Objections to Mrs. Clinton’s swearing have nothing to do with profanity per se, but with hypocrisy. Swearing is the clearest evidence we have of how different her public and private selves really are. Sure, the former secretary of state may appear cool and disciplined on the outside, smiling and pleasantly nodding as her political opponent threatens to throw her in jail. But beneath that porcelain surface, she’s a scheming empress of fury.
.. he wonders if cursing poses the same problem for conservatives that Bill Clinton’s willingness to answer “Boxers or briefs?” did. Liberals didn’t get why Mr. Clinton’s choice to entertain the question was a big deal. But conservatives — who in Mr. Haidt’s research assign a high value to ideas like “respect for authority” and “sanctity” (whereas liberals lend greater weight to concepts like “fairness”) — recoiled at such casual degradation of the Oval Office.
The Least Surprising ‘Surprise’ of the Campaign
What’s changed since the John F. Kennedy and Johnson’s time is that we can’t, officially or unofficially, look the other way indefinitely. Although we have more liberal ideas about marriage and fidelity than we once did—Ronald Reagan was our first and, so far, our only divorced president—there are new and legitimate demands in the political marketplace that disparagement of women comes at a price, and that price is defeat. The transitional figure in this shift from lechers like Kennedy and Johnson to straighter shooters like Jimmy Carter, the Bushes, and Barack Obama is, of course, Bill Clinton, somebody who projects as a modern man but is really a lech throwback. In entering the presidential race, Trump probably thought he could pull off a Bill Clinton-type fusion of the modern and the lech just long enough to get elected.
.. But our reactions tell us more about us than they do about him. We knew all along that he was this way. He told us he was this way. In 1999, he explained to Chris Matthews on Hardball that he had a woman problem. “Can you imagine how controversial I’d be?” Trump said. “You think about him [Clinton] and the women. How about me with the women? Can you imagine?”
James Buchanan: Worst. President. Ever.
People are debating who will be more disastrous for the country, Trump or Clinton. But James Buchanan takes the cake.
.. But Obama and Bush can both take heart. And Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton can gain solace, perhaps, from knowing that no matter how badly they do, they almost certainly won’t rank last.
.. things were going well for the country, at least in an economic sense. There had been a bad downturn 20 years before, with multiple causes, like war in Europe, the dissolution of the Bank of the United States, and overspeculation in, oddly enough, slaves and Western land. The great acquisition of land under President James Knox Polk, from Oregon to California to Texas, reinvigorated the economy, and a boom lasted for the next two decades.
.. Buchanan wanted to be a hero, and thought if the case could be decided broadly, it could settle the question of slavery in the Union for good.
.. Taney castigated Scott, whom he said was not a citizen, being a slave, and thus could not bring any suit. He also wrote that the Constitution gave no state or territory the power to institute or, conversely, prohibit slavery. Thus all the compromises about it, going back to the 1820s, were invalid, and, in fact, the Fugitive Slave Law, requiring anyone who knew about it to return slaves to their owners anywhere in the country, was in force.
.. the decision at the time, there was a practical downside, too. Now no one knew whether he or she wanted to go West, to use the railroads, or to start a business that railroads might profit from. Railroad stocks started to decline in value, and then a contagion hit, and it was free fall.
.. Yet the South did not succumb as badly. Its agrarian culture was self-sustaining, and its cotton still had a market in Europe. There was a surge in arms sales there as well
.. He said too many people had speculated in land and slaves and the like and “deserved the gambler’s fate.” Eventually, he noted, the youth and energy of the rugged American individuals would triumph, though there would clearly be an interim of rough times.
.. exacerbating the killings, some done by the wild-eyed anti-slavery radical John Brown.
.. He supported mercenary William Walker’s forays to conquer Nicaragua and Guatemala, and sent troops to try to annex parts of Paraguay, primarily to acquiesce to his Southern base that wanted more slave states to come into the union.
.. A standoff ensued until Buchanan sent troops otherwise guarding Kansas, where there was a real problem, out to calm the nonfatal—except to one pig—battle.
.. Lincoln no doubt was a man with plans and savvy, but I contend that the bar was set so low by his predecessor that maybe if there were no James Buchanan, the “Worst. President. Ever,” there would have been a few notches more on the presidential-rating scale for Abe Lincoln to climb.
And if Elected: What President Trump Could or Couldn’t Do
Mr. Trump’s critics wonder whether a man with such a violent temper can be trusted with the presidency. But his defenders, like Senator John McCain and the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, assure usthat the Constitution will constrain him.
“I still believe we have the institutions of government that would restrain someone who seeks to exceed their constitutional obligations,”Mr. McCain told The New York Times. “We have a Congress. We have the Supreme Court. We’re not Romania.”
.. The World Trade Organization ruled the steel tariffs illegal in that case. But Mr. Trump could simply ignore its judgment, and indeed withdraw the United States from the W.T.O., just as President Bush withdrew the United States from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. While he’s at it, Mr. Trump could tear up the North Atlantic Treaty, which created NATO, an organization that he has called “obsolete.”
.. In May, Mr. Trump vowed to rescind President Obama’s environmental policies. He would be able to do that as well. He could disavow the Paris climate change agreement, just as President Bush “unsigned” a treaty creating an international criminal court in 2002. He could choke off climate regulations that are in development and probably withdraw existing climate regulations. Even if a court blocked him, he could refuse to enforce the regulations, just as Mr. Obama refused to enforce immigration laws.
.. Mr. Trump has expressed impatience with his critics and hinted that he would use federal powers against them. He wouldn’t be able to put someone in jail merely for criticizing him. But he could direct agencies to use their vast regulatory powers against the companies of executives who have displeased him, like Jeff Bezos, for example, the founder of Amazon. Mr. Trump has already hinted that he would go after Amazon for supposed antitrust violations.
.. Much depends on how far Mr. Trump is willing to push existing legal understandings. There is a netherworld of laws that presidents are supposed to comply with but courts don’t enforce. He could send military forces into a foreign country without authorization from Congress; courts would most likely stay out of the dispute.
.. To make things happen, Mr. Trump will need to get loyalists into leadership positions of the agencies, but to do so, he will need the cooperation of the Senate (or he will need to aggressively exploit his recess appointment powers).
.. Like President George H.W. Bush, who rescued Iran-contra defendants from punishment in 1992, he could hand out get-out-of-jail-free cards in the form of the pardon.