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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Relevant column:

"I don't see a moral obligation for anyone to serve in a Trump administration. But people who opposed Donald Trump, on both the left and right, should commit right now to one thing: We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration. Their motives will not be questioned, and if things do turn out as some of his critics fear, the people in his foreign and domestic policy apparatus will not suffer guilt by association. It is just too important that Trump have good advisers.

Trump will be the least policy-savvy president in history. He has built no ideological framework for future policies, much less a set of detailed proposals. He has few advisers, in part because so many of the usual contenders have come out against him."

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2016-11-09/there-s-n...

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I don't think we can assume that just because somebody accepts a job working for the President necessarily means they necessarily condone the tone of his campaign or ever judged him to be a good choice for president. They can of course be judged on how they influence and shape policy proposals, and their participation in the process might well be much better or much worse than a principled boycott.

Peter Thiel is not somebody who has simply refused to rule himself out of serving, however. I do think we can judge people for donating large sums of money to the Trump election campaign and subsequently being appointed to a position of power, both because they signalled strong approval of Trump and his campaign with their wallet and because (like major donors appointed to high office in other administrations) they can readily be accused of paying for positions of power.

You can definitely judge him for supporting the campaign.

But do you judge him even more for pitching in after the election? As an admirer of Thiel and... the opposite of Trump, I find the whole thing confusing, but I'm definitely glad to have a sharp voice outside the Christie/Gingrich/Guiliani-axis involved.

Thiel is not some random rich fat cat who buys an ambassadorship. He's an extremely capable and accomplished man, and to me it looks like he's the one doing Trump a favor, not the other way around.

I realize reasonable people can differ on that part :)

We judge him for how and why he pitches in, bearing in mind that a Trump presidency is something he wanted to actualise rather than mitigate the effects of.

I don't doubt Thiel is capable and accomplished, but I also don't doubt he's ruthless, ambitious and tends to see things in black and white. It remains to be seen which of the ideas he's championed on he chooses to focuses his efforts on, of course, whether that's encouraging the government to support breakthrough research and entrepreneurship, slashing higher education funding and creating new tax shelters for the ultra rich, or just ensuring Palantir is well-positioned for contracts on new surveillance systems. Of course, reasonable people will still probably argue over what his contribution has been after he's made it. :)

> We judge him for how and why he pitches in

You have no idea how or why he's pitching in. You have very limited information on that front and judging him based on that is silly.

It seems far more likely everything that was said and done was simply to get his foot in the door. You have no idea what his intentions are.

We'll have considerably more information on how and why he's pitched in after he's actually done something with the foot he's got in the door. Which was literally the entire point of the post you're responding to...

I do.

Do you know because you know Thiel or do you know because you're a Jedi and you searched your feelings?

Because I know Thiel. Not very well, but I've stood in the same private room with him and heard him lay out his vision for how government should operate.

No, but his financial and verbal support for Trump before the election colors his participation in the administration.

I agree entirely with McArdle on this. At this point, I would be extremely reassured by an administration that is "wrong within normal parameters".

That's not what we're likely to get. We've gotten the following trial balloons for appointments:

* John Bolton or Newt Gingrich for State

* Larry Kudlow or Steven Mnuchin for Treasury

* Joe Arpaio for DHS

* Steve Bannon for Chief Of Staff

* Chris Christie or Rudy Giuliani for AG

I do not believe we should cheerlead the spectacular failure of a Trump administration. While I'd rather see Trump serve 4 years than 8, if massive infrastructure spending restores jobs to Ohio and Wisconsin and cements the Rust Belt vote for Trump in '20, so be it. I'm not a Republican, and I think much of Republican ideology is wrongheaded, but I also know the country needs to flip back and forth between the two parties, almost by design, and some of what the GOP does that sticks will be good, and the bad can be corrected.

But what we're looking at now is wrong beyond normal parameters. The suggested appointments I just listed are comically unqualified. One of those State appointments is ideologically opposed to the concept of diplomacy. Their DHS suggestion is (or was) about to be indicted for launching politically motivated bogus prosecutions against local politicians! The people of Maricopa County just tossed him out on his ass. One of those AG trial balloons would have, as a first order of business, the task of excusing himself from an upcoming felony prosecution. The other has made a name for himself in 2016 by loudly proclaiming his intent to lock up Trump's political opposition.

