No team has traded its Super Bowl MVP after a championship, but with Carson Wentz returning, the Eagles may not have a choice
So the Eagles are in a position of power: They have two coveted quarterbacks.
Meanwhile, the Bills, Broncos, Browns, Cardinals, Jets and others could all hit the market for a quarterback. And they might pay plenty for the player who just shredded Bill Belichick’s defense for the Lombardi Trophy.
.. The Eagles drafted Foles in the third round of the 2012 draft. In 2013, he had one of the best statistical seasons for a quarterback ever: 27 touchdowns, only two interceptions. Not even Tom Brady has put up numbers like that.
From there, it got bumpy. He wasn’t that great and got hurt in 2014. Philadelphia traded him to the Rams in 2015. He wasn’t very good there, either. He went to the Chiefs in 2016 and barely played.
.. They traded a mountain of picks to get Wentz. They made Chase Daniel one of the NFL’s most expensive backups. Then they cut Daniel to sign another expensive backup they liked even more: Foles.
.. the only reason Philadelphia is even in a position to consider a trade is the fact that he had become so devalued. That he became a playoff sensation made Foles more valuable and more expendable than ever.
.. His salary is part of what could make him so attractive. He’d quickly become one of the league’s cheapest starting quarterbacks.
.. Philadelphia is one of three teams above the salary cap for 2018, according to overthecap.com. In that context, Foles’s $7.6 million charge is awfully cumbersome for a player the team hopes doesn’t play.
.. Teams short on financial flexibility benefit the most from draft picks—the types the Eagles could get from another team in a trade. The draft produces cheap players on rookie contracts.
How Nations Recover
I’ve been especially interested in the way Britain revived itself between 1820 and 1848. Its comeback has some humbling lessons for us today.
Britain was roiled by economic and demographic changes. There were financial crises, bad harvests and a severe depression. There was crushing inequality. The average life expectancy nationwide was 40, but in the industrial cities of Manchester and Liverpool it was around 28.
.. The Chartists cohered around The People’s Charter, which had six demands, including universal male suffrage, vote by ballot and equal electoral districts. In 1842, the Chartists presented a petition to Parliament with three million signatures.
.. Finally, there was the Anti-Corn Law League. This was the best organized and best funded pressure group in 19th-century Britain. It promoted free-trade legislation to reduce the power of the landed gentry, to make food cheaper for the working classes and to encourage international exchange and cooperation.
.. Britain was blessed by a stable parliamentary system and by a legislative culture that valued deliberation and debate. Political leaders in both parties understood that the winds of change were blowing and they had better initiate reforms if they wanted to head off a revolution.
Coming to Davos: Macron and Trump Cross Paths Again
The American leader is deliberately presiding over a retreat from global leadership by the United States. Mr. Macron wants to be a global leader but is painfully aware that France, despite its status as a nuclear power with a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, cannot compete. So he is enlisting Europe in his ambition. In President Trump’s view, America will become great again by withdrawing from the world. In President Macron’s view, France can be great again only by making Europe a global actor.
Compare the two leaders’ visits to China: In November, Mr. Trump, flattered and treated to a lavish banquet in the Great Hall of the People by a very determined Chinese president, forgot to talk about trade — supposedly his biggest issue with China. In January, Mr. Macron proclaimed in Beijing that “France is back, Europe is back” and proceeded to demand from the same leader, Xi Jinping, reciprocity in access to Chinese and European markets — a constant theme of his three-day visit. Whether the Chinese will give in is another story, but presumably they spotted the difference.
.. Now, they represent two camps within the Western world:
- a camp of nationalist leaders, which include a handful of Trump followers inside the European Union, and
- a camp of internationalists, gathering most of Europe’s heavyweights around President Macron and Germany’s chancellor, Angela Merkel. Thanks to Donald Trump’s clumsiness, Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain has joined the latter camp, even while negotiating Brexit.
.. Why similar domestic political dynamics produced such different effects is very much a question of electoral mechanics. Under America’s Electoral College system, Donald Trump could beat a candidate who won the popular vote by a majority of three million, while France’s two-round system never gave Ms. Le Pen a chance.
.. Mr. Trump’s erratic debut at the White House, coupled with the shock of the Brexit referendum, also made French voters think twice before taking the nationalist direction.
.. The two men may pretend to enjoy a warm relationship. They may even think they do, based on their common imperative of fighting terrorism. Yet the way they exercise power and the policies they promote keeps them apart.
.. Mr. Trump, who campaigned as a populist and rules as one, is accused of diminishing the American presidency. His compulsive tweeting habits, betraying a limited vocabulary, aim to bypass the mainstream media that he loathes; he watches TV, doesn’t read books, takes a lot of time off.
Mr. Macron, as soon as he was elected, reverted to a quasi-monarchical presidential role. His goal, he explained, was to restore authority and dignity to an office that had been weakened by his predecessors Nicolas Sarkozy and Mr. Hollande. His Twitter line is kept strictly to official announcements. He communicates through 90-minute speeches and lengthy interviews studded with references to philosophers, archaic words and refined grammar.
.. He is a true workaholic and makes it known that his nights are short.
The two leaders do have a few things in common. They are both lucky — and in politics, luck matters. The American president enjoys buoyant economic conditions, part of a global economic surge; similarly, his French counterpart has benefited from an upswing in the eurozone. They both managed to pass, in their first year, a tax reform criticized by their opponents for mostly benefiting the wealthy and intended to convince the corporate world that they are on its side. But neither conforms to a classic ideological line; pundits in their respective countries struggle to define Macronism or Trumpism.
.. The approval ratings of President Macron, unlike those of President Trump, are on the rise.
.. Much of the future of the liberal democratic West will depend on these two mavericks’ fortunes.
With Fireworks, Washington Returns to the Core Trump Agenda
President’s focus on immigration, trade and infrastructure is in line with his base—just as election year gets going
If there were three signature Donald Trump issues during the 2016 presidential campaign—ones he stressed repeatedly at rallies and in debates—they were immigration, trade and infrastructure.
And so far the Trump emphasis this year is on…immigration, trade and infrastructure.
.. After a year focused more on tax cuts, health care and deregulation—issues that tend to appeal more to traditional Republicans—the focus so far this year has moved decisively back to standard Trump issues... What is surprising is how low immigration and the wall ranked on the list of reasons his supports actually voted for him.When his voters were asked last December, shortly after the election, why they backed Mr. Trump, just 20% said taking a tough approach on immigration and the wall was the most important reason. More than twice as many said simply improving the economy overall was most important.
.. around the time Mr. Trump was inaugurated in January, just 31% of whites without a college degree—again, a strong Trump constituency—said building a wall was an absolute priority.
Trade and infrastructure improvements, by contrast, ranked far higher as a matter of concern. Among those same white noncollege Americans, 65% said imposing tariffs against countries that take advantage of trade agreements was a top priority, and the same share cited improving infrastructure.
.. much of Mr. Trump’s campaign appeal was based not on specific policy positions, but more on his pugilistic attitude—and the simple fact he wasn’t Hillary Clinton, an object of hatred for many Trump voters