John Cassidy's Blog, page 37

What Sort of Man Is Donald Trump?

On Sunday, the Times ran a front-page story about Donald Trump’s older brother, Freddy, a heavy drinker who died an early death, back in 1981, at the age of forty-three. Freddy was a free spirit who quit the family real-estate business to become a pilot; Donald was more ambitious, attending Wharton business school and following the lead of his father, Fred, Sr., a developer who built the family fortune.

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Six Bits of Good News from 2015

When I was younger, I once asked my mother why she didn’t read the newspaper on a regular basis. “It’s all bad news,” she replied. “Why would I want to read that?” It was a fair question, and, reflecting back on 2015, it’s easy to see how many people could have adopted the same attitude. From the attack at the Charlie Hebdo offices, in Paris, in early January, to the downing of Germanwings Flight 9525, in March, to the bodies of Syrian refugees washing up on the shores of the Mediterranean in the summer to the second terrorist outrage in Paris, in November, many of the headlines from overseas were grim. Here at home, meanwhile, the nightly news served up a steady diet of police shootings and gun massacres, the deadliest of which—a rampage in San Bernardino, California—was carried out by a radicalized American-born Muslim and his Pakistani wife.

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The Year of the Imaginary College Student
Daily Cartoon: Thursday, December 31st

The Year in John Cassidy

From tragic terrorist attacks to the confounding ubiquity of Donald Trump, the news in 2015 was as head-spinning as ever. In reviewing John Cassidy’s analyses of the year’s events, what stands out is the responses’ breadth—not just thematic, but temporal. Often writing immediately after news has broken, Cassidy distills what has just happened with an astute eye to what will still matter months down the road. As he says in a May reflection on the late mathematician and game theorist John Nash, “We know it is possible to impose at least some order on the chaos.”

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Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing
Daily Cartoon: Monday, December 28th

Donald Trump Isn’t a Fascist; He’s a Media-Savvy Know-Nothing

With Donald Trump ending 2015 well ahead in the Republican primary polls, the debate about what his candidacy represents is intensifying. Pointing to favorable remarks about Vladimir Putin that Trump made recently, Michael Gerson, a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush, said Sunday, on “Meet the Press,” “This is a man now flirting with authoritarianism. . . . This is a serious, serious matter.”

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Daily Cartoon: Monday, December 28th
Marco Rubio and the Problem of the Political Natural
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Democratic Debate Offers Up No Winners, but a Clear Choice

The Democratic National Committee made a big mistake staging the third Presidential-primary debate, which was held at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, on a Saturday night, when millions of potential viewers wouldn’t be watching. The debate was lively, informative, and civil. Apart from a brief diversion into whether former President Bill Clinton, should he become the first First Gentleman of the United States, would be entrusted with selecting flowers and menus for official occasions—his wife said that he wouldn’t—it was also substantive. And excluding, for a moment, Martin O’Malley, it reaffirmed the choice facing Democratic voters: experience, moderate reformism, and vigorous engagement abroad (Hillary Clinton) versus passion, an assault on privilege, and an abiding skepticism about overseas military engagements (Bernie Sanders).

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Will Donald Trump’s Supporters Show Up at the Polls?

For months now, commentators and political insiders have been making various arguments about why Donald Trump can’t win the Republican Presidential nomination: he’s too extreme; he has no political experience; his campaign will eventually implode; the rest of the Party will unite against him; he’s just a protest candidate; and so on. As we draw closer to the start of the primaries and Trump’s lead in the national polls persists, some of these arguments are still being put forward, if not with quite so much vehemence. But another skeptical case is being made about Trump’s prospects, which goes like this:

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The Year in ISIS and Donald Trump: A Reading List

The Year in ISIS and Donald Trump: A Reading List

If you’re like me, you’re intending to catch up on some reading over the holidays—once you’ve finished filing your expenses, closed Twitter and Facebook, and recovered from the office Christmas party. Of course, neither of us will probably end up reading as much as we’d like to. But this is a time for good intentions, so here are some magazine pieces you might have missed about two of the biggest stories of 2015: ISIS and Donald Trump.

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The Janet Yellen Era Starts Here

After seven long years, the era of zero-level, short-term U.S. interest rates is at an end, at least for now. In raising the federal funds rate by a quarter of a percentage point on Wednesday, Janet Yellen and her colleagues at the Federal Reserve signaled that, in their view, the U.S. economy, which has been hooked up to a monetary life-support machine since December, 2008, is now strong enough to withstand slightly higher borrowing costs.

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At the G.O.P. Debate in Las Vegas, Jeb Bush Casts Himself As the Trump Fighter

If last night’s Republican debate, in Las Vegas, had been the prize fight between Donald Trump and Ted Cruz that CNN promoted it as, many of the attendees would have demanded their money back, and rightly so. After more than two hours of ho-hum Obama bashing—and equally predictable talk about getting tough with ISIS and its sympathizers, enlivened only by Jeb Bush’s efforts to land a haymaker on Trump’s double chin—the New York billionaire gave the game away. He and Cruz, whom the campaign wallahs have now anointed as his most serious challenger, had met in a private sit-down a few days ago, where, evidently, they agreed not to throw any punches at each other—not in public, at least.

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Daily Cartoon: Wednesday, December 16th
The Republicans’ Principle-Free Presidential Debate
Chilling Video Terrifies Nation

A Message to Readers

With the festive season upon us, I want to pass along a couple of notes to all the regular (and irregular) readers of this column. First, I’d like to wish you a happy and safe holiday, and to express my gratitude for your attention, wherever you live: New York, elsewhere in the United States, Canada, Britain, France, India, Hong Kong, Australia, wherever.

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