest When War Is Most Limited. This Is A Lesson With Enduring Relevance To Our Own Times - And Our Own Wars.

Donald Trump's Big Goal Is To Become The Richest Man In The World, Abusing The Powers Of The Presidency.

The Great Society Went Wrong For Three Major Reasons. First, The Self-organization The Johnson Administration Promoted Turned Out To Be Not The Pooling Of Family And Community Resources Into Shops And Businesses, But Political Pressure For Government Handouts. Second, The Great Society Failed To Anticipate The Perverse Side-effects Of Handing Money Out To People Who Have Done Nothing To Earn It. Third, While The Great Society Was Showering Money On The Poor, The Supreme Court Was With Childlike Glee Smashing To Bits Traditional Methods Of Maintaining Law And Order.

The Thing That Sustains A Strong Fox Network Is The Thing That Undermines A Strong Republican Party.

Reagan Survived The Iran-contra Scandal Because The Elements Of It That Were Illegal (aiding Anti-communist Nicaraguans) Were Popular And The Things That Were Unpopular (arming The Iranians) Were Quite Legal.

Donald Trump Is The Least Unpopular Thing About Today's Republican Party. I Mean, The Idea That A Mitch Mcconnell Or A Paul Ryan Could Say, "let's Toss Trump Overboard And Return To Our Program Of Plutocratic Politics, Health Care Removal, Massive Income Tax Cuts For The Affluent, Deregulation Of Finance" - If They Cut Loose From Donald Trump, It's Like, You Know, Storm In Channel, Continent Cut Off. If They Cut Loose From Him, They Are Much Likelier To Sink.

When We Talk About Authoritarianism, We Conjure Up Out-of-date Visions From The 1930s. But We Are No More Likely To Do Authoritarian Government The Way They Did In The 1930s Then We're Likely To Address Or Talk Or Do Any Of Our Other Business In The Way They Did It In The 1930s.

You Can Have These Fake Engagements, These Virtual Engagements That Substitute For Actual Engagements. You Don't Have To Participate, You Can Hit A Button, Send You 200 Dollars To The Barack Obama For President Campaign And Think It's Like You Knocked On A Door. But You Didn't Knock On A Door.

I Keep Telling My American Friends, "if You Think Of Donald Trump As Only Something That Is Happening Inside The United States, You're Missing It." Because There Are Trump-like Events Happening Across The Western World, In Warsaw Pact Countries, In France, Germany, Austria, The Netherlands. As We Speak, The Second-largest Party In The Dutch Legislature - Who's More Level-headed Than The Dutch? - Is Geert Wilders's Party, Which Is A Very Trump-like Party, And They've Got 33 Out Of 150 Seats.

Venezuela Has Gone From Being A Democratic Country 15 Years Ago To Being Totally Not A Democracy Today. Usually That De-democratization Doesn't Take The Form Of A Heavy Handed Police State.

Obviously, Donald Trump Won't Be Impeached Or Removed So Long As The Republicans Hold Even One House Of Congress. And Even Should They Lose Both In November Of 2018, Launching An Impeachment - As The Republicans Discovered With Bill Clinton - Is Very Dangerous To The Impeaching Party. Unless You Have A Highly Credible Set Of Extremely Damning Facts, You Turn A Constitutional Crisis Into A Political Crisis. You Rally Potential Supporters Of The Impeached President To Him. You Make His Base Bigger. So I Imagine That He Is Likely To Serve Out The Full Term.

It's Very Important To Understand That 21st Century Authoritarian Rule Does Not Look Like 20th Century Authoritarian Rule. You're Not Going To Have People In Parade Ground Formations. You're Not Going To Have A Police State. You're Not Going To People With Decorative Armbands Bullying People On The Sidewalks. And The Leaders Won't Stand At Microphones For Hours Ranting At People. All Of That Is So 80 Years Ago.

So Little Of What Makes A Democracy Work Is Written Down. So Much Of It Is Just The Things You Don't Do. There Are A Lot Of Things That A Prime Minister Or A President Can Do And They Don't Do Them Because It Never Occurs To Them To Do Them.

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Maybe It's True That People With Less Extreme Views Who Are Also Interested In Public Affairs Have Been Driven Out By A Marketplace That Doesn't Offer Them Anything Of The Tone They Want To Listen To.

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More Irishmen Died Fighting For Britain In World War I Than Died Fighting Against Her In All Of Ireland's Bids For Independence Combined.

