In Trump, Dean says he has observed many of his former boss’s most dangerous traits—obsessive vengefulness, reflexive dishonesty, all-consuming ambition—but none of Nixon’s redeeming qualities.
“I used to have one-on-one conversations with [Nixon] where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud…’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle.
.. “I don’t think Richard Nixon even comes close to the level of corruption we already know about Trump.”
.. In the four decades since Nixon resigned, Dean says, the institutions that are meant to keep a president’s power in check—the press, Congress, even the courts—have been rendered increasingly weak and ineffectual by a sort of creeping partisan paralysis.
The Lord of Misrule
His tweets are classic fool behavior. They are raw, ridiculous and frequently self-destructive. He takes on an icon of the official culture and he throws mud at it. The point is not the message of the tweet. It’s to symbolically upend hierarchy, to be oppositional.
.. The sad part is that so many people treat Trump’s tweets as if they are arguments when in fact they are carnival.
.. They contribute to carnival culture.
.. The first problem with today’s carnival culture is that there’s an ocean of sadism lurking just below the surface. The second is that it’s not real. It doesn’t really address the inequalities that give rise to it. It’s just combative display.
Kristof: Rumors about Trump are “Poetic Justice”, but Skepticism Warranted
I do think Democrats should retain skepticism about the allegations that Russia has compromising material on Trump, in the form of his sexual escapades on camera. The Russians would indeed have tried to gather that material, but remember this is unsubstantiated and emerged as opposition research. Sure, it’s poetic justice that a man who trafficked in rumors about President Obama’s birthplace is now subjected to rumors that Russia compromised him, but these may not be any more true than the ones about Obama.
Donald Trump: A Modern Manchurian Candidate?
“Trump has criticized: Republicans, Democrats, the pope, U.S. elections, C.I.A., F.B.I., NATO, Meryl Streep. Trump hasn’t criticized: Vladimir Putin.”
.. If it persists in office, Mr. Trump’s slavish devotion to the Russian strongman will continue to raise questions about the exact nature of their relationship. If the president-elect wants to put such suspicions to rest, he should get as tough with the Kremlin as he vows to do with America’s other enemies.