In The Shadow Of Mt Hollywood

Yesterday I started thinkng about Biden and Ukraine vis-a-vis Kennedy and the Cuban missile crisis. I realize the circumstances are only very generally equivalent, but they do represent rare and potentially consequential direct confrontations betweeen the US and the Soviet Union or its successor. My conclusion yesterday was that in 1962, Khrushchev was a weak leader with backing that turned out to be unreliable, and he was badly played by Kennedy, who had speechwriters who'd studied Cicero in Catholic school, a highly effective media operation, and a telegenic persona. It didn't hurt that he lived with his family in London from 1938 to 1940 and saw Winston Churchill at close hand. No matter there was a behind-the-scenes deal whereby the US removed missiles in Turkey that were an equivalent threat to the Soviets, that wasn't public, and Kennedy came off as the young, resolute, dynamic Leader of the Free World. From a domestic political standpoint, his handling of the c...

It seems to me that the Ukraine situation could potentially work out for Biden the way the Cuban missile crisis worked out for Kennedy. According to this article , President Kennedy’s handling of the Cuban missile crisis significantly contributed to his strong overall job approval scores. From the fall of 1961 until the spring of 1962, his approval ratings held steady at almost 80 percent (table 10). They then slowly, but steadily, subsided, dropping to a low of 61 percent in mid-October 1962. The Cuban missile crisis then pushed approval up to 74–76 percent from November 1962 to January 1963. Should Biden manage to appear strong and decisive and then manage to look as if he'd forced Putin to back down in some way, he'd achieve a reset -- though as the link points out, Kennedy already had high job approval, well above Biden's. On the other hand, Putin isn't Khrushchev, who was in power for about a decade before being removed, while Putin has been de facto c...

Two third-rate minds of the center right have come to the same conclusion. Glenn Reynolds, a moderate Hefnerian and a transhumanist, wrote in the New York Post, It’s time to admit it. Less than a year in, Joe Biden’s is a failed presidency. Biden knows it, the press knows it, and voters know it. And our foreign adversaries like China and Russia know it. Somehow, the cabal that put Biden in power will scheme to winkle him out of power. It is unlikely to be as straightforward as it was with Richard Nixon. Biden is not hated so much as he is held in contempt. And with Nixon, the Democrats were fortunate that his vice-president, Spiro Agnew, was corrupt in a good, old-fashioned, straightforward political way. It turns out that he liked simple brown bags, especially ones filled with cash. Agnew would have been as unacceptable as Kamala Harris, but the blatant corruption made it easy to get rid of him before proceeding to tackle the big fish of Richard Nixon. As I say, I doubt removi...

On January 17, I noted here that the Clintons and their old retainer Dick Morris have been trying to create a Hillary wave . At the time, I noted that Morris said, “Hillary has set up a brilliant strategy that nobody else is able to do,” Morris added. “Knowing the people around her, I believe there is only one person capable of that level of thinking — and that’s her husband, Bill. How's that working out? According to Paul Bedard, In the first polling deep dive into her chances to win the 2024 Democratic presidential primary and eventual race against Trump, Clinton turned out to be no more popular than Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and far less popular than Vice President Kamala Harris and former first lady Michelle Obama in a potential primary. . . . “The new hope of a revived Hillary Clinton gets beaten by Trump, 51% to 41%, with Trump beating her among independents, 52% to 37%; among suburban voters, 52% to 39%; and taking 19% among liberals, 13% among Democrats, a...

A headkine on Politico yesterday: Why Schumer picked a filibuster fight he couldn't win . Chuck Schumer doesn’t typically lead his caucus into losing votes that divide Democrats. He made an exception for election reform. The Senate majority leader has run a 50-50 Senate for a year now, longer than anyone else. The whole time, Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin have consistently communicated to Schumer that he wouldn’t get their votes to weaken the filibuster, no matter the underlying issue. But his decision to force the vote on the caucus anyway — and get 48 Democrats on the record for a unilateral rules change dubbed "the nuclear option" — will go down as one of Schumer’s riskiest moves as leader. Politico does all it can to spin it as a some sort of secretlly brilliant move for Schumer, but it keeps trying to answer that pesky question -- why. Schumer usually touts his caucus' unity, declining to engage in extended debates over issues that divide his 50 m...

I dipped in and out of Biden's press conference yesterday. As of this morning, there are many takes on it, but what struck me in particular was this sequence , in response to a question from (I think) Peter Doocy: Why are you trying so hard in your first year to pull the country so far to the left? THE PRESIDENT: Well, I’m not. I don’t know what you consider to be too far to the left if, in fact, we’re talking about making sure that we had the money for COVID, making sure we had the money to put together the Bipartisan Infrastructure, and making sure we were able to provide for those things that, in fact, would significantly reduce the burden on the working-class people but make them — they have to continue to work hard. I don’t know how that is pointed to the left. If you may recall, I — you guys have been trying to convince me that I am Bernie Sanders. I’m not. I like him, but I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist. I’m a mainstream Democrat, and I have been...

Few photos from the past weekend's news illustrate more clearly the current real US political alignment. With even legacy media beginning to ask whether President Brandon needs to change direction following a disastrous first year, let's parse out the current situation. My first observation is that the current Democrat coalition is anything but Marxist, pace Mark Levin. My second is that President Brandon has no choice but to do everything he can to appease that coalition as it exists. The contradiction in the news photos of the looted container trains in Los Angeles over the weekend is the distant view of the alabaster city framed by stately palms contrasted with the third-world conditions on the rail right of way in the foreground. This is one key nexus of the current coalition, which the rail shippers fully recognize : Photos and videos showing piles of empty boxes littered alongside rail tracks in Los Angeles County, California have gone viral as shipping compani...