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Crown Prince Rupprecht, The Heir To The Throne Of Bavaria Who Commanded The Army Group Facing The British At The Somme, Was The Senior Direct Lineal Heir Of James Stuart, The Old Pretender Of 1715. Had There Been Any Jacobites Left In Britain In 1916, They Would Have Had To Regard This South German Prince As Their Rightful King.

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The Monster Has Escaped Elba!" "the Tyrant Has Landed At Cannes!" "bonaparte Meets The Troops." "napoleon Approaches Paris." "his Imperial Majesty Has Entered The Capital.

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Whenever You Discuss Politics, It Is Always Better To Use Individual Names Rather Then The Term Neocon.

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One Can Shape History As Much Through The Facts One Omits As Through The Facts One Includes.

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If You Go On Tv And Say There's No Other Country In The World Where You Can Be Born Poor And Become Rich, You Get A Huge Megaphone. If You Tell The Truth, Which Is That Most Of The Studies Show Actually The United States Is Worse Than Anybody Except Britain In Upward Mobility, There Is No Audience For You.

Upward Mobility

[democrats] Hated Richard Nixon, And No Wonder. It Was Nixon Who Sent Alger Hiss To Jail, And Nixon Who Waged The Vietnam War After The Democrats Gave Up.

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Why Should We Not Expect Self-designated Environmental Leaders To Practice What They Preach?

The Soviet Union Was Brought Down By A Strange Global Coalition Of Western European Conservatives, Eastern European Nationalists, Russian Liberals, Chinese Communists, And Afghan Islamic Reactionaries, To Name Only A Few. Many Of These Discordant Groups Disliked The United States Intensely. But Americans Were Able To Mobilize Them To Direct Their Ire At The Soviet Union First.

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Donald Trump Is Behaving In An Extremely Provocative Way Toward China, Having First Cancelled The Tpp And Alienated America's Friends In The Region. Same Thing That He's Authorizing Much Riskier Gambits Against Isis, Having Alienated Many Of America's Allies And Friends In The Region.

One Of The Things You Can Learn From A Figure Like Venezuela's Hugo Chavez Is That If You Take All The Resources Of The State For Yourself, You Don't Build Much Of A Constituency And You Have To Rely On Repression, And Repression Is Difficult In The Modern World.

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But The Thought Leaders On Talk Radio And Fox Do More Than Shape Opinion. Backed By Their Own Wing Of The Book-publishing Industry And Supported By Think Tanks That Increasingly Function As Public-relations Agencies, Conservatives Have Built A Whole Alternative Knowledge System, With Its Own Facts, Its Own History, Its Own Laws Of Economics.

An American-led Overthrow Of Saddam Hussein - And The Replacement Of The Radical Baathist Dictatorship With A New Government More Closely Aligned With The United States Would Put America More Wholly In Charge Of The Region Than Any Power Since The Ottomans, Or Maybe Even The Romans.

We Live In An Age Of De-democratization. The Number Of Democracies In The World Has Been Going Backwards Since 2005, And Even Many Existing Democracies Including In Europe Have Been Becoming Less Democratic.

I'm A Latecomer To The Environmental Issue, Which For Years Seemed To Me Like An Excuse For More Government Regulation. But I Can See That In Rich Societies, Voters Are Paying Less Attention To Economic Issues And More To Issues Of The Spirit, Including The Environment.

The System We Have Is One That Protects My Rights Under A President I Don`t Approve. That Tomorrow We`ll Do The Same For You. And What People Have In Common Is Their Commitment To Those Shared Rules. And If You Have Someone Who Was A Challenger To The Shared Rules, That`s Unacceptable. And We`ve Never Seen That Before. Not In A Long, Long Time But We See It Now.

One Of The Things That Always Drives Any Practitioner Of Journalism Crazy Is You'll Run It People Who Say Why Doesn't The Media Cover This Or That? Well Of Course The Media Covered It. Why Didn't You Read About It? And, You Know, It's, You Know, There You Are, It's Not The Journalist's Job To Knock Down Your Door, You Know, Punch The Url Into Your Computer And Force You To Stop Watching The Kardashians And To Read, You Know, A Report On Integrity In Government Instead, It's Your Job.

So Long As Donald Trump Is Powerful And Popular, Fox News Is Going To Achieve An Advertising Bonanza Unheard Of In The Era Of Modern Cable, Because People Will Pay Them To Talk To The President.

One Of The Things That Really Has Gone Wrong In Modern Politics, One Of The Things That Made Trump Possible Was That Many People Have A View Of Politics As Something Dramatic And Exciting And Thrilling And Emotional.

