February 15, 2024
Michael Barone is a political genius, best known perhaps for his "Almanac of American Politics" which he co-authored for decades, but from the labors of which he retired a few years back. Barone is the author of numerous other books, all excellent, but the one that has stuck with me over the years is the lesser known "Hard America, Soft America: Competition vs. Coddling and the Battle for the Nation's Future (Crown Forum, 2004).
In a nutshell and with apologies to Barone for this way too short summary, "Hard America, Soft America" sets aside all the usual rules of dividing up the U.S. such as Red v. Blue, old v. young or other demographic divisions. Rather, "Hard America" is the America of farm, factory and frontier —the country of clear-eyed realists acquainted with the way the world really works, familiar with its often profoundly unfair twists and turns of life, and deeply familiar with the old adage: Work or don’t eat."Soft America" is, by contrast, the gooey stuff of the New Age nonsense of a few decades ago plus every cliche on every sign in every yard that proclaims "all are welcome here," etc. At bottom," Hard America" is hard-edged and realistic about the world. "Soft America," not so much, if it all.
Rarely have we had two presidential candidates who embody Hard America and Soft America so thoroughly as former President Trump and President Biden. Even before the damning Hur report was made public, the public had concluded that President Biden was too old for the job —too befuddled, too, in a word, "soft.
86 percent thought that much according to an ABC News poll even before Special Counsel Hur explained his decision not to charge the president with crimes related to his unlawful retention of classified materials because the president is a "elderly man with a poor memory."
The decision by Attorney General Garland to release the report explaining that Hur had declined to prosecute Biden because of his infirmity has ignited anger on the left which somehow has persuaded itself we all don’t know this already. Now that it’s in black and white, they can no longer pretend that the absent president can actually do the hard things. He can’t. "Soft" is actually too hard of a word to describe the infirm occupant of 1600, but it will do.
Vice President Harris is also from "Soft America," as any of her word salad declamations on any subject could prove. Her world is the world of the faculty lounge and the "arranged" politics of California where the overwhelmingly blue state seems always to line up the next Democrat to be tagged for the next job provided be or she checks boxes and says "nice" things about hot button issues. Vice President Harris embodies every cliche of "Soft America" and her rise is the triumph of the anti-meritocracy. She’s the perfect running mate for a president already in the deep twilight of his twilight years. And our enemies know it.
By contrast, former President Donald Trump is most definitely from "Hard America." After four decades as a land use lawyer —now retired— I can assure you I never met, much less worked for, a developer who wasn’t from "Hard America," largely because projects either pencil or they don’t. The site grading either balances or it doesn’t. The houses, apartments, commercial buildings or office towers either make money or they go bust. It’s a hard nosed, hard knocks business. The former president is like every other developer I’ve ever known well: A bottom line guy. A "Hard America" guy.
Which is why I hope Trump picks as a running mate another member of the "Hard America" class, people for whom either a job gets done or it’s a failure. There is, for example, no grading on the curve when it comes to protecting Americans (Biden has utterly failed here) and no getting around the bottom line of the value of all the oceans of red ink unleashed by the hapless president in his pursuit of "FDR status," a hilarious conceit of Team Biden.
Joe Biden defines "Soft America," which is why Arkansas Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has led every list I’ve been promoting of potential running mates for Trump since day one.
Read the rest of the article at https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/morning-glory-donald-trump-should-select-tom-cotton-running-mate to see why. I think Cotton would be a great choice!
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
04:31 PM
| Comments (4)
| Add Comment
Post contains 755 words, total size 5 kb.
Trump needs to pick someone from outside the D.C. power structure, and he needs to pick someone with strong ties to workaday America - what this guy is calling the hard class (I don't much care for the term primarily because it suggests working Americans are somehow mean and "hard". I would say realist America versus fantasy America maybe?)
But he's right about this; the big cities and blue states are full of dreamers who seek to make the world the way they wish it were rather than accept that it can't be that way and accept the reality.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at February 16, 2024 07:53 AM (esjeD)
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at February 17, 2024 12:14 AM (ISUTu)
You may remember it came back to bite Trump in a big way when he tapped Jeff Sessions for AG. The GOP lost that seat and at the same time got a big zero for Attorney General (something I would never have suspected from Sessions.)
Again, I would be pleased with Cotton, no question.But we need him where he is right now.
I'd like to see Trump pick somebody like Ken Paxton from Texas, or Missouri's Jay Ashcroft.
They need to be right wing enough the Democrats don't see assassination as an option, and at the same time uncorrupted by Washington politics and money. Trump's big mistake last time was tapping the swamp to fill those positions. He wound up with the alligators and snakes being in place to bite him.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at February 17, 2024 09:33 AM (rtDCL)
Posted by: Anonymoussly at March 27, 2024 02:03 PM (IyMpz)
37 queries taking 0.8622 seconds, 171 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