There is every reason to believe that a candidate famous for bragging about his vindictiveness and ability to retain a grudge, working with a party whose best and brightest almost uniformly refused to support him, will run a disastrous, counterproductive, dangerous administration.

I completely agree with McArdle. If Trump appoints Jaime Dimon to Treasury, I will be grateful and relieved. Not because I think the apotheosis of the Wall Street Elite belongs at the head of Treasury, but because at least it's a sign we're getting a normal GOP administration. I am not hopeful.

It's such an insane thing to have to hope for, but the best case scenario is that Trump is... George W. Bush. That he'll be impolite, but not undiplomatic. That he'll start one, maybe two wars, and keep them non-nuclear. That we'll see a declining market economy, not an authoritarian state. I oppose Paul Ryan on nearly every economic ideal, but I have to hope he pushes his agenda through, as opposed to... Alex Jones?

Most terrifying on the list is Steve Bannon. Rumor is that Trump likes him, and the only one close to him who doesn't is Ivanka. Probably because she's Jewish enough to fear the top adviser to the president being a white nationalist itching for the Day of the Rope.

The Democratic party did not have a right to the 2016 election. We knew the bench was thin coming into this cycle, and that the GOP bench was particularly strong. I do not mind that the administration is changing party hands. I mind it going to a febrile pumpkin. You know who else has this problem? Much of the Republican party.

Let's be fair, skin-tone wise he would be an anemic pumpkin.

How about Sarah Palin for State?

People laughed when she warned about Russia, Hillary supposedly hit the "reset button" on the relationship, and then... Russia invaded and annexed Crimea.

Like Arpaio, another official who left office in disgrace (this time, resigning abruptly before she was even ousted), in a red state with a red local government, after costing taxpayers millions of dollars defending her unlawful abuses of power.

Arpaio, Gingrich, Palin --- these aren't serious Republican thinkers. They're people riding a GOP gravy train. Each chose to court publicity instead of doing their job, and each is being rewarded under the Reality TV Administration of Donald Trump.

>Arpaio, Gingrich, Palin

>each is being rewarded under the Reality TV Administration of Donald Trump

None of these people as of this moment have been appointed to anything within the Trump administration, yet you say each is being rewarded. Either you know something the rest of us don't or you are peddling BS.

Apparently the whole media is peddling BS. Who are we going to believe, the transition committee or our own lying eyes?

Is Joe Arpaio really the suggested option for DHS?

Yes. The transition team has floated his name. Another name is David Clarke, who thinks we should outlaw Black Lives Matter.

These are all trial balloons, of course. I hope they're just posturing, and that we're going to get people in the vein of John Ashcroft --- wrong (very wrong), but within normal parameters.

Meanwhile, those of us who elected him did so based largely on his policy promises, including immigration.

So if he wishes to appease his electorate, this better not be mere posturing, and he absolutely should select Arpaio, a man eminently qualified to preside over the operations of ICE and other DHS functions.

Joe Arpaio mismanaged his office, redirected tens of millions of dollars of funding from detention and infrastructure funds to patronage for his own employees, conducted politically motivated investigations into local political figures (including judges, the mayor, the Arizona AG, and the entire Maricopa County Board of Supervisors) --- much of this corroborated by an open letter from his deputy and second-in-command, who supported Arpaio's immigration positions but resigned in disgust over Arpaio's incompetence and malfeasance. It was also the finding of the US Attorney for Arizona.

Joe Arpaio was forced to pay a local resident $1.6MM for staging an assassination plot against himself.

You don't understand the complaint I'm making. I have a complaint that transcends policy. I disagree strongly with the immigration position Trump has taken. But I expected to disagree with the next administration, which was almost inevitably going to be Republican.

I can live with disagreement.

How can you live with this level of incompetence?

It's like the stupid Trump wall. Do you think I have some great moral problem with a border wall? Why would I? I have compassion for people who have lived in this country all their lives after having brought here as children, and would be upset to see them deported --- pointlessly, to no benefit for the US. But making it harder for people to come here unlawfully? Why would I care?