Events Don't Happen Because I Write A Speech. I Am Allowed To Write A Speech Because Events Are Going To Happen.

The Habit Of Going To Your Congressman's Town Hall And Asking Questions, That's Powerful In A Way That Shouting Slogans Or Getting Arrested Is Not, That Is Completely Counterproductive.

Asking Questions

I Think The Single Most Important Question Is How Do You Maximize The Number Of Children Who Grow Up In Stable Two-parent Households. We Know In All Kinds Of Ways It Makes A Huge Difference To How Kids Come Out And We Are Hardening Into A Caste Society Where Some Kids Do Better In All Kinds Of Ways Because They Have Two Parents And Others Don't.

Republicans Have To Move To A Point Of Greater Unity.

Democracy Takes Work. That's The Thing We're Really Finding Out, That, You Know, In Many Ways, You Know, The Past Two Decades We've Taken For Granted All Of The Extraordinary Achievements Of The Post-war Generation. You Know, Building This Global Alliance Structure That Has Kept The Peace Across The North Atlantic Since World War Ii. Building All Of These Institutions, Building All This Remarkable Technology. And People Have Privatized. You Know, You Can Now, You Don't Have To Go Outdoors Much, The Whole World Comes To You.

My Mother Cared More About How You Reasoned Than About The Conclusions You Reached.

Donald Trump, As A Businessman, He's Not Much Of A Builder And He's Not Much Of Dealmaker And He Certainly Isn't Very Good At Making Expenses Line Up With Income. But He Is A Marketing Genius. He Must Have Seen An Empty Market Niche That No One But Him Filled.

America Under 30 Is A More Non-whites Place Than America Over 60. And We Know That Non-whites And Whites Vote Differently.

I Was In The White House, Probably The Only Administration I'll Ever Work For. The Administration Was Not A Success, Neither At Home Nor Abroad. The Iraq War Was Not A Success. The Condition Of The Average Person Was Not Enough Better At The End Of Seven Years Of George Bush Than It Was At The Beginning, And Certainly It All Ended In The Collapse That Was The Great Recession. So I Feel A Sense Of Karmic Obligation To The Universe Because Of That.

A Novel Makes It Possible To Understand Not Just Events, But The People Who Control The Events; Not Only Their Choices, But Also Their Motives.

We, As Conservative Intellectuals, Should Not Be In The Business Of Making Excuses For Bad Parliamentary Decisions By Republican Leaders In Congress.

People Who Watch A Lot Of Fox Come Away Knowing A Lot Less About Important World Events.

Journalists Have To Do Their Job. And Journalists Have To Resist Emotionalism. You Have To Keep Your Cool And To Continue To Do Your Job Until You're Prevented.

Canada Has A Real Civil Service, Which The United States Doesn't Have, An Independent Civil Service. Canada Also Has A Stronger Federal System.

I Am Not A Person Of The Left. But One Of The Things, The Central Idea Of Democracy Is That You Have A Bigger Investment In The System As A Whole Than You Do In Any Particular Outcome.

We've All Been Wrong- I Certainly Have- And We Should Thank Those Who Set Us Right. Not Always Fun, But Always Best In The End.

So If I Have Two Pieces Of Cake, Do I Have Twice As Good An Experience As The First Piece Of Cake? One Of The Things I've Found In Life Is That The First Piece Of Cake Is The Best.

What I Say Is I Am Somebody Who Cares About Conservative Ideas. I Want To See Them Implemented In Governance.

By Abrogating All Moral Standards In Their War Against Israel, Arab And Muslim Leaders Initiated A Process Of Moral Collapse That Has Ended By Soaking Their Own Societies In Blood. The Terror They Intended To Inflict Only Upon Others Has Rebounded With A Hundred Times Greater Horror Upon Their Own Lands.

Speech Writers Are More Vulnerable To Vanity Than Any Other Group Of People In Washington.

Think Tanks Do Have Points Of View, And They Are Absolutely Entitled To Defend Them.

Trump Is Not Just Unlike A Republican, He's Unlike A Presidential Candidate. The Whole Elaborate Presidential Process Is Designed To Screen Out People Like Donald Trump. And That Process Broke Down In Ways Quite Unlike Anything In The Recent Experience Of The United States.

Life, As The Signs In The Liquor Stores Say, Is Too Short To Drink Bad Wine. And Summer Is Too Short To Read Bad Books.

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