This is the most devastating political ad I’ve seen in years. It reveals the truth about Trump and China, and that truth is ugly. pic.twitter.com/52cNf9Ay9u— Joe Scarborough (@JoeNBC) April 18, 2020
Sunday, April 19, 2020
Ugly
The Guessing Game - Updated/Beautiful Issue
What will be on the cover of People this week? Last year at this time it was the "Beautiful" issue (below,) but in the midst of the pandemic People might put that on hold for a while. Other possibilities, in no particular order:
Princess Beatrice: Her wedding has now been officially postponed due to the coronavirus
Harry and Meghan: Settling into their new life in Los Angeles; they've been seen delivering food to people in need. Update on Tuesday, 4/21: Private texts to Meghan's father have become public, part of their lawsuit again some of the British tabloids.
Brian Dennehy: Died at age 81
Michael Jordan: A new documentary titled "The Last Dance"
Chris Soules: Is the former Bachelor dating Victoria Fuller, a so-called villain from Peter's season?
Princess Anne: She's on the cover of the May issue of Vanity Fair to mark her upcoming 70th birthday, read the VF article here
James Patterson: A new book about the Kennedys, titled The House of Kennedy
Covid-19: Stories about the virus have been on the last five covers. Will this week be different?
Melania Trump: Turning 50 on April 26, the First Lady has mostly been AWOL during the Covid-19 emergency. (Read more here.) As I've pointed out before, since the day Donald was elected, People has not put one single word about Melania on the cover of the magazine, which is a change from past practice and has to be a deliberate omission. Will the magazine mark this milestone birthday? Probably not. In contrast to Melania, the two most recent First Ladies joined together to send out a message of hope:
Will & Grace: The series finale airs April 23
Nick Cordero: A Broadway star, he had his right leg amputated due to the coronavirus
Dr. Phil. Dr. Drew and/or Dr. Oz: They all got themselves in hot water for saying stupid things on television, followed by apologies, more or less, for "misspeaking." A Washington Post article about the good doctors starts with this:
Dr. Phil had much to say about the coronavirus lockdown the other night on Fox News.
“Look, the fact of the matter is we have people dying — 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes,” the talk-show host said Thursday, “but we don’t shut the country down for that. But yet we’re doing it for this?”
Social media quickly erupted with fury and derision as viewers pointed out the hopeless apples-to-orangeness of his argument: Cars and tobacco aren’t exactly communicable diseases; and both, in fact, have inspired extensive government regulations to limit injuries and death. (The TV shrink was also widely mocked for making a comparison to swimming-pool deaths using a bogus statistic inflated by a factor of nearly 100.)
But the interview raised deeper concerns: Why was Dr. Phil — not a medical doctor but a clinical psychologist with no special knowledge about the politics, science or economics of the shutdown — on a TV news channel talking about the topic in the first place?
Like Drs. Drew [Pinsky] and Oz before him, Phil McGraw was on TV, it seems, largely because he’s a articulate, charismatic and well-known TV personality. But none of that amounts to expertise on this particular topic. In fact, in recent TV appearances to discuss the pandemic, fellow celebrity doctors Drew Pinsky and Mehmet Oz have offered commentary based on a loose or seemingly wobbly understanding of the crisis — arguably doing more to undermine public understanding than enhance it.
All three have since walked back their statements. (Read the entire article here.)
CNN piled on with an article titled "Fox News keeps inviting TV doctors on air who say crazy things," read that here.
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Last year at this time: The Beautiful Issue, dated May 6, 2019
This is the final version of last year's Beautiful issue:
Update: Val Kilmer. His memoir, titled I'm Your Huckleberry, is out today; he reprises his role as Iceman in the upcoming Top Gun sequel, which is now scheduled to open in December
Update #2. It is the Beautiful issue, featuring Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson and her daughter Rani:
Issue dated May 4, 2020: The Beautiful Issue
This is the final version of the cover, with secondary headlines featuring Harry & Meghan and a story about a nurse treating coronavirus patients:
Princess Beatrice: Her wedding has now been officially postponed due to the coronavirus
Harry and Meghan: Settling into their new life in Los Angeles; they've been seen delivering food to people in need. Update on Tuesday, 4/21: Private texts to Meghan's father have become public, part of their lawsuit again some of the British tabloids.
Brian Dennehy: Died at age 81
Michael Jordan: A new documentary titled "The Last Dance"
Chris Soules: Is the former Bachelor dating Victoria Fuller, a so-called villain from Peter's season?
Princess Anne: She's on the cover of the May issue of Vanity Fair to mark her upcoming 70th birthday, read the VF article here
James Patterson: A new book about the Kennedys, titled The House of Kennedy
Covid-19: Stories about the virus have been on the last five covers. Will this week be different?
Melania Trump: Turning 50 on April 26, the First Lady has mostly been AWOL during the Covid-19 emergency. (Read more here.) As I've pointed out before, since the day Donald was elected, People has not put one single word about Melania on the cover of the magazine, which is a change from past practice and has to be a deliberate omission. Will the magazine mark this milestone birthday? Probably not. In contrast to Melania, the two most recent First Ladies joined together to send out a message of hope:
Former First Ladies @MichelleObama and @LauraWBush appeared on One World: #TogetherAtHome to stand in solidarity with @WHO and the incredible health care workers defending our communities against COVID-19. Do your part to fight this crisis at https://t.co/26xVXSb0qy. pic.twitter.com/yTxjQfGE1Y— Global Citizen (@GlblCtzn) April 19, 2020
Will & Grace: The series finale airs April 23
Nick Cordero: A Broadway star, he had his right leg amputated due to the coronavirus
Dr. Phil. Dr. Drew and/or Dr. Oz: They all got themselves in hot water for saying stupid things on television, followed by apologies, more or less, for "misspeaking." A Washington Post article about the good doctors starts with this:
Dr. Phil had much to say about the coronavirus lockdown the other night on Fox News.
“Look, the fact of the matter is we have people dying — 45,000 people a year die from automobile accidents, 480,000 from cigarettes,” the talk-show host said Thursday, “but we don’t shut the country down for that. But yet we’re doing it for this?”
Social media quickly erupted with fury and derision as viewers pointed out the hopeless apples-to-orangeness of his argument: Cars and tobacco aren’t exactly communicable diseases; and both, in fact, have inspired extensive government regulations to limit injuries and death. (The TV shrink was also widely mocked for making a comparison to swimming-pool deaths using a bogus statistic inflated by a factor of nearly 100.)
But the interview raised deeper concerns: Why was Dr. Phil — not a medical doctor but a clinical psychologist with no special knowledge about the politics, science or economics of the shutdown — on a TV news channel talking about the topic in the first place?
Like Drs. Drew [Pinsky] and Oz before him, Phil McGraw was on TV, it seems, largely because he’s a articulate, charismatic and well-known TV personality. But none of that amounts to expertise on this particular topic. In fact, in recent TV appearances to discuss the pandemic, fellow celebrity doctors Drew Pinsky and Mehmet Oz have offered commentary based on a loose or seemingly wobbly understanding of the crisis — arguably doing more to undermine public understanding than enhance it.
All three have since walked back their statements. (Read the entire article here.)
CNN piled on with an article titled "Fox News keeps inviting TV doctors on air who say crazy things," read that here.
