Nobody Ever Won An Election By Spitting

The Great Power The President Has Is That He Is The Most Prominent Person In The Biggest Media Event On The Planet. He Has The Attention Of The Nation And The World. When He Speaks, Everybody Listens.

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.

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 All Have More At Stake In The Rules Of The Game Than We Do In The Outcomes Of The Game. When That Changes, That's When You Begin To Lose Democracy.

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.