Post by onelasttime on Aug 25, 2021 18:43:11 GMT
As usual I agree with Paul Waldman, well for the most part.
The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is the Democrats want to govern, the Republicans do not. Not only don’t the Republicans want to govern, they don’t want the Democrats to either so they act as obstructionist to whatever the Democrats propose and try to do.
Yes there are Democrats you have to wonder what they’re thinking and some old school Republicans left who actually do want to govern.
“Opinion: Despite what Biden’s critics say, governing is hard — if you care about it”
Opinion by Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 12:57 p.m. EDT
“The Biden administration’s execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal is a story that includes both an initial mishandling and an extraordinary logistical achievement. The chaos of the first days — produced by mistaken predictions about the strength of the Afghan government and a lack of appropriate planning — has been followed by the successful evacuation of tens of thousands of Americans, Afghans and other nationals, as many as 20,000 in a single day.
Which finds us in a familiar pattern: A Democratic president is forced to clean up a mess left by his predecessor, and when doing so turns out to be complicated and difficult, his critics act as though they would have performed perfectly a job they would never have even tried to do.
“President Biden’s responsibility is simple,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “He should clearly and firmly state that the United States will stay for however long it takes and use whatever force is necessary to ensure we do not abandon our people or our friends.” Simple!
That is in many ways the difference between a Democratic presidency and a Republican one: Democratic presidents not only have to confront the disasters Republicans have left to them, they’re also determined to take on ambitious policy goals that entail complex design and implementation challenges. If they fail — or even if they succeed but the success is messy and time-consuming, as it usually is — they get pilloried for not meeting expectations their Republican counterparts are seldom held to, and would certainly never hold themselves to.
We’re seeing that now. One can make plenty of criticisms of the Biden administration’s decisions on Afghanistan over the last few weeks. But one doesn’t hear much about what critics would have done differently, beyond just staying there forever (which would have been impossible without a large military escalation, given the Trump administration’s agreement last year to essentially hand the country to the Taliban).
As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told this blog, “There is this fantasy that has been constructed by the media and members of both parties that we could leave Afghanistan, amid a collapse of the Afghan army and government, in a neat, clean way.”
Meanwhile, conservatives have been comforting themselves with the laughable idea that had Donald Trump been in charge this withdrawal would have gone smoothly, because he was so competent and skilled, or because the force of his will was so undeniable, or something or other.
Even putting aside how idiotic that is, one of the signatures of the Trump presidency, like that of many Republicans, was that for the most part he didn’t try to do hard things that involved complex governing challenges. And when he did, he either failed or just gave up.
For four years he promised a fantastic health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, but no plan came, and he even professed surprise that health care was “complicated.” Similarly, Republicans in Congress were close to repealing the ACA in 2017 when they suddenly realized they had no replacement for when they threw an industry covering nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy into chaos. They quickly cobbled together a joke of a plan; fortunately it never had to be implemented.
Convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons was another challenge that had vexed multiple administrations; Trump thought forming a friendship with Kim Jong Un (“we fell in love”) would do it. He still has his nukes.
Then when confronted with the biggest challenge of his presidency — a pandemic that upended our lives and would kill millions worldwide — Trump downplayed it, denied it, promoted quack therapies, and turned much of the government’s response over to his idiot son-in-law.
While there’s no iron law of GOP incompetence, the fact that Republicans believe government should be limited means they don’t think too much about how to make it work. Their principal goals are cutting taxes for the wealthy and delivering deregulation to corporations. And just as it’s easier to wreck a car than to assemble one, taking government apart is a simpler task than building it up.
And on those rare occasions when a Republican administration tries to do something hard, chances are they’ll be undone precisely because they fooled themselves into thinking it would be easy. Like the Iraq War.
When Biden took office, he had to deal with an economic crisis, a public health crisis and a two-decade-long war he was determined to end. Not only that, he has other priorities on his agenda that will require intricate legislating, enormous implementation challenges, or both. Just as Barack Obama confronted an economic crisis while pursuing the most consequential health-care reform in nearly half a century, Biden is handling multiple generation-defining challenges at the same time.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t watch this administration closely, identify its errors and consider what could have been done differently. We absolutely should. But we should also remember that there are seldom straightforward answers in governing, or simple solutions one could easily have pursued. Especially when you’re trying to do hard things.”
Here is where I disagree with Waldman. Waldman, other members of the media and “armchair experts” have no idea what constitutes an error for the simple reason they weren’t part of the decision making process with the data available.
Hearings? Absolutely as long as they are “good faith” ones with the sole purpose of finding out what happened and could it have been done better.