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Last year at this time: The Beautiful Issue, dated May 6, 2019
This is the final version of last year's Beautiful issue:
Update: Val Kilmer. His memoir, titled I'm Your Huckleberry, is out today; he reprises his role as Iceman in the upcoming Top Gun sequel, which is now scheduled to open in December
Update #2. It is the Beautiful issue, featuring Goldie Hawn, Kate Hudson and her daughter Rani:
Issue dated May 4, 2020: The Beautiful Issue
This is the final version of the cover, with secondary headlines featuring Harry & Meghan and a story about a nurse treating coronavirus patients:
Dogs
This made me smile this morning:
It reminded me of this:
And for good measure, a few more sweet tweets about dogs:
Juvenile primate mauled by domesticated wolves. Horrific. pic.twitter.com/xSjryH7cRg— Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill) April 18, 2020
It reminded me of this:
TO ALL: WHEN MY TIME COMES, THIS IS HOW I WANNA GO 😍❤pic.twitter.com/Od8TqmUQa6— Urgent News (@UrgentNews911) August 17, 2019
And for good measure, a few more sweet tweets about dogs:
Police therapy dog Ben Franklin still deserves to be known as a very good boy.https://t.co/lrF7QjESeN— Mental Floss (@mental_floss) December 20, 2019
— Andrew Cotter (@MrAndrewCotter) March 27, 2020
I was bored. pic.twitter.com/bVoC0hyNzC
Actual photo of service dogs watching Billy Elliot The Musical as part of their behaving in a theater training.— TODD SPENCE (@Todd_Spence) February 21, 2020
My heart can’t take it pic.twitter.com/d7Gi6g246V
Friday, April 17, 2020
This Day In History, 1970: The Return Of Apollo 13
Today marks the 50thAnniversary of the return flight of the incredible Apollo 13 mission to the moon where a catastrophic explosion in space nearly ended the lives of the 3 man crew. It was such an honor to participate in the beautiful Ron Howard film. pic.twitter.com/EwujTF9syc— Gary Sinise (@GarySinise) April 17, 2020
Home safe. #OTD 50 years ago, the Apollo 13 crew splashed down in the Pacific Ocean. Although an explosion had disrupted the planned landing on the Moon, the ingenuity of Mission Control successfully brought the three astronauts back to Earth: https://t.co/SZJwF19ba9 pic.twitter.com/8BbFktk3sy— NASA (@NASA) April 17, 2020
What’s on the Apollo 13 audio tapes?— NASA (@NASA) April 17, 2020
Nearly 7,200 hours of Apollo 13 Mission Control audio is now available at https://t.co/ZsLVmqQqOt. Website creator & @NASA_Johnson contractor Ben Feist helps us step back in time in a special #AskNASA at Home episode: https://t.co/NfqKgwJbtk pic.twitter.com/orvXMxdhKt
This tweet is from Monday:
50 years ago – the Godfather of NASA Mission Control Gene Kranz and his team used this room to bring the #Apollo13 crew home safely. Check out the project that preserved the Mission Operations Control Room here: https://t.co/SThEIonAPK Failure is never an option. pic.twitter.com/ao7B1j2Igs— Buzz Aldrin (@TheRealBuzz) April 13, 2020
Thursday, April 16, 2020
This Day In History, 1975: A Chorus Line
This video is from five years ago, on the 40th anniversary of A Chorus Line's debut:
Happy A Chorus Line Day to me and your theater geek friend! I saw it after it moved to B'way and proceeded to perform "Dance 10 Looks 3" nightly in my basement for an audience of no one. The movie sucks. Watch this tribute instead. https://t.co/8kS9ZP220S— Jessica Shaw (@JessicaShaw) April 16, 2020
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
The Guessing Game - Updated/Julia Louis-Dreyfus
What will be on the cover of People this week? My guesses, in no particular order:
The Kennedys: The family holds an online memorial for Maeve and Gideon McKean, who drowned in a canoe accident in the Chesapeake Bay
Linda Tripp: Died at age 70
George Stephanopoulos: His wife is recovering but he's now been diagnosed with the virus. So far he says he feels fine
The Coronavirus: It's been on the cover of the last four issues, no reason for People to stop now
Harry and Meghan, Will and Kate, Prince Charles and Camilla: Nothing specific, it's just been a couple of weeks since we've seen any of the royals on the cover
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Will Donald fire him?
Listen To Your Heart: The latest Bachelor Nation show premiered last night; apparently the ratings were terrible. On the other hand, Sharleen Joynt loved it:
As a disclaimer, I should mention I’ve never even seen A Star Is Born (I honestly can’t even stand the song!), so the movie that “inspired” this show in no way “inspired” me to like this spinoff. But—ugh!—I liked last night’s Listen To Your Heart premiere! In fact, I liked it a lot. Perhaps I went in with overly low expectations, primed to have them surpassed. Maybe, being a musician, this show spoke to me on a level even a fantastic Bachelor season cannot. Or maybe—just maybe—I’m secretly soothed by this mansion’s familiar Bachelor-ific decor, calmed by its curiously wet driveway. Maybe I missed this show more than I’d like to admit, or maybe Listen To Your Heart satisfied a reality TV craving only a pandemic could induce. Maybe it’s all of the above, but I’ll argue, with or without special circumstances, Listen To Your Heart is a hell of a lot more than just a distraction or fresh meat. (Click here to read her review at Flare.com)
In other BN news, Reality Steve says the show is trying to find a resort, where they would kick all the customers out then sequester Claire, the cast and the entire production staff for the entire time it takes to film the show, with all the dates taking place onsite. Maybe...
Tom Hanks: Hosted Saturday Night Live from his kitchen
Andrew Cuomo: Still in the spotlight, he's the main cover story on the May issue of Rolling Stone:
Issue dated May, 2020
Click here to read the story. Andrew's brother Chris is still sick and he's going a little bit crazy; click here to see People's slide show of the two brothers' "journey to fame"
Oprah: She's raising concerns about the impact Covid 19 is having on the black community
Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and/or Barack Obama: Sanders dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden, then today (Tuesday 4/14,) Barack Obama endorsed him as well:
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Update: Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes center stage this week, in a cover story celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day doesn't get much notice now, even in years when a pandemic isn't the biggest news story. Ten years ago I wrote a post titled "Earth Day: Good, Bad or Indifferent" (you can read it here,) in which I said maybe it's time for Earth Day to go away. Not because saving the Earth isn't important, it's more important than ever and will never not be. It's just that designating one day a year as the day of the Earth doesn't appear to be accomplishing much. And that list, mentioned on the cover below, "50 easy ways you can make a big difference"? You have to buy the magazine to read it.
Issue dated April 27, 2020: Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Last year at this time: Issue dated April 29, 2019
Last year, the issue following the one above was the "Beautiful" issue, featuring Jennifer Garner. Will People do one this year? It's one of their most consistent theme cover stories, but now might not be the right time. As I'm writing on Thursday afternoon there's nothing at People.com teasing a big announcement of who this year's cover girl is, a possible indication that the Beautiful issue has been postponed.
The Kennedys: The family holds an online memorial for Maeve and Gideon McKean, who drowned in a canoe accident in the Chesapeake Bay
Linda Tripp: Died at age 70
George Stephanopoulos: His wife is recovering but he's now been diagnosed with the virus. So far he says he feels fine
The Coronavirus: It's been on the cover of the last four issues, no reason for People to stop now
Harry and Meghan, Will and Kate, Prince Charles and Camilla: Nothing specific, it's just been a couple of weeks since we've seen any of the royals on the cover
Dr. Anthony Fauci: Will Donald fire him?
Listen To Your Heart: The latest Bachelor Nation show premiered last night; apparently the ratings were terrible. On the other hand, Sharleen Joynt loved it:
As a disclaimer, I should mention I’ve never even seen A Star Is Born (I honestly can’t even stand the song!), so the movie that “inspired” this show in no way “inspired” me to like this spinoff. But—ugh!—I liked last night’s Listen To Your Heart premiere! In fact, I liked it a lot. Perhaps I went in with overly low expectations, primed to have them surpassed. Maybe, being a musician, this show spoke to me on a level even a fantastic Bachelor season cannot. Or maybe—just maybe—I’m secretly soothed by this mansion’s familiar Bachelor-ific decor, calmed by its curiously wet driveway. Maybe I missed this show more than I’d like to admit, or maybe Listen To Your Heart satisfied a reality TV craving only a pandemic could induce. Maybe it’s all of the above, but I’ll argue, with or without special circumstances, Listen To Your Heart is a hell of a lot more than just a distraction or fresh meat. (Click here to read her review at Flare.com)
In other BN news, Reality Steve says the show is trying to find a resort, where they would kick all the customers out then sequester Claire, the cast and the entire production staff for the entire time it takes to film the show, with all the dates taking place onsite. Maybe...