The problem with the wall isn't that it's immoral. It's that it's fucking idiotic. It's one of the largest land borders in the world, bracketed by two different maritime borders with the same country. It will be ludicrously expensive and solve virtually no problems, including unlawful immigration. It is an utterly incompetent policy solution to the problem it purports to solve, and yet here we go, ready to shovel an avalanche of money into the least useful most expensive public works project conceived of in the last 50 years.

Setting aside the implication that Thiel is "good people", this is totally wrong. They will suffer guilt by association in a quite literal way:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watergate_Seven

I think the point is they shouldn't suffer the guilt, not that they won't.

He gave over $1M to Trump's campaign. If anything, he just paid his way into being a presidential advisor.

Sure, I may not know his exact motives for supporting Trump's campaign, or his motives for joining his administration, but if something stinks I'm not going to ignore it.

I'm done giving politicians the benefit of a doubt, because they always just disappoint me in the end.

>He has built no ideological framework for future policies

Sounds like a positive thing

Not when you are getting strong-armed by the likes of Putin. I can only imagine how Trumps "business-sense" will fail him upon entering Beijing, much like Bush and Clinton failed to keep their resounding statements of "strategic competitors" and "butchers of Beijing"[1] after arriving during their respective terms. Trump has even less foreign policy acumen than the other two and I can only imagine he will bow down to both Russian and Chinese demands. The manufacturing jobs he claims China has taken from the US have moved from China to cheaper nations like Bangladesh and Vietname [1].

Obama made a push to conserve the rapid "manifest destiny" of China into the pacific. I can only imagine how Trump will shirk at any sign of conflict, much like he failed to condem the well-documented wrongdoings of his most xenophobic supporters. We can only hope that good people with a foreign polic background will understand how unprepared Trump is for foreign policy relations and will volunteer their service for the betterment of the country.

[1]: WSJ November 10th, 2016 China's World: In Trump Win, China Hopes for U.S Retreat by Andrew Browne

> I can only imagine he will bow down to both Russian and Chinese demands

My worry is the opposite.

Trump's style is furious counter attack at the slightest provocation. That's obnoxious when you're a jerk billionaire. It's more serious when you control the deadliest military machine in history.

I still dont see why people refer to Trump as some negotiating savant. Time after time, its been shown that hes notoriously thin skinned and easy to rattle. During the 3rd debate he was not doing terrible until Hillary commented that he's only successful because daddy gave him money. Trump's inherent identity and belief that he was responsible for all of his own success being under attack in a public forum caused him to become apoplectic. You could see the anger rise, his face turned beet red, he saw red, wasn't thinking clearly and it was then that he went off the rails and his performance suffered. It was clear he had been rattled and veered far off message.

I imagine this is his personality. Whatever the case, it has been a constant since I became aware of him from Howard Stern during his playboy years in the 1980's. New Yorkers are well aware of this, his ego and his compulsive need to settle scores with reporters and others for any perceived slight whether imagined or real when he was a fixture of Page 6. Someone like Putin or anyone else with a poker face and on even footing could play him like a fiddle, alternating between awe/flattery and hurling passive aggressive insults.

Fair enough, he might be a hot head. Hopefully the Russians realize this and also realize we vastly outspend them, militarily.

I didn't vote for either of the two majority candidates but I'm excited to see what will happen. His first 100 days plan is all over the board, nothing has been seen like this before with such drastic changes. I don't know what the outcome will be if he does implement them all.

> Hillary commented that he's only successful because daddy gave him money.

Well to be fair that was a pretty low blow. Tons of people inherit a lot of money. Not everyone becomes Trump.

> Tons of people inherit a lot of money. Not everyone becomes Trump

Trump inherited his father's wealth AND his father's business.

I'd argue that other modern reality TV stars are more successful then he is. Paris Hilton never received an inheritance (hefty allowance not withstanding) and built her own business. Kim Kardashian inherited less than him and is on her way to becoming richer. Both built their own business empire, not inheriting daddy's.

An NPR politics podcast had mentioned that Trump always responds to the last statement from the other side, even if it's irrelevant to the rest of the statement. Clinton leveraged that during the debates.

I can imagine foreign diplomats quickly catching onto this and using it to their advantage in discussions.

Choosing not to build an ideological framework because you want to sort of wait and see what happens is different from not building one because you are too ignorant to do so. I'd agree with you that this is a positive thing if it was the former but I think it's pretty clear that it is in fact the latter.

