Wednesday, March 27, 2019

On Presidents, Investigations, And The Gen. Pop.

     So the Mueller Report has been turned in and it's got a little something for every side to cheer and/or bemoan. This should be no surprise -- muddles are something politics and government both do very well -- but the pundits are all making hay of it while the haymaking is good, hammer and tongs and sharp words and cash that check from Fox or NBC or WaPo quickly, while the story's still in progress.

     Because people will become bored by the details, no matter how juicy.

     Americans like to believe their Presidents are something special -- especially bad, especially good, and quite often, both especially clever and especially stupid at the same time.  Heaven forbid he should merely be mentally normal and roughly as moral as politicians in general, muddling his way from one crisis to the next.  Oh, no, we hear, Pearl Harbor cannot possibly have come as a surprise to FDR and Dick Nixon probably had a 1000-year Imperial Presidency up his sleeve, not just the next election.  And so on, at James-Bond-film levels of intrigue, and on and on.  If you like a President, they're a genius of benevolence; if you don't, they're idiots -- but idiot-savants when it comes Doing Bad Stuff.

     These extremes strike me as doubtful.  The smart money is on "muddle."  There's an unlimited supply.

3 comments:

Eaton Rapids Joe said...

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those who muddle are lost; -almost JRR Tolkien

Old NFO said...

That there is... And the idjits are just digging deeper and deeper...

pigpen51 said...

I have not even checked into what the report was supposed to say or not say. I figure that no matter what, no ones mind was going to change. His supporters would still cheer and his detractors would still boo. The most important thing is, will they leave the common person alone to live their lives, with minimal governmental interference? Because that is the best we can hope for at the end of the day.
I had to sort of believe that no matter what the investigator Mueller found, unless there was explicit treason, they would probably bury it, to keep the nation on an even keel.
The nation is run by not only the government, but there are most likely people behind the scenes, who have more input into what goes on than one might think.