The difference between the Democrats and the Republicans is the Democrats want to govern, the Republicans do not. Not only don’t the Republicans want to govern, they don’t want the Democrats to either so they act as obstructionist to whatever the Democrats propose and try to do.
Yes there are Democrats you have to wonder what they’re thinking and some old school Republicans left who actually do want to govern.
“Opinion: Despite what Biden’s critics say, governing is hard — if you care about it”
Opinion by Paul Waldman
Columnist
Today at 12:57 p.m. EDT
“The Biden administration’s execution of the Afghanistan withdrawal is a story that includes both an initial mishandling and an extraordinary logistical achievement. The chaos of the first days — produced by mistaken predictions about the strength of the Afghan government and a lack of appropriate planning — has been followed by the successful evacuation of tens of thousands of Americans, Afghans and other nationals, as many as 20,000 in a single day.
Which finds us in a familiar pattern: A Democratic president is forced to clean up a mess left by his predecessor, and when doing so turns out to be complicated and difficult, his critics act as though they would have performed perfectly a job they would never have even tried to do.
“President Biden’s responsibility is simple,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). “He should clearly and firmly state that the United States will stay for however long it takes and use whatever force is necessary to ensure we do not abandon our people or our friends.” Simple!
That is in many ways the difference between a Democratic presidency and a Republican one: Democratic presidents not only have to confront the disasters Republicans have left to them, they’re also determined to take on ambitious policy goals that entail complex design and implementation challenges. If they fail — or even if they succeed but the success is messy and time-consuming, as it usually is — they get pilloried for not meeting expectations their Republican counterparts are seldom held to, and would certainly never hold themselves to.
We’re seeing that now. One can make plenty of criticisms of the Biden administration’s decisions on Afghanistan over the last few weeks. But one doesn’t hear much about what critics would have done differently, beyond just staying there forever (which would have been impossible without a large military escalation, given the Trump administration’s agreement last year to essentially hand the country to the Taliban).
As Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) told this blog, “There is this fantasy that has been constructed by the media and members of both parties that we could leave Afghanistan, amid a collapse of the Afghan army and government, in a neat, clean way.”
Meanwhile, conservatives have been comforting themselves with the laughable idea that had Donald Trump been in charge this withdrawal would have gone smoothly, because he was so competent and skilled, or because the force of his will was so undeniable, or something or other.
Even putting aside how idiotic that is, one of the signatures of the Trump presidency, like that of many Republicans, was that for the most part he didn’t try to do hard things that involved complex governing challenges. And when he did, he either failed or just gave up.
For four years he promised a fantastic health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, but no plan came, and he even professed surprise that health care was “complicated.” Similarly, Republicans in Congress were close to repealing the ACA in 2017 when they suddenly realized they had no replacement for when they threw an industry covering nearly one-fifth of the U.S. economy into chaos. They quickly cobbled together a joke of a plan; fortunately it never had to be implemented.
Convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons was another challenge that had vexed multiple administrations; Trump thought forming a friendship with Kim Jong Un (“we fell in love”) would do it. He still has his nukes.
Then when confronted with the biggest challenge of his presidency — a pandemic that upended our lives and would kill millions worldwide — Trump downplayed it, denied it, promoted quack therapies, and turned much of the government’s response over to his idiot son-in-law.
While there’s no iron law of GOP incompetence, the fact that Republicans believe government should be limited means they don’t think too much about how to make it work. Their principal goals are cutting taxes for the wealthy and delivering deregulation to corporations. And just as it’s easier to wreck a car than to assemble one, taking government apart is a simpler task than building it up.
And on those rare occasions when a Republican administration tries to do something hard, chances are they’ll be undone precisely because they fooled themselves into thinking it would be easy. Like the Iraq War.
When Biden took office, he had to deal with an economic crisis, a public health crisis and a two-decade-long war he was determined to end. Not only that, he has other priorities on his agenda that will require intricate legislating, enormous implementation challenges, or both. Just as Barack Obama confronted an economic crisis while pursuing the most consequential health-care reform in nearly half a century, Biden is handling multiple generation-defining challenges at the same time.
That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t watch this administration closely, identify its errors and consider what could have been done differently. We absolutely should. But we should also remember that there are seldom straightforward answers in governing, or simple solutions one could easily have pursued. Especially when you’re trying to do hard things.”
Here is where I disagree with Waldman. Waldman, other members of the media and “armchair experts” have no idea what constitutes an error for the simple reason they weren’t part of the decision making process with the data available.
Hearings? Absolutely as long as they are “good faith” ones with the sole purpose of finding out what happened and could it have been done better.