Tom Hanks: Hosted Saturday Night Live from his kitchen
Andrew Cuomo: Still in the spotlight, he's the main cover story on the May issue of Rolling Stone:
Issue dated May, 2020
Click here to read the story. Andrew's brother Chris is still sick and he's going a little bit crazy; click here to see People's slide show of the two brothers' "journey to fame"
Oprah: She's raising concerns about the impact Covid 19 is having on the black community
Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and/or Barack Obama: Sanders dropped out of the presidential race and endorsed Biden, then today (Tuesday 4/14,) Barack Obama endorsed him as well:
For all of us who love this country and are willing to do our part to make sure it lives up to its highest ideals – now’s the time to fight for what we believe in. Join us at https://t.co/Kboaxi3MVL. And I’ll see you on the campaign trail as soon as I can.— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) April 14, 2020
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Update: Julia Louis-Dreyfus takes center stage this week, in a cover story celebrating the 50th anniversary of Earth Day. Earth Day doesn't get much notice now, even in years when a pandemic isn't the biggest news story. Ten years ago I wrote a post titled "Earth Day: Good, Bad or Indifferent" (you can read it here,) in which I said maybe it's time for Earth Day to go away. Not because saving the Earth isn't important, it's more important than ever and will never not be. It's just that designating one day a year as the day of the Earth doesn't appear to be accomplishing much. And that list, mentioned on the cover below, "50 easy ways you can make a big difference"? You have to buy the magazine to read it.
Issue dated April 27, 2020: Julia Louis-Dreyfus
Last year at this time: Issue dated April 29, 2019
Last year, the issue following the one above was the "Beautiful" issue, featuring Jennifer Garner. Will People do one this year? It's one of their most consistent theme cover stories, but now might not be the right time. As I'm writing on Thursday afternoon there's nothing at People.com teasing a big announcement of who this year's cover girl is, a possible indication that the Beautiful issue has been postponed.
Thursday, April 9, 2020
It's Joe Biden
Bernie Sanders dropped out of the presidential campaign yesterday, and Tulsi Gabbard withdrew some time ago, leaving Joe Biden as the presumptive Democratic nominee. In an article titled "After 32 Years of Running For President Biden Clinches it," Jonathan Bernstein ponders Biden's long path to becoming the Democratic nominee for president:
Former Vice President Joe Biden has gone from what political scientist Josh Putnam has called the presumptive presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to being the just plain presumptive Democratic nominee.
Bernie Sanders finally saw that there was no realistic chance of winning the nomination, and that dropping out now was the way to maximize his influence. Surely his decision to suspend his campaign was due in part to the coronavirus lockdown, and the halt to normal campaigning.
(1) That's especially obvious during the pandemic. One example: Trump tried to get states to keep new unemployment filing data quiet at one point early on, even though the same numbers are released nationally every Thursday -- so he was only putting off inevitable bad news. Of course, more broadly, there's evidence that Trump's slow response to the pandemic in February may have been a case of trying to win news cycles then, even at the cost of seeing larger damage later on (although whether it made a difference is less clear).
(2) The best portrait of mid-career Biden remains Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes," the masterpiece of reporting on six of the candidates from the 1988 cycle.
(3) Some, in fact, badly underrate him. A lot of people have seen selective and even doctored clips too many times and concluded that Biden is barely functional. He has aged, and I for one think parties should avoid selecting presidential candidates as old as Biden -- or Trump. But beyond that? His lifetime stutter is less controlled than it was 30 years ago, but otherwise? I've watched him in every debate through this cycle, in numerous town-hall-type appearances and in plenty of interviews, and he's perfectly coherent. Everyone sometimes reaches for a word, gets some basic fact wrong, or otherwise looks silly, and so it's easy to use even perfectly in-context clips to make anyone who is in the news constantly look incoherent. Democrats have done that to Trump; Republicans did it to Obama. (This is the article in entirety.)
I've updated my lists for the final time. Just shy of a year from the day he announced, and as Bernstein says, 32 years after Joe's first presidential campaign, he is now the (presumptive) nominee and the last person standing on my I'm Running list:
Former Vice President Joe Biden has gone from what political scientist Josh Putnam has called the presumptive presumptive Democratic presidential nominee to being the just plain presumptive Democratic nominee.
Bernie Sanders finally saw that there was no realistic chance of winning the nomination, and that dropping out now was the way to maximize his influence. Surely his decision to suspend his campaign was due in part to the coronavirus lockdown, and the halt to normal campaigning.
Still, the Vermont senator probably lost the Wisconsin primary this week (although the results won’t be in until next week), and he might well have lost mail-in primaries in Alaska, Wyoming and Ohio later this month and another few states with primaries scheduled in May. It’s probably better to get out now and be perceived as a team player than to demonstrate the limits of his appeal in state after state over the next two months.
Whether Sanders stuck around until June was going to be irrelevant to Biden and the fall campaign; if anything, a steady stream of big wins might have helped the former vice president’s image, but the nomination has been his for some time now. What is more relevant is whether Sanders will succeed in persuading his strongest supporters to back the Democratic ticket. We won’t know that for a while.
Think about it. Joe Biden, who has been more or less running for president at least since the 1988 cycle, has at long last won a Democratic presidential nomination. His triumph relied quite a bit on Barack Obama’s selection of him as his running mate in 2008, and he did a solid job as vice president. Biden also benefited from quite a bit of luck.
I do think, however, that he demonstrated three qualities that could help him in the White House, should he win in November.
Coalition building: Biden had enough supporters early on that he was the plurality leader in endorsements throughout the campaign. His real strength, however, was that a whole lot of Democratic Party actors who had different first choices — and in many cases different second, third, fourth and fifth and more choices — seemed to find him acceptable.
Biden may never have had wild enthusiasm from a lot of the party, but there never seemed to be a Stop Biden movement at any point. Part of the reason for that was his knack of positioning himself right in the center of the Democratic Party. His long-term success in personal appeals to party actors also played a role. Coalition-building skills are highly useful to presidents.
Perseverance: Biden made two choices that risked his reputation. The first was to run at all, given his long-term failure in presidential politics. He could easily have retired as a successful senator and vice president, and his presidential campaigns would have been a minor footnote in his political biography. Another late-career flop would have turned him into a joke. And then he chose to carry on after miserable finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, risking further humiliation if he couldn’t turn things around.
Long-term thinking: One of Barack Obama’s biggest strengths as a candidate and as president was worrying very little about winning every news cycle; one of Donald Trump's weaknesses as president is his focus on winning news cycles. 1 Biden seems to have learned from Obama. When things were going badly for his campaign, he mostly didn’t panic. He did shake up his campaign a little after Iowa, but for the most part over the length of the process he was slow and steady, even though in the past steadiness was never really one of Biden’s defining characteristics. 2 If he’s added that to his skill set over the years, it will serve him well if he becomes president.
The balance of the findings from political scientists is that the out-party candidates just don’t make much of a difference if there’s an incumbent president on the ballot. The election is a referendum on the incumbent. That's likely more true with Trump in particular, and the circumstances of the pandemic and the pandemic-caused recession. So while I do think Biden enters the general election somewhat underrated as a candidate, it probably just doesn’t matter much. 3
Still, winning a presidential nomination is always an impressive accomplishment, and Biden has shown some signs he will be an OK candidate this fall and will have pretty good skills to use as president if he wins.
Whether Sanders stuck around until June was going to be irrelevant to Biden and the fall campaign; if anything, a steady stream of big wins might have helped the former vice president’s image, but the nomination has been his for some time now. What is more relevant is whether Sanders will succeed in persuading his strongest supporters to back the Democratic ticket. We won’t know that for a while.
Think about it. Joe Biden, who has been more or less running for president at least since the 1988 cycle, has at long last won a Democratic presidential nomination. His triumph relied quite a bit on Barack Obama’s selection of him as his running mate in 2008, and he did a solid job as vice president. Biden also benefited from quite a bit of luck.
