Nobody Ever Won An Election By Spitting

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.

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.

In Journalism I Can Only Tell What Happened. In Fiction, I Can Show It.

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.

Donald Trump Doesn't Believe In Much, Doesn't Want To Do Much.