Donald Trump not running for president
Hey guys! Guess what?
Donald Trump ended his months-long public flirtation with a 2012 presidential run Monday, saying that he will not seek the Republican nomination — even though he could have won the election.
I can’t believe people actually thought he was going to run. (Well, I guess I can, but really.)
Jan Brewer vetoes birther, campus gun bills
You may have heard that the governor of Arizona, Jan Brewer, vetoed two bills on Monday. One of them would have required people running for President of the United States to prove U.S. citizenship to be on the state’s ballot. Hoorah and all that.
What you may not have heard, and what I certainly didn’t hear, is that there were more ways than just a birth certificate to prove citizenship.
The so-called “birther bill,” would have made Arizona the first state in the nation to require presidential candidates prove U.S. citizenship by providing a long form birth certificate, and other forms of proof including baptismal or circumcision certificates, to be placed on the state ballot.
Why hasn’t Obama gotten results liberals like?
Glenn Greenwald:
When has Obama ever done any of that? When does he offer stirring, impassioned defenses of the Democrats’ vision on anything, or attempt to transform (rather than dutifully follow) how Americans think about anything? It’s not that he lacks the ability to do that. Americans responded to him as an inspirational figure and his skills of oratory are as effective as any politician in our lifetime. It’s that he evinces no interest in it. He doesn’t try because those aren’t his goals. It’s not that he or the office of the Presidency are powerless to engender other outcomes; it’s that he doesn’t use the power he has to achieve them because, quite obviously, achieving them is not his priority or even desire.
Interesting theory. I’m not sure I’m completely sold — at this point I think it’s more a little of column “GOP obstructionism”, a little of column “not much motivation for / interest in implementing liberal/progressive policies”.
I do definitely buy into the idea that there’s little political motive for implementing such policies. The Obama halo effect is pretty strong, just as it was with Clinton, and as a politician focused on re-election, Obama’s going to do his best to court folks not already in his camp.
However, the idea that Obama simply has no or little interest in implementing programs and policies that were effectively campaign promises is a little too cynical for my tastes. What seems like a more reasonable conclusion to me is the following: while Obama would certainly like to implement these programs and have defense cuts and spend badly needed billions on infrastructure, STEM education and the like, his political calculus is (quite a bit) more complicated. In this exercise, I imagine he views his first term as a mixed bag, but something he’s ultimately proud of.
Unfortunately, my rating of Obama’s first term is a bit more negative. However, while I’m not sold on supporting Obama in the Democratic primary coming in 2012 in principle, I don’t really think there’s a reasonable chance of anyone better emerging. But we shall see, as the election machine slowly grinds into motion yet again (groan).
Peruvian Presidental Election Heading for a Runoff
Peru held its presidential election on Sunday. The leader only received 30.5% of the vote, so a runoff between the top two candidates will be held in June. The leader, Ollanta Humala, was a lieutenant colonel in the Peruvian army and was endorsed by the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez.
Humala, 48, made promises similar to those of Keiko Fujimori: free nursery school and public education, state-funded school breakfasts and lunches, a big boost in the minimum wage, and pensions for all beginning at age 65.
He says he would respect international treaties and contracts, but many Peruvians don’t believe him.
Humala, who launched a bloodless, short-lived revolt against Alberto Fujimori just before the latter fled into exile in 2000, advocates rewriting the constitution, as Chavez and his leftist allies in Bolivia and Ecuador have done
His challenger will be the second-place candidate, Keiko Fujimori, who received 23.1% of the vote. Keiko Fujimori is the daughter of former president Alberto Fujimori, who is currently serving twenty-five years in prison in Peru for corruption and human rights abuses.
Keiko Fujimori constantly invoked her father during the campaign, running on his legacy of delivering essential services to Peru’s forgotten backwater and of being tough on crime. It’s a potent message in a nation of 30 million where one in three live on less than $3 a day and lack running water.
This election is not viewed particularly favorably by political observers.
Nobel literature laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has called the Humala-Fujimori runoff option “a choice between AIDS and terminal cancer,” given perceptions of their anti-democratic tendencies.
Yikes.
Michael Bérubé writing for Crooked Timber:
“We didn’t know, when we made these governors available to the public, how truly dangerous they were,” said an NGA representative who requested anonymity because he feared swift and remorseless retaliation from one of the defective governors. “In most cases, they seemed like fully functioning human beings. But now it appears that many of them avoided routine safety checks or managed to buy off safety regulators.”
Hilarious. My favorite part:
“Don’t forget what happened last time we issued a recall in [California],” said Anthony Kiedis of the Institute for Advanced Californication. “They wound up with some guy who went through nightclubs and malls shooting people. Even when they tried to blow up his oil truck and crush him in a drill press, they couldn’t get rid of him. So you take your chances.”