I do think, however, that he demonstrated three qualities that could help him in the White House, should he win in November.
Coalition building: Biden had enough supporters early on that he was the plurality leader in endorsements throughout the campaign. His real strength, however, was that a whole lot of Democratic Party actors who had different first choices — and in many cases different second, third, fourth and fifth and more choices — seemed to find him acceptable.
Biden may never have had wild enthusiasm from a lot of the party, but there never seemed to be a Stop Biden movement at any point. Part of the reason for that was his knack of positioning himself right in the center of the Democratic Party. His long-term success in personal appeals to party actors also played a role. Coalition-building skills are highly useful to presidents.
Perseverance: Biden made two choices that risked his reputation. The first was to run at all, given his long-term failure in presidential politics. He could easily have retired as a successful senator and vice president, and his presidential campaigns would have been a minor footnote in his political biography. Another late-career flop would have turned him into a joke. And then he chose to carry on after miserable finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire, risking further humiliation if he couldn’t turn things around.
Long-term thinking: One of Barack Obama’s biggest strengths as a candidate and as president was worrying very little about winning every news cycle; one of Donald Trump's weaknesses as president is his focus on winning news cycles. 1 Biden seems to have learned from Obama. When things were going badly for his campaign, he mostly didn’t panic. He did shake up his campaign a little after Iowa, but for the most part over the length of the process he was slow and steady, even though in the past steadiness was never really one of Biden’s defining characteristics. 2 If he’s added that to his skill set over the years, it will serve him well if he becomes president.
The balance of the findings from political scientists is that the out-party candidates just don’t make much of a difference if there’s an incumbent president on the ballot. The election is a referendum on the incumbent. That's likely more true with Trump in particular, and the circumstances of the pandemic and the pandemic-caused recession. So while I do think Biden enters the general election somewhat underrated as a candidate, it probably just doesn’t matter much. 3
Still, winning a presidential nomination is always an impressive accomplishment, and Biden has shown some signs he will be an OK candidate this fall and will have pretty good skills to use as president if he wins.
(1) That's especially obvious during the pandemic. One example: Trump tried to get states to keep new unemployment filing data quiet at one point early on, even though the same numbers are released nationally every Thursday -- so he was only putting off inevitable bad news. Of course, more broadly, there's evidence that Trump's slow response to the pandemic in February may have been a case of trying to win news cycles then, even at the cost of seeing larger damage later on (although whether it made a difference is less clear).
(2) The best portrait of mid-career Biden remains Richard Ben Cramer's "What It Takes," the masterpiece of reporting on six of the candidates from the 1988 cycle.
(3) Some, in fact, badly underrate him. A lot of people have seen selective and even doctored clips too many times and concluded that Biden is barely functional. He has aged, and I for one think parties should avoid selecting presidential candidates as old as Biden -- or Trump. But beyond that? His lifetime stutter is less controlled than it was 30 years ago, but otherwise? I've watched him in every debate through this cycle, in numerous town-hall-type appearances and in plenty of interviews, and he's perfectly coherent. Everyone sometimes reaches for a word, gets some basic fact wrong, or otherwise looks silly, and so it's easy to use even perfectly in-context clips to make anyone who is in the news constantly look incoherent. Democrats have done that to Trump; Republicans did it to Obama. (This is the article in entirety.)
I've updated my lists for the final time. Just shy of a year from the day he announced, and as Bernstein says, 32 years after Joe's first presidential campaign, he is now the (presumptive) nominee and the last person standing on my I'm Running list:
I'm Running Declared Democratic candidates, in order of their announcement.
Joe Biden (4/25/19)
I'm Not Running Anymore Declared candidates who have dropped out:
Joe Biden (4/25/19)
I'm Not Running Anymore Declared candidates who have dropped out:
- Richard Ojeda (1/25/19)
- Eric Swalwell (7/8/19)
- John Hickenlooper (8/15/19)
- Jay Inslee (8/21/19)
- Seth Moulton (8/23/19)
- Kirsten Gillibrand (8/28/19)
- Howard Schultz (9/6/19) * Ran as an Independent
- Bill de Blasio (9/20/19)
- Tim Ryan (10/24/19)
- Beto O'Rourke (11/1/19)
- Wayne Messam (11/20/19)
- Joe Sestak (12/1/19)
- Steve Bullock (12/2/19)
- Kamala Harris (12/3/19)
- Julián Castro (1/2/20)
- Marianne Williamson (1/10/20)
- Cory Booker (1/13/20)
- John Delaney (1/31/20)
- Andrew Yang (2/11/20)
- Michael Bennet (2/11/20)
- Deval Patrick (2/12/20)
- Tom Steyer (3/1/20)
- Pete Buttigieg (3/1/20)
- Amy Klobuchar (3/2/20)
- Michael Bloomberg (3/4/20)
- Elizabeth Warren (3/5/20)
- Tulsi Gabbard (3/19/20)
- Bernie Sanders (3/8/20)
Days until the election: 207
Monday, April 6, 2020
The Guessing Game - Updated
What will be on the cover of People this week? My guesses:
The Cuomo Brothers: Older brother Andrew, the governor of New York, and younger brother Chris, a CNN anchor who has COVID 19, have become a double act on television (read more here)
Hunter Biden: His son was born (read more here)
The Queen: A rare and moving address to citizens of the U.K., seen by people around the world
Peter Beard: The famed photographer, artist and writer, age 82 and suffering from dementia, disappeared from his home a week ago
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Her daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon died after a canoe accident last week; I wrote about it here. As of Monday evening, Maeve's body has been found; the search for Gideon's body will continue tomorrow
Kobe Bryant: Selected for the Hall of Fame
Channing Tatum: After a brief reconciliation, he and his wife are splitting up again
Joanna Gaines: Her new lifestyle channel, named Magnolia, will debut in October
Michelle Money: Her daughter had a brutal accident while skateboarding, she's been in a coma for over a week with brain trauma and a skull fracture. (Who's Michelle Money? She competed on The Bachelor in 2011, on Brad Womack's season, then went on to win Season 1 of Bachelor In Paradise)
Duffy: The Welsh singer tells a harrowing tale of abduction and rape
Modern Family: After 11 seasons, the final episode airs April 8
Celebrities Who Have COVID 19:
--Andrew Parker Bowles: Camilla's ex-husband has the coronavirus at age 80
--Boris Johnson:The British Prime Minister has been hospitalized due to COVID 19; earlier today he was moved to the intensive care unit
--Colton Underwood: Colton appears to have recovered; his new book is out but because of social distancing, he's not able to do much to promote it. Read more here
--Navy Captain Brent Crozier: Captain Crozier was fired by the Navy for writing a letter asking for medical help for the sailors on his ship, he's now been diagnosed with the virus
--Ali Wentworth: She has the virus, husband George Stephanopoulos has been hosting Good Morning, America from home
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Wednesday morning update: Tiger King. On last week's Guessing Game list, I said, regarding Tiger King, "I don't even know what this is, but all of a sudden, it's everywhere." Now I know. It's "Netflix's wild hit docuseries" and apparently it rates a People cover. I admit I don't care too much about the blonde man in the picture, but the tiger is spectacular. No green this week.
