CSotD: Can’t Anybody Here Play This Game?
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The Ol’ Perfesser, Casey Stengel, added to his fame by becoming the first manager of the New York Mets, who racked up 40 wins and 120 losses that year, prompting Stengel’s famous quote, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”
It seems a good question at the moment, to which I would add another from his volume of wisdom, “If we’re going to win the pennant, we’ve got to start thinking we’re not as good as we think we are.”
Seems Washington is full of people who think they’re pretty darned good and perhaps should buckle down and take a more realistic look at themselves.
It’s my understanding, for example, that in all the shutdowns we’ve had over the years, nobody ever thought it would be a good idea to shut down the legislature. Now, granted, the Senate is still in session and holds the key to getting the government back into action, but is there really no other business that the House could be tackling?
Like, f’rinstance, swearing in a new member even if she does seem likely to force a vote to release the Epstein files?
On his podcast the other day, David Frum pointed out that parliamentary governments don’t have shutdowns. When they hit a block like this one, it leads to a vote of no-confidence and calls, at least, for a shuffling of coalitions in the government, if not for a new election entirely.
That is, it generally leads to resignations, and frequently starts at the top. Only in America can the head of government retain power despite being unable to govern.
Meanwhile, Ramirez accuses Democrats of playing chicken and running themselves into a wall of brave Republican refusal to yield. But perhaps that refusal is based not on bravery but on contempt for the rule of law.
In his same remarks, Frum observed that the Trump administration has established a record of ignoring Congress’s constitutional role in setting spending, and is on record as declaring that they need not carry out budget requirements approved by Congress.
Which raises the question, he noted, of what good it would do to extend ACA support and get the government restarted if Dear Leader is just going to ignore the law and do whatever he wants?
Pett drew this one a little too quickly: On Tuesday, Japan elected Sanae Takaichi as the country’s first female prime minister.
On that same podcast, Frum interviewed Margaret Thatcher’s biographer, who made the point that Thatcher had not avoided gender when she ran for PM of England, but, rather, had emphasized that men had failed to address the issues she would tackle. This was, he said, a more straightforward approach than the “I may be a woman but” approach of other women candidates, including here.
I was never a fan of the Milk Snatcher, but I did get a kick out of her husband’s sage advice:
This sort of basic wisdom seems to have been wasted on Attorney Lindsey Halligan, the inexperienced lawyer Dear Leader has named to prosecute his political opponents.
In a jaw-dropping demonstration of ignorance, Halligan contacted Lawfare reporter Anna Bower to complain about a remark Bower had passed along, and proceeded to (improperly) spill details of grand jury testimony in the Letitia James case and then, after several separate on-line conversations, dropped this bomb:
As Bower — who most assuredly is a journalist — said, that’s not how it works. “Off the record” has to be agreed upon before you begin spilling the beans. End of discussion.
That’s not even Journalism 101, though Halligan majored in politics and broadcast journalism. I dealt for years with apple farmers, motel owners, furniture dealers and local politicians who knew we weren’t off the record unless it was established ahead of time.
Halligan has made so many amateurish mistakes so far that the cases she is handling may be dismissed before they begin. Trump has fired a great number of qualified attorneys, but surely he can still find someone marginally competent.
To quote Nicole Wallace, “I don’t know whether to deal with the legal issues or the stupidity first, but the stupidity is just unbelievable here.”
Ann Telnaes’ commentary on this issue was in yesterday’s post, but since then I came across an explanation from the Contrarians, in which two ethics lawyers, one from the George W. Bush administration, the other from the Clinton White House, explain that the law and the Constitution specifically forbid Dear Leader from raiding the Treasury to pay his legal bills.
Of course, going back to Frum’s point about how the law doesn’t matter if the president declines to follow it, Trump may just reach into the piggy bank anyway, but there is a chance that the courts would point out the clear prohibition he violates.
However, much as district courts may, for instance, hinder his desire to unleash the military on his own people, there is an appeals process that leads to Mitch McConnell’s carefully assembled Supreme Court, which tends to confound expectations.
For example, SCOTUS has been nibbling away at the Voting Rights Act to the point where one more bite may completely obliterate the reason it was passed in the first place, though perhaps racial bias is not as big a problem as the Republican plan to demand citizenship papers from voters.
And their announced plan to put some of their friendly federal officials at voting sites to make sure everyone who shows up to vote is neat, clean and well-behaved.
There are laws, but you do well to know them, and to be prepared for anything.
Juxtaposition of the Day
The woman in Bok’s cartoon has no idea how government employment works, but Hands explains it.
It would be nice if Casey Stengel’s classic question could be asked of potential voters, but attempts at voter qualification were abused too often in the name of voter suppression, so we assume that, if you show up to vote, you know more or less how the game is supposed to be played.
The Ol’ Perfesser apparently understood politics as well as baseball:
The secret of managing is to keep the guys who hate you away from the guys who are undecided.
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