Surrounded by power-hungry yet unserious figures - and their sycophants

In the post below, LITD looks at what a pathetic joke the Most Equal Comrade is.

And what of the pathetic joke whom so many see as most likely - or second most likely, behind yet another pathetic joke with a rabid taste for power - to assume his job next year?

Well, let's look at what passes for foreign policy in his universe:

New York: Donald Trump has said he is open to the idea of both Japan and South Korea developing their own nuclear deterrents and would like to withdraw US troops from their soil.

In perhaps his most detailed explanation yet about his foreign policy plans if he were to be elected president, Mr Trump told a US newspaper that allowing the two countries to do this would reduce pressure on the US to come to their defence every time North Korea acted aggressively. He also said he would consider stopping oil purchases from Saudi Arabia unless the Saudi government provided troops to fight Isis.

"There'll be a point at which we're just not going to be able to do it any more. Now, does that mean nuclear? It could mean nuclear," Mr Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, told the New York Times.

Mr Trump said the US "cannot be the policeman of the world" and suggested that Tokyo and Seoul would move to develop their own weapons regardless, if the US continued along what he described as a path of "weakness". 

"Would I rather have North Korea have [nuclear weapons] with Japan sitting there having them also? You may very well be better off if that's the case," Mr Trump said. "If Japan had that nuclear threat, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing for us."

During the extensive interview, Mr Trump was asked about halting oil purchases from US allies unless they provided on-the-ground forces against Isis. "The answer is, probably yes," he said.

Mr Trump has said the United States should be reimbursed by the countries it provides protection, even those with vast resources such as Saudi Arabia, a top oil exporter.

"And yet, without us, Saudi Arabia wouldn't exist for very long," Mr Trump said. 

Real nice. US world leadership as a protection racket.

Then there are his supporters, many of whom were once worthy of admiration but have become clown shows themselves:

Donald Trump didn't show up to the Friday night fish fry in Milwaukee and instead outsourced the job to Sarah Palin, who delivered a meandering speech on trade and immigration.

"It's always so good to be in Wisconsin, getting off the airplane today as I'm walking through the airport and seeing all the green and gold and green and gold 'til I'm dead and cold—paraphernalia everywhere—it's Packers," Palin said to kick off her speech.

It started poorly and managed to get worse. "What the heck are you thinking candidates?" Palin asked. "What are you thinking when you go ahead and you're actually asking for more immigrants, even illegal immigrants, welcoming them in, even inducing and seducing them with gift baskets. Come on over the border and there's a gift basket with teddy bears and soccer balls. What are you thinking? It's just inviting more. Yeah. Candidates they can say anything they want to about immigration, amnesty."

It wasn't clear which candidates, in Palin's view, are seducing illegal immigrants with gift baskets of teddy bears and soccer balls. She later brought up the Gang of 8 immigration bill in an awkward attempt to criticize Ted Cruz. "Who offered the amendments for that to further collapse U.S. jobs and income and security?" Palin asked. She never answered the question, so voters were left wondering who she was talking about.

Palin went on to attack another unnamed candidate for supporting free trade. "What candidate helped pass Obama's trade deal? TPP. And actually removed the hurdles for fast tracking. That's TPA. And actually purposely opened the door for China and Russia to come on in and join TPP with zero congressional consult. Who opposed the crackdown on currency cheating? Who kind of freaks out now about putting any tariffs on Chinese trinkets and goods? You have to ask yourself who is this?"

Who is this? Voters were again left wondering, assuming they were still paying any attention at that point.
Palin received almost no applause during her 20-minute speech, but the crowd did clap once when she called for inducting Green Bay Packer Jerry Kramer into the Hall of Fame and again when she took a swipe at Hillary Clinton.
"It was the flattest speech I have ever heard in my entire life. It was totally lackluster," Gail Nolte, an accountant from Wauwatosa, told me after the speech. "I've heard her speak before with so much enthusiasm and tonight it was just like she was reading from a manuscript. I was very disappointed."

Peggy Noonan views Squirrel-Hair's current juncture through the prism of a concept she calls The Mess:

The Mess is something a candidate occasionally brings with him that voters can tell is going to cause trouble down the road. The Mess is a warning sign; it tells potential supporters to slow down, think twice. The Mess might be a pattern of scrapes with the law, a series of love affairs or other scandals. Voters will accept normal, flawed human beings but they don’t like patterns of bad behavior. They don’t like when they see a Mess, because they don’t want to elect trouble to high office. Donald Trump’s Mess is his mouth, his indiscipline, his refusal to be . . . serious.

At the same time Mr. Trump doesn’t even seem to be trying to do the one big thing he has to do now. He is the front-runner for the nomination. At this point it is his job to keep the support he has and persuade those who don’t like him to give him a second or third look. To do that he only has to be more thoughtful, stable and mature in his approach—show he may be irrepressible and fun and surprising, even shocking, but at bottom he has within him a plausible president. 

Instead, he is stuck at nutty. Rather than attempt to win over, he doubles down. In the process he shows that what occupies his mind isn’t big issues, significant questions or the position of the little guy, but subjects that are small, petty, unworthy. 

Instead of reassuring potential or reluctant supporters, he has given them pause. Instead of gathering in, he is repelling. This is political malpractice on a grand scale. 

It was always Mr. Trump who was the only one big enough to take down Mr. Trump. He may be doing it. In the process he does a great favor to his current and potential opponents. One of the things Mr. Trump does is make everyone else look normal. His outrageousness cancels out theirs. Once Hillary Clinton was too corrupt to be elected, had too many negatives, too much bad history from her early days in Arkansas to the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, the emails. She brought and brings quite a mess. 

But his mess cancels out her mess. 

The sheer force of Donald Trump’s weird, outsized strangeness has made her look normal. It’s made Ted Cruz look normal too, like a nice, sincere fella right in the middle of the political bell curve.

There are people who used to dismiss Trump supporters, and who later self-corrected to show compassion from great heights: “My God, they’re suffering in America.” They have now taken a newly jaundiced eye—his supporters are his enablers.

My thought is different. Maybe the sadness here is that Mr. Trump’s supporters are earnest and full of concern for America and he isn’t worthy of them. Maybe he only harnessed their legitimate anger but can’t do anything with it because he’s not as serious as so many of them are, but a flake, a dope with poor impulse control. 

What happens to Trumpism—his stands on illegal immigration, trade, entitlements—when Mr. Trump is gone? Does he have any sense of responsibility for what he leads? 

And the immediate question: Is it possible he can change and be worthy of the moment? I don’t know but doubt it, because in my observation people at the end of middle age don’t usually change, they just become more so. In any case it’s getting late. So far Donald Trump has conquered all expectations, half-conquered the American political system, and almost conquered one of our two great political parties. It is sad he can’t conquer himself.

Sad to see someone reach the age of 69 and have cultivated little or no sense of responsibility - even as he aims for the most responsible position in the world.

Then again, as  is shown in the previous post, the current holder of that position is well into his 50s and has likewise failed to cultivate any.

It is so very late in the day.