Issue dated April 20, 2020: Tiger King
Last year at this time: Issue dated April 22, 2020
The Cuomo Brothers: Older brother Andrew, the governor of New York, and younger brother Chris, a CNN anchor who has COVID 19, have become a double act on television (read more here)
Hunter Biden: His son was born (read more here)
The Queen: A rare and moving address to citizens of the U.K., seen by people around the world
Peter Beard: The famed photographer, artist and writer, age 82 and suffering from dementia, disappeared from his home a week ago
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend: Her daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon died after a canoe accident last week; I wrote about it here. As of Monday evening, Maeve's body has been found; the search for Gideon's body will continue tomorrow
Kobe Bryant: Selected for the Hall of Fame
Channing Tatum: After a brief reconciliation, he and his wife are splitting up again
Joanna Gaines: Her new lifestyle channel, named Magnolia, will debut in October
Michelle Money: Her daughter had a brutal accident while skateboarding, she's been in a coma for over a week with brain trauma and a skull fracture. (Who's Michelle Money? She competed on The Bachelor in 2011, on Brad Womack's season, then went on to win Season 1 of Bachelor In Paradise)
Duffy: The Welsh singer tells a harrowing tale of abduction and rape
Modern Family: After 11 seasons, the final episode airs April 8
Celebrities Who Have COVID 19:
--Andrew Parker Bowles: Camilla's ex-husband has the coronavirus at age 80
--Boris Johnson:The British Prime Minister has been hospitalized due to COVID 19; earlier today he was moved to the intensive care unit
--Colton Underwood: Colton appears to have recovered; his new book is out but because of social distancing, he's not able to do much to promote it. Read more here
--Navy Captain Brent Crozier: Captain Crozier was fired by the Navy for writing a letter asking for medical help for the sailors on his ship, he's now been diagnosed with the virus
--Ali Wentworth: She has the virus, husband George Stephanopoulos has been hosting Good Morning, America from home
Stories that appear on the new cover will be highlighted in green.
Wednesday morning update: Tiger King. On last week's Guessing Game list, I said, regarding Tiger King, "I don't even know what this is, but all of a sudden, it's everywhere." Now I know. It's "Netflix's wild hit docuseries" and apparently it rates a People cover. I admit I don't care too much about the blonde man in the picture, but the tiger is spectacular. No green this week.
Issue dated April 20, 2020: Tiger King
Last year at this time: Issue dated April 22, 2020
The Worst President Ever?
Writing at the Washington Post, historian Max Boot says definitively that Donald is the worst U.S. president ever. The picture accompanying the story, which was taken last Friday, makes clear that Donald isn't holding up well during the biggest crisis of his presidency:
photo credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
This is Boot's article in its entirety:
Until now, I have generally been reluctant to label Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history. As a historian, I know how important it is to allow the passage of time to gain a sense of perspective. Some presidents who seemed awful to contemporaries (Harry S. Truman) or simply lackluster (Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush) look much better in retrospect. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, don’t look as good as they once did.
So I have written, as I did on March 12, that Trump is the worst president in modern times — not of all time. That left open the possibility that James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding or some other nonentity would be judged more harshly. But in the past month, we have seen enough to take away the qualifier “in modern times.” With his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus, Trump has established himself as the worst president in U.S. history.
His one major competitor for that dubious distinction remains Buchanan, whose dithering helped lead us into the Civil War — the deadliest conflict in U.S. history. Buchanan may still be the biggest loser. But there is good reason to think that the Civil War would have broken out no matter what. By contrast, there is nothing inevitable about the scale of the disaster we now confront.
The situation is so dire, it is hard to wrap your mind around it. The Atlantic notes: “During the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the economy suffered a net loss of approximately 9 million jobs. The pandemic recession has seen nearly 10 million unemployment claims in just two weeks.” The New York Times estimates that the unemployment rate is now about 13 percent, the highest since the Great Depression ended 80 years ago.
Far worse is the human carnage. We already have more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other country. Trump claimed on Feb. 26 that the outbreak would soon be “down to close to zero.” Now he argues that if the death toll is 100,000 to 200,000 — higher than the U.S. fatalities in all of our wars combined since 1945 — it will be proof that he’s done “a very good job.”
No, it will be a sign that he’s a miserable failure, because the coronavirus is the most foreseeable catastrophe in U.S. history. The warnings about the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks were obvious only in retrospect. This time, it didn’t require any top-secret intelligence to see what was coming. The alarm was sounded in January by experts in the media and by leading Democrats including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Government officials were delivering similar warnings directly to Trump. A team of Post reporters wrote on Saturday: “The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus —the first of many—in the President’s Daily Brief.” But Trump wasn’t listening.
The Post article is the most thorough dissection of Trump’s failure to prepare for the gathering storm. Trump was first briefed on the coronavirus by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Jan. 18. But, The Post writes, “Azar told several associates that the president believed he was ‘alarmist’ and Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention to focus on the issue.” When Trump was first asked publicly about the virus, on Jan. 22, he said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
In the days and weeks after Azar alerted him about the virus, Trump spoke at eight rallies and golfed six times as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Trump’s failure to focus, The Post notes, “sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.” It also allowed bureaucratic snafus to go unaddressed — including critical failures to roll out enough tests or to stockpile enough protective equipment and ventilators.
Countries as diverse as Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, South Korea, Georgia and Germany have done far better — and will suffer far less. South Korea and the United States discovered their first cases on the same day. South Korea now has 183 dead — or 4 deaths per 1 million people. The U.S. death ratio (25 per 1 million) is six times worse — and rising quickly.
This fiasco is so monumental that it makes our recent failed presidents — George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — Mount Rushmore material by comparison. Trump’s Friday night announcement that he’s firing the intelligence community inspector general who exposed his attempted extortion of Ukraine shows that he combines the ineptitude of a George W. Bush or a Carter with the corruption of Richard Nixon.
Trump is characteristically working hardest at blaming others — China, the media, governors, President Barack Obama, the Democratic impeachment managers, everyone but his golf caddie — for his blunders. His mantra is: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” It remains to be seen whether voters will buy his excuses. But whatever happens in November, Trump cannot escape the pitiless judgment of history.
Somewhere, a relieved James Buchanan must be smiling.
photo credit: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post
This is Boot's article in its entirety:
Until now, I have generally been reluctant to label Donald Trump the worst president in U.S. history. As a historian, I know how important it is to allow the passage of time to gain a sense of perspective. Some presidents who seemed awful to contemporaries (Harry S. Truman) or simply lackluster (Dwight D. Eisenhower, George H.W. Bush) look much better in retrospect. Others, such as Thomas Jefferson and Woodrow Wilson, don’t look as good as they once did.
So I have written, as I did on March 12, that Trump is the worst president in modern times — not of all time. That left open the possibility that James Buchanan, Andrew Johnson, Franklin Pierce, Warren Harding or some other nonentity would be judged more harshly. But in the past month, we have seen enough to take away the qualifier “in modern times.” With his catastrophic mishandling of the coronavirus, Trump has established himself as the worst president in U.S. history.
His one major competitor for that dubious distinction remains Buchanan, whose dithering helped lead us into the Civil War — the deadliest conflict in U.S. history. Buchanan may still be the biggest loser. But there is good reason to think that the Civil War would have broken out no matter what. By contrast, there is nothing inevitable about the scale of the disaster we now confront.
The situation is so dire, it is hard to wrap your mind around it. The Atlantic notes: “During the Great Recession of 2007–2009, the economy suffered a net loss of approximately 9 million jobs. The pandemic recession has seen nearly 10 million unemployment claims in just two weeks.” The New York Times estimates that the unemployment rate is now about 13 percent, the highest since the Great Depression ended 80 years ago.
Far worse is the human carnage. We already have more confirmed coronavirus cases than any other country. Trump claimed on Feb. 26 that the outbreak would soon be “down to close to zero.” Now he argues that if the death toll is 100,000 to 200,000 — higher than the U.S. fatalities in all of our wars combined since 1945 — it will be proof that he’s done “a very good job.”
No, it will be a sign that he’s a miserable failure, because the coronavirus is the most foreseeable catastrophe in U.S. history. The warnings about the Pearl Harbor and 9/11 attacks were obvious only in retrospect. This time, it didn’t require any top-secret intelligence to see what was coming. The alarm was sounded in January by experts in the media and by leading Democrats including presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden.
Government officials were delivering similar warnings directly to Trump. A team of Post reporters wrote on Saturday: “The Trump administration received its first formal notification of the outbreak of the coronavirus in China on Jan. 3. Within days, U.S. spy agencies were signaling the seriousness of the threat to Trump by including a warning about the coronavirus —the first of many—in the President’s Daily Brief.” But Trump wasn’t listening.
