Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bane | Hacker News Reader

This is huge. Early analysis is that this is a net positive for Korean democracy since the entire process, from protests to ouster was relatively peaceful and the people involved in the ouster tried to follow the rule of law as much as possible. It's exercised for the first time a part of the legal system that's never been explored in the country.

At each stage of the very complex process, the government figured out what to do without too much fuss, even operating as a temporary parliamentary democracy.

It wasn't too long ago that this could have gone very differently: seizure of power, military occupation, coups, violence and corruption.

This is Korea's Nixon moment.

edit There's some very serious discussion regarding criminal charges they may now be brought now that she's freed from Presidential immunity.

edit2 For folks who want more background on what this is all about, "Ask a Korean" has done a magnificent job of writing the charges up.

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/11/the-ultimate-choi-soo...

http://askakorean.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-ultimate-choi-soo...

Some good discussion and perspectives on Reddit's main thread on the news, as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/5yjign/president...

Not really huge, very expected for anyone that's been keeping tabs on the situation there.

What is surprisingly here is that the reality conformed to reasonable expectations. For a country that has witness too many violations of the democratic process, this is huge.

My cousin is a historian of Korea, and well, Korean herself. She says this president is like Korea's GWB. Shamelessly very right wing, a lot of gaffes related to speech and behavior. There are going to be a lot of happy people tonight.

sorry, but what's GWB stands for?

George W. Bush

George W. Bush

Deleted comment

what does, not what's (what is).

> She says this president is like Korea's GWB.

If she were like GWB we wouldn't have gone this far. She is more like Nixon, but worse.

Nixon is "the worst" because he was the one forced from office. But he wasn't actually removed through legal process. They started the process, but he left on his own before it came to anything. Clinton was actually impeached, but did not leave. I dont think the US has ever removed a president legally. They have quit, which isn't the same thing. Korea is ahead in that regard. Im not sure how/if the american system might handle a legal forced removal.

In nixon's defense: read his wikipedia article. He wasnt a monster. Many good things came from his presidency.

Except that time he intentionally sabotaged the 1968 peace talks to end the Vietnam War because he thought it might help him win an election. For reference, the war continued until late 1975. He is directly responsible for each and every casualty and atrocity committed in those 7 years, as well as the thousands upon thousands of irreparably mentally and emotionally damaged veterans that survived.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/02/us/politics/nixon-tried-t...

7 years. Iraq and/or afganistan were/are far longer. Every US president has their war. More often than not those wars have ties to domestic politics. That a president uses a war for political gain is expected. It is for the people to hold that in check... which they did with nixon. If not for vietnam he probably would have stayed in office. He spent all his political capital and, when the inevitable scandle hit, he had to go. Other presidents stayed on after far worse.

I'm not a US history expert, but I think Nixon had very firm ideas about how to run a country. In the end, people did not approve of these ideas, but at least there was an internally coherent world view.

The problem with Park is not that she had wrong ideas, but that she did not have any idea at all. Instead she let her close friend take care of the boring chore of running a country. During the past four years the country was essentially on auto-pilot, progressively worsening while bureaucrats were awaiting for leadership that never materialized.

I'd say she's more like Nikolai II, complete with Rasputin.

I agree. The point is that there is no US president comparable to Park, and probably the closest match is Nixon.

New precedents (presidents, heh) can and are always being set in the United States.

Not Trump?

Trump appears to know what he wants, and has surrounded with people who believe in his vision of America. There might be some disagreement on the specifics of implementation, but in general they're all keeping the same goal.

Remember Trump supposedly offered Kasich the VP post, telling him that as VP he can run all the policy, to which Kasich asked "then what will you do?" and rejected the offer. I think a lot of Trump decisions we're seeing are Pence decisions, especially when he does things that get praise from establishment republicans. And we've seen he's delegated quite a bit to folks like Bannon and Miller, to the point where those two are writing executive orders and Trump has complained about being improperly briefed on them after signing.

He has to delegate somethings. In a typical company you hire separately for different roles. In the executive branch, there's only one hiring decision---President.

All power derives from the President, and thus cabinet, department heads, and various appointed positions exist only to accept delegated powers.

Additionally, due to the way many laws are written, the President has wide latitude to determine policy at various government branches, but obviously cannot actually do all of those jobs personally.

I think Trump is acting as the analogous 'visionary' CEO---he decides policy but is largely hands-off as to implementation. However if your actions blow up in his face, he'll fire you instantly. Some leaders are far more hands-on and even in large companies they cherry pick certain segments and micromanage them on occasion. Trump isn't that way. It's not good or bad, it's just his management style.

In a way, due to his life as a public figure and businessman, we knew what Trump's management style was going to be long before he entered office. Obama on the other-hand was a dark horse candidate, and no one really knew how he was going to make the jump from teaching students to setting policy for a massive number of governmental departments.

More Reagan who was just a front for Bush Sr. Or Bush Jr, who didn't care neither.

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