I'd probably add "duplicitous" to "ignorant". Of course, there's also a tenable argument that absence of an ideological framework is an improvement on the ideological framework of some of the alternative candidates that could plausibly have won the election if he hadn't announced his candidacy. But it says something about a president when the nicest thing you can say about most of their stated intentions is that they're a mountebank without the integrity or ability to actually follow through.

Thinking is impossible without ideology. You need some principles, otherwise you're just floating in empty space with no way to decide anything, because you couldn't even judge outcomes.

His ideology is mostly "might is right". That's actually quite convenient, because it sanctions any outcome. Grandmother robbed at night? Why did you leave the house? Grandmother killed at home? Shoulda worked harder – winners can afford better locks.

what is the point of this. When one says he doesn't have much of an ideology, they mean he's not operating with a battleship of ideology like Marxism. He's not running events through a historical realism filter (and throwing errors when reality doesn't compute.) He seems closer to situational ethics. He knows he cares more about what's close than what's far, he cares more about how things affect where he lives than judging things according to some universal standard. If he doesn't see evidence that something is tangibly good for people he's around, he questions its value. I can see why this confuses the hell out of people, look at how he answers hypothetical questions and what people do with the answers. I'm not even saying this is a good thing, just that all these WEIRD - Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich people have convinced themselves he's some kind of alien because he doesn't get his values from a pedigreed abstract universal code that must explore every corner of the universe's decision tree and be able to prove its philosophically consistent, or it's shit.

Trump is probably gonna fail, if you want to stick it to him hold him accountable by his own standard. At the end of his term, you look at America and say Did you do it, Donald? Where are the jobs? Are people happier and more secure? Do they have better health care? The answer is probably going to be no. There's no internally consistent excuse he could give to this that wouldn't entail his own failure, because results were what mattered. so the only thing he could possibly say, and we already know this is, we could've won but we were sabotaged. So get ready for it, but remember it's gonna be hard to argue against because people will have fought against him, and what's worse they will have fought against him _on principle_, yet again caring more about the "integrity" of the system than the people the system was supposed to protect. Even if he loses and it can clearly be chalked up to his own bungling, he'll be able to point that out and sufficiently mask his own failures because of it.

I mean, this is a really bad situation, same as the election itself was: if he wins, then well, he wins, maybe he'll accomplish some good, but it's gonna come with a lot of bad. If he loses, it's still a sufficient indictment of the system that his criticism still stands. You people don't even realize how fucked you are. He is America's Destroying Angel. By the time he arrives, it's already too late.

Why?

Ideological leaders (on the left and the right) were responsible for hundreds of millions of deaths in the 20th century, for a start.

More generally, no ideology can actually capture reality. While they all contain some truth, they are all also fundamentally untrue if you drill down far enough. I'd rather grade someone on results (human happiness) than adherence to an ideological framework. I don't mean this in a simple utilitarian sense, either.

I find ideologies in general a huge impediment to solving problems. It erects imaginary barriers around potential solutions. We can all agree that universal health care at an affordable price is a good thing. Whether that is by market based solutions or by single payer doesnt matter to me. Whatever is most efficient and provides the best health outcomes is what matters, not some belief based upon... faith

Ideologies more often exist to build teams/coalitions than to solve real problems.

>> We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration.

>> Their motives will not be questioned,

>> [They] will not suffer guilt by association.

Really? I'll do whatever the hell I want. It's perfectly reasonable to blame the enablers and question why they would associate with and help a person who has said and done such heinous things.

> "[...] But people who opposed Donald Trump, on both the left and right, should commit right now to one thing: We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration."

I'm not one to demonize Trump, but I don't see why someone who does demonizes Trump should not extend this to his administrative team, especially since on a lot of topics, Trump is more liberal that a proper GOPer.

You can't chum the water and not take any responsibility when the swimmers get attacked by a shark.

"We will not tar good people for joining the Trump administration."

Good people like Colin Powell, Gen Eric Shinseki, Tom Ridge, John J. DiIulio, Jr., etc, etc?

Reread 'The Prince'. Any nail sticking up will be pounded down. There will be no tolerance for 'good people'.

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