The Post article is the most thorough dissection of Trump’s failure to prepare for the gathering storm. Trump was first briefed on the coronavirus by Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar on Jan. 18. But, The Post writes, “Azar told several associates that the president believed he was ‘alarmist’ and Azar struggled to get Trump’s attention to focus on the issue.” When Trump was first asked publicly about the virus, on Jan. 22, he said, “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China.”
In the days and weeks after Azar alerted him about the virus, Trump spoke at eight rallies and golfed six times as if he didn’t have a care in the world.
Trump’s failure to focus, The Post notes, “sowed significant public confusion and contradicted the urgent messages of public health experts.” It also allowed bureaucratic snafus to go unaddressed — including critical failures to roll out enough tests or to stockpile enough protective equipment and ventilators.
Countries as diverse as Taiwan, Singapore, Canada, South Korea, Georgia and Germany have done far better — and will suffer far less. South Korea and the United States discovered their first cases on the same day. South Korea now has 183 dead — or 4 deaths per 1 million people. The U.S. death ratio (25 per 1 million) is six times worse — and rising quickly.
This fiasco is so monumental that it makes our recent failed presidents — George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter — Mount Rushmore material by comparison. Trump’s Friday night announcement that he’s firing the intelligence community inspector general who exposed his attempted extortion of Ukraine shows that he combines the ineptitude of a George W. Bush or a Carter with the corruption of Richard Nixon.
Trump is characteristically working hardest at blaming others — China, the media, governors, President Barack Obama, the Democratic impeachment managers, everyone but his golf caddie — for his blunders. His mantra is: “I don’t take responsibility at all.” It remains to be seen whether voters will buy his excuses. But whatever happens in November, Trump cannot escape the pitiless judgment of history.
Somewhere, a relieved James Buchanan must be smiling.
Friday, April 3, 2020
Another Kennedy Tragedy? - Updated
If we weren't in the middle of the coronavirus emergency this would be bigger news:
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the daughter of RFK and Ethel; she's their eldest child and the eldest of the 29 cousins that make up the third generation. (Five of those cousins have died: Kathleen's brothers David and Michael, JFK Jr., Kara Kennedy, daughter of Ted Kennedy, and Christopher Lawford, son of actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford.) Maeve is Kathleen's daughter and Gideon is her grandson.
Seeing this story brought back memories from 21 years ago: "A member of the Kennedy family is missing; a water-based search is underway..." Given that Maeve and her son have been missing since yesterday, I'm guessing this story will end the same way as John Jr.'s did. If that turns out to be the case, it will be the second time in less than a year that one of Ethel Kennedy's grandchildren has died. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, daughter of Courtney Kennedy and Paul Hill, died of an accidental drug overdose in August.
It's sad.
Update on Saturday morning: Apparently this story will not have a happy ending. The search effort for Maeve and Gideon has been changed from "search and rescue" to "search and recovery," meaning they are not expected to be found alive. This is the exact same language used by the Coast Guard in 1999 to indicate that JFK Jr., Carolyn and Lauren could not have survived their accident. I'm struck by the parallels between the two events.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issued a statement last night:
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, McKean's mother, said earlier in the evening that the search had turned from a rescue to a recovery mission.
"With profound sadness, I share the news that the search for my beloved daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon has turned from rescue to recovery," Townsend said in a statement.
"My heart is crushed, yet we shall try to summon the grace of God and what strength we have to honor the hope, energy and passion that Maeve and Gideon set forth into the world," the statement read. "My family thanks all for the outpouring of love and prayers as we grieve and try to bear this devastating loss." (From CNN, read more here.)
Search underway for two members of the Kennedy family missing in the Chesapeake Bayhttps://t.co/wZWp3U8tgf— Jake Tapper (@jaketapper) April 3, 2020
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend is the daughter of RFK and Ethel; she's their eldest child and the eldest of the 29 cousins that make up the third generation. (Five of those cousins have died: Kathleen's brothers David and Michael, JFK Jr., Kara Kennedy, daughter of Ted Kennedy, and Christopher Lawford, son of actor Peter Lawford and Patricia Kennedy Lawford.) Maeve is Kathleen's daughter and Gideon is her grandson.
Seeing this story brought back memories from 21 years ago: "A member of the Kennedy family is missing; a water-based search is underway..." Given that Maeve and her son have been missing since yesterday, I'm guessing this story will end the same way as John Jr.'s did. If that turns out to be the case, it will be the second time in less than a year that one of Ethel Kennedy's grandchildren has died. Saoirse Kennedy Hill, daughter of Courtney Kennedy and Paul Hill, died of an accidental drug overdose in August.
It's sad.
Update on Saturday morning: Apparently this story will not have a happy ending. The search effort for Maeve and Gideon has been changed from "search and rescue" to "search and recovery," meaning they are not expected to be found alive. This is the exact same language used by the Coast Guard in 1999 to indicate that JFK Jr., Carolyn and Lauren could not have survived their accident. I'm struck by the parallels between the two events.
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend issued a statement last night:
Former Maryland Lt. Gov. Kathleen Kennedy Townsend, McKean's mother, said earlier in the evening that the search had turned from a rescue to a recovery mission.
"With profound sadness, I share the news that the search for my beloved daughter Maeve and grandson Gideon has turned from rescue to recovery," Townsend said in a statement.
"My heart is crushed, yet we shall try to summon the grace of God and what strength we have to honor the hope, energy and passion that Maeve and Gideon set forth into the world," the statement read. "My family thanks all for the outpouring of love and prayers as we grieve and try to bear this devastating loss." (From CNN, read more here.)
... and her son-in-law said this in a post on Facebook:
I am writing here to address the countless people who have loved my wife Maeve and my son Gideon. As many of you have seen, they went missing in the Chesapeake Bay yesterday afternoon. I tried to reach out personally to as many people as possible before the news became public. However, I know that I was only able to scratch the surface. For those of you learning of this news here, I am sorry. I know Maeve would have loved for you to have gotten a personal call.
Despite heroic efforts by the Coast Guard and many state and local authorities, the decision has now been made to suspend the active rescue effort. The search that began yesterday afternoon went on throughout the night and continued all day today. It is now dark again. It has been more than 24 hours, and the chances they have survived are impossibly small. It is clear that Maeve and Gideon have passed away. The search for their recovery will continue, and I hope that that will be successful.
I know that people have many questions about what happened as we grapple with this tragedy. Here is what I have come to understand. We were self-quarantining in an empty house owned by Maeve’s mother Kathleen on the Chesapeake Bay, hoping to give our kids more space than we have at home in DC to run around. Gideon and Maeve were playing kickball by the small, shallow cove behind the house, and one of them kicked the ball into the water. The cove is protected, with much calmer wind and water than in the greater Chesapeake. They got into a canoe, intending simply to retrieve the ball, and somehow got pushed by wind or tide into the open bay. About 30 minutes later they were spotted by an onlooker from land, who saw them far out from shore, and called the police. After that last sighting, they were not seen again. The Coast Guard recovered their canoe, which was capsized and miles away, at approximately 6:30 yesterday evening.
Gideon was 8, but he may as well have been 38. He was deeply compassionate, declining to sing children’s songs if they contained a hint of animals or people being treated cruelly. He hated if I accidently let a bad word slip. He spent hours upstairs reading, learning everything he could about sports, and trying to decipher the mysteries of the stock market. But he was also incredibly social, athletic, and courageous. For his school picture, he gathered a couple of his many friends to be in the shot with him. He played every sport he could, complaining to me that even though he was often playing six days a week, there was still that seventh day, and why hadn’t I signed him up for something else. And he was brave, leading his friends in games, standing up to people who he thought were wrong (including his parents), and relishing opportunities to go on adventures with friends, even those he’d just met. It is impossible to sum up Gideon here. I am heartbroken to even have to try. I used to marvel at him as a toddler and worry that he was too perfect to exist in this world. It seems to me now that he was.
Maeve turned 40 in November, and she was my everything. She was my best friend and my soulmate. I have already thought many times over today that I need to remember to tell Maeve about something that’s happening. I am terrified by the idea that this will fade over time. You could hear Maeve’s laugh a block away—and she laughed a lot. She was magical—with endless energy that she would put toward inventing games for our children, taking on another project at work or in our community, and spending time with our friends. There were weeks when we had people over to our house so often that our kids would be confused when we were just having dinner as a family. Maeve once spent the hours before New Year’s Eve organizing a 40-person party at our house, complete with a face painter, during a cross country flight home, while also reading to one of our kids in her lap. She once landed in DC after a 30-hour trip home from Asia, and then took a cab straight to the pool to play with our kids. She did the Peace Corps, she ran the Boston Marathon, she knew how rub Gabriella’s legs when they cramped, and being in her presence somehow allowed you to be a better version of yourself. She was the brightest light I have ever known.
At seven, Gabriella is heartbroken, but she amazes me with her maturity and grace. Toby is two-and-a-half, so he’s still his usual magical and goofy self. I know soon he will start to ask for Maeve and Gideon. It breaks my heart that he will not get to have them as a mother and brother.
There has been an overwhelming outpouring of love and support from so many people. Given who Maeve and Gideon were, I am not the least surprised. I am trying my best to respond. Many have asked what they can do. I don’t have any answers for that right now. If people have photos of Maeve or Gideon, those would be great for us to have, especially for me to share with Gabriella and Toby. And feel free to tell stories here. As Gabriella and Toby lay sleeping next to me last night, I promised them that I would do my best to be the parent that Maeve was, and to be the person that Gideon clearly would have grown up to be. Part of that is keeping their memories alive. Any help with that would be welcome.
And click here to read a Glamour magazine article dated May 1, 2008, an interview with the four daughters of Bobby Kennedy and Ethel (Kathleen, Courtney, Kerry and Rory,) and eight of their daughters. Two of the young women quoted, Saoirse Kennedy Hill and Meave Kennedy Townsend, have now died.
I know that people have many questions about what happened as we grapple with this tragedy. Here is what I have come to understand. We were self-quarantining in an empty house owned by Maeve’s mother Kathleen on the Chesapeake Bay, hoping to give our kids more space than we have at home in DC to run around. Gideon and Maeve were playing kickball by the small, shallow cove behind the house, and one of them kicked the ball into the water. The cove is protected, with much calmer wind and water than in the greater Chesapeake. They got into a canoe, intending simply to retrieve the ball, and somehow got pushed by wind or tide into the open bay. About 30 minutes later they were spotted by an onlooker from land, who saw them far out from shore, and called the police. After that last sighting, they were not seen again. The Coast Guard recovered their canoe, which was capsized and miles away, at approximately 6:30 yesterday evening.
Gideon was 8, but he may as well have been 38. He was deeply compassionate, declining to sing children’s songs if they contained a hint of animals or people being treated cruelly. He hated if I accidently let a bad word slip. He spent hours upstairs reading, learning everything he could about sports, and trying to decipher the mysteries of the stock market. But he was also incredibly social, athletic, and courageous. For his school picture, he gathered a couple of his many friends to be in the shot with him. He played every sport he could, complaining to me that even though he was often playing six days a week, there was still that seventh day, and why hadn’t I signed him up for something else. And he was brave, leading his friends in games, standing up to people who he thought were wrong (including his parents), and relishing opportunities to go on adventures with friends, even those he’d just met. It is impossible to sum up Gideon here. I am heartbroken to even have to try. I used to marvel at him as a toddler and worry that he was too perfect to exist in this world. It seems to me now that he was.
Maeve turned 40 in November, and she was my everything. She was my best friend and my soulmate. I have already thought many times over today that I need to remember to tell Maeve about something that’s happening. I am terrified by the idea that this will fade over time. You could hear Maeve’s laugh a block away—and she laughed a lot. She was magical—with endless energy that she would put toward inventing games for our children, taking on another project at work or in our community, and spending time with our friends. There were weeks when we had people over to our house so often that our kids would be confused when we were just having dinner as a family. Maeve once spent the hours before New Year’s Eve organizing a 40-person party at our house, complete with a face painter, during a cross country flight home, while also reading to one of our kids in her lap. She once landed in DC after a 30-hour trip home from Asia, and then took a cab straight to the pool to play with our kids. She did the Peace Corps, she ran the Boston Marathon, she knew how rub Gabriella’s legs when they cramped, and being in her presence somehow allowed you to be a better version of yourself. She was the brightest light I have ever known.
At seven, Gabriella is heartbroken, but she amazes me with her maturity and grace. Toby is two-and-a-half, so he’s still his usual magical and goofy self. I know soon he will start to ask for Maeve and Gideon. It breaks my heart that he will not get to have them as a mother and brother.
There has been an overwhelming outpouring of love and support from so many people. Given who Maeve and Gideon were, I am not the least surprised. I am trying my best to respond. Many have asked what they can do. I don’t have any answers for that right now. If people have photos of Maeve or Gideon, those would be great for us to have, especially for me to share with Gabriella and Toby. And feel free to tell stories here. As Gabriella and Toby lay sleeping next to me last night, I promised them that I would do my best to be the parent that Maeve was, and to be the person that Gideon clearly would have grown up to be. Part of that is keeping their memories alive. Any help with that would be welcome.
And click here to read a Glamour magazine article dated May 1, 2008, an interview with the four daughters of Bobby Kennedy and Ethel (Kathleen, Courtney, Kerry and Rory,) and eight of their daughters. Two of the young women quoted, Saoirse Kennedy Hill and Meave Kennedy Townsend, have now died.
Update #2 on Saturday afternoon. Maria Shriver posted Kathleen Kennedy Townsend's full statement:
Wednesday, April 1, 2020
Donald's Daily Dance With The Press
Political scientist Jonathan Bernstein ponders Donald's daily press conferences:
Let’s get back to President Donald Trump’s daily press conferences — which, unfortunately, he is still combining with briefings from his coronavirus task force. As Trump was snapping at reporters on Monday, political scientist Matthew Dickinson wrote: “I have to think the reporters at these press conferences like to provoke Trump with these questions as much as Trump loves to dump on them for asking them. It serves both their purposes. #Symbiosis”
It’s a good point— but perhaps more complicated than it seems.
On one hand, the basic claim is probably true. Getting berated by the president on national television is a good career move for White House reporters. It raises their visibility and improves their reputation among other journalists. And the president surely thinks his tirades help generate enthusiasm among his strongest supporters.
But the question isn't really whether reporters like asking tough questions or whether Trump likes insulting the press. It’s whether the whole process is good for the nation. I think it is.
Trump faced three tough questions on Monday. One was about virus testing, in particular the president’s boast that the U.S. is doing more of it per capita than any other country. Another was about Trump’s hint, the day before, that someone was stealing or otherwise misusing personal protective equipment at New York hospitals. And the third was about all the times that Trump had claimed the coronavirus was under control when it wasn’t.
Each of these is a valuable question. The reporters involved probably knew that Trump would respond with fireworks, and may have even welcomed them. But the questions themselves were perfectly reasonable, not grandstanding gimmicks.
As for the answers? Trump seemed to have something prepared for the testing question Monday, although it didn’t do him much good. When PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor challenged him on the topic, he claimed to “know South Korea better than anybody” and asked her to guess the population of Seoul, which he then triumphantly claimed was 38 million. Unfortunately for him, that was off by about 28 million. (Some speculated that he or someone on his staff had mistaken Seoul’s elevation for its population.) The result? Another round of negative stories.
The best thing about these confrontations is that they can encourage presidents to take action to provide themselves with better answers. In other words: Knowing that he’ll be asked tough questions about virus testing might push Trump to try to fix the problems that have been holding that testing up. Yes, he has also tried bluffing and bravado. But facing potentially embarrassing questions on live TV tends to be a strong motivator.
I know, you’re probably thinking that the president should act simply because lives are at stake. Sure. But Trump is hardly the first president to put political considerations before humanitarian ones. In fact, the U.S. government is designed to harness the motivation of self-interest precisely because it’s so hard to rely on a politician’s altruism. On balance, the questions reporters choose to ask generate imperfect but worthwhile information for the president about what is actually important to the nation. That’s a good thing, even if Trump isn’t always good at reading the clues. (This is the column in its entirety.)
Let’s get back to President Donald Trump’s daily press conferences — which, unfortunately, he is still combining with briefings from his coronavirus task force. As Trump was snapping at reporters on Monday, political scientist Matthew Dickinson wrote: “I have to think the reporters at these press conferences like to provoke Trump with these questions as much as Trump loves to dump on them for asking them. It serves both their purposes. #Symbiosis”
It’s a good point— but perhaps more complicated than it seems.
On one hand, the basic claim is probably true. Getting berated by the president on national television is a good career move for White House reporters. It raises their visibility and improves their reputation among other journalists. And the president surely thinks his tirades help generate enthusiasm among his strongest supporters.
But the question isn't really whether reporters like asking tough questions or whether Trump likes insulting the press. It’s whether the whole process is good for the nation. I think it is.
Trump faced three tough questions on Monday. One was about virus testing, in particular the president’s boast that the U.S. is doing more of it per capita than any other country. Another was about Trump’s hint, the day before, that someone was stealing or otherwise misusing personal protective equipment at New York hospitals. And the third was about all the times that Trump had claimed the coronavirus was under control when it wasn’t.
Each of these is a valuable question. The reporters involved probably knew that Trump would respond with fireworks, and may have even welcomed them. But the questions themselves were perfectly reasonable, not grandstanding gimmicks.
As for the answers? Trump seemed to have something prepared for the testing question Monday, although it didn’t do him much good. When PBS’s Yamiche Alcindor challenged him on the topic, he claimed to “know South Korea better than anybody” and asked her to guess the population of Seoul, which he then triumphantly claimed was 38 million. Unfortunately for him, that was off by about 28 million. (Some speculated that he or someone on his staff had mistaken Seoul’s elevation for its population.) The result? Another round of negative stories.
The best thing about these confrontations is that they can encourage presidents to take action to provide themselves with better answers. In other words: Knowing that he’ll be asked tough questions about virus testing might push Trump to try to fix the problems that have been holding that testing up. Yes, he has also tried bluffing and bravado. But facing potentially embarrassing questions on live TV tends to be a strong motivator.
I know, you’re probably thinking that the president should act simply because lives are at stake. Sure. But Trump is hardly the first president to put political considerations before humanitarian ones. In fact, the U.S. government is designed to harness the motivation of self-interest precisely because it’s so hard to rely on a politician’s altruism. On balance, the questions reporters choose to ask generate imperfect but worthwhile information for the president about what is actually important to the nation. That’s a good thing, even if Trump isn’t always good at reading the clues. (This is the column in its entirety.)
With Apologies To Rodgers & Hammerstein
Sleep, eat, whinge, tweet, snooze, blob, think... A few good suggestions for passing the time:
What, exactly, does it mean to "whinge"? I googled it (it's British): "complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way" #LearningNewWords
In other coronavirus news in England, Andrew Parker Bowles, former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall, AKA Camilla, wife of Prince Charles, has been diagnosed with the virus:
Here's what Vanity Fair had to say about the royal family's "friends, ex-partners and extended family":
Just after Prince Charles released his first public remarks after recovering from the coronavirus, another diagnosis makes clear exactly how hard the pandemic has already hit the British upper-classes. On Wednesday, the Telegraph reported that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles also caught the virus, adding that he might have been exposed at an event that Princess Anne also attended.
On March 10 and 11, 80-year-old Andrew was photographed at the Cheltenham Festival alongside Anne and various other close friends. On the second day, he was also photographed hugging Zara Tindall, Anne’s daughter and his goddaughter. Held one week before the U.K. issued guidelines banning large gatherings, the horse races at the Cheltenham Racecourse were criticized for refusing to cancel despite the increasing threat of COVID-19. According to the BBC, the event organizers did provide additional hand-washing stations and dispensers for hand sanitizer.
Though he isn’t titled himself, Andrew is a distant relative of the Earl of Macclesfield and a longtime friend of the royal family, even participating as a page boy in Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. As depicted in the third season of The Crown (with some embellishment), Anne and Andrew dated briefly in the early 1970s before he married Camilla—who, of course, had famously dated Anne's brother Prince Charles, and continued her relationship with him even after their respective marriages. When the breakdown of Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage became fodder for the tabloids, Camilla was attacked relentlessly in the press, but Parker-Bowles avoided much of the blowback. Throughout his marriage, which ended in 1995, he remained on good terms with Anne, despite his wife’s rekindled relationship with Charles, which apparently began after the two were considering separation. Through it all, they remained members of the family’s tight-knit social circle.
Andrew’s coronavirus diagnosis is a sign that the usually admirable closeness among the royal family and their friends, ex-partners, and extended family also runs its own risks. The incubation period for the coronavirus to have spread at the Cheltenham Racecourse has already passed, and thus far the palace has not announced whether or not Anne, Zara, or any other relatives have been tested after attending the festival. According to the Telegraph, hundreds of other attendees of the society event have since reported symptoms consistent with the virus.
What, exactly, does it mean to "whinge"? I googled it (it's British): "complain persistently and in a peevish or irritating way" #LearningNewWords
In other coronavirus news in England, Andrew Parker Bowles, former husband of the Duchess of Cornwall, AKA Camilla, wife of Prince Charles, has been diagnosed with the virus:
Andrew Parker Bowles coronavirus diagnosis sparks fears for royals, by @CamillaTominey. https://t.co/LIsgGS5MgW— Majesty/Joe Little (@MajestyMagazine) April 1, 2020
Andrew Parker-Bowles , Princess Anne, Princess Royal and Zara Tindell attend day 1 'Champion Day' of the Cheltenham Festival 2020 at Cheltenham Racecourse on March 10, 2020 in Cheltenham, England. (Photo by Max Mumby/Indigo/Getty Images) pic.twitter.com/AJjilUu0p6— Louise G. (@LouiseGhislaine) March 11, 2020
Here's what Vanity Fair had to say about the royal family's "friends, ex-partners and extended family":
Just after Prince Charles released his first public remarks after recovering from the coronavirus, another diagnosis makes clear exactly how hard the pandemic has already hit the British upper-classes. On Wednesday, the Telegraph reported that Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall’s ex-husband Andrew Parker Bowles also caught the virus, adding that he might have been exposed at an event that Princess Anne also attended.
On March 10 and 11, 80-year-old Andrew was photographed at the Cheltenham Festival alongside Anne and various other close friends. On the second day, he was also photographed hugging Zara Tindall, Anne’s daughter and his goddaughter. Held one week before the U.K. issued guidelines banning large gatherings, the horse races at the Cheltenham Racecourse were criticized for refusing to cancel despite the increasing threat of COVID-19. According to the BBC, the event organizers did provide additional hand-washing stations and dispensers for hand sanitizer.
Though he isn’t titled himself, Andrew is a distant relative of the Earl of Macclesfield and a longtime friend of the royal family, even participating as a page boy in Queen Elizabeth’s coronation. As depicted in the third season of The Crown (with some embellishment), Anne and Andrew dated briefly in the early 1970s before he married Camilla—who, of course, had famously dated Anne's brother Prince Charles, and continued her relationship with him even after their respective marriages. When the breakdown of Charles and Princess Diana’s marriage became fodder for the tabloids, Camilla was attacked relentlessly in the press, but Parker-Bowles avoided much of the blowback. Throughout his marriage, which ended in 1995, he remained on good terms with Anne, despite his wife’s rekindled relationship with Charles, which apparently began after the two were considering separation. Through it all, they remained members of the family’s tight-knit social circle.
Andrew’s coronavirus diagnosis is a sign that the usually admirable closeness among the royal family and their friends, ex-partners, and extended family also runs its own risks. The incubation period for the coronavirus to have spread at the Cheltenham Racecourse has already passed, and thus far the palace has not announced whether or not Anne, Zara, or any other relatives have been tested after attending the festival. According to the Telegraph, hundreds of other attendees of the society event have since reported symptoms consistent with